Anna Rosensweig is writing a book for the general public about how Christian nationalists in the United States have mobilized theories of resistance that were developed during the sixteenth-century Wars of Religion in France to justify their opposition to reproductive rights, queer and trans rights, and racial justice. Provisionally titled, Whose Resistance Theory? From Early Modern France to QAnon, Parents’ Rights, and Christian Insurrection, Rosensweig’s book traces how in recent years extremist preachers, pastors, and parents’ rights activists in the United States have urged local officials such as sheriffs and school board members to act as “lesser magistrates” and defy state and federal law. In doing so, these Christian nationalists have drawn explicitly on relatively obscure Protestant political treatises such as Theodore de Bèze’s Du droit des magistrats sur leurs sujets (1573) and the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579), which state that during religious conflicts, “lesser magistrates” can legitimately resist a tyrannical king on behalf of the broader public. Rosensweig’s book demonstrates how the Christian nationalist preoccupation with Protestant resistance theory is part of a broader effort on the American Right to disassociate the American Revolution from the French Revolution and the Enlightenment in order instead to forge direct connections between the American Revolution and the religious conflict sparked by the Protestant Reformation.
To learn more about this public writing project, you can hear Rosensweig on podcasts by the University of Minnesota’s Future of the Past Lab and Vote Common Good or read about her work’s connection to current events at the UR News Center and Word&Way.
ipcsrochester.com 