What is “Christian nationalism”? There are many varieties floating around, but here’s my stab at it. While Stephen Wolfe may have made the label prominent with his book, this is a much wider discussion. Megachurch pastors like Josh Howerton are using the label and defining carefully what they mean by it. Howerton has 25k+ in his church each week and some of his podcasts discussing CN have over half a million views. The CN discussion is not dying down anytime soon; if anything, it seems to be just getting underway.
Each part of the CN label is important.
Advocates want a distinctively Christian politics, rather than a secular one (or one animated by some other religious tradition). They want a social order in which God’s Word and Christ’s church are recognized for what they are. They believe the nation has a moral obligation to recognize and obey the Triune God. Of course, a nation that is officially Christian will not impose Christian faith on people – though civil law would impose a generalized Christian morality on people’s outward behavior because all civil law is imposed morality (e.g., marriage laws, abortion laws, welfare laws, property laws, etc. would reflect biblical teaching). Faith cannot be coerced, and all Christian nationalists believe in sphere sovereignty, namely, the view that church and state are distinct institutions with their own jurisdictions, officers, and roles. CNs are decidedly anti-statist. While some accuse CNs of trusting in political power, or the sword of the state, these are slanders; nothing could be further from the truth. CNs do not look for salvation in the state; rather, they want Jesus’ salvation and reign to shape the way the state operates. CNs want a limited government and low taxation in order to maximize ordered liberty for individuals, families, and businesses; they generally stress personal responsibility and reject the nanny (welfare) state; they do not want the state to usurp the role of fathers as protectors and providers, but they do want policies that encourage lifelong monogamous marriage and large families; they reject socialism and crony capitalism; they want sound money that cannot be easily manipulated; they want education taken out of the hands of the state and put in the hands of parents; they reject the managerialism and bureaucratic bloat that makes government unaccountable; they respect the right of civil disobedience in certain cases, and the role of lesser magistrates to resist tyranny; and so on. The CN political agenda is not radical by historical standards; it will be very familiar to anyone who is well acquainted with traditional conservative principles of civil government. A Christian nation is not a nation with an established church or a favored denomination (though Christian nations have had establishment arrangements at times, it is not necessary or always desirable), but it is a nation influenced by the church and respectful of the church. A Christian nation is not a nation in which every individual is a Christian. A Christian nation is a nation in which Christian faith is deeply pervasive, even as leaven permeates a whole batch of dough. It is a nation in which Christian faith is twisted into the constitution and culture of the people.
Further, CN advocates believe that God has generally organized humanity into nations, and so they oppose the globalist, multicultural order progressives push for today, and instead favor one rooted in the particularity of national cultures; hence the nationalism part of the label. While “nationalism” has some negative connotations, it can be thought of in this context as an intentional and directed kind of patriotism, seeking the good of one’s nation and fellow citizens. Nationalism is simply the love of one’s country and one’s countrymen. Nationalism is animated by gratitude for our culture, heritage, and the land in which God has providentially placed us. Nationalism means civil rulers should protect the interests of their own nation, rather than serving a globalized order or prioritizing immigrants above their own people. Nations might have their identity shaped by propositions and ideas (this is certainly true in the case of America), but nations are fundamentally constituted by a people, with bonds to one another, a shared memory of their past, and a common language and culture. Nations are rightly concerned with the productivity and prosperity of their own people, but nations are not merely marketplaces or economic zones. Nations are not families, but they have a familial quality and their civil rulers are rightly regarded as father figures, after a fashion.
The CN discussion is not just about America, though it is taking place primarily in an American context right now. American CNs do not just want America to be a Christian nation; we want all nations to be thoroughly Christianized. There is nothing provincial about CN. CN can be understood as the outworking of the Great Commission. To say every nation is to be discipled (Matthew 28:16-20) is to say every nation should be Christianized. This is not about American exceptionalism — indeed, there are no exceptions. Every nation has the same obligation to King Jesus. When enough nations have been Christianized, we call the result Christendom. Many CNs are postmillennialists (or optimistic amillennialists) and therefore believe Christendom is the future. But even aside from views about the future course of history, all CNs recognize that Christendom (however imperfect or incomplete) has been a historical reality. Nations have been Christianized on a wide scale in the past and our hope is that they will be again.
All CNs recognize that Western civilization in general and America in particular arose out of the Christian faith; our peoplehood and our way of life were birthed by the gospel and make no sense without it. Our culture, customs, and constitutions are rooted deep in the soil of Scripture; cut off from trust in and obedience to God’s Word, those traditions wither and die. The crisis of identity experienced by Western nations today is due to widespread apostasy and cannot be reversed without a repentant return to the faith that formed our national identities in the first place. The history of the West was, until quite recently, largely synonymous with the history of Christendom and the only way for the West to become great again is to restore and renew Christendom.
