Frontier Cosplay at the Frisco City Council
Joel Tenney says mosques and Hindu temples are incompatible with Texas, while claiming Sam Houston as his great-grandfather and doing evangelical mission work in already-Christian Armenia.
New Christian nationalist just showed up on my radar.
Joel Tenney drove to Frisco, Texas to explain that mosques and Hindu temples are “incompatible” with being American.
This was not a zoning argument. It was not about traffic. It was not about drainage. It was theological gatekeeping dressed as civic concern
Before we go any further I want to point out that Joel made sure to let everyone know of his unique qualifications as he he comes from Texas Royalty! Grandson of Sam Houston non the less.
The irony is that Sam Houston was removed as governor of Texas in 1861 because he refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy. So watching someone invoke Houston’s name while trying to define Texas as a Christian-only project is historically ridiculous. Also, Tenney appears to have been born in the 1990s. Sam Houston’s documented great-grandson, Sam Houston IV, was born in 1931. So unless this family tree includes a time machine, “great-grandfather” is doing a lot of cosplay work here. But honestly, even if the ancestry claim were true, nobody cares. Your bloodline does not give you veto power over other people’s religious freedom.
Frisco Was Never Just About Zoning
Tenney’s argument was not really about land use. It was about who gets to belong.
He said, “I don’t want to bring any mosque to Texas. Ever. We shouldn’t have one here. It’s incompatible with what it means to be an American.”
That is not civic concern. That is religious exclusion.
He also warned that building temples would change “the layout and the structure and the fabric” of Texas.
Translation: non-Christian worship makes him nervous when it has walls, parking lots, and legal permits.
Assimilation Apparently Means Conversion
Then he held up a Muslim woman converting to Catholicism as his example of “assimilation.”
That tells you everything.
To him, assimilation does not mean learning the language, obeying the law, paying taxes, raising a family, and participating in civic life.
It means stop being Muslim. Go to church. Become acceptable.
That is not assimilation.
That is religious replacement.
The Sam Houston Cosplay Gets Weird
And then, just to complete the historical costume drama, he claimed Sam Houston and Davy Crockett as “great-grandfathers.”
A man who appears to have been born in the 1990s claiming Sam Houston as his great-grandfather is not genealogy.
It is frontier cosplay with a family tree drawn in crayon.
The point is not just that the math is questionable. The point is that he is using Texas mythology as a permission slip for religious exclusion.
Sam Houston becomes a prop. Davy Crockett becomes a prop. “Texas roots” become a prop.
All so he can tell Muslims and Hindus that their houses of worship do not belong here.
Then Comes the Armenia Irony
And here is where it gets even stranger.
Tenney is apparently taking a break from making Armenia his personal evangelical mission field.
Which is quite a performance, because Armenia is not some spiritually vacant land waiting for an American preacher with a passport and a persecution complex.
Armenia is overwhelmingly Armenian Apostolic Christian. Ancient Christian. Pre-Protestant Christian. Pre-America Christian. Pre-Texas Christian.
So when an American evangelical says he is doing mission work in Armenia, the obvious question is:
Mission work to whom?
Christians?
Ancient Christians?
People whose church predates Texas, America, Protestantism, and the entire evangelical conference-industrial complex?
When Ancient Christians Are Not “Christian Enough”
This is the part people miss.
Twenty years ago, a lot of American evangelicals were treating Orthodox and Apostolic Christians like they were not really Christian enough.
Eastern Europe, Russia, Armenia, Egypt, the Balkans, all of it became “mission territory” because incense, icons, sacraments, and apostolic succession apparently did not count unless someone added a projector screen and a worship band.
Now that picking fights with Orthodox Christians is less useful, the panic machine has pivoted.
The new enemy is Islam.
And in Frisco, Muslims and Hindus became the latest props in the “defend Texas” cosplay.
Religious Liberty for Me, Suspicion for Thee
But the deeper issue is not his ancestry math.
The deeper issue is this:
He wants his version of Christianity welcomed in Armenia, but Muslims and Hindus restricted in Texas.
He wants evangelical freedom abroad and religious gatekeeping at home.
He wants religious liberty when it serves his tribe, and religious suspicion when it serves his politics.
That is not Christianity.
That is not patriotism.
That is Christian nationalism with a travel itinerary.
The Old Playbook Has a New Target
And honestly, if his plan is to take the old evangelical anti-Orthodox playbook and aim it at Islam, good luck.
The Orthodox may have been polite.
Muslims have 1,400 years of theology, law, poetry, philosophy, prayer, and memory behind them.
The fog machine revival crowd may discover this is not the soft target they thought it was.
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Right here in y’all-drive-friendly Texas, we have to contend with ropes & spurs that bite, big snakes that bite, huge swarms of mosquitoes that bite, giant gators that bite, peppers that bite, deadly heat waves that bite, traffic that bites, fire-ants that bite like hell, 4”-long cockroaches that will bite everything you own; and ugliest of all, genetically brain-dead MAGAts, whose aggressively idiotic barks are way worse than their bites but they’re still a toxic pain in the ass to have as neighbors. Just sayin, Y’all.
This article reveals the underbelly of Christian dominionism that is prevalent in so much of American conservative Christianity. The hypocrisy is screaming in their faces, and it is as if they are proud of it, as long as you look American, pious, and cowboy-hero-myth saying it. I am no longer Christian and have no plans to convert to Islam, but some of the most powerful voices defending religious freedom are coming from those who have deconstructed some aspect of their faith. We look back and see the importance of people having the right of spiritual expression. Side note: I'm speaking now specifically to the unchurched/non-religious among us, because we will defend and speak out, but often are not included at the table when thought leaders congregate to discuss spirituality in America. That disparity will one day need to change. It is articles like yours, Virgin Monk Boy, that prove change is indeed needed.