Yes, Christian Nationalism Is Christian

There has been a flurry of panicked responses by Christian preachers and believers who are concerned that the extreme hatred and violence of Christian Nationalism is driving people away from Christianity in general. They have real cause for concern. The number of Americans attending Christian churches has dropped sharply since the election of Donald Trump.

This decline in American Christianity can’t just be blamed on the influence of Donald Trump himself, however. Self-identification as Christian has been declining in the United States for the last two decades, as cases of church corruption and rampant trends of sexual attacks against children by preachers and priests of many Christian denominations have been exposed. The spread of Christian Nationalism through America’s churches has only increased this long-term decline of Christianity.

So, in an attempt to separate Christianity from Christian Nationalism, Christian religious leaders have begun to claim that Christianity can’t be associated with Christian Nationalism. They claim that Christian Nationalism is not part of Christianity at all.  

Reverend Chuck Currie in Chicago writes, “Christian nationalism is a racist ideology incompatible with Christianity.”

Christian minister Stephen Simpson says, “Christian Nationalism is a heresy and not compatible with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God.”

Sarah Robinson, preacher at the Audubon Park Church in Florida, insists that, “The ideas of Christian nationalism, they are twisted versions that are rejected in fact versions of what Christianity is really all about.”

Samuel Perry, who studies the sociology of religion, translates this position into academic language. He said, in a recent conversation with another sociologist, “White Christian nationalism could be understood as sort of an imposter Christianity that uses evangelical language to cloak ethnocentric and nationalist loyalties.”

Imposter Christianity? Is Christian Nationalism an imposter Christianity?

An imposter is someone who comes along and adopts someone else’s identity, pretending to be something that they know they are not. Christian Nationalists are not people coming from the outside of Christianity. They’re not Buddhist saboteurs who were trained by some foreign government to parachute into the United States on a secret mission to destroy American Christianity. They’re not Zoroastrian masters of disguise.

In almost every case, Christian Nationalists have been Christians their whole lives. They were born into Christian families and grew up identifying as Christian, going to church, praying, and participating in Christian communities. They cite many specific bible verses to support their violent hatred, and these verses are not isolated and out of context. They fit within a coherent narrative of the Christian bible as a harshly judgmental, exclusionary, and violent text.

Christian Nationalists not pretending to be Christian. They’re not imposters. They are sincere believers in Christianity. As such, Christian Nationalists represent a much more disturbing cultural problem than they would if they were just a weird sect of heretics who don’t represent the beliefs of Christianity at all.

Perhaps what Professor Perry means to say is that Christian Nationalism is an ideological imposter, a way of thinking that has crept into genuine Christianity and implanted itself there as some kind of parasite, growing strong from the lifeblood of Christianity, but never really being part of the organism. That would be a creative metaphor, but inapt. Christianity is not really like a biological organism. It doesn’t have a central nervous system or unitary cardiovascular system. There is no equivalent of DNA in Christianity, a universal code that defines what is Christian and what isn’t.

Christian Nationalism arises from problematic aspects of Christian theology. It isn’t a foreign invader.

Who Gets To Decide Who’s A Real Christian And Who’s A Fake Christian?

The truth is that Christians have always argued with each other about what counts as real Christianity and what doesn’t. They have never agreed. It could be said that a central part of Christian theology is to define true Christianity by casting out other people by depicting them as fake Christians. Every Christian group there is has been criticized as being a false deviation from true Christianity.

So, who has the right to decide who is a real Christian and who is a fake Christian? Individual Christians seem to take this responsibility on themselves all the time. Evangelicals like to talk about Christians and Catholics, as if Catholics belong to a totally separate religion, and aren’t Christian at all. Some Christians say Mormons don’t count as Christians, but the Mormons sure believe that they are. Who’s right?

We now see progressive Christians taking on the power to say that they know who’s a real Christian and who isn’t. They’re trying to ideologically excommunicate Christian Nationalism from Christianity, like a scapegoat sent off into the desert to die, a ritual sacrifice that purifies the village of what they suppose to be “true Christianity”. In reality, religious communities can’t simply cleanse themselves of their problems through magical rituals.

No gods or messiahs have appeared in the sky to proclaim what true Christianity is, and what it isn’t. So, let’s pay attention to the facts at hand.

The plain fact is that Christian nationalists identify as Christians. They’re involved in well-established Christian organizations that have been recognized as Christian for a long time.

There’s really no controversy about this. Christian Nationalists are Christians.

