What’s Christian Nationalism?

What defines “Christian nationalism” as an ideology? What are the dangers, and how can Christians responsibly participate in the public sphere?

The Trinity Forum, in partnership with The Center for Public Justice and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Initiative on Faith and Public Life, invited Mark Noll and Vincent Bacote on June 18 to speak on “The Challenge of Christian Nationalism.” Noll specializes in the history of Christianity and is professor emeritus of history at Wheaton College and the University of Notre Dame. Bacote is an associate professor of theology and the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College.

Noll and Bacote began the conversation by distinguishing between “responsible Christian patriotism” and “destructive Christian nationalism.”

“Responsible Christian patriots,” Noll proposed, “love their country but also realize that God’s standards of right and wrong must apply to my country as well as to all the countries of the world. In contrast, Christian nationalists are often those who love their country right or wrong and refuse to allow any criticism of its history. Responsible Christian patriots try to show how Christianity can be a service to the nation. Extreme nationalists make Christianity a servant of the nation.”

Bacote described two contrasting images: Christian patriots plant the flag at the foot of the cross; Christian nationalists drape the flag over the cross.

Part of the confusion as to what Christian nationalism is, Bacote argued, is that “probably the great majority of people that are Christian nationalists aren’t even necessarily people that might even use that label to describe themselves. I think they have an unwitting commitment to God’s… sponsoring America, but they might not recognize it as sponsorship, whereas there are people who have some of the same ideas that are talking about Christian nationalism, or rather White supremacy, and for them being a White nationalist includes the idea of being Christian as sort of part of the heritage.”

Bacote was careful to note, however, that “It’s an oversimplification to conflate White supremacy and White nationalism with Christian nationalism.”

The concept of Christian nationalism has a longer history than most may realize, according to Noll. “American Christian nationalism that surfaced in various ways throughout American history begins before there’s the United States. It really begins with British imperial Protestantism in the colonial wars between Britain and France in the 18^th century. During those conflicts, [the British] looked upon themselves as defenders of the truth, defenders of the Bible, defenders of freedom. France was everything evil… During the American revolution, Loyalists and patriots all both treated each other as demonic, inspired by tyranny, and opposed to the Christian faith… during the Civil War, North and South both treat each other as extreme examples of what honest, straight-thinking, Bible-believing people rejected. That’s deep in our background.”

However, Noll argued that the reason Christian nationalism has reached such a fever pitch now is because “Older ideas, fashioned in response to contemporary crises, [were] circulated by the explosion of popular access in social media.”

Indeed, Trump’s incendiary tweets, which led Twitter to ban his account, did much in galvanizing Christian nationalists. And they responded to him because he spoke their language. Trump never shied from invoking God—in fact, he did it at two to three times the rate of any other U.S. president in the last century.

His narrative was clear: I stand for Christian America, and if I lose, we lose our “one nation under God.”

This idea is crucial to understanding Christian nationalists’ mentality, Bacote explained: “If you think about threats of secularization happening in society… people’s experience of that, and then narratives that people hear about that, leads them to fear that something is being lost, and the way that it gets articulated is we are losing blank—fill in the blank. The blank has something to do with what America is supposed to be properly as a country with a Judeo-Christian background.”

Trump played off those fears by making promises with a Bible-raising photo-op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House.

Religion can be misused in the public sphere, but neither Noll nor Bacote advocate for Christians to cut themselves off from politics. 

“As a Christian, you have a unique opportunity in a country like this one to use your political agency as a way to express neighbor love,” Bacote insisted.

However, Bacote warned, do not have any illusions about “fully establish[ing] the kingdom of God” on earth. He notes the danger in thinking “that we’re supposed to be establishing God’s kingdom on earth because we pray for the kingdom to come.” His response is that “nobody sees clearly enough to articulate public policy with the level of specificity about what the kingdom is going to look like… if Paul sees through the glass darkly, I’m sure we do as well.”

Christian involvement in politics must also never be ruled by sectarian division.

“Christian people are going to disagree amongst themselves about what is good for society, and sometimes those disagreements will run very deep,” Noll acknowledged, “but Christian people…, if they don’t define themselves primarily by the universal offer of forgiveness in Christ by the gospel, are really betraying the faith.”

He stressed, “Especially in a democracy where we’re encouraged to bring our values into the public space, Christian believers should always remember that even political opponents are made in the image of God; even political opponents are those for whom Christ died.”