https://news.yahoo.com/idaho-epicenter-american-redoubt-white-100000776.html
Idaho Statesman
Opinion
Idaho at the epicenter of American Redoubt, white Christian nationalism
movement | Idaho
Bob Kustra
Sun, April 9, 2023 at 3:00 AM PDT
It’s not often I read a book about our challenging times and find Idaho
prominently featured, but that’s how things turned out when I read
“Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism
and What Comes Next,” by Bradley Onishi.
The author, a former white Christian nationalist with nine years in the
evangelical movement, including six years in ministry, left the church,
earned a doctorate in religious studies and assumed a teaching position
at the University of San Francisco.
Bob Kustra
Bob Kustra
He wrote “Preparing for War” after Jan. 6, 2021, when he realized that
the terrorist assault on the Capitol was the result of white Christian
nationalist rhetoric over the years. The book explains how the rise of
the new religious right gave birth to white Christian nationalism and
how it might play out in the future in even more dangerous and
destructive ways.
He now describes his former church affiliation as a movement thoroughly
entrenched in American nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and
xenophobia.
Onishi draws an important distinction between white evangelicalism and
white Christian nationalism, which he claims far exceeds the boundaries
of white evangelicalism.
White Christian nationalism marries cross and flag and creates the myth
of America founded as a Christian nation. It also reflects on what it
sees as America’s covenant with God in recognizing its past glory when
straight white Christians had exclusive control of America’s politics
and culture. Finally, such loyalty and obedience to a God whose nation
has failed him creates an apocalyptic vision for white Christian
nationalists to act out of a crisis narrative that demands the kind of
immediate action we witnessed on Jan. 6.
Brad Onishi had a front-row seat in the growth of the evangelical
movement in Orange County, California, where he was raised. He witnessed
the Sun Belt migration as white Southerners headed West to recreate
their own version of white Christianity, a potpourri of Christian
nationalist mythology, libertarian economics and cowboy individualism.
Voila! Orange County becomes the epicenter of white Christian
nationalism. But its vision was overridden by a California that won the
Oscar for the most liberal state in the Union, far outnumbering the
white conservatives in Orange County.
And here’s the part of the narrative where Idaho appears stage right. An
entire chapter is devoted to an influx of conservative Californians and
white Christian nationalists to Idaho and neighboring states.
Onishi credits James Wesley Rawles, a former military intelligence
officer, with applying the term American Redoubt to the intermountain
states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Eastern Washington. The
American Redoubt is the intermountain region where white Christian
nationalists seek to take over local governments and cultivate Christian
nationalist churches, all toward the goal of setting up a theocratic
society. Rawles’ website expands on the preparedness required for a
Second Civil War he predicts between the right and the left.
This is not a tale Idahoans have trouble understanding given Meridian’s
recent experience of a California transplant who attempted to abolish
the library district. California plates are as plentiful in Boise these
days as Idaho potatoes. Although all Californians moving to Idaho
certainly do not fit the mold of white Christian nationalist, sidle up
to a bar in Boise next to a displaced Californian and you are likely to
hear a lecture on how expensive it is to live in California and how much
his home’s equity was worth in the Idaho housing market. But it’s also
possible that you will get a riff on the liberal state and the
conservative ecstasy of living in a state where the right wing is in its
ascendancy.
Onishi counts at least 50 people from his home community of Yorba Linda
who he knows have moved to Idaho, which he claims has gone from “flyover
country” to the hottest region west of the Mississippi. No argument there.
Some Idahoans when first hearing of California’s “wagon train in
reverse” heading to the Gem State may rejoice to think of the newbies
serving as a moderating influence on Idaho’s increasingly conservative
politics. Onishi dashes those expectations by citing Boise State
research showing the new Californians more conservative than native
Idahoans.
Onishi portrays many of our new residents as seeking a self-segregated
white Christian society without the bother of religious, racial or
ethnic minorities. I’m sure Boiseans could quibble with Onishi on some
of his generalizations applying to their city, but it’s very difficult
to question his premise when you leave Boise for the rest of Idaho.
Onishi cites various iterations of the American Redoubt, naming and
quoting political/religious leaders setting up their own Christian
fortresses in Moscow and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington.
No matter where you travel in the United States today, there is a
recognition of Boise as a city on the move and a state growing by leaps
and bounds. What is less obvious is this parade of people who move to
Idaho to separate themselves from the United States of America, not just
California. They are hoping they can remove themselves from a nation
growing increasingly diverse by finding refuge in Idaho and other
intermountain states.
A manifestation of the Redoubt’s effort at the state level to assume
control of Idaho’s local governments is the ongoing attack Republican
legislators wage on what they call “woke” ideology but is really nothing
but an assault on a compendium of current statutes that trust local
governments to act on behalf of their citizens.
They also target the word “diversity” in their efforts to expunge any
reference to schools’ preparing students for a workplace and society
quite different from the all-white existence these extremists attempt to
build in Idaho. And they continue to take aim at their favorite target —
the teaching of racism and America’s history of slave holding, which
they package in neatly bound critiques of gibberish that ignores our
slave-holding past and the racism still deeply embedded in our society.
If you travel out Military Reserve Road, you can visit the Fort Boise
Military cemetery of Civil War veterans’ graves and headstones. On its
website, you can read about reports of the cemetery haunted by spirits
that roam the area. Apparently, those spirits have found their way to
the State’s Capitol where the American Redoubt’s Second Civil War pits
those clear-eyed and proud about the diversity of America against Idaho
Republicans who bow in reverence to those who seek a White Redoubt.
Which shall it be for Idaho’s future? The answer is ours to complete.
Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to
2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio and is a
regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as
Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.