The Attacks on Christian Identity Politics

Christendom is becoming increasingly secular. Some, like Pres. Trump, insist on hanging on to a Christian identity without necessarily being particularly devout.

Here is a Wash. Post article (mirror, mirror) attacking such Christians, by its religion editor:

The unre­li­gious reli­gi­os­ity of Chris­tian iden­tity polit­ics ...

Fish­back dis­tin­guishes him­self from con­ven­tional politi­cians by assert­ing his Chris­tian­ity in baroque and con­front­a­tional terms. He does not just invoke Chris­tian themes. He draws a line between Chris­ti­ans and non-Chris­ti­ans, as in his com­ment about the West­ern Wall.

Fish­back’s reli­gious rhet­oric is part of an emer­ging form of Chris­tian iden­tity polit­ics. Like a num­ber of prom­in­ent influ­en­cers, he inter­laces elab­or­ate expres­sions of Chris­tian piety with cri­ti­cisms of Jew­ish sup­port­ers of Israel. Many of these influ­en­cers are “trad Caths,” Cath­ol­ics drawn to the tra­di­tional Latin mass and ali­en­ated from the church hier­archy. They are cre­at­ing a reli­gious right dis­tinct from the one that was once led by evan­gel­ic­als.

What is the real gripe here? Catholics have always been much more numerous than evangelicals. Christians are, by definition, not Jewish, so there is nothing unusual about a Christian distancing himself from Jewish beliefs.

Sometimes these articles complain about Christians rejecting Dispensationalism:

Dispensationalism is a Christian theological framework for interpreting the Christian Bible which maintains that history is divided into multiple ages called dispensations in which God interacts with his chosen people in different ways.[1]: 19  It is often distinguished from covenant theology, the traditional Reformed view of reading the Bible.[2][3] These are two competing frameworks of biblical theology that attempt to explain overall continuity in the Bible.

This is some obscure theology. Most Christians have never even heard of it. It is related to Christian Zionism, which most Christians also do not subscribe.

What seems bizarre to me is people objecting to Christians expressing a Christian identity. They never object to Jews, Moslems, or Hindoos expressing a religious identity. So why the attacks on Christians?

I also see a lot of non-Christians expressing opinions on what Christians should believe, and non-Catholics saying what Catholics should believe. Typically they have their own idiosynchratic Bible interpretations. Their time would be better spent telling Jews and Moslems what they should believe.