Christian Conservatism and Christian Realism vs. Christian Nationalism

Mark Tooley on October 29, 2024

Most of what is written about Christian nationalism is silly. Critics and analysts sweepingly deride conventional Christian conservatives as Christian nationalists. By some counts, there are, by this definition, tens of millions of Christian nationalists. Sometimes even civil religion, with its homage to a vague deity, is labeled Christian nationalism. If so, all presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden are Christian nationalists.

Sometimes the target of these critics of Christian nationalism are folk religionists who conflate God and country. They sometimes sport paraphernalia with American flags draped around the cross. These folk religionists typically aren’t aware they are Christian nationalists. They don’t publish articles, much less books. And they typically don’t have articulated policy agendas, just an attitude that God and country should be interchangeably honored.

But, in a somewhat new movement of thought leaders, some more intellectual Christians do consciously self-identify as Christian nationalists. Media coverage typically fails carefully to distinguish them from more traditional Christian conservatives. The self-identified Christian nationalists have an agenda that fulfills the worst nightmares of many secular progressives. They are useful for progressive media to spotlight. But these self-identified Christians nationalists also are commanding greater attention among some especially young Christian conservatives who despair over current cultural trends hostile to traditional Christianity. So, they do merit serious attention. 

Continue reading at the Christian Post here.

  1. Comment by Wilson R. on October 29, 2024 at 11:16 am

    So if you don’t realize that you’re a Christian Nationalist, then you can’t possibly be a Christian Nationalist? Well, that’s convenient.

  2. Comment by Different Steve on October 29, 2024 at 12:15 pm

    I don’t care for the current unrelenting politicized tack Juicy Ecumenism has taken recently. Run out of actual Christian topics or something? I have a bad enough taste in my mouth, I can foresee giving up on you guys, like I gave up on the Washington Post and the Episcopal Church so many years ago.

    “In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”

    After “Colossal” Exodus Of Subscribers, WaPo Boss Bezos Explains “The Hard Truth” About Not Endorsing Kamala

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/colossal-mass-exodus-over-200000-wapo-subscriber-cancellations-after-bezos-blocks-harris

  3. Comment by Different Steve on October 29, 2024 at 3:54 pm

    Having read the exerpt of the article here, I think it does address much of my discomfort with the term “Christian Nationalism”. I have no problem with nationalists (as opposed to globalists), or with Christians ( or religions generally), but for leftist propagandists you put the two together and suddenly we have latter day Nazis. I appreciate that the article may be an effort to mitigate other articles on this site. Maybe the other articles also weren’t so bad, but when I see the term “Christian Nationalist” I tend to feel like it’s time to stop reading. Maybe I’ll follow the link to read the remainder of the article later.

  4. Comment by WilsonR on October 29, 2024 at 8:00 pm

    There are apologists for Christian Nationalism, but there is no principled case for it—even for the variety that does not seek to impose a version of the faith on the whole country. The ideology by definition is hostile to the gospel.

  5. Comment by Different Steve on October 30, 2024 at 8:22 am

    We’re hostile to the gospel if we don’t want to pay for sex changes for undocumented so-called refugees?

    What Democrats really believe seems too insane to be true

    https://nypost.com/2024/10/29/opinion/what-democrats-really-believe-seems-too-insane-to-be-true/

  6. Comment by Wilson R on October 30, 2024 at 8:26 am

    I don’t conflate anti-trans with Christian Nationalism. They are two separate things. Being anti-trans does not necessarily make you a Christian Nationalist, and vice-versa.

  7. Comment by Different Steve on October 30, 2024 at 8:32 am

    Not what I asked, you’re being evasive.

  8. Comment by Wilson R. on October 30, 2024 at 11:13 am

    I said Christian Nationalists are hostile to the gospel. I’m not interested in a discussion about sex change surgeries for undocumented immigrants. You can chew on that one with somebody else. (What is it with you guys–all about trans all the time? It’s like an obsession, as if that’s the only issue out there, and it’s really bizarre.)

    But I am interested in why you use the term “so-called refugees.” The implication is that these people cannot legitimately claim to be refugees. If you want a discussion on that, I’m here for it.

  9. Comment by Different Steve on October 31, 2024 at 7:11 am

    By “not interested”, you mean it’s devasting to your ideology, so you evade, evade, evade. Wasn’t me that said we should pay for illegals sex changes, it was Kamala, an apparently unavoidable outcome of your woke intersectionality globalist open border ideology. They can’t all be refugees, that’s a massive scam.

