A Politico journalist declared Friday on MSNBC that what unites “Christian nationalists” is their belief that human rights “come from God,” suggesting that such a belief is dangerous for the country.
“There are a lot of groups orbiting Trump, but the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalists is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” Heidi Przybyla toldMSNBC’s Michael Steele.
“The problem is that… men are determining what God is telling them,” Przybyla added.
Her remarks were swiftly rebuked for ignoring the fact that the U.S. Declaration of Independence explicitly states, as one of the country’s founding principles: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Ethics and public theology professor Andrew T. Walker slammed her statements on X as “a civics failure, a talent failure, an intelligence failure, a historical failure, an ethics failure.”
Believing rights come from God is now Christian Nationalism. This is a civics failure, a talent failure, an intelligence failure, a historical failure, an ethics failure...shall I keep going? Elites we will always have. But my heavens, we need better elites.
Bishop Robert Barron warned that Przybyla’s claim that human rights come from our government, and not God, “open(s) the door to totalitarianism.”
“It was one of the most disturbing and frankly dangerous things I’ve ever seen in a political conversation,” Bishop Barron said in a video address posted to X on Friday
He explained that if human rights “come from the government, they can be taken away by those same people,” and pointed out that “government exists to secure these rights, not to produce them.”
Politico Journo Calls “Rights Come From God” a “Christian Nationalist” Belief
Selwyn Duke
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; all men and women created by…go…you know, you know the thing,” said Joe Biden in 2020. We don’t know if his inability to remember the famous Declaration of Independence line means he isn’t a “Christian nationalist” or if the fact he tried to means he is, but we know whom to ask: journalist Heidi Przybyla.
Przybyla is the Politico hire who recently claimed that believing people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” makes you a Christian nationalist — and that you’re then not a “Christian.”
This brought understandable mockery, with all and sundry pointing out that the belief is mainstream in America, being integral to our Republic’s founding and embraced by disparate ideologues across our political spectrum. Przybyla then responded, claiming her remarks were taken out of context. There is context, too — but the most charitable conclusion it suggests is that the journalist’s mouth got a step ahead of her brain.
Przybyla made her comments during a Thursday MSNBC panel discussion on All In with Chris Hayes, though the only thing all in was her foot in her mouth. As she said in a clip that went viral:
“The one thing that unites all of them … as Christian nationalists — not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court; they come from God.” (Video below.)
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