In Name Only
O Republican, Republican, wherefore art thou Republican? Deny thy forebears and confuse thy name. And for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all.
This name, and the taking done under its auspices, is not the Grand Old Party your grandparents knew, or your parents for that matter. It’s not the GOP you grew up knowing, not anymore.
Republican In Name Only—RINO for short—is the label slapped on anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to the party or out of step with prevailing ideological tastes. Fiscal conservatism and commitment to limited government are out of fashion in today’s GOP. So is free trade and internationalism in foreign affairs. Old-fashioned Republicans who cling to these principles are dismissed as RINOs and drummed out of the party.
The kind of Republicans who are in charge of their party today are increasingly isolationist on foreign policy and protectionist on trade. Despite empty rhetoric to the contrary, they could not care less about the national debt. The last time they had the run of the place in the nation’s capital, the debt exploded. They’re completely at peace with heavy-handed and even oppressive government when it advances aims like revoking reproductive freedom and criminalizing abortion, done to the battle cry “Make America Pray Again!”
Ah, prayer. Never has it been more prevalent, conspicuous. In schools, at sporting events, in the halls of Congress and other corridors of power. And never has it been more trivialized and cheapened by public displays of piety.
The current Speaker of the House insists America is—and was created to be—a Christian nation and that Thomas Jefferson was “divinely inspired” in penning the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s own writings indicate he might quarrel with that characterization if he were alive today. He told a contemporary of his that “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part” of the framework of our government. To another he went so far as to “Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.”
This was not just one founder’s perspective. In the late 1700s, the U.S government entered into an international treaty, ratified by the Senate and signed by President John Adams, stating “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
That’s not what most Americans think these days. Sixty percent believe the founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation, nearly half think it should be now, and a third—a bloc the size of the entire Republican core—are convinced it actually is. Christian Nationalism in the form of overtly political movements like the New Apostolic Reformation is a substantial subset of this segment of the population. These are the WINOs—Worshippers in Name Only. Theirs is a Christianity divorced from Christ. The teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are nowhere to be found in their theology.
When they say America is a Christian nation, they do not mean a country that feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, cares for the sick, unburdens the debtor, loves the neighbor, welcomes the stranger, forgives the sinner, tolerates the different, exalts the lowly. They mean the exact opposite. They mean a Christian nation in name only, one that is anything but Christlike.