TIME: The ‘Alt-Right’ Has Created Alt-Christianity

I’m not sure that I would call it Alt-Christianity:

“When I was in Charlottesville as part of a clergy delegation to protest the Unite the Right rally, I got to look into the faces of “out” Nazis and white supremacists for the first time in my 61 years. And they looked scarily normal. They’re the guys arranging stock at the local big box store or the desk jockeys in a cubicle farm. Decent. Clean cut. Surprisingly young. And white. No doubt I looked into these faces before — on the street, in a restaurant, in church — but I didn’t know it because they weren’t carrying Nazi and Confederate flags, semi-automatic rifles and shields. …

So as traditional Christian institutions shrink, stagnate and struggle, Spencer and his white-supremacist allies, feeling supported by Donald Trump, are creating a violent alt-Christianity, as their counterparts in the Middle East have created an alt-Islam. They are supplying their followers with alt-liturgies, alt-mysticism, and alt-magic and are willing to smash, burn, destroy and kill for it, as they idolize their vision of “America” as a white “ethno-state,” an absolutized, divinized race and nation.

In Charlottesville, I saw Nazi flags on American soil and alt religious fervor in the faces of American Nazis and white nationalists. The message I will bring to faith leaders around our nation is both urgent and clear: Aristotle was right. Nature indeed abhors a vacuum. If we don’t provide emerging generations with genuine identity, community and purpose through robust and vibrant spiritual communities, somebody else will do so. If good religion slumbers and stagnates, bad religion is the alternative.”

The Alt-Right is divided on religion.

The #UniteTheRight crowd in Charlottesville was composed of Christians, pagans, deists, atheists and agnostics. As far as religion goes, the one thing that united everyone in that crowd was the rejection of mainstream Christianity, which is perceived as weak, effeminate and unappealing.

As a Christian, I don’t believe in the sins of racism, sexism, nativism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, white privilege or anti-Semitism. None of these secular leftwing sins existed a century ago. Most of them were conjured into existence in academia and were pushed into the mainstream by the mass media. They were unknown to even to ancient and modern philosophers and theologians. Martin Luther has been condemned for anti-Semitism by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Southern Baptist Convention has condemned its own founders on the grounds of racism.

The Christianity of Russell Moore isn’t the Christianity of Stonewall Jackson and Robert Lewis Dabney. The Lutheranism of Martin Luther isn’t the Lutheranism of ELCA. The Christianity of Oliver Cromwell or Hernán Cortés isn’t the Christianity of Pope Francis. There was no such thing as the sin of “racism” in the 19th century. Everyone hasn’t accepted the religion of the Baby Boomer generation.

I saw these clergy come out to pray for us on July 8th and August 12th in Charlottesville. These Unitarians who don’t even believe in God came with their ukuleles to play Pete Seeger and John Lennon songs. We didn’t get much of a chance to interact with these people, but they represent everything we dislike about mainstream Christianity and why it is in decline.