Blood and Faith, by Damon T. Berry

With some trepidation I picked up Damon T. Berry's Blood and Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism.  Why the trepidation?  As a white, conservative, Christian man, I prepared myself for the assault.  I fit every politically incorrect category.  I anticipated that he would be assaulting me by implication, assigning labels of racist and white supremacist to me.

Thankfully, I was wrong.  Berry, who teaches religious studies at St. Laurence University, traces the roots of white nationalism, focusing on the post-World-War-2 era in the United States.  The big picture of white nationalism in the United States is that it rejects Christianity and conservatism.  One of the intellectual founders, Revilo Oliver, had written for National Review and was involved in the John Birch Society, but subsequently "abandoned any defense of conservatism or Christianity and argued strenuously that other whites should do so as well."  Another leader, William Pierce, taught that "to protect . . . the white race itself, Christianity must be rejected."  Many were drawn to pre-Christian European traditions, such as Odinism, while others rejected religion altogether.  Some even were in league with Satanism.  Christianity, with its non-European, Jewish roots, was considered "one of the primary causes of the decline of the White race."

But then, causing a bit of whiplash, Berry tries to tie white nationalists and the "alt-right" (which he never really defines) with white evangelicals and the Trump administration.  This final part of the book was remarkable because while the first five chapters were careful and deliberate biographical and historical accounts, the last chapter and conclusion devolved into specious correlations and journalistic speculation.  So is this a scholarly examination or a political op-ed?  This was the accusation that I originally anticipated.  Berry spends the whole book talking about white nationalism's absolute rejection of Christianity, then concludes that white evangelicals are hand-in-hand in support of Trump.

So as a historical study, Berry's contribution is welcome.  These movements and organizations, though largely forgotten and little known, are around, lurking on the edges of American public life.  Despite some his unwarranted associations in the conclusion, Berry provides ammunition for those in American Christian life who want to demonstrate conclusively that it is anti-historical and unfair to associate white, conservative evangelicals with white nationalism.  As Berry describes them, the white nationalists are small, culturally irrelevant, and insular.  Their recent public appearances have been disproportionately publicized; they should be marginalized and ignored, not covered with fleets of satellite news trucks.  I, for one, hope that the white nationalists survive--only in the history books.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!