Laura Flanders: I discovered rather a lot from this movie. For one factor, the large position that Christian Nationalists performed within the January 6 rebellion. What do we have to learn about what occurred the night time earlier than, January 5?

Dan Partland: The rebellion on the US Capitol on January 6 was mainly a Christian nationalist rebellion—which isn’t to say that everyone there was a Christian nationalist, nevertheless it was a unifying theme. It wasn’t a coincidence that every one of these folks had been on the Capitol that day. There have been church buildings and lots of conservative Christian teams organizing protests to deliver folks to the Capitol on January 5. That they had performed this a bunch of instances prior with one thing known as the Jericho Marches. The thought of the Jericho Marches was to represent, in Christian phrases, the taking down of the federal government. The story of Jericho is that the partitions come crumbling down. It was well-known, extremely publicized inside sure Christian circles that the occasion on the sixth was going to be an effort to dam the certification of the election.

LF: American as baseball and apple pie, is it? Christian nationalism?

Rob Reiner: Christianity is definitely part of the material of America. There’s no getting round that. The issue with Christian nationalism is that they declare that America must be a Christian nation. That it was based to be a white Christian nation. We all know, based mostly on our Structure, very clearly there’s a separation of church and state. To say that Christian nationalism—which is a political motion, not a spiritual motion—must be tied into what’s American is just a little deceptive.

LF: What makes the Christian nationalism of at the moment completely different from the conservative spiritual actions we’ve identified up to now?

DP: The present Christian nationalist motion, which as Rob stated is a political motion and never a religion, has turn out to be the dominant expression of Christianity in America. That’s what’s actually scary. It represents a hazard not simply to American democracy due to the methods wherein they’ll use each democratic and antidemocratic means to attempt to implement this Christian agenda into legislation but additionally a hazard to church itself due to the ways in which it’s co-opting the thought of what Christianity is about and undermining the central tenets of the religion.

RR: We’ve got specialists within the movie, very conservative, religious Christians, leaders, thinkers, pastors, who discuss how this motion is totally antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. That’s what you need to focus in on, as a result of the concept that you could possibly promote a political agenda within the identify of God and that might offer you permission to resort to any means to get what you need, as much as and together with violence we noticed on January 6, is totally antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, which is love thy neighbor, do unto others, and so forth.

LF: How huge is that this motion?

RR: Christian nationalism, the best way we discuss it within the movie as this political motion, isn’t the bulk. It’s removed from the bulk. However due to the best way our system works, a really virulent minority can management our politics—and that’s what they’ve performed. They’ve found out a technique to take this motion, which may be very well-funded, very well-organized, far more so than when it began again within the ’50s. They’ve funneled this group into Donald Trump, and he’s their spokesperson for this. You’ll be able to acquire an incredible quantity of energy with perhaps 20, 25, 30 p.c of the populace.

LF: Dan, as you concentrate on the work you hope this movie will do, who’re you attempting to achieve?

DP: There’s lots of people, American Christians, who’re beginning to actually be unwell comfy with the general path of their political leanings, of their church, of this motion basically. They’ve been swept up in it. So we’re positively considering reaching these folks, as a result of I believe these persons are reachable.

RR: We would like spiritual teams, church teams to try it and share it with their flock and discuss to one another. How do you are feeling about this motion? Is it representing true Christianity? We would like that dialogue to proliferate. We’re seeing the rise of autocracy and theocracy world wide, and it’s a clarion name to say this may occur right here. If democracy crumbles, then it portends a hazard all through the world.

LF: There’s something about evangelicalism that I respect, which is that inside sure boundaries they do imagine that individuals could be modified, saved, rescued, transformed.

DP: It’s incorrect to consider Christian nationalism as a lightweight swap that’s both on or off. You’re a Christian nationalist, you’re not. The best way a lot of the scholarship views that is actually a spectrum. Among the greatest analysis on this classifies teams starting from what they name ambassadors of Christian nationalism, who firmly imagine this can be a Christian nation and must be mirrored that means in legislation. The subsequent tier is accommodators, resisters, after which rejectors. On this prime class of ambassadors, these are in all probability the general public we’re speaking about once we say Christian nationalists. This can be as a lot as 20 p.c of the inhabitants. That’s an enormous quantity, 20 p.c who’ve deeply held beliefs that the US is and will formally be a Christian nation and need to write that into legislation. That’s the inhabitants that we’ve to be apprehensive about.

What makes it so troublesome to handle is that when you think about the following tier, individuals who you’d name accommodators of Christian nationalism and even resisters, now you’re speaking about nearly two-thirds to three-quarters of the nation have a minimum of some little bit of Christian nationalist perception. A few of it’s nice, after all—“That is mainly a Christian nation.” There’s a background of Christianity all through the historical past of this republic. The kind of benign ways in which it begins, which is simply recognizing that there’s lots of Christian folks right here, shortly turns into a slippery slope with this informal language of, “The US is mainly a Christian nation.” What does that imply? We’ve got to attract that brilliant line once more between the separation of church and state, which is a foundational American precept, which I can not imagine within the yr 2024 is changing into fuzzy to folks.

RR: You’re by no means going to get to that hard-core group of Christian nationalists that simply imagine it. and you may’t persuade them. It’s these different layers that Dan talked about. If you will get to these folks to make them perceive that that is destroying their religion, that’s the best way I believe you may undo it. There’s all types of pie-in-the-sky issues like eliminating the Electoral School, which might truly make us extra democratic and majority rule. There are lots of safeguards for the minority to ensure that they’re not run over roughshod by the bulk. However when that minority will get an excessive amount of energy, then they’re working roughshod over the bulk. You hear this each 4 years, that that is the best and most vital election in our lifetime. This one truly is: Democracy is on the poll. Joe Biden has made that case. We’ve got a selection right here, and it’s a really stark selection. We will both select to proceed this excellent experiment or take an enormous step in the direction of destroying it. To me, 2024 is the important thing. I imagine that People, on the finish of the day, are going to decide on democracy over autocracy. I’ve to imagine that.