I understand where Christians who deny Christian Nationalism’s part in Christianity are coming from. They mean well. It’s great that they’re speaking out against Christian Nationalism. However, an effective movement against Christian Nationalism needs to be based in reality, not in what we wish was true.

Belief In Christian “Goodness” Leads To Horrific Immorality

Chrissy Stroop, a former right-wing evangelical who was raised to believe in many of the tenants of Christian Nationalism, writes that “Authoritarian Christianity is not ‘fake,’ and sometimes religion is about power and control. Christianity isn’t always or inherently benign.” She warns that “‘Christian’ is not a synonym for ‘good’,” and that “using ‘Christian’ as a synonym for ‘good’ reinforces Christian supremacy in our society.”  

This last point is especially important. When progressive Christians declare that Christian Nationalists are not Christians because they’re not good people, they’re actually providing rhetorical coverage to Christian Nationalists.

It’s a problem when people begin their resistance against Christian Nationalism with the presumption that Christianity is by definition good. Along with this presumption comes the implication that people who aren’t Christian are by definition refusing to go along with something good. That makes non-Christians the problem.

People who argue that Christian Nationalists are non-Christian, because they’re bad, are agreeing with the Christian nationalist premise that non-Christians are bad people, and need to be brought back into the proper faith.

Christian Nationalists agree with Christian progressives who assert that Christianity stands for what’s right and good in the world. They just disagree about what Christianity says about what’s right and good. It shouldn’t shock anyone that there is such fundamental disagreement within Christianity. Christian history is defined by schisms and blood conflicts between Christian sects, and the Christian bible itself is full of contradictions and ambiguities. The Christian bible shows the character of Jesus as advocating for massive acts of violence at some times, and favoring peace at other times. It’s worth remembering that the last words of Jesus in the Book of Revelation are strongly on the side of hate and bloody religious war. It’s these teachings of Jesus that thrill Christian Nationalists the most. They believe that Christian goodness requires totalitarian rule with an iron scepter, and the Jesus of the Book of Revelation would agree with them.

Ironically, the belief in Christianity’s inherent goodness has led Christians to do horrible things over and over again. The wars of Christian against Christian in Europe were motivated by the sincere belief that Catholicism was right and Protestant Christianity was wrong, fighting bloody battles against people who believed the opposite, that Protestant Christianity was the true and good Christianity and Catholic Christianity was in error. Protestants fought and killed Protestants too.

Colonialist Christians who massacred Native Americans did so out of the belief that Christianity was inherently good, and that non-Christians must therefore be inherently evil. Christians who enslaved Africans were motivated by their belief in inherent Christian goodness, preaching that they were doing enslaved Africans a favor by bringing them into Christian civilization.

The belief that Christianity is the same thing as goodness motivated the Catholic Church in Canada to beat, sexually assault, and murder generation after generation of children from indigenous communities at church-run residential schools. These Christian residential schools took huge numbers of children from their own homes, without permission, and literally tortured those children in an attempt to convert them into obedient Christians. Huge numbers of unmarked graves at these Christian residential schools have been discovered, where the children killed by Christian teachers and priests were disposed of. The horrific Canadian residential school program was motivated by the belief that Christianity is morally good, and therefore non-Christian children had to be converted to Christianity by any means necessary.

It's a cruel twist, but the belief that Christianity is inherently good has consistently motivated Christian-controlled governments to do terrible things. The evidence from centuries of history is that Christianity has been a force for harm on a massive scale over and over again. The claim that Christian Nationalists can’t be real Christians because Christianity is about peace and love just doesn’t match the facts.

More often than not, Christianity is about violence and hate. Christian Nationalists are just what one would expect to see when the wall between church and state is broken down. That’s why the authors of the Constitution sought to protect American democracy from the influence of religion.

Let’s be clear: Not all Christians are Christian Nationalists. In the United States of America, however, Christian nationalism is the only form of Christianity that’s experiencing consistent growth. Non-nationalist sects of Christianity are shrinking as Christian Nationalism spreads. The majority of American Christian voters voted for Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalism both in 2016 and 2020.

The strong role of Christian Nationalism within American Christianity is something that would be foolish to ignore.

Christian Nationalists are Christians.

Christian Nationalism is a kind of Christianity.

If Christians don’t want Christian Nationalism to be part of their religion, then they need to take responsibility for the problem and honestly confront the ugly aspects of their own faith.

Simply declaring that there’s nothing Christian about Christian Nationalism achieves nothing.