As this posts goes live, it is July 4, 2026—the 250^th anniversary of the issuance of the Declaration of Independence, and the day we in the United States of America celebrate the beginning of our nation’s existence. And today, I’m going to write a bit about a problem we’re facing, one that dresses nice and looks presentable and may even have some tempting notions, but ultimately one that is quite problematic: Christian Nationalism.

(This post is a summary of a paper I wrote during my doctoral work, heavily excerpted to fit a blog post, but I guess if you’re really curious about the full paper I’d be willing to share it. Just let me know!)

What Is Christian Nationalism?

First, it is important to be clear what I mean by the term Christian Nationalism. I do not refer to people who identify as Christians serving in political positions making decisions for a nation based on their Christian beliefs and practices, though that is certainly a small part of what Christian Nationalism is. Rather, I am referring to a more comprehensive experience which involves a set of specific beliefs and practices with consequences which extend beyond the individual and into the state.

Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry explore Christian Nationalism in their work, Taking America Back for God. They present this definition of Christian Nationalism: 

Simply put, Christian Nationalism is a cultural framework…that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity within American civic life. But the “Christianity” of Christian Nationalism is a particular sort.… It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.¹

Whitehead and Perry flesh out their argument by exploring questions of power, boundaries, and order. Christian Nationalism asserts the importance of power, either the power of America’s military or the individual power of a “strongman” leader.² It sets clear boundaries between who is “in” and who is “out;” these include national borders as boundaries as well as creating divisions between people-groups.³ Finally, Christian Nationalism seeks to reinstitute often misogynistic and xenophobic hierarchies which are seen as foundational to their understanding of that past when everything seemed, to those who hold Christian Nationalist and adjacent beliefs, as it ought to be.⁴ Kristin Du Mez says it in this way, reflecting on the patriarchal nature of Christian Nationalism: “White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole.”⁵

In order to assist in identifying Christian Nationalist beliefs, Philip Gorski, also writing with Samuel Perry, offers seven statements which serve as indicators of Christian Nationalist beliefs:

1. “I consider founding documents like the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution to be divinely inspired.”
2. “The success of the United States is part of God’s plan.”
3. “The federal government should declare the United States a Christian Nation.”
4. “The federal government should advocate Christian values.”
5. “The federal government should enforce a strict separation of church and state.”
6. “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces.”
7. “The federal government should allow prayer in public schools.”⁶

Gorski and Perry use agreement with statements 1-4 and 6-7 and disagreement with statement 5 to identify people who hold Christian Nationalist beliefs. They add the caveat, which Du Mez also identified, that while these are strong predictors for Christian Nationalism among white Americans, they are not predictors for Christian Nationalism among Black or Hispanic Americans.⁷ Christian Nationalism finds its core adherents in those Americans who are white, conservative, and evangelical.

A “Prophetic” Critique

The identifiers of Christian Nationalism from Gorski and Perry call to mind the identifiers used by Walter Brueggeman to discuss totalism⁸ in the reign of Solomon.⁹ He describes Solomon’s harem, control of economy, bureaucracy, standing army, rationalization of reality, and exploitation of labor as hallmarks of totalism. Christian nationalism certainly includes allusions to these hallmarks. The focus on masculinity and strength corresponds to the harem, the standing army, and, more loosely, control of the economy. Christian Nationalism’s focus on hierarchy, order, and boundaries corresponds to the bureaucracy, rationalization of reality, and creation of a labor pool to exploit. In critiquing Solomon and, later, the Roman Empire, Brueggeman indirectly critiques this developing totalism present in Christian Nationalism, centered in the critique offered by the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth. For Brueggeman, “The guardians and profiteers of the present stability are acutely sensitive to any change that may question or challenge the present arrangement. Very early Jesus is correctly perceived as a clear and present danger to that order.”¹⁰

