Right now, few phrases sell more books than “Christian nationalism.” A quick Amazon search finds dozens of volumes on the topic, written only in the past few years, by theologians, pastors, historians, sociologists, scholars of religion, and self-made authors with no credentials at all.
The problem is that Christian nationalism can mean nearly whatever one wants it to mean. In my context (the United States), it connotes, at minimum, the idea of turning America into or preserving its status as a “Christian nation.” But this means different things to different people. Some Christian nationalists, for example, are Catholic Integralists. Some appear to use Christian nationalism as a thinly veiled cover for white nationalism. Some are old-fashioned Christian Reconstructionists in the mold of R.J. Rushdoony. In many cases, these Christian nationalists want to wield the power of the state to shape America according to an ideal vision of a Christian society.
The phrase “Christian nationalism” is more frequently deployed by critics than by advocates. Most public figures accused of being Christian nationalists have rejected it or at least distanced themselves from it. A few openly embrace it. It’s often used as a club to beat one’s opponents. Some indiscriminate pundits use it as a synonym for “Trump supporter” or “right-wing Christian.” I’m reminded of philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s tongue-in-cheek definition of a fundamentalist as a “stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.” “Christian nationalist” often functions in a similar way in our contemporary public discourse.
Members of mainline Protestant denominations (including the Episcopal Church, to which I belong) like to distract themselves from the fact that their denominations are hellbent on the path toward cultural irrelevance by shouting from the rooftops that they are not Christian nationalists. We’re Christians, but we’re not like those Christians.
There are two fundamental flaws with this attitude. The first is that Anglicans (including Episcopalians) are, in fact, Christian nationalists. You may suspect I’m about to argue that the Church of England is an established church and therefore fits the bill of Christian nationalism and that, by extension, all Anglican churches are implicated in this embarrassing marriage of church and state at the very heart of Anglicanism. But that’s not what I have in mind.
Anglicans are Christian nationalists because, like all faithful Christians, we hope and pray for the conversion of all people to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That includes all Americans. Consider this prayer for mission at the conclusion of the Daily Office in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer:
O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This is not some remnant of an older prayer book that has been grandfathered in. This prayer was added to the Daily Office for the first time in the 1979 prayer book. There are many other collects and prayers with similar themes in our tradition, and that’s because it reflects beliefs that are as old as Christianity and find their origins in the New Testament. In the Great Commission, Jesus tells his disciples to baptize and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19).
While it would be a mistake to read “nation-states” for “nations” in this passage, there is no evading that Christians are called to hope and work for the conversion of everyone in their communities. In other words, Episcopalians hope that America will become a Christian nation. This does not mean that its laws will impose Christianity on its people or that the state will be subservient to the church. But Episcopalians do pray that America (and the whole world) will become a place filled with Christians.
Some will object and say that this isn’t the version of Christian nationalism that has everyone riled up. That is only partially true, however. Plenty of people will be scandalized by the version of Christian nationalism that I’ve just sketched. Some will want to distinguish good Christian nationalism from bad Christian nationalism. Everyone quibbles about what counts as Christian nationalism, and that’s because at this point the phrase verges on meaningless.
This leads us to the second flaw. Christians who declare that they are not like those Christian nationalists really aren’t saying anything meaningful. If churches want to attract the unchurched or the ecclesio-curious, they will need to do much more than that. Young people, especially, are more likely to be radicalized into far-right Christian groups or simply to ignore Christianity altogether than to choose a church because it doesn’t identify with Christian nationalism.
More important, our churches need to articulate a compelling vision of the gospel—including its inherently social and political dimensions—that does not simply default to an individualistic, privatized faith. Christianity is not just a collection of private spiritual resources. It makes claims about the world and the powers that run the world. Stanley Hauerwas once quipped that the sentence “I believe Jesus is Lord, but that’s just my personal opinion” reflects the ultimate trivialization of the Christian faith. The statement “Jesus is Lord” is a universal, public declaration that Jesus is the ruler over all of creation. It’s a claim about ultimate reality, not a subjective feeling.
Given these concerns, I’ve made it a point to drop “Christian nationalism” from my pastoral vocabulary. It’s not because I’m averse to controversial topics or because I’m not alarmed by some of the rhetoric I’ve encountered from so-called Christian nationalists. Rather, I’ve found that it’s more helpful to engage specific pastoral concerns and concrete ideas, which takes a bit more work.
Take, for example, the recent CNN feature on pastor Douglas Wilson, who over the past several decades has built a theological empire based in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson has recently made headlines by planting a church in Washington, D.C. The church counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its members, and it isn’t shy about its ambitions of implementing a top-down implementation of Christian values through the federal government.
Wilson and his crew promote a range of provocative claims about the nature of these Christian values. One of the more notorious of these is the idea that women (or married women, at least) shouldn’t be allowed to vote. So, it’s not just the First Amendment that raises problems for their vision but also the 19th Amendment and doubtless several others.
Wilson is an especially interesting case, because he’s not only a Christian nationalist but a postmillennialist. Postmillennialism is a minority viewpoint among Christian theologians, but it has enjoyed short bursts of popularity at various epochs in the Church’s history. The textbook definition of postmillennialism is that Christ’s second coming will occur after the “Millennium,” which constitutes a messianic age in which Christianity will flourish. In other words, it’s an optimistic end-times theology. Postmillennialists believe that the trajectory of human history is upward. As time goes on, things will get better (i.e., more Christian), even if there are setbacks in certain times and places. And then Jesus will come back.
Most Christians today would be surprised to learn that postmillennialism was the domain of progressive mainline Protestants, not conservatives, at the turn of the 20th century. Think Union Theological Seminary, not Moscow, Idaho. The Baptist pastor and theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, pioneer of the Social Gospel, was convinced that Christianity should transform social structures and thereby help usher in the kingdom of God.
Congregationalist minister Charles Sheldon, author of In His Steps (which spawned “What would Jesus do?” bracelets), was another proponent of postmillennialism. The Christian Century magazine (which was The Christian Oracle until 1900) was committed to the view that history was on Christianity’s side and that the 20th century would usher in a golden age of moral progress, aided by the church’s influence and institutional support. These turn-of-the-century postmillennialists reflect yet another vision of America as a Christian nation, but one would be hard-pressed to find any advocates of it today.
My suggestion is that we ignore the specter of Christian nationalism. We can do better. Ask yourself what would be more fruitful: a token, box-checking rebuke of Christian nationalism from the pulpit (in which no one in the pews would recognize themselves as a target of the denunciation), or an adult education series on eschatology that covers what postmillennialism gets wrong and what it gets right and why it has attracted such disparate adherents across the centuries. Or perhaps a discussion about why there’s nothing “biblical” about repealing the 19th Amendment.
The views of Douglas Wilson and others like him deserve to be denounced, but denouncing bad theology isn’t enough. We should be prepared to proclaim the gospel in its fullness, and to help people everywhere seek after and find the Lord, and to bring the nations into his fold. And that may require us to focus more on Christ and a little less on whether we sound like those Christians.
The Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem is associate professor of moral theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and theologian in residence at the Church of St. Michael & St. George.
