White Christian nationalists favor strong, authoritarian leaders who espouse a semi-secularized version of their rhetoric, which is how Christian Nationalists found their champion in Trump. Their ideology is American fascism repurposed and repackaged for the 21st century, and white Christian Nationalism is its theology. To understand how we arrived at this moment, we need to examine the origins of this belief system—and how it has been embedded in America from the beginning.

What happens when the founders and exemplars of your faith were martyred and you are told to be a good Christian is to be martyred? What happens when your faith, which relies on martyrdom, is the dominant religion of the empire? And what happens when someone who looks like how you pretend Christ looks like is publicly murdered? White Christian nationalists have found their martyr in Charlie Kirk.

Today we breathe new life into this land. Today we breathe life into the unmarked graves on which we stand. We honor them in the only way...