Christian Nationalism Is America’s Most Protected Terror Pipeline

Two Minnesota State Legislators And Spouses Shot In Targeted Attacks — Source: Handout / Getty

What do you call a white man who murders his political enemies, believes the world is ending, and thinks God told him to prepare for war?

In America, we call him a concerned Christian “prepper.”

The only thing more American than apple pie is a white man with a Bible, a stockpile of guns, and a martyr complex. One of them turned his faith into firepower, and once again, the media still won’t call it what it is: another chapter in America’s long love affair with white religious violence. America, once again, is pretending not to know its own doctrine.

Instead, we get sanitized headlines and forensic curiosity.

Vance Boelter didn’t just love Jesus. He loved white Jesus. Not the healer. Not the rebel flipping tables. But the weaponized, flag-draped version who blesses bullets, sanctions slavery, and shows up to school board meetings pissed about pronouns. He didn’t worship the Jesus who fed the poor. He worshipped the one who carries a rifle, hates immigrants, wears a crusty red MAGA hat, and votes straight-ticket Republican.

Reporters note that Vance Boelter, who is charged with hunting and killing former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and wounding two others, Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, is a “devout Christian.” That he was a “prepper.” As if stockpiling weapons for an ‘End Times’ bloodbath is just an eccentric hobby like ice fishing, or home-brewing kombucha.

Most coverage of right-wing violence stops at psychology or politics. Our media outlets aren’t asking the obvious questions: how does a faith tradition that claims to worship the Prince of Peace keep producing white men who fantasize about holy war? How did white supremacist ideology hijack Christianity to justify violence?

After every act of right-wing Christian violence, the media reaches for the softest possible vocabulary. He was a “prepper.” A “family man.” A “devout believer.” He posted “concerning” things. Maybe he was just “mentally ill.” What we never hear: Radicalized. Extremist. Domestic terrorist. Christian supremacist. White racist. We never hear that the radicalization pipeline is one that begins not in foreign cells or dark web forums, but in American churches.

Because naming it would force this country to reckon with its own religion. Its own whiteness. Its own history. So instead, the press offers us profiles of quiet neighbors and misunderstood loners, laundering the violence through the language of pity and pathologized individualism. The same media that had no trouble labeling Black Lives Matter activists “radical” and “dangerous” and even “terrorist” for holding signs can’t bring itself to call a white man with a kill list what he is: a homegrown disciple of American theocracy.

Meanwhile, the GOP doesn’t just stay silent; it lights the match. They’ve spent years cultivating this base. Defending Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero. Protecting January 6 defendants as “hostages.” Inviting pastors who preach armed rebellion to deliver opening prayers in Congress. People like the Minnesota shooter aren’t rogue actors. They’re political assets. The Republican Party isn’t afraid of Christian nationalists; it depends on them. Their silence about Vance Boelter’s religious motivations isn’t apathy, it’s strategy.

But none of this is new.

This country has always had a taste for God and guns. From the Christian slaveholders who beat Bible verses into Black flesh, to the Klan’s white robes and burning crosses, to Manifest Destiny’s bloody march across Indigenous lands, violence has never been a betrayal of American Christianity. It’s been a tool of it.

White Christian nationalism isn’t a distortion of the faith. It’s one of its most enduring denominations.

And now we’re watching the same formula repeat itself. Threats against elected officials are rising. Far-right pastors are preaching civil war. Legislatures are pushing bills to criminalize trans people, censor Black history, and hand churches more power over public schools. And men like Vance Boelter aren’t anomalies. They’re advance warning signs. Not the edge of the movement but the center of it.

Vance didn’t snap. He followed a script. One that’s been rehearsed in pews, podcasts, and prepper YouTube channels for decades. The Christian Right has long blended patriotism with prophecy, guns with gospel, and fearmongering with faith. And it’s not a fringe element, it’s a core feature of modern white evangelicalism.

This is the theology of dominion. The belief that America was founded by God for white Christians to rule. That liberals, Black folks, immigrants, queer folks, and nonbelievers are threats to be neutralized. That violence isn’t a betrayal of faith—it’s a fulfillment of it. Boelter wasn’t acting outside the doctrine. He was absorbing it, regurgitating it, and enacting it.

The numbers don’t lie. White Christian nationalism has been gaining ground for decades and keeps swelling.

According to a 2023 PRRI survey, roughly 30% of Americans either actively identify with or sympathize with Christian nationalist beliefs. That’s not a handful of extremists. That’s one in three people walking around with the belief that God gave this country to white Christians and everybody else is either a threat or a punishment.

