How Christian Nationalism Is Shaping Trump’s Foreign Policy Toward Africa 

After threatening last weekend to go guns-a-blazing into Nigeria in defense of Christian Nigerians President Donald Trump has ended protection for another group facing violence and political instability On Wednesday the Trump administration terminated temporary protected status shielding immigrants from South Sudan from deportation even though the African nation has faced escalating violence political instability and food insecurity in newest weeks The announcement stands in stark contrast to another up-to-date decision from the administration to give Afrikaners priority for asylum even as the State Department moved to severely limit refugee admission to the United States The president has justified prioritizing white South Africans by spreading misleading contends about the persecution and killings of white farmers Related How Trump Twisted DEI to Only Benefit White Christians While Trump s immigration and foreign program stances in relation to these three countries may seem disjointed experts on white supremacy and Christian nationalism communicated The Intercept that it all fit into the white Christian nationalist playbook Trump s strategy feeds into his base s fears over immigration and demographic change while positioning the president as a defender of Christian values There is this myth that if white Christians lose a majority in the United States of America then the white Christian civilization that we have built here is fundamentally going to be threatened and that s why you have to open your borders to the Afrikaners and close your borders to people who are not white and not Christians explained Stephen Lloyd a professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland who specializes in world Christianity as well as theology ethnicity and race in South Africa Trump s narrative however flies in the face of facts on the ground After Trump threatened to deploy military action in Nigeria over suggests that Christians were being persecuted and designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern for alleged violations of religious freedom Nigerian administrators and regional experts fast fired back We are not proud of the prevention situation that we are passing through but to go with the narrative of a Christian genocide Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa a spokesperson for Nigeria s Ministry of Foreign Affairs narrated Al Jazeera no it is not true There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria While Nigerians have undeniably experienced violence at the hands of militant groups like Boko Haram Christians have not been the specific target In fact much of the violence has been directed at Muslims who practice their faith in a way these groups disagree with There are a great number of Christian casualties of violence in Nigeria Nobody disputes that announced Alex Thurston an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati who specializes in Islam and African politics However the idea of a genocide against Christians is the wrong framing The violence in Nigeria affects multiple different Nigerians of numerous faiths Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Facts an independent global monitor of conflict and protest figures unveiled that of the attacks on civilians in Nigeria so far this year roughly of those attacks targeted Christians because of their religion The alleged persecution of the Afrikaners serves a similar narrative purpose for Trump while also being riddled with several of the same fallacies Related How Trump s Embrace of Afrikaner Refugees Became a Joke in South Africa For the greater part part Afrikaners don t see themselves as refugees commented Lloyd Even specific very conservative Afrikaner separatists talk very much in terms of wanting to build their future in South Africa not outside of it he revealed Afrikaners who grew up under apartheid were taught to view themselves as their own distinct heritage explained Lloyd which includes heavy ties to Christianity but is distinct from white Christian custom in the United States Afrikaners often feel themselves to be a tribe in the way that the Zulu or the Xhosa people are a tribe And so there is still that sort of national sentiment that you look out for each other you try to care for each other You care for each other s political future Notably there hasn t been a mass exodus of Afrikaners to the United States since Trump declared an expedited refuge process Lloyd revealed Of the roughly million Afrikaners in South Africa only have immigrated to the United States under the fast-tracked refugee process Trump initiated However framing these complex political scenarios in the context of a genocide of white people or Christians is politically beneficial to Trump noted Christine Reyna a professor of psychology at DePaul University It allows him not only to drum up concerns over immigrants she revealed but it motivates his base to patronage him out of that fear In Nigeria it s genocide against Christians and in South Africa it s the supposed genocide against these white Afrikaners mentioned Reyna And so in absence of an actual genocide in the United States against either of these two groups you can keep that narrative of that existential fear of extermination and genocide and oppression that is alive and well within a certain subset of white Americans Despite crafting similar narratives in Nigeria and South Africa Trump s initiative prescriptions are quite different One of the ideas of Christian nationalism is that racial and ethnic groups have their own particular territories revealed Lloyd So while members of the Christian right in the United States may view themselves as the saviors of Nigerian Christians they believe that they should remain in Africa and not mix with white Christians here Whereas white or Western Christians in Africa should be brought into the United States Related Trump Administration Expels Eight Men to War-Torn Third Country South Sudan This racist logic allows them to justify limiting immigration of the other as somehow biblical as is the episode with South Sudanese immigrants One of the key things about Christian nationalism is the love of your own revealed Lloyd That s why I think they are signaling that immigration framework is going to preference Afrikaners Lloyd commented The idea that you re preferencing conservative white Christians is in essence preferencing your own people over those in Haiti those in South Sudan those in Venezuela In a January Fox News interview Vice President JD Vance declared that God requires Christians to love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your society and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world There s this sense that we have to keep America Christian because when Christians become a minority they re persecuted Lloyd stated And also if we maintain our Christian majority then we can be the defenders of Christians around the world The post How Christian Nationalism Is Shaping Trump s Foreign Framework Toward Africa appeared first on The Intercept