---

People are talking about Christian nationalism everywhere. The term, Christian nationalism, is often used and often invoked, but I don’t see it often defined. It can mean different things to different people. The phrase has increasingly become a pejorative label, though some people wear the pejorative label proudly now like a badge of honor.

My concern about “Christian nationalism” grows out of my own Christian experience. I admit that my experience is primarily anecdotal, but I find in Scripture adequate cause for that concern, and Scripture shines light on my experience and on any form of Christian nationalism, as I will explain.

I am chiefly concerned about the Church’s faithful witness and faithful adherence to following Christ. I am concerned that the world often confuses Christianity with particular political expressions, and I am concerned that Christians often do exactly the same thing.

The very fact that “Christian” nationalism has become a pejorative label suggests my concerns have some warrant. And not just me; I see a rising tide of concerned followers of Christ wrestling with the issue.

Jesus was clear to his detractors, and to his followers, that people should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. (Mark 12:17) I don’t see Jesus confusing or conflating what is Caesar’s and what is God’s, but the idea of Christian nationalism does both.

The very term, Christian nationalism, blurs the lines between what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. It suggests a conflation of biblical and political principles. It creates confusion that results in (or from) not knowing where politics end and Christianity begins.

I have the same issue with the way people use the term, evangelical. Originally, the term had a purely religious and theological meaning. Today, media and political pundits ascribe a political meaning to it. For the majority of people today (perhaps), the meaning conflates political and religious ideas into a confused mess that can mean very different things for different people.

As for a definition of Christian nationalism, I “asked” Bing’s Copilot for help. The resulting definition is my starting place for the rest of my thoughts today (not that I think it is a particularly good definition):

“Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to fuse Christian religion with a nation’s character.”

I would agree that Christian nationalism is an ideology, but ideologies do not seek. (People do.) (So much for the power of AI.) It seems more accurate to say that Christian nationalism is an expression of Christianity and of nationalism that fuses the two ideologies together. Whether people seek to fuse them, or simply do fuse them, together may be splitting hairs.

Having become a Christian in college in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I can attest to the organic nature in which patriotism fused with my own newfound beliefs in the milieu of the post-Jesus Movement. I didn’t seek or set out to fuse them together. They just became entangled.

---

Columbus Day served as reminder of our good fortune that God-fearing explorers with perpetual good will braved stormy seas and the specter of a flat earth to discover our fair land. Thanksgiving was encouraged as reminder that God ordained these things and established our manifest destiny in His good graces.

The groundwork for nationalism was laid in my life long before I became a Christian. I am a Boomer who was educated in an atmosphere of post-war optimism, but I am also a late Boomer. I was born on the cusp of the tumultuous 1960’s.

---

Many people in the American Church resisted the rising tide of rebellion against conventional norms, both in the Church and outside the Church. Many people clung reflexively to patriotism and national pride in reaction to the countercultural protest and unrest.

If traditional churchgoers were like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son in that time, the protesters were like the (younger) prodigal son. Our focus may be drawn to the excesses of the younger son, but we realize in the back of our minds that the older son is prodigal too.

My own story links up with the Jesus People Movement. The Jesus People were countercultural prodigals who found Jesus. They repented, turned from their rebellious ways, and embraced the Ancient of Days, God who became incarnate and died for the sins of the world.

I became a believer in 1980, and I joined a church with roots in the Jesus People Movement in 1982. The “radicals” who got saved in the early days of the church had long turned from their rebellious ways, when I joined them, and they had settled into a cultural conservatism that belied their former years.

Sometimes, we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, in rescuing the baby, we take some bathwater in. Their newfound cultural conservatism was turning political and patriotic when I arrived. It was a patriotism not simply informed by secular pledges of allegiance; it was a patriotism that was infused with biblical blessing and mandate.

I spent six years in that church formed by hippies who migrated to the northeast in the late 60’s and early 70’s and found Jesus on their way.

---

When I joined this church, the original members had already closed their candle shops to become landlords and insurance salesmen. They no longer lived in communes where they shared resources in common. They were no longer long-haired hippie freaks. They had stable families and businesses and owned their own houses. 

With their conversion, they repented of their sins, and they rejected their former radicalism. In rejecting their former radicalism, they embraced a newfound conservatism that included a renewed sense of patriotism.

While I was living with them, I saw the influence of the Moral Majority take hold. The post-war patriotism of the Baby Boomer generation turned religious when hippies converted, rejected their former radicalism and were welcomed into the church by older prodigals who championed the Moral Majority.

I also saw portents of a darker future. On the edges of that idyllic, “New Testament church” with communal roots from a more radical past lurked associates of the John Birch Society and sundry other political influences.