Among Trump supporters, the numbers are even more alarming. A study published by the Pew Research Center found that 55% identify as Christian nationalists, compared to only 15% of Biden voters. This is not a bipartisan phenomenon; it’s a white evangelical pipeline, plain and simple. Most Republicans are sympathetic to Christian nationalism. Nearly 29% of white evangelicals are core adherents of Christian nationalism, with another 35% sympathetic. That means nearly two-thirds of the largest, loudest religious voting bloc in the country is spiritually aligned with a worldview that sees a multiracial society as a mistake and civil rights as an assault on “Christian values.”

And it’s not just rhetoric. It’s weaponized belief.

The Pew Research Center also found that Christian nationalists are seven times more likely than other Americans to agree that “true patriots might have to resort to violence to save our country.” Twelve percent of them admitted to having threatened or used a weapon in recent years.

And let’s not pretend this is hypothetical. Since 9/11, right-wing extremists, not Islamic terrorists, have been responsible for more deaths on U.S. soil. From 2020 to 2021, 90% of all domestic terror incidents were linked to far-right ideologies, including white Christian nationalism.

This data confirms what should be obvious: Christian nationalism is not marginal. It’s a fast-growing, primarily white, conservative, evangelical ideology tightly correlated with support for violence, authoritarianism, and anti-democratic policies. That makes Vance Boelter not an anomaly, but a predictable actor in a movement that has been growing for decades.

We saw it on January 6.

That wasn’t just a political riot; it was a white Christian insurrection. These people didn’t just storm the Capitol, they anointed it. They marched with crosses, waved “Jesus Saves” flags, blew shofars like it was Jericho, and prayed in the halls of Congress while erecting a noose outside.

They smeared feces on the walls and dragged a guillotine onto the lawn like it was the French Revolution in a MAGA hat. And all of it—all of it—was wrapped in worship. They didn’t just believe they were fighting for Trump. They believed they were doing God’s work.

This is what happens when Christian nationalism stops preaching and starts marching. When holy war leaves the sanctuary and enters the streets. When whiteness, weaponry, and worship collapse into one doctrine of control.

We’re seeing it in state legislatures pushing voter suppression, book bans, and anti-LGBTQ crackdowns, all backed by scripture and soaked in the language of divine authority.

We’re seeing it in school boards banning sex ed and Black history while inviting pastors to open meetings with prayer and political rants.

We’re seeing it in abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest, written by lawmakers who believe they’re enforcing “God’s law” over human rights.

We’re seeing it in public libraries defunded and defaced, simply for offering access to drag story hours or anti-racist books.

We’re seeing it in armed militias patrolling Pride events, calling themselves “Christian soldiers,” as if queer joy were a threat to national security.

We’re seeing it in courtrooms, where judges rule based on personal faith rather than constitutional rights, chipping away at the wall between church and state brick by brick.

We’re seeing it in politicians invoking Old Testament punishments for trans people and calling for “biblical justice” against their enemies on cable news.

Each of these episodes is more than a legislative or cultural skirmish. They’re the footprint of a national campaign to merge church and state, policy and prophecy, civic space and pulpit.

This isn’t a culture war. It’s a white supremacist crusade baptized in evangelical rage.

And unless we name it, confront it, and dismantle it, we’re going to keep watching headlines like Vance Boelter’s fade into silence until the next one explodes.

White evangelicalism is the most coddled domestic terror pipeline in this country. And nobody wants to say it out loud.

You want to talk about “ideological extremism?” Fine. Let’s talk about the church pews where violence is baptized in patriotism. Let’s talk about pulpits where pastors preach armed defense of a Christian nation. Let’s talk about the YouTube prophets, the militia chaplains, the Jesus-flavored apocalypse porn that radicalizes white men under the guise of faith.

But the media won’t have that conversation because white Christianity keeps getting a pass. Because America doesn’t see it as a threat. It sees white nationalism as tradition. And that refusal to interrogate the religious roots of white violence? That’s complicity and the protection racket.

That’s why Vance Boelter gets labeled a “prepper” instead of a domestic terrorist. Because naming the threat would mean confronting the cold, hard truth that the real radicalization is happening on Sunday mornings, during the most segregated hour in America, where a gospel of grievance is preached weekly.

And what it’s producing isn’t just believers or the faithful. It’s soldiers in the army of white Jesus.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack here.

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