Religious Nationalism and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals and Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the response to the coronavirus crisis by Evangelical Christian nationalists in the USA. The article outlines the curious mediaverse of religious nationalism—its post-truth and fake news aspects in particular—links religious nationalism to American exceptionalism, and analyzes conflicts between secular and religious authorities. Drawing upon some lessons from the past, the article addresses the wider implications of Christian nationalism on American politics, and capitalist ideology, as it has been played out virally in the corporate media. The article shows that the ideological underpinnings of evangelical Christianity prevent its proponents from understanding the virus in an historical and materialist manner and points toward more epistemically sound approaches to relationships between science and religion. It concludes that privatization, austerity capitalism, and ‘gig economy’ need to be replaced by socialist alternatives and seeks inspiration in theory and practice of Marxism and South American liberation theology.