  10. Comment by Different Steve on October 31, 2024 at 7:18 am

    As CNN had reported that week, Harris, when running for the Democratic nomination in 2019, had written in an ACLU questionnaire that she supported publicly funded “gender-affirming care,” including transition surgeries, for federal prison inmates and detained illegal immigrants.

    Follow-up reporting from the Washington Free Beacon revealed that while serving as California attorney general, Harris had in fact implemented a statewide policy of taxpayer funding for prisoners’ sex changes, born out of a settlement in which she agreed to pay for the transition of a man convicted of kidnapping a father of three and murdering him as he begged for his life.

    Harris later bragged, on camera, about this policy as evidence of her commitment to the progressive “movement” — in a clip that has since become a staple of Trump campaign ads.

    The sequence of events neatly encapsulated a pattern that has played out countless times since Trump entered American political life.

    Trump says something seemingly insane, to many people’s outrage and disbelief, only to have his supposed “lie” revealed to be wholly or at least significantly true.

    https://nypost.com/2024/10/29/opinion/what-democrats-really-believe-seems-too-insane-to-be-true/

  11. Comment by Wilson R. on October 31, 2024 at 11:24 am

    Steve:

    Several observations:

    1. You seem to be working very hard to prove my point. This obsession with transgenderism—which was never mentioned in the original post nor in my response to it—is more than a little weird.

    2. I gather from your mention of “intersectionality globalist open border ideology” that there might be some issues other than transgenderism that you’re concerned about, although it’s very difficult to discern an actual argument amid so much word salad. I’m not even sure what all that means. And I’m not sure that you’re sure, either.

    3. To borrow the language of trial lawyers, your allegations assume facts not in evidence. Open borders? Nah, I’m not for that. Does it make you feel better to hurl charges based on nothing? Taxpayer-funded sex changes for detained immigrants here illegally? I haven’t said anything to that effect either, but since you keep bringing it up, please read this next part and remember it: I’m opposed to that idea.

    4. NY Post? Lol. How would you expect someone who’s not a propagandist to take you seriously when your citations come from the NY Post? Oh, and the Washington Free Beacon? Double-LOL. Good lord.

    5. Who are these “so-called” refugees you think are fakers? People fleeing war and persecution in Syria? People fleeing Islamic totaliarianism in Afghanistan? Haitians and Mexicans and Somalis fleeing murderous gangs? Venezuelans fleeing a left-wing dictatorship? Every one of those groups meets the definition of refugee as we have always accepted the term. Even people fleeing famine or economic disaster have always been considered refugees.

    You know who else were political refugees? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fleeing Herod. In fact, the association between God’s son and refugees is so strong that in 1959, when the UN proclaimed a World Refugee Year to draw attention to the plight of displaced persons, several nations with highly religious cultures (Ireland and Spain, for example) issued postage stamps depicting the Holy Family on the flight to Egypt.

    You know who counts as economic refugees? Jacob’s family, who moved to Egypt in the wake of famine in the land of Canaan.

    Does this mean the US policy should be to accept every refugee who appears at our border? Of course not. I’ve never met anybody who said that we should–not even liberal Christians who get accused of favoring “open borders” (which we do not have, by the way–take it from someone who owns property on the Rio Grande).

    But whatever their views on immigration and refugee policy, Christians are called to affirm the humanity of displaced persons and to look upon them with compassion. Dismissing them as “so-called” refugees is a rejection of that calling. And it’s false witness.

  12. Comment by Different Steve on October 31, 2024 at 3:29 pm

    Virtually everybody coming across the southern border is claiming to be a refugee. That has been millions of people during the open border years. I think I’ve heard as high as 15 or even 20 million. They cross the border at will, get processed, and then claim refugee status, as instructed by their human traffickers, after which they wait many many years for actual hearing date. They then get distributed to wherever in the country, in these open border years often by covert government flights to the interior of the country. Given that it could be years until the hearing, by that point the hue and cry would go up for an amnesty. The Bible stories you site are of a refugee here and there, not opening one’s border to millions of people. We can’t have everybody coming here, there are too many people in the world. Billions, you know. I notice now that with an election coming up, somehow the Biden administration has found a way to reduce the number of migrants substantially. They’re like a wife beater that tells the wife come on back, I’ll stop the beatings. I have zero problems with my conscience. The big cause for all the refugee fraud: the Biden administration eliminating Remain in Mexico on day one, pandering to folks like you. Before then, people would make their applications in Mexico, and if they were determined to be legit, then they could get in. After Remain in Mexico was ruining by know nothing Biden on his first day, the process then was, they apply for asylum, then disappear wherever in the US. People have been killed and raped thanks to these lax policies on top of everything else. This human trafficking is basically an update of slavery. Slavers probably figured they were doing good because if nothing else they were bringing Africans so they could come to Jesus. Don’t kid yourself what you would have done back in the day. How appropriate that the Democrat running for President came from a family that were the biggest slave owners in Jamaica, and not that long ago either. Kamala was bad news as a prosecutor, was entirely ok with making prisoners work for 17 cents or something like it a day.

  13. Comment by Different Steve on October 31, 2024 at 3:49 pm

    “So if you don’t realize that you’re a Christian Nationalist, then you can’t possibly be a Christian Nationalist? Well, that’s convenient.”

    That’s not really what the article was saying. It was saying that people who do not identify as Christian Nationalist are unfairly being called Christian Nationalist.

    I have little doubt that you would be outraged if a transsexual were misgendered, called by their “dead name” or wrong pronouns. In some locations, by law that is considered a hate crime. But here you are, insinuating that people that do not identify as Christian Nationalist are Christian Nationalist.

    Now, inasmuch as Mark suggests that people who actual identify as Christian Nationalist may be a problem, admitting that I don’t know much about people who so identify, I figure they may have an ideology that even I would consider bizarre. Lord knows, I had occasion to talk to a Sovereign Citizen type once, and he definitely had an idea about how to avoid debt that I considered bizarre and a non-starter. But, you don’t just call anybody whose opinion you don’t like a Sovereign Citizen, nor a Christian Nationalist just because they’re Christian and oppose Biden open border policies.

    Hillary Clinton: “Deplorables”.

    Joe Biden: Trump supporters are “garbage”.

    Wilson R.: “Well, that’s convenient.”

  14. Comment by Wilson R. on October 31, 2024 at 4:10 pm

    Here is the text I was responding to:
    “Sometimes the target of these critics of Christian nationalism are folk religionists who conflate God and country. They sometimes sport paraphernalia with American flags draped around the cross. These folk religionists typically aren’t aware they are Christian nationalists.”

    Perhaps the author uses the term “folk religionists” to distinguish them from those who want to impose a rightwing theocracy on other Americans. But he clearly says they are Christian Nationalists nonetheless.

    Christian Nationalists aren’t monolithic. (Neither, by the way, is what some people lazily call “the Left.) The covers everyone from those who merely want to see the US flag in their place of worship to those who believe God chose America out of all the nations for a special purpose to those who take it many steps further and openly say they want to end democracy in favor of making church and state inseparable (and that last group is not an inconsiderable number).

    Merely opposing Biden doesn’t make one a Christian Nationalist. There are a lot of very thoughtful people concerned about Christian Nationalism. Is that REALLY how you think they define Christian Nationalists? That’s just wack.

    And again with the trans stuff. Man, that really feels like an obsession with you.

  15. Comment by Tim Ware on October 31, 2024 at 8:53 pm

    Different Steve,
    The people who are seemingly attracted to Christian Nationalism or other similar ideas are, for the most part, members of one of the only groups that it is ok to hate. Look at who is front and center in the picture at the head of Mr. Drumm’s article. We don’t have to extend the same deference to people like that as we are forced to do with certain other groups. We can treat them any way we want.

    Just another example of the hypocrisy of the so-called inclusive crowd. As I have said before, ignore their rhetoric and look at their actions.

  16. Comment by Wilson R. on November 1, 2024 at 11:56 am

    “Look at who is front and center in the picture at the head of Mr. Drumm’s article.”

    I gather that people here know who this person is. For those, like me, who do not recognize him, please fill us in. And what are his offenses? Apparently, the posters here view him as the leader of a hate group.

  17. Comment by Gary Bebop on November 1, 2024 at 1:22 pm

    Thanks, Mark, for doing some serious work on an entangled ball of yarn. The complexity of the topic is daunting, but your writing opens windows for the truth to enter. It’s clear that aggressive secularism has seized the reigns of government in America, top to bottom. We are subjects of a secular administrative state. The revolt against such a status has begun.

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