--- title: Charlottesville: 'Alt-Right' Has Created Alt-Christianity description: If faith communities don’t provide these healthy, life-giving human needs, then death-dealing alt religions will fill the gap. canonical: https://time.com/4915161/charlottesville-alt-right-alt-christianity/ author: Brian D. McLaren article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-08-25T14:58:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:12.144Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The 'Alt-Right' Has Created Alt-Christianity og:description: 'If good religion slumbers and stagnates, bad religion is the alternative' og:url: https://time.com/4915161/charlottesville-alt-right-alt-christianity/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7e815e69d826be4/6988db0cbc6cfcff803e2cc3/alt-right-christianity-charlottesville.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2600 og:image:height: 1463 og:image:alt: North Carolina Klan Group Protests Civil War Memorial Changes og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 'Alt-Right' Has Created Alt-Christianity twitter:description: 'If good religion slumbers and stagnates, bad religion is the alternative' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta7e815e69d826be4/6988db0cbc6cfcff803e2cc3/alt-right-christianity-charlottesville.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 'Alt-Right' Has Created Alt-Christianity > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: President Trump Again Blames 'Both Sides' for Charlottesville Violence [Watch (HLS stream): President Trump Again Blames 'Both Sides' for Charlottesville Violence](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EzwfOun0.m3u8) (1:32)  _Published 2017-08-15. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that anti-racism protesters bear some of the blame for the violent rallies in Charlottesville, returning to his original comments that "both sides" were responsible for the deadly clashes._ by [Brian D. McLaren](https://time.com/author/brian-d-mclaren/) ## Brian D. McLaren Aug 25, 2017 2:58 PM UTC  KKK members watch as anti-KKK groups chanted against them. KKK members watch as anti-KKK groups chanted against them. Michael S. Williamson—The Washington Post/Getty Images by [Brian D. McLaren](https://time.com/author/brian-d-mclaren/) ## Brian D. McLaren Aug 25, 2017 2:58 PM UTC When I was in [Charlottesville](http://time.com/4904281/bigots-boosted-by-the-bully-pulpit-charlottesville/) as part of a clergy delegation to protest the [Unite the Right rally](http://time.com/4899514/charlottesville-boston-white-nationalist-rallies/), I got to look into the faces of “out” Nazis and [white supremacists](http://time.com/4901402/charlottesville-yes-youre-racist-twitter/) for the first time in my 61 years. And they looked scarily normal. They’re the guys arranging stock at the local big box store or the desk jockeys in a cubicle farm. Decent. Clean cut. Surprisingly young. And white. No doubt I looked into these faces before — on the street, in a restaurant, in church — but I didn’t know it because they weren’t carrying [Nazi](http://time.com/4900385/charlottesville-nazi-kkk-swastika-germany-reaction/) and [Confederate flags](http://time.com/4798357/confederate-flag-massachusetts/), semi-automatic rifles and shields. What would possess these young white men (and a few women) to chant hateful [anti-Semitic](http://time.com/4752446/anti-semitic-attacks-spike-anti-defamation-league/) and racist slogans, to shout homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic slurs, to speak of putting Jews in ovens and driving people of color off of “their” soil (land stolen by their immigrant ancestors from the Native Peoples)? That’s the question many of us are asking. After returning home from the [Charlottesville](http://time.com/4898842/tavis-smiley-donald-trump-american-hate/) protest, I came across an [interview with Christian Piccolini](http://www.npr.org/2017/08/13/543259499/a-reformed-white-nationalist-speaks-out-on-charlottesville?utm%5Fcontent=buffer808bb&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fcampaign=buffe), a former white supremacist. As a teenager, Piccolini was recruited and radicalized by an extremist group. “There are so many marginalized young people, so many disenfranchised young people today with not a lot to believe in, with not a lot of hope, so they tend to search for very simple black-and-white answers,” he explained. Savvy extremists ready to dispense those easy answers have no shortage of potential recruits, easily accessible through the Internet. Piccoloni’s words seem equally relevant in [Afghanistan](http://time.com/4911492/trump-afghanistan-military-victory/) or Syria, Virginia, Ohio or Arizona. I suppose that’s part of the [shock of Charlottesville](http://time.com/4904270/will-nation-succeed-after-charlottesville/): while Islamophobic Americans were developing conspiracy theories about Sharia law coming in from the outside, our own brand of violent extremism was brewing in our basements. Piccolini warns, “What people need to understand is that since Sept. 11, more Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by white supremacists than by any other foreign or domestic group combined by a factor of two. Yet we don’t really talk about that, nor do we even call these instances, of the shooting at Charleston, S.C., or what happened at Oak Creek, Wis., at the Sikh temple or even what happened in Charlottesville this weekend — as terrorism.” The draw is “not necessarily because of the ideology. I think that the ideology is simply a vehicle to be violent,” Piccolini explains. “I believe that people become radicalized, or extremist, because they’re searching for three very fundamental human needs: identity, community and a sense of purpose.” When a disenchanted or disaffected young person who feels alienated and alone goes online, Piccolini explains, they’re able to find purveyors of that community, identity and purpose they seek. Sadly, Piccolini’s analysis aligns with the Nazi historian Richard J. Evans’ description of young men in 1920s Germany, as [Jim Friedrich](https://jimfriedrich.com/) noted this week: --- > “” --- White nationalist and “alt-right” leader [Richard Spencer](http://time.com/4902729/richard-spencer-university-of-florida/) seems to understand this desire for meaning, personal significance and “bonding effect” described by both Evans and Piccolini. Famous for his Nazi salute and exclamation of “Hail Trump!” after Trump’s election, [Spencer](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/charlottesville-white-supremacist-rally-erupts-in-violence-w497446) has gushed about the torch-lit march in Charlottesville in religious terms: “I love the torches. It’s spectacular; it’s theatrical and mystical and magical and religious, even.” In a December 2016 conversation, journalist [Graeme Wood](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/his-kampf/524505/), a former high school classmate of Spencer’s, was surprised when Spencer started talking to him about religion, not defending Christianity but “he longed for something as robust and binding as Christianity had once been in the West, before churches surrendered their power to folk-singing liberals and televangelists.” Piccolini, Evans and Spencer himself are telling us something we need to understand: White nationalism isn’t simply an extremist political ideology. It is an alt-religious movement that provides its adherents with its own twisted version of what all religions supply to adherents: _identity_, a personal sense of who I am; _community_, a social sense of where I belong; and _purpose_, a spiritual sense of why my life matters. If faith communities don’t provide these healthy, life-giving human needs, then death-dealing alt-religions will fill the gap. So as traditional Christian institutions shrink, stagnate and struggle, Spencer and his white-supremacist allies, [feeling supported by Donald Trump](http://time.com/4902308/white-nationalists-supremacists-donald-trump-charlottesville/), are creating a violent alt-Christianity, as their counterparts in the Middle East have created an alt-Islam. They are supplying their followers with alt-liturgies, alt-mysticism, and alt-magic and are willing to smash, burn, destroy and kill for it, as they idolize their vision of “America” as a white “ethno-state,” an absolutized, divinized race and nation. In Charlottesville, I saw Nazi flags on American soil and alt religious fervor in the faces of American Nazis and white nationalists. The message I will bring to faith leaders around our nation is both urgent and clear: Aristotle was right. Nature indeed abhors a vacuum. If we don’t provide emerging generations with genuine identity, community and purpose through robust and vibrant spiritual communities, somebody else will do so. 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