A Bokononist’s Guide to Christian Nationalism

Busy, busy, busy. The puppets dance, the flags wave, and the faithful chant their rehearsed hymns of power. Christian Nationalism is not a faith but a performance, an elaborate pageant staged around a hollow center. It brings to mind Vonnegut’s “wampeter,” a meaningless object around which lives and narratives orbit, wrongly convinced of its truth.

The men and women who anchor themselves to this cause have memorized their lines. They recite the verses they favor, skip the ones that challenge them, and wield scripture like a club. They speak with certainty, strut with moral confidence, and call it religion. But what they’ve constructed is not a spiritual body. It is a granfalloon, a false collective bound by grievance, nationalism, and a desperate desire to be seen as chosen.

Christian Nationalism is full pageantry. It is a costume drama in which each actor dresses the part of a persecuted saint while gripping the tools of dominance. It is cosplay for those who long for a mythic past that never was and fantasize about a future where they reign supreme. To maintain the illusion, they must forget the fundamentals. Jesus, after all, was a brown-skinned outsider who preached love, humility, and resistance to empire. To remember this would shatter the fantasy.

So, the script is rewritten. 

“Blessed are the meek” becomes “Blessed are the strong.”

 “Love your neighbor” becomes “Build a wall.”

“Sell what you have and give to the poor” becomes “The poor are lazy.” 

The actors stay in character. The play continues. The faith they claim is not in God but in their own curated righteousness.

Beneath its theatrical robes, Christian Nationalism is a religion of complaint. It holds the throne and the cross and insists on being seen as ruler and victim. It governs with one hand while wailing with the other. It claims censorship from the heights of television studios, laments persecution from the safety of megachurch pulpits, and declares war while holding the pen that writes the laws. Its suffering is synthetic, designed to sanctify its power. There must be a battle so they can play the brave.

The whisper from Vonnegut’s Bokonon echoes here, too. “See the cat? See the cradle?” But they do not look.

Because the truth of Christian Nationalism is about control and obedience. It trades in fear. Fear the stranger. Fear the immigrant. Fear the teacher. Fear the woman who speaks. Fear the child who learns. Fear the body that resists. In this theology, the Bible is no longer a book of peace. It is a political instrument, a tool of conquest, a license for cruelty. Jesus is no longer a carpenter or a prophet. He is refashioned into a golden idol, a white, gun-wielding politician whose commandments align neatly with national policy.

This is not the Jesus of Nazareth. This is American Jesus™. He is branded and sold, scrubbed clean of subversion. He doesn’t flip tables; he signs real estate deals. He doesn’t feed the hungry; he scolds them. He doesn’t turn the other cheek; he launches preemptive strikes. American Jesus™ is perpetually angry. His hands grip power, not bread. His voice echoes with dominance, not grace. And he is always for sale.

The most successful deceit of Christian Nationalism in the ability to convince its followers that they are righteous even as they betray the very teachings they claim to revere. It tells the poor to despise the poorer. It tells the oppressed to trust their oppressors. It tells the powerful they are under siege. The lie is vast, loud, and all-consuming. To question it would require unraveling the entire story they’ve told themselves about who they are. So they do not.

Vonnegut again: “All the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” That, perhaps, is the central scripture of this movement. It does not seek truth or God. It seeks dominance and control. It does not seek heaven. It seeks a throne.

And so the flags keep waving. The puppets keep dancing. The chants keep echoing. “See the cat? See the cradle?” The shape of the lie remains intact.

For those who see through it, the task is to name it. To point to the absurdity. To call out the cracks. To remind others that the emperor’s garments are not robes of truth but scraps of propaganda, stitched together by fear.

And when the movement demands your submission, when it insists that its gospel is the only gospel, its kingdom the only kingdom, resist with laughter. Laugh because laughter is the one force authoritarianism cannot co-opt. Laugh because mockery is a solvent. It breaks the spell. It cuts the strings.

To laugh is to say, “I see through this.” To laugh is to say, “You do not own me.” To laugh is to reclaim joy, clarity, and agency from a system built on illusion.

As Bokonon taught: “Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” And let their foma,their falsehoods, their bluster, their holy theater, shrivel in the daylight.