“As someone who spent the majority of my life as a diehard Christian Nationalist but didn’t know it,” April Ajoy writes in Star Spangled Jesus, ” I have quite a bit of firsthand information about what Christian Nationalism is, what it looks like, what its goals are, and why we need to resist it.”
As a former Evangelical Christian myself, I could relate to much of what Ajoy says. Star Spangled Jesus is the best book I have read that identifies what Christian Nationalism is. “Christian Nationalism disguised itself quietly in evangelicalism for decades, slowly and seamlessly infusing American patriotism into a requirement for following Jesus,”
Star Spangled Jesus is a well researched book. Throughout its pages the author gives example from her own life on erroneous evangelical thinking. She has a number of quotes from evangelicals and from faith leaders who perceive spirituality differently. Like this one: “Reverend Robin Meyers put it this way in his book, Saving Jesus from the Church: ‘There is not a single word in that sermon [the Sermon on the Mount] about what to believe, only words about what to do.… Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe!'”
If you were part of an evangelical church in the past and have misgivings about some of what was taught there, Star Spangled Jesus is a good read. Ajoy is not anti-religion. Or a misguided Christian deceived by Satan. The book speaks to people like me who still identify as Christians, yet are put off with the version of Christianity presented publicly by many politically oriented faith leaders today. And as serious as this subject is, Ajoy mixes in her good sense of humor, too, in sharing her story.
She adds in the concluding pages “My desire is that people will read this book and leave with a clearer understanding of what Christian Nationalism is and how it has been manipulating Christianity.” For this reader, she achieved that goal.
