Chilling Echo of Fascist Spain In American Christian Nationalist Sermon

Chuck O'Neal, the self-avowed Christian Nationalist preacher at the On Bible Church in Beaverton, Oregon, was desperately trying to show members of his congregation why they shouldn't be ashamed of being Christian Nationalists.

“Ultra MAGA Christian Nationalism. ‘Pastor, can you find that in your bible?’ Yes, I can, in one of my most favorite verses, Matthew 28:18-20. Matthew 28:18-20: Our king, the king of kings, the lord of lords, Jesus Christ who conquered sin, Satan, and death and rose again in the third day before he ascended, he commanded Christian Nationalism on a global and local level. Matthew 28:18-20: Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to me in Heaven and on Earth.’ He is the absolute authority, the authority above all authority, above all nations, above all kings, above all governments, all presidents. ‘All authority has been given to me,’ says Jesus, in Heaven and on Earth. ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. Nations! Do we not want nations to be saved? Did Jesus not want nations to be saved? Will Jesus not bring every nation to its knees before him? He will. Oh yes, I intend to make this a Christian nation. Yes, I intend to see every man, woman, and child confess Christ as lord. I intend to see biblical law the law of our land.”

O'Neal couldn't stop himself from going further, though. With his righteous Christian dander up, he declared that parents and grandparents who take children to see gay pride parades should be arrested and their children taken away from them.

“Genesis 1:26: ‘Let us make man in our image. Male and female he created them.’ That’s the god they spoke of. I truly never thought we’d live to see the evil we are seeing today, as perverts parade themselves in streets with little children out there being taught perversion by them, and grandma and mommy and daddy and grandpa standing along the side of the pervert parade, smiling as if this was a beautiful family scene. Grandma and grandpa and mommy and daddy should all be arrested, and the children taken from them.”

In that moment, we see a flash of where Christian Nationalism will go if we fail to successfully resist its rise in the United States.

We don't need to imagine what it would be like if Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale really happened. It did happen, less than a century ago, in Spain.

We teach our children that fascism was defeated at the end of World War II, but that’s not really what happened. Fascism in Spain persisted for two generations, from the 1930s until 1975, just 47 years ago.

A central component of Spanish fascism was the blending of church and state. In fascist Spain, Christianity was made the official religion of the state. Christian churches were given the legal power to control people’s lives. Christian priests and nuns had the authority to impose biblical laws. To be anything other than Christian became illegal.

In fact, the Spanish fascist government didn’t stop at requiring all people to be Christians. The government decided what kind of Christian everyone had to be. To belong to the Catholic Church was mandatory. They called this regime National Catholicism.

Spanish fascism was Christian Nationalism.

Guess what? The Spanish fascists took people's children away from them if they were gay, or if they were atheists, or liberals, or women who had sex outside of marriage.

Over the last decade, the people of Spain have begun to learn the details of a horrific government program that was enacted under Francisco Franco: The Christian Nationalists of fascist Spain stole people’s babies and sold them for profit.

Many of the records that documented this abuse were destroyed after the fall of the fascists, and many fascist judges and government officials remain in their positions. So, the full extent of the baby-stealing program is not known. Some estimates place the number of stolen babies in the tens of thousands. The documentary Stolen Babies of Spain calculates that 300,000 babies were taken from their families.

The widespread theft of babies across Spain was done with the approval of the fascist government, but the people who actually stole the babies were the priests and nuns of the Catholic Church. The trafficking of stolen babies was a Christian Nationalist program.

Christian leaders in Spain worked with the fascist government to set up a system of political and religious surveillance. Families and individuals who were disloyal to the government and the Catholic Church were identified. When women from these families went to hospitals to give birth, nuns took their babies and told the women that the babies had died. The babies were then sold to wealthy Christian families loyal to the fascists. Eventually, in order to keep the trafficking of stolen babies going, the Christian Nationalists of Spain began to sell the babies overseas. Many of the stolen babies ended up in the United States.

What Minister Chuck O'Neal of the On Bible Church wants is to remake America in the image of fascist Spain, in the name of Christian Nationalism.

This article is a modified and shortened version of an article and a podcast episode at Stop Christian Nationalism.