Maybe the best way to get at the usefulness of the CN label is to compare it to alternatives. If not a Christian nationalism, then what kind of nation do we want? Secular? Progressive? Islamic? Buddhist? There is no religious neutrality. Every nation has a G/god, which serves as the source of order and the standard of morality. Obviously, Christians will (or should) desire the Christian God to be our society’s source of law and meaning. What else could Jesus have meant when he commanded us to make the nations his disciples, and to teach them everything he commanded (Matt. 28:16ff)? Every nation is being discipled into the will of some G/god. Which will it be? Every society is intrinsically religious. What religion do we want to prevail? If we believe Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, then the answer should be obvious.
We can make the second part of the CN label multiple choice as well. If not a Christian nationalism, then what? Tribalism? Globalism? Individualism? Imperialism? Obviously, Christians should want to see the Lord Jesus honored in all of life and culture – I want to live in a Christian home, with a Christian family, on a Christian street, in a Christian neighborhood, in a Christian town, in a Christian county, in a Christian country, on a Christian planet, in a Christian cosmos. But there is no question biblically that God has generally organized humanity into nations. This is not to discount the reality of smaller gatherings (like states or tribes) nor deny the possibility of larger groupings (like an empire), which can be sanctioned in various ways at various times. But the Bible has quite a bit to say about nations – in Genesis 10, Scripture gives a table of 70 nations that came out of Babel; God promised to bless all the nations of the earth in Abraham’s seed; in Psalm 2, the nations rage against the messiah and get inherited by the Messiah as his redemptive possession; in Isaiah 60, the nations and their kings bring their peculiar treasures into God’s the kingdom; the Great Commission is structured in terms of nations; in Revelation, there are hints that national identities will continue to exist in the final new creation; and so on. Nations in the Bible might not be identical to the modern nation-state in every respect, but they are identifiable people groups that typically have their own language and culture, their own governments and borders. Nations are covenantal entities, in that God blesses and judges nations as nations. Nations are the objects of Christ’s redemptive work and the church’s missionary efforts. God recognizes nations because they are his providential creations (Acts 17:26). While “nationalism” is an infelicitous term in a lot of ways, with plenty of baggage, in this particular context, it is quite useful. We live in a nation and we are called to disciple our nation.
ADDENDUM: America was founded as a Christian nation, with an informal Christian establishment. In that sense, we were classically liberal but also “theocratic.” We had blasphemy laws, sabbath laws, sodomy laws, abortion laws, obscenity laws, etc. Most states had religious test oaths for office. The culture was imperfectly, but genuinely, Christian; laws and social customs reflected that. The Christian faith informed and shaped much of life in a variety of ways.
Obviously, to have that again requires a change in the hearts of the people, as well as changes in laws and customs. But I think we should work at it from both ends – the top down and the bottom up. Civil law, after all, has a pedagogical function that shapes the consciences of the people. And the civil magistrate needs to be called upon to do his duty to God, just as private individuals do. The civil magistrate has a duty to promote (though not coerce) piety in his own sphere.
Every nation, even classically liberal nations, require some kind of theology – a transcendent grounding for law and morality. There is no neutrality. I think the kind of description I give of CN meshes very well with the Westminster Confession’s teaching on the civil magistrate. Our experiment with secularism has failed – there is no way forward other than repentance, and that must include political and civil repentance.
It’s impossible to fulfill the Great Commission if all we preach is a message of personal salvation. The church must declare the whole counsel of God, applying Scripture to all of life. We must disciple individuals and families – but also institutions and cultures.
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From an X post:
This post may be too complex for X, and I’ve written and spoken on these issues at much greater length elsewhere, but it needs to be said. Two things can be and indeed are true of America:
- America was founded as a largely Christian nation, bringing the glories of “old world” Calvinistic Christendom into the “new world.” This claim is not based merely on the fact that most Americans were professing Christians at the time of our nation’s founding. It is also rooted in the fact that biblical and Christian influence can be seen in all kinds of ways on our institutions and culture in the early days of our nation’s history. We had blasphemy and Sabbath laws; sodomy was criminalized; marriage laws largely reflected biblical teachings; many early states had established Protestant churches and religious (Christian) test oaths for office holders; our system of governance largely inherited English common law, tracing back to King Alfred and grounded in principles drawn from Moses; public education in early America was distinctly Christian, with prayer, catechisms, and the use of the Bible; etc. Many of our founders, eg, John Adams, John Jay, and Patrick Henry, recognized America could only function as designed with a citizenry shaped by the gospel and Christian virtue. In America’s founding era, we were a nation deeply formed by the Christian faith and the heritage of Christendom.
