Thank You For Your Service: Narrative Change Regarding Soldiers in the American Rifleman from 1975-2018

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Religion and Violence

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the NRA has merged the rhetoric of sacrifice for the nation with rhetoric about Christ’s sacrifice, more clearly linking nationalism with religious nationalism. At the heart of this nationalism is the God-given right to keep and bear arms, which enables the defense of all other freedoms. It’s sacred status is consecrated by the blood of soldiers (and later warriors) who died defending the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Narratives of government corruption and distrust, always present in American society but especially resonant after the turbulent 1960s, grew in the aftermath of Vietnam and with the election of a draft dodging president in the 1990s, reinforced the centrality of the 2A as necessary to defend the God-given rights against all enemies. By invoking the blood sacrifice traditions in American religious nationalist narratives, the soldier’s sacrifice in the defense of the Constitution becomes the means through which the nation is sanctified and the 2A is reinforced as a means through which the Nation is purified of those who would defile it from a corrupt government. As both a Second Amendment warrior and a retired soldier who sacrificed for the Nation– Oliver North’s ascension to the NRA presidency represents the full merging of nationalism with religious nationalism by his embodiment of the soldier’s sacrifice as a religious obligation.

Author

• Jessica Dawson, US Military Academy