And yet the actions of Christian Nationalism today are not dissimilar from those of Christians in the 4^th and 5^th Centuries CE after the legitimization and establishment of Christianity within the Roman Empire. Bryan Stone presents an argument that the thorough connection of totalism to Christianity is at its heart a denial of the lordship of Christ, as the state becomes the head of the Christian rather than Jesus Christ.¹¹ This is also the argument of the book of Revelation, challenging the church through its imagery of beasts against the manipulation of political and religious authority to any end, let alone the end of some kind of “Christian”. Instead, according to Roberto Mata, “the book of Revelation calls believers to exclude themselves from the socioeconomic and political structures of the Roman Empire.”¹² Mata uses the example of the call of the divine voice in Revelation 18:4 to flee from Babylon to argue that Christians ought to resist the powers of totalism (to use Brueggemann’s language) and to live outside as an alternative community. This is certainly not the impetus of Christian Nationalism, but it does reflect the early church’s nature as an alternative community against totalism, which, paraphrasing Philippians 3:20, calls the Christian to a heavenly citizenship in God’s kingdom rather than citizenship in an earthly kingdom.

N.T. Wright’s words with regard to the building of God’s kingdom also invites criticism of the Christian Nationalist position.

“We need to distinguish between the final kingdom and the present anticipation of it. The final coming together of heaven and earth is, of course, God’s supreme act of new creation, for which the only real prototype…was the resurrection of Jesus. God alone will sum up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. He alone will make the “new heavens and new earth.”¹³

Where Christian Nationalism seeks to bring about God’s eternal reign by human effort, through the laws of the state, the judgments of courts, or the authority of the strong leader; the alternative community is bearing witness to and participating in God’s action on behalf of those who are outside the boundaries Christian Nationalism establishes.

A Move towards Hope

This leads into the other aspect of the alternative community of hope: a theology of hope does not solely critique Christian Nationalism but also offers energizing for the alternative community. Though encounters with and the study of Christian Nationalism, especially given its recent efforts in the political structures of the United States of America, are certainly concerning, the alternative community, in its nature as a community focused on hope in God’s promise, offers something new in answer. Returning to Brueggeman, he describes the alternative community in the ministry of Jesus, saying of the things Jesus did and taught, “An unmanaged newness was coming, and it created a future quite different from the one that royal domination intended to permit.”¹⁴ He goes on to describe this community, borrowing language from Luke’s gospel, as one in which those with power and authority in the realm of totalism are unmade and even redeemed in the alternative community, so that the poor and forgotten of totalism find blessing in the community of hope.

Where Christian Nationalism fails, and where the theology of hope energizes the alternative community against it, is in lacking trust in the promise of God. If God is truly faithful to work out that which God intends for the world—its holistic redemption and restoration in the new creation—then there is no need to work on God’s behalf to fulfill God’s promise. While God does invite Christians to participate in God’s work, Christians also must acknowledge that we participate in what God is doing already, rather than seeking to create that which God is neglecting to do. Ultimately, this is the argument of N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope. “If we ask what on earth can possibly justify such an outrageous statement — that Jesus is already king of the world even though Caesar seems to be and death is still rampant — there can be only one answer: the resurrection.”¹⁵ It is in remembering God’s promise, specifically God’s promise of a kingdom not of this world in which all things are restored, that the alternative community may be whom God has called it to be, even and especially in the face of totalism expressed in Christian Nationalism in America.

1. Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 10. ↩︎
2. Whitehead and Perry, 55–56. ↩︎
3. Whitehead and Perry, 90–91. ↩︎
4. Whitehead and Perry, 123. ↩︎
5. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020), 4. ↩︎
6. Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 15–16. ↩︎
7. Gorski and Perry, 22. ↩︎
8. Walter Brueggemann uses “totalism” as a sort of catch-all term for all of those things which stand in opposition to God’s alternative community, which includes: the struggle for economic justice and against exploitation; the struggle for human dignity against political oppression; the struggle for solidarity against alienation; and the struggle for hope against despair in individual life. (Brueggemann, 27) ↩︎
9. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), 24. ↩︎
10. Brueggeman, 84. ↩︎
11. Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism after Christendom: The Theology and Practice of Christian Witness (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007), 120. ↩︎
12. Roberto Mata, “Self-Deporting from Babylon? A Latinx Borderlands Reading of Revelation 18:4,” in Reading Biblical Texts Together: Pursuing Minoritized Biblical Criticism, ed. Tat-Siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2022), 422. ↩︎
13. N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2018), 208. ↩︎
14. Brueggemann, 108. ↩︎
15. Wright, 247. ↩︎