- The kind of Christian faith present in our nation was flawed, and other influences prevented America from consistently embedding Christian faith in our founding documents and institutions as fully as we should have. While many founding fathers were orthodox, Protestant believers, some were not, and were much more influenced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Madison and Jefferson both wanted to privatize religious faith as a way of keeping social peace. They feared religious passions could convulse America the way religious wars had wrecked Europe. They wanted the fruit of Christian virtue without the root of Christian faith. The low ecclesiology that emerged particularly in the Second Great Awakening at the start of the 19th century pushed the church in an egalitarian, experience-centered direction, thus weakening the church — and this weakening of the church opened the door to the rise of “Americanism,” the view that America as a nation, rather than the church, would be God’s primary instrument for accomplishing his purposes. This doctrine of Americanism led to confusion about the role of the church in America and the role of America in the world. Classical liberalism, present at America’s founding, gave way to modern liberalism, focused on the autonomy of the individual — but note the seeds of this shift were there from the beginning. Of course, there were other flaws, including race-based chattel slavery; the failure to confess Jesus as Lord in our Constitution, recognizing him as the supreme source and judge of civil power; and a failure to more fully implement biblical law. The flaws in our nation, present from our earliest era, opened the door to pluralism and the eventual infiltration of cultural Marxism and other subversive influences in our culture.
All that to say: America was founded as a Christian nation, but a very imperfect one, and those imperfections were weaponized against our Christian heritage in order to secularize us. America started out as the next chapter in the unfolding story of Christendom; over time, our nation got high-jacked by secularists and statists who have led us in a progressive direction. Hence, the contemporary “culture wars.”
The “Christian nationalist” movement, at its best, is an attempt to build on our Christian past while correcting its deficiencies. This is why I consider myself an ecclesiocentric Christian nationalist, or a post-liberal Christian nationalist. In order to make America great again, we cannot just rewind the tape to an earlier point in our history. We actually must lay a firmer foundation. We do not desire an established church, but we do desire a strong and a faithful church at the heart of our nation, as the key catalyst to discipling our land. To make America great again, we must make the church in America great again. We need churches that proclaim the whole counsel of God, centered on the gospel and radiating out to apply the Bible to all of life; we need churches that worship with reverent joy and beauty; we need churches that will faithfully discipline their own members, including members who hold civil office; and we need a church that is willing to suffer, sacrifice, and serve for the sake of carrying out the mission Jesus gave us.
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Some say America is Babylon and we are exiles. Therefore we do not need to involved in politics and certainly shouldn’t try to biblicize our nation’s politics.
But that’s not what the faithful Jews did when in exile. Think of Daniel. He was involved in politics, and the end result was King Darius proclaiming to his entire empire that Daniel’s God is the true God. Jeremiah told the exiles to seek the good of their city – which certainly included teaching the way of salvation, challenging the idolatry around them, and promoting all that is good, true, and beautiful in public and private life.
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“It certainly is very desirable that a pacific disposition should prevail among all nations. The most effectual way of producing it is by extending the prevalence and influence of the gospel. RealChristians will abstain from violating the rights of others, and therefore will not provoke war.
Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
— John Jay
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“The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
— John Quincy Adams
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Some say there cannot be a Christian nation, only Christian people. Ok, but nations are composed of people. A Christian nation is just a nation with a critical mass of faithful Christians who have some significant measure of success in influencing (or discipling) their culture. For example a nation that outlaws abortion and confirms its marriage laws to biblical teachings that apply to the civil realm is more Christian than nations that allow abortion and have “same-sex marriage.”
Can there be a Christian family? A family is more than individuals after all. Can there be a Christian school? Or Christian education? Can there be Christian music? Or Christian art? Can there be a Christian law that gets passed by a legislature?
Granted, the label “Christian” when used as an adjective means something slightly different in each case. But it can definitely be appropriately applied to more than just individuals. There is such a thing as a Christian nation – or nation-state, or civil government. There are Christian schools providing a Christian education with a Christian curriculum. There is Christian music. And so on. These are real and legitimate categories.
The problem is that we have so privatized Christian faith, many think there can be nothing other than a Christian individual. This is simply not true. The Bible certainly teaches a doctrine of personal salvation. But it is also full of wisdom, principles, and laws that apply to politics and society. Christianity is both personal and public. As a public religion, it never settles for privatization. When it does, the salt loses its saltiness and the light gets hidden under a bushel.
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American pastors used to do political discipleship. See, for example, the book “Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805,” edited by Ellis Sandoz.
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“He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most…active in promoting true and undefiled religion…to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind…
Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy of his country….
It is in the man of piety and inward principle that we may…find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier…
God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable.”
— John Witherspoon
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With the obvious failure of secularism in the public square, the myth of neutrality had been exposed. With the left getting hyper-radicalized, a lot of Christians have defaulted to a kind of theonomic position. Theonomy (in its broad general equity form) has gotten mainstreamed amongst conservative Christians, almost be accident. