Echo of White History

Donatist, Pelagianism, Monophysites and Arianism, too; if you say these words as a chant, one can hear the chorus of crones from Macbeth doing call and response, like in the Black Church, “Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

As much misery in the real world was caused by these Catholic heresies as imagined literary pain was foretold by the Weird sisters. Of course, few today consider the nature of Christ. But back in the day it was a matter of life and death. Literally.

A Donatist believed that to minister to the flock the clergy had to be pure. Kind of makes sense. By natural extension, though, a cleric who was appointed by a corrupt church official was illegitimate. You can imagine what a shit show that caused. Pelagianism was worse. It held that one did not need the intercession of the priesthood to get right with God. Good deeds alone could save you and baptism was unnecessary. That was a direct threat and needed to be ripped out by the roots.

Neither of these deal with the nature of Christ. The Monophysites heresy did. Jesus was either human or divine: he could not be both... The flip side, Nestorius asserted that Jesus was two independent natures. Two mints in one, like the old Certs slogan. Arianism complicated the whole thing by insisting that Jesus was divine but ranked below God and that both ranked below the Holy Spirit. If I was a believer, I might opt for Door #3. The good news is that they figured it all out by compromising. Something Christians do not do well. The whole Trinity resolution was just that, a compromise. A way to bring the house back to general order. One time in two thousand years: it really stands out.

To lighten the mood though, in today’s secular world heresies are in the dark past and fear of them is no more terrifying than walking through the forest in the Wizard of Oz. Call and response again to the heresies, the Weird sisters, too. “Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my?”

The problem has not gone away. Christian Nationalism is based on a credo repeated far and wide in this country by populists from the right: “I am a Christian who is oppressed by the deep state; I am a white person who is discriminated against by cultural forces outside my control; My faith in Jesus tells me that the unsaved are unclean.”

Of course, I just made that credo up. But not from whole cloth. Catholics will chant their credo with the rosary slowly moving bead by bead through their hands: "I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth...” Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

When early Christians lost faith in secular authorities to protect them against heresy, they resorted to employing private armies of religious thugs to pummel the other side. Today, we have the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers and the Boogaloo Bois. Maybe except for the latter, Christian Nationalists all.

Today's heresy to many Christian Nationalists is that five hundred years of enlightenment doctrine is wrong: the white man's manifest destiny is not to be on top of the world order. That’s heresy! Burn the house down. This is totally opposite to the commonly held European belief, promulgated since racial classification and so-called scientific racism emerged during the Enlightenment, and conveniently promulgated by the merchant elites who brought us the slave trade.

Which nature of Jesus did the Enlightenment and the self-identified white European intellectuals believe made this repugnant categorization God's work? The ranked God of Arius? No. Any other natures of Jesus espoused by the defeated heresies? No. It was the unified God of the Trinity that directed evolution to put the white race on top of the heap.

That's my story and I am sticking to it. Today's populist, on the right, refuses to see the fallacy inherent in the proposition that skin color determines one's place in the human pecking order. That one's pedigree comes from one's breeding stock. And they are going to fight it every step of the way. They exist in every layer of our socio-economic cake. White cake that is. When you infuse this political imperative with religious fervor, what a strong cocktail of disaster will, or may, ensue. The fanatical adherents to Christian Nationalism in government cause standstill. The giant with the feet of clay. The tail wagging the dog.

The result? Just ask the Weird sisters, “Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and Cauldron bubble.”