Jesus Was The First Christian Nationalist

It’s difficult for people who have idealized their religion to come to grips with the imperfections in their objects of faith. Religious belief is a reaction to the cruelties of the world. It’s maintained through the need to reconcile the hard truths of life, to create a zone of displaced meaning in which, despite all evidence of the dangers of existence, people can feel safe.

For this reason, progressive Christians have found it difficult to fully confront Christian Nationalism. As much as they want to stand up to the cruelty of Christian Nationalists, they falter, afraid to deal with the authoritarian, violent ideology of the New Testament.

Instead of acknowledging the real biblical foundations of Christian Nationalist violence and hatred, progressive Christians avert their eyes and declare Christian Nationalists to be “fake Christians” or “heretics” who practice an “imposter Christianity”. They insist that Christian texts, Christian doctrines, Christian governments, and Christian churches are completely pure and blameless. They say that, somehow, Christian Nationalism isn’t at all a part of Christianity.

In doing so, progressive Christians end up insulting non-Christians in a way that echoes the ugliness of Christian Nationalism rather than repudiating it. The core article of faith that progressive Christians and Christian Nationalists agree upon is that only non-Christians are capable of violence and hate. From this problematic article of faith, progressive Christians reason that Christian Nationalists must not be real Christians.

So it is that Josiah Hawthorne writes that Christian Nationalism is “not the way of Christ's Kingdom”, overlooking the authoritarianism inherent with the very phrase “Christ’s Kingdom”. Shannon Theule writes in agreement that “Christian Nationalism is not Christianity. It is not the way of Christ.”

All evidence points to the ideological origins of Christian Nationalism within mainstream Christianity, but progressive Christians are reluctant to look at that evidence honestly. They’re afraid that having an honest look would destroy their religion.

In fact, the lack of an honest self-examination is a significant part of the reason for the decline of Christianity in America. Every time the negative aspects of Christianity are exposed, Americans watch as Christians refuse to deal with the problems. Every time Christians insist that nothing is wrong with Christianity, the more clear it is that something is terribly wrong.

So, let’s be honest about this problem. Yes, Christian Nationalism is Christianity. It is cruel and ugly and thoroughly Christian.

History is pretty clear about this: Christianity has quite often been the source of cruelty. From the early days of Christianity, the religion was focused on crushing dissent and building political power. Without the assistance of the Roman Empire in persecuting non-Christians, Christianity would never have gained its current dominance.

When Christianity spread around the world it wasn’t on the basis of the strength of its ideas. In country after country, people agreed to worship Jesus not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to by Christians carrying weapons and chains. Christianity spread itself through imperial violence and oppression. Christianity is a religion of empire, and so we should not be surprised now to see Christian organizations developing new forms of Christian Nationalism to use violence and intimidation to gain yet more power for themselves.

Let’s stop pretending Jesus was a perfect person who taught pure love. The Christian bible itself is explicit about the violence, hatred, intolerance, emotional manipulation, and ambition for power pursued by Jesus.

Progressive Christians prefer to act as if these parts of the Christian bible don’t exist, but they’re in there for anyone to see.

The gospels celebrate a violent religious insurrection by Jesus in the style of January 6. Jesus stormed the Temple in Jerusalem, and began beating people who disagreed with his interpretation of religious laws. This wasn’t just a threat. Traditional Christian imagery shows this story in the form of Jesus pushing his victims down onto the stone floor of the temple so that they cannot escape his physical attack.

Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus is recorded as attempting to force entire cities to worship him by threatening them with violent destruction if they refuse to obey. Peregrin Wood, in his recent book Carson V. Makin, analyzes these incidents of genocidal threats by Jesus. He writes:

The church leaders who followed Jesus and wrote the New Testament were fond of stories in which non-Christians are tortured and killed in bizarre ways. The Book of Revelation is full of these threats, including tales of non-Christians subjected to the pain of scorpion stings for five months straight, being forced to inhale the hot toxic gases that come out of volcanoes, forced to drink poisoned water, bitten by heavenly horses of Jesus that have snakes for tails, and so on.  

It wasn’t that these Christian leaders had forgotten the lessons of Jesus. Misery and death, after all, is exactly what Jesus promised to towns where people decided that they didn’t want to listen to his followers.

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

– Matthew 10:14-15

Let’s review. What happened to the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah?

The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

– Genesis 19:24-25

Jesus wasn’t just threatening to burn alive entire towns full of people, including the children and babies, as punishment for people deciding that they didn’t want to listen to strangers wandering into town babbling about a messiah and promising magic miracles. No, Jesus was promising to inflict even worse torture than that, and then death.

This wasn’t just a one-time thing. It wasn’t Jesus being grumpy on a bad day. The Bible depicts Jesus threatening with violence and death against anyone who didn’t want to worship him.

Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not agree to worship him. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

– Matthew 11:20-24

There’s some history referred to in this passage that would have been familiar to the people Jesus was screaming at, but is probably unknown to most people living today. This Bible passage menacingly refers to the siege of Tyre, a city in the Levant that had been conquered by Alexander the Great three centuries before. Alexander’s cruelty to Tyre was infamous. He killed 6,000 of Tyre’s defenders, demolished half the city, sold 30,000 of its residents into slavery, and crucified 2,000 residents on the city’s beach.

Remember that when you think about the meaning of crucifixion in Christianity: Jesus threatened the crucifixion of thousands, and worse. Christianity isn’t at all opposed to crucifixion. It just wants to crucify other people, as punishment for not becoming Christians.

In the Book of Revelation, Jesus involves himself in Christian vs. Christian accusations of heresy, declaring “you hate the Nicolaitans, and I hate them too.” Jesus promises to kill children. He declares that Jews who refuse to worship him belong to a “Synagogue of Satan” and will be forced to cower at the feet of their Christian masters.

Such passages are not a deviation from the character of Jesus. They are an expression of the intention of Jesus, which he declares in the gospels: That he does not want peace, because he has come to divide people from their loved ones through his harsh judgment. Jesus promises that he’s going to return with a sword in his hand to exact his vengeance.

These are exactly the kind of nasty attitudes that we see in present-day Christian Nationalists. It’s fair to say that Jesus himself was the first Christian Nationalist. Jesus promises violent political power for his followers, and eagerly anticipates the day when Christians will be able to make others suffer.

In Revelation 2:26, Jesus promises the early Christian churches, “To the one who is victorious and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations to rule them with an iron scepter & will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

This promise is at the core of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalists aren’t merely using Christianity as a cover for their hate. Christianity is the source of their hate. They aren’t distorting bible passages to justify their cruelty. The Christian bible urges its followers to behave in cruel ways, and not just in the Old Testament. The New Testament is rife with hate and violence.

Until we confront this painful truth, we will be unable to escape its consequences. Bloody and intolerant Christian movements have been around for as long as Christianity has existed.

This problem won’t go away by pretending that it doesn’t exist.

For as long as progressive Christians continue the pretense that Jesus was a purely loving and peaceful person, they will be providing ideological cover to the Christian Nationalists who they claim to reject.