Desantis Promotes the “Innocence” in History and “Purity Culture” of Christian Nationalism

“Woke; adjective: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

By his own admission, Governor Ron DeSantis has attempted to prevent residents, schools, and corporations in Florida from becoming actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice) in his rhetoric and his support for the state’s so-called “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act.”

In addition to demonizing Latinx and black immigrants coming from the U.S. southern border and using their bodies as props to promote himself and his far-right agenda, conservative Republicans in the state legislature, along with the Governor’s absolute backing, passed the act to supposedly provide businesses, employees, children, and families the legal means of opposing alleged “woke indoctrination.”

The bill bans the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other discussions around the topic of the country’s racial history in the schools and diversity and inclusion training in corporations.

DeSantis announced during his second inaugural address, January 3, 2023:

“We reject this woke ideology. We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy,” he reiterated. “We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional.” And then he pledged, “We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”

Actually, in his statement and actions, DeSantis is not allowing reality, facts, and truth to enter the public sphere.

DeSantis is not only criminalizing discussions of race and racism, but he is also preventing Florida residents from actively attending to important societal facts and issues of sexuality and gender as well.

Tuesday, June 7, 2022, a large van from the Broward County Florida public school department drove up in front of the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale. In the van, Broward County school officials had filled boxes of children’s books on LGBTQ themes taken from county classrooms and school libraries for donation to the museum.

While county officials claimed the donations were the result of their attempts to clear shelves and office space for the accumulation of other subject matter, it is no mere coincidence that Florida’s so-called “Parental Rights in Education” law, called by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, was to take effect weeks later on July 1, 2022.

Passed primarily by Republicans in the state legislature and signed into law by DeSantis, the new law reads in part:

“Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Though Florida has positioned itself at the tip of the spear to cut and bleed to death school curricular materials on topics of race, gender, and sexual identity, school contexts, as reproductions of the larger society, function on an overarching system of racism, heteronormativity, and other forms of oppression.

Speaking in December 2022 on a progressive political panel titled “Straight White American Jesus” in Denver, focusing on the topic white Christian nationalism in the United States, speakers talked of major components of Christian nationalism: “innocence” in history, and “purity culture.”

Sara Moslener, a lecturer in religion at Central Michigan University, asserted that concepts of “innocence” and “purity culture” are often located in white Christian nationalism, stemming from colonial history when whiteness was coupled with freedom and innocence.

“The innocence that is connected to white racial identity has been a … delusion that has worked really well in giving white people a sense of specialness, a sense of ‘we have something in common with one another’,” she said. “There is this sense that we are innocent of all of these things, and white Christian nationalism says: well, this was all part of God’s plan.”

Moslener continued by explaining the concept of “purity culture,” taken from conservative evangelical Christianity that opposes abortion rights and homosexuality, and adheres to traditional gender roles and sexual abstinence before marriage for women. She claimed that this is also foundational to Christian nationalism. This “purity culture,” is mainly about “evangelicals gaining political power.”

“White Christian Nationalism is steeped in myths of national innocence and this idea that the founding of the United States was a God-anointed beginning,” Moslener said. And this is connected as a movement by a unified commitment to a social order of a shared theology of family, and a shared perception of gender roles, sexuality, and gender expression.

Katherine Stewart, an investigative journalist and author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism who was also on the panel said of Christian nationalism, “It’s not a single religion, it’s both an ideology – a set of ideas — and it’s also a political movement – an organized quest for power.”

“Many politicians have tried to ally themselves with this ideology to promote it,” Stewart said, citing Ron DeSantis, who identified himself with this ideology to gain votes in his political campaigns, and apparently now in his quest for the White House.

So, while DeSantis and the growing number of politicians and state and national conservative caucuses are pushing for similar “anti-WOKE,” “anti-CRT,” and “anti-LGBTQ” regulations and laws in the schools and restrictions on inclusion and diversity discussions in businesses, their not-so-hidden agenda is intended to bring the nation closer to the patriarchal white Christian nationalist ideals attempted in other Fascist movements.

Power-hungry autocrats understand that an informed awake populace increases the chances of mass challenges to their authority, as history has clearly shown. But if the white power structure can severely restrict and downgrade the education of people they deem outside this structure — people of color, non-Christians, non-cisgender, and non- heteronormative individuals – then they believe their domination will be assured.

However, allowing free and age-appropriate discussions of the “hard” history connected to race and racism unmasks this Christian nationalist myth of “white innocence.” And free and age-appropriate discussions of topics around sexuality and gender knocks out of the water the propagation of their invention of some sort of “purity culture” destined by God.

Anti-wokeness is anti-awareness, and that is DeSantis’ intent.

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