Christian nationalists like to claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, even though scholars and moderate pastors overwhelmingly agree this was not the case. Now a recent report reveals that Christian nationalists are growing in the United States — and doing so by spreading hateful views about vulnerable minority groups.
“Michael Spangler does not look like a white supremacist and antisemite,” wrote Bob Smietana from Religion News on Sunday. Despite his clean-cut appearance, however, Smietana pointed out that Spangler eventually “began talking about Jews. And a broad smile broke across his face.”
Spangler then asked Smietana, “You’re asking if I oppose the Jews who murdered Christ?”, adding that he believes the Bible condemns Jews as “the enemies of God and all men. We need to consider them and treat them accordingly.”
Smietana described Spangler as in the same category as Joel Webbon and Joshua Haymes: “A segregationist and ‘race realist’ whose start-up church, which has a handful of families, bars Black people out of fear of ‘harmful race-mixing,’ Spangler is one of a small but growing group of pastors and internet influencers who openly embrace racist and antisemitic views, casting them as true Christian ideas.”
Dale Partridge is another example in this trend.
“For Dale Partridge, an Arizona pastor and another member of the New Christian Right channel, that one-way trip has included significant transformation,” Smietana wrote. “A decade ago, Partridge was a lifestyle blogger and social justice evangelical entrepreneur who had been ‘saved from success.’ In 2015, he gave a TEDx talk called ‘How to Value People over Profits’ based on his book of the same title. His most controversial view was that yoga pants are sinful.”
Smietana added, “In recent years, Partridge, who has more than 300,000 social media followers and more than 40,000 on YouTube, has rebranded himself as a chain-smoking, hardcore Christian nationalist, claiming women should not be allowed to vote, Black Americans should not be citizens and Jews were ruining Germany before the Nazis took over.”
“‘So this Nazi or National Socialist movement terrified the Jews because it represented a powerful form of Christian nationalism,’ he said in a video clip posted on social media.” Smietana continued.
He also pointed out that “Partridge has argued for America to become 90 [percent] white again, as it was in the 1960s, and called for the deportation of 100 million immigrants.”
Earlier in September, The Dispatch’s Eli Kronenberg reported that the late Charlie Kirk’s activist group Turning Point USA is also being taken over by Christian nationalists.
“Jonah Scott became president of the University of Central Florida’s Turning Point chapter within months of arriving on campus in the fall of 2024, after previously founding a chapter at Seminole State College,” Kronenberg wrote. “He said the chapter’s meetings in his first year took place in a small conference room that held 30 to 40 students, but after Kirk’s death, the chapter had to start booking the campus’s largest meeting room in order to accommodate more than 200 students.”
Kronenberg continued that “with a growth in attendance came a shift in tone. When Scott stood for reelection as president this spring, some new members sought to push the chapter in a different direction, and Scott lost.” Scott told Kronenberg that “I think Turning Point became a lot more of a Christian organization since Charlie passed, and they wanted more Christian leadership. I myself am Jewish, so there was a lot of that. Though we did incorporate a lot of Christian stuff into the group, I think a lot of people wanted it to be a more explicitly Christian organization.”