---

Christian nationalism involves a blurring of the lines between God’s purposes and our own purposes. Christian nationalism is a form of syncretism – the blending of Christian belief into a new system, or the incorporation of other beliefs into the expression of our Christian beliefs.

My purpose in writing this is not to justify my own brand of Christian flavored politics. I am striving for understanding and perspective. I have been engaged in that struggle since I became a Christian in college, and I have been growing in my knowledge of God and His kingdom ever since.

After my conversion, any career-mindedness I had turned into a desire to be involved in ministry. The church I described above is where I landed after I graduated from college. It is where I grew up in the faith.

I moved in 1982 into the last communal house left over from those more radical, early days of the church. The fellowship was still very communal, and the worship services were heavenly. I participated in street evangelism and door to door evangelism and every aspect of the life of the church. That life was also taking on a distinctly political flavor at that time.

---

We expressed our faith in action at the voting booth and (for some of us) by getting involved in politics. We were intent on influencing our community, State, and nation back to God – back to its Christian roots.

We didn’t seek to fuse Christianity with the nation’s character; we believed Christianity was fused with the nation’s character. Right from the start, and we believed the destiny and purpose of the United States of America was indelibility and inextricably Christian.

During this time the Moral Majority was embraced by evangelicals. It was a weird conglomeration of formerly progressive, hippie types who found Jesus and dyed-in-wool fundamentalists who thought Christian and rock music didn’t belong in the same sentence together.

We believed the United states was a Christian nation at its foundation that was established and blessed by God, and we believed Americans were God’s people, like the nation of Israel. We understood that the American heritage was formed on Christian values and principals, and we were fighting to steer the country back to God.

That fusion of Christianity with “Americanism” is a form of Christian nationalism, and it animates the “culture war” that still goes on today. Generations of Americans have now fought in this war, and I believe many of our children have died in the faith because of it.

I wandered in the wilderness of that fused (or confused) faith for more years than I care to remember. Many of the “founding fathers” of our country in which we rested this “faith” were not orthodox believers (or not believers at all, like Thomas Payne). Deism was the Christian flavor of most of those founding fathers, like Benjamin Franklin, which championed a warped gospel that has colored American Christianity from the formation of our country.

---

Prosperity and manifest destiny are not consistent with words or the message of Jesus who said: “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20); “The greatest among you will be your servant” (Matt. 23:11); and “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matt. 16:24)

We do not conquer the world and achieve manifest destiny on a cross, but Jesus called us to the cross. The cross is the narrow way and the narrow door into the kingdom of God. Wide is the way, however, that threatens to draw us along in the current of our times.

The deconstruction of my syncretistic faith after I left that church of my early Christian years almost undid me. I wandered for years in the wilderness of wrong thinking and muddled belief before God brought me back into a more orthodox and true faith. The “structure” of thinking that fused Americanism and Christian belief, however, had to come down before I could move forward.

I didn’t realize how off the mark we may have been – particularly in our failure to talk about the kingdom of God, which we conflated with tour American heritage. That the kingdom of God is not of this world was lost on us.

I did not see that we were bending scripture to our own, national narrative. I did not see the disconnect. I was immersed in it, and I couldn’t see out of the fog of that confusion.

Our biggest challenge as created beings, perhaps, is that we lack perspective. We are finite, but we tend to have great confidence in our abilities nevertheless, perhaps because we are the most advanced of all created things in our world (that we can see). Thus, we tend to trust in and rely on ourselves more than we should.

Humility is required to walk with Jesus, and that often means we need to adjust our ways of thinking. It may even require us to repent (turn from) our ways of thinking that are wrong (or simply not beneficial in helping us to know, understand, and follow Jesus).

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the LORD.'”

jEREMIAH 17:5

We must ever be humble. We must ever be reminded:

“‘[M]y thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,’
declares the Lord.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.'”

Isaih 55:8-9

God’s kingdom is always countercultural in a world that is fallen. We must be ever alert for ways in which we tend to blend our expression of faith into forms, ideas, and ways that are ours, and not God’s.

I have been influenced by a “Christian nationalism” in my own faith journey, and I have been convicted of the error of that view I formerly had.

I don’t want to suggest that any appreciation or even pride in one’s nation, nationality, or culture, or even some degree of patriotism is sinful or bad, in itself. Even money isn’t bad in itself; it’s the love of money that is bad.

Rather, I am saying that we need to be very careful about these things, and we need to allow the Holy Spirit to challenge us, sometimes, on things we hold dearly in our hearts – especially if we hold them too dearly. Our preoccupation with the United States if America as an object of our faith is one of those things.

I