Mormon-American Nationalism and the Religiopolitical Art of Jon McNaughton

In 2012, conservative political commentator Sean Hannity interviewed Utah-based artist and Latter-day Saint Jon McNaughton on Fox News regarding his inflammatory painting, One Nation Under Socialism (2012). The painting drew intense scrutiny due to its depiction of a smug and devious President Barack Obama burning the Constitution. One Nation Under Socialism provides commentary on the threats that McNaughton and others with similar views perceived in modern politics. Writing in the context of the 2012 presidential election, McNaughton proclaimed that the "Constitution is literally going up in flames" due to the Obama administration's having "taken over our healthcare system, and given bailouts to the automotive industry, banking industry, and energy industry."1 McNaughton produced the painting as a sequel of sorts to his One Nation Under God (2008) which depicts Jesus Christ holding the United States Constitution. When Hannity asked McNaughton about this painting, McNaughton responded, "I believe that the Constitution is divinely inspired," a statement to which Hannity quickly added his agreement: "I do too."2 McNaughton and Hannity shared the idea that socialism and a divinely inspired Christian nation were completely at odds with one another. McNaughton put it in plain terms: "This is a Christian nation, founded on the premise that God gave us the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We allow all to worship as they will, without government encroachment, but you sure better not tell us to stop because you're offended!"3 McNaughton's artwork is a way of his taking a stand against the supposed socialist and atheistic encroachments on his Christian America. In this article, I argue that McNaughton's paintings represent an influential Latter-day Saint contribution to a nationalistic cultural movement that conflates patriotism with a religious devotion to Constitution worship, far-right conspiracy theories, Mormon exceptionalism, and white supremacy.Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue that the "Christianity" of Christian nationalism "represents something more than religion" and explain that "it includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism."4 Following the November 2020 presidential election, a political survey by Y2 Analytics concluded that "many Latter-day Saint voters subscribe to Christian nationalism sentiments and . . . believe God has chosen Trump or that his election is part of God's plan."5 It is no secret that Latter-day Saints from the "Mormon Corridor" have voted overwhelmingly Republican for decades and at rates comparable to evangelical Christians.6 Despite differences between the two religious camps, evangelicals and Latter-day Saints tend to rally on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage and have demonstrated their commitment to voting for presidents who will place conservative judges on the Supreme Court. The occasional political alignment between evangelicals and Latter-day Saints is interesting considering the unwillingness of white evangelicals to consider Latter-day Saints genuine Christians.7 As another 2020 study explains, "Christian nationalism, simply put, is not an exclusively evangelical ideology. It exists independently."8 Indeed, as shown by Y2 Analytics and recent events, these sentiments exist among Latter-day Saints in significant numbers and highly visible ways.McNaughton's work contributes to the larger Christian nationalist efforts to argue for a distinctly Christian nation. To contextualize these sentiments, I examine three of McNaughton's paintings: the two well-known paintings, One Nation Under God (2009) and One Nation Under Socialism (2013), as well as a lesser-known painting, The Impeachment Mob (2020). This third painting portrays an angry group of politicians, including Mitt Romney, the Latter-day Saint senator from Utah, involved in the impeachment and unsuccessful conviction of President Trump in 2020 and 2021.Born on November 9, 1967, in Mesa, Arizona, Jon McNaughton moved to Utah with his family in his teens and subsequently attended BYU to study art. However, according to a short personal biography, he was soon dissuaded from being an art major due to "his rebellious nature that didn't conform to an establishment that encouraged contemporary abstract art," and opted to graduate in design.9 McNaughton's refusal to "conform" to modern trends in art would prove prescient to the dawn of his religiopolitical art career in the twenty-first century. While he opposed the direction of the art department at BYU, his work openly took inspiration from the teachings of Joseph Smith, Ezra Taft Benson, and W. Cleon Skousen, providing a lens into how a specific strain of Mormon American nationalism has found its way into popular American culture.10 It is not enough to simply observe that McNaughton's paintings embody Christian nationalism; that much is clear to most casual observers. McNaughton's paintings are intimately tied to sermons and statements by early, modern, and contemporary Latter-day Saint leaders and reflect movements to pedestalize the United States Constitution, having it approach the status of scripture.11 Thus, these paintings offer the potential to naturalize white Christian nationalism for a segment of the Latter-day Saint population and give voice to an undercurrent of Mormon American nationalism typically unrepresented and even disavowed by the church at the institutional level.12 This is accomplished, in part, through a process of political socialization that can accompany the traditionally revered genre of history painting. McNaughton believes that his paintings visually capture history, stating that he "prefers to paint pictures that he believes have relevance to what is going on in the world, that make a statement, that stand for something."13 As McNaughton does not speak on behalf of the church, his religious devotions and interpretations provide a look into an individual case of lived religion.McNaughton's paintings demonstrate the role of materiality in contemporary American Christian nationalism. These visual messages rarely require special explanation, communicating in accessible ways that legislation, political theory, policy, and even sermons cannot achieve. I suggest here that McNaughton's religiopolitical paintings succeed in this regard due to their blending of Americana, their blunt and unapologetic positing of American nationalism, and what might be seen as a quintessential American Mormonness that correspondently denotes whiteness, the traditional family, laissez-faire capitalism, and unbounded patriotism. How McNaughton capitalizes on reinterpreting history and Mormon revelations to fit his religiopolitical identity provides a compelling case of the powerful stakes involved in the politics of religious-historical memory. This is because the visual representation of a white Christian American past and the hopeful vision of a similar future suggests the necessity of both preserving a Christian nationalist historical memory and ensuring a religious, racial, and political future that reflects those desires and anxieties. Therefore, scholars of American religion should not discount McNaughton's paintings as simply quirky, irrelevant, or fringe. The fact that McNaughton regularly sells out of sketches every week should alone communicate the necessity of considering his paintings when studying the current American religiopolitical landscape. Importantly, the creation, advertising, consumption, and displaying of McNaughton's work is evidence that at least some of the Latter-day Saints who subscribe to Christian nationalism embody or believe the racially paternalistic, Christian exceptionalist, and conspiracy-ridden messages of McNaughton's paintings.The foregoing analysis will demonstrate how the religious nationalist sentiments—political, racial, and gendered—expressed in McNaughton's paintings are powerfully intertwined with his faith. Indeed, to McNaughton, these paintings appear to encompass religion in practical devotion and personal belief. McNaughton's paintings indeed represent something much more than what might be commonly understood as "religion;" they contain symbols, values, and civic blueprints that reflect a Christian nationalist belief that "America has been and should always be distinctively 'Christian.'"14Christian nationalism is not necessarily inherent to any religious denomination, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whitehead and Perry explain the important distinction that separates definitions of Christian nationalism and its adherence from affiliation with a religious denomination, explaining that the former is constituted by a "combination of conservative political ideology, belief in the Bible, apocalyptic vision of societal decline, and divine militarism," and that it "is not just repackaged ethnocentrism, racial resentment, or authoritarianism."15 This insight is relevant to McNaughton and the unique brand of "Mormon" Christian nationalism. This analysis is not meant to implicate all Latter-day Saints as Christian nationalists. Rather, certain theological and cultural forces found within a historical analysis of Mormonism's American nationalist trajectories demonstrate how Latter-day Saints have aligned with the Christian nationalist tenets outlined by Whitehead and Perry. However, Whitehead and Perry do not include any discussion of Mormonism's contribution to Christian nationalism or how the phenomenon has influenced the relatively small religious sect. Thus, analyzing McNaughton's paintings can offer an important exercise in exploring how contemporary expressions of Christian nationalism have appropriated elements of radical conservative Mormonism, and therefore, how Mormonism (especially its American nationalist variety) has contributed to the popular and visual culture of Christian nationalism in the United States today.The ultimate lens through which to view the confluence of Christian nationalism and Latter-day Saint American exceptionalism considered here is McNaughton's One Nation Under God. The painting captures an apocalyptic scene where Jesus Christ stands amidst an anachronistic gathering of American figures, predominantly male. The eschatological scene resembles images of the Final Judgment, where figures kneel and tremble before Christ. It strongly resembles John Scott's Washington, D.C., Temple mural, The Last Judgment, which was featured until the temple underwent renovation.16 McNaughton's scene, however, specifically warns the inhabitants of the United States of threats to true American and religious identity. The image is full of Christian nationalist undertones, especially the jeremiad exhortation to repent and return to the terms of God's covenant with the American project. Strikingly, McNaughton's employment of the U.S. Constitution and Christ the Pantocrator iconography aligns strongly with Mormon nationalist beliefs about the Constitution that extol it to the ranks of scripture.The focal point of One Nation Under God is the likeness of Jesus Christ holding the U.S. Constitution. The dual focus of the image leaves it difficult to determine—between Christ and the Constitution— the true nucleus of the painting. In Christian iconography, Christ Pantocrator is one of the most important and prevalent representations of Christ. In Pantocrator ("Almighty" or "All-powerful") iconography, Christ holds a book (the Gospels) in his left hand.17 Christ holding the Constitution in One Nation Under God, therefore, clearly is meant to substitute these traditional icons in Pantocrator imagery with the Constitution as holy writ. This meshing of Christ and the Constitution is intentional and speaks directly to the belief of religious nationalists that the United States was established as a Christian nation. But what makes McNaughton's visual representation unique is how closely One Nation Under God reflects mid- to late-twentieth-century Latter-day Saint discourse on the founding of the United States and the Constitution. Most prominently, the connection of Christ to the Constitution exhibits sentiments championed by church president Ezra Taft Benson in the late Cold War. While Benson regularly communicated such language throughout his ministry in the church, the seasoned eighty-eight-year-old church president gave his October 1987 General Conference address, "Our Divine Constitution," a few weeks following the 1987 Bicentennial Celebration of the United States Constitution. Around this time, McNaughton graduated from Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah, and served a Latter-day Saint mission to Japan.18The conservative political influence of Ezra Taft Benson (1898–1994), President Eisenhower's two-term Secretary of Agriculture (1953–1961), Latter-day Saint Apostle (1943–1985), and thirteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1985–1994) has lasted well into the twentieth-first century.19 Historian Matthew L. Harris found that Benson's experience in higher church leadership and the United States government from the early 1940s and through the Cold War shaped his radical conservative views.20 These periods of Benson's life, especially during the Cold War, only heightened and intensified his view of the "world as an eternal war between good and evil," and his experience in American politics reinforced Benson's worldview that communism and strong government intervention in the lives of citizens "struck at the very core of Mormon theology by denying Latter-day Saints free agency, which made them slaves to the government."21 Benson once expressed his skepticism as to whether a "good Mormon could be a liberal Democrat," stating, "I think it would be very hard if he was living the gospel and understood it."22 Benson's aptitude for American politics and devotion to conservatism in the age of the Cold War, along with his loyalty to the church, culminated in the Latter-day Saint apostle's believing that he had a divine mission to fight communism/socialism wherever he suspected it, be it overseas, within the government, or within his own church.President Benson's 1987 talk was the result of a lifetime of developing an affinity for what he saw as a divine Constitution. In the later years of his life, and during his church presidency, Benson effectively reoriented Latter-day Saint discourse towards a re-emphasis on the Book of Mormon.23 That is, Benson was a vocal advocate for the significance of the unique sacred scripture and the importance of its doctrines and relevance to the latter days, especially its warnings about "secret combinations," essentially what Benson saw as government conspiracies to rob God-fearing Americans from their natural rights and liberty as protected by the Constitution. In this context, Benson stated in his 1987 address that "I reverence the Constitution of the United States as a sacred document. To me, its words are akin to the revelations of God, for God has placed His stamp of approval upon it."24 Here Benson's words speak to the wider sentiment of a divinely inspired Constitution. However, he goes further than most Christian nationalists by equating the document with direct revelation from God.In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, revelation from God through His chosen prophet on Earth remains among the significant principles espoused. This is seen in the church's Articles of Faith, a list of Latter-day Saint beliefs composed by Joseph Smith in the 1840s. The eighth article speaks to the church's beliefs in holy writ: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God."25 The ninth article speaks to the aforementioned significance of a contemporary prophet on Earth: "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God."26 As scholars of Mormonism and Latter-day Saint leaders have argued, the principle of continuous, modern-day revelation is paramount in Mormon culture and theology, with its ability to adapt the church to its modern circumstances.Thus, while Benson's views were not synonymous with those of the church, his influence over members of the church as an apostle and president was and still is considerable.27 In any case, the centrality of the Constitution in One Nation Under God with its proximity to Jesus Christ resonates with Benson's 1987 address and the prominent Latter-day Saint discourse on the divinity of the founding document. McNaughton explains in strikingly parallel terms that Christ holding the Constitution in his painting "is very significant. I believe it was a divinely inspired document. I believe God holds this country in the hollow of his hand. The Constitution gave Americans the kind of liberty unknown elsewhere in the world."28 Moreover, McNaughton wrote in a letter to the Daily Universe (BYU campus newspaper) in response to the BYU bookstore's announcement to stop selling the painting, "Why is this painting, which is supported by church doctrine (D however, the soldier is also depicted with his hands covering his face, suggesting grief at McNaughton's notion of a war where "American fought against American and brother against brother."36 An African-American Union soldier, though difficult to see due to his location in the painting, represents, in McNaughton's words, the idea that "the blacks had a difficult role in the Civil War, but nevertheless willingly fought for their freedom in whatever capacity they were asked to perform."37A more prominently featured character in the foreground of One Nation Under God similarly plays the role of embodying both an ideology and, in McNaughton's mind, a particular group of Americans. The "college student," a young African-American male, though not identified by McNaughton as such, is located on the "right hand of God," a common motif that suggests righteous status in the eyes of God.38 McNaughton clearly gave more attention to controlling the image of the college student than any of the other anonymous racialized figures. Notably, the student holds a distinct book, The Five Thousand Year Leap, hinting that an education that involved this text is responsible for his being on the right hand of Christ. Written by ultra-right ideologue and Latter-day Saint W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) in 1981, The Five Thousand Year Leap is a revisionist history of the United States that interprets its founding and development in biblical terms.39 A former FBI employee, Salt Lake City police chief, and BYU religion faculty, Skousen, a Canadian-born American, was a prominent conservative voice in the Latter-day Saint community through much of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1971, Skousen founded The Freemen Institute, now known as The National Center for Constitutional Studies, essentially a Latter-day Saint version of the John Birch Society.40 Skousen was popularly known and well-loved in the Latter-day Saint community for his anti-Communist and Christian nationalist views. Both Skousen and his onetime Utah neighbor, Ezra Taft Benson, longtime opponents of civil rights,41 had a fraught relationship with the Black community. These two Latter-day Saint figures also reflected a pervasive fear in American society of interracial marriage.42Skousen's views on race, and African-Americans in particular, were further expressed when he wrote in a controversial U.S. history textbook published by the NCCS, The Making of America, that "slavery is not a racial problem. It is a human problem."43 Skousen quoted at length early twentieth-century historian Fred Albert Shannon's treatment of American slavery in the nineteenth century, explaining of enslaved Africans, that "the gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot."44 This inclusion by Skousen is significant considering the serious scholarship on the subject and the testimony to the contrary on the part of enslaved, formerly enslaved, freed, and free African-American men and women, such as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. DuBois explained that the songs of enslaved people didn't capture joyous sentiment, but were "the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of earth and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways."45 Skousen also infamously quoted Shannon for his use of the racial slur "picaninny" to describe Black children. Despite public outcry, Skousen defended its use explaining that the word was "used as the blacks themselves used it. It was a colloquial term with no deprecatory implication."46 Earlier in the 1960s, Skousen believed the civil rights movement to be a Communist plot to create racial tensions that would lead to a Communist regime in the United States. Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Skousen told an assembly of BYU students that King, "a Savior to the colored race," "was a martyr, but not to a cause. . . . It is now known that Martin Luther King was in direct contact with the Soviet Union."47 Similarly, Ezra Taft Benson, in a General Conference address to the church in 1967, claimed that "there is no doubt that the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America."48 These statements are representative of Benson and Skousen's views on race in the mid-twentieth century, though both of them continued to believe in the Communist plot to use race well into the latter part of their lives.49Skousen advanced his beliefs on race in The Five Thousand Year Leap, the text held by the college student in McNaughton's piece. In it, Skousen put forward the necessity of all racial minorities, especially African-Americans, to "cross the culture gap." Skousen explained that being a minority in the United States is painful because acceptance depends on "crossing the culture gap." This means learning the English language—with an American dialect more or less; attain the general norm of education—which in America is fairly high; becoming economically independent—which often means getting out of the ghetto; and becoming recognized as a social asset to the community—which always takes time.50Skousen saw the United States as the harbinger of white civilization, stating the requirements of "acceptance" into white American life. This language is common parlance within American nativism: "if you want to be an American, act like an American." The assumption is less commonly expressed in explicit terms, yet its message is strongly implied: "if you want to be an American, look like an American." Further, Skousen asserts that "it is a fact of life in America . . . that no ethnic group is going to be entirely comfortable or treated completely as equals in an adopted society" unless they make the appropriate steps to "cross the culture gap," Skousen's clear assumptions being that white Americans are deservedly comfortable, the pinnacle of cultural identity, and those with the prerogative to dictate who is accepted and who is not.51 The paternalistic allusion to white America adopting African-Americans into its society clearly shows Skousen's belief that racial minorities must do the work to conform to a white, Christian America.With this context we now have the tools through which to see McNaughton's young African-American "college student"—his well-dressed appearance in, quite literally and metaphorically, "white collar" attire, his enlightened expression while looking to a white Christ, and his holding Skousen's text—giving viewers the sense that they are witnessing the very moment this man is "crossing the culture gap," a glimpse into Skousen's paternalistic views on race accommodation in the United States.52 To be a "true American," they must adopt "true American" customs and practices, most notably, the worldview of Christian nationalism espoused by such works as The 5,000 Year Leap.53 Of course, any discussion of race and Mormonism requires the acknowledgment that until 1978, Latter-day Saint males of African descent were banned from ordination to the priesthood, and all Latter-day Saints of African descent were restricted from receiving higher ordinances in temples, effectively limiting them from participating in the most important of Latter-day Saint devotional practices. Paul Reeve and others have demonstrated that this was not always the case, as Joseph Smith ordained African-American men in the early decades of the church. However, well over a century and a half of the church's existence has been troubled by complex race relations.54 While McNaughton painted One Nation Under God nearly thirty years after the 1978 policy change that granted those of African descent these blessings, misconceptions continue to spread in Latter-day Saint circles as to why the ban was instituted in the first place. Ultimately, McNaughton's representation of African-Americans in his painting cannot be divorced from this troublesome and ever-present history.In his analysis of One Nation Under God, art historian David M