In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, characters engage in doublespeak, a way of distorting language to obscure its true meaning. Christian Nationalists have mastered their own doublespeak. Nowhere is this more apparent than when reading Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s manifesto for transforming our government into a Christo-fascist regime.
Christian Nationalists are taught to be “in the world but not of it.” This means they are called to live alongside the world’s non-Christians, but they are called to remain separate and apart from secular behavior and influence. One way they attempt to remain apart is with language. They speak in a language I call Evangelicalese. I grew up in the world of Christian Nationalism. Evangelicalese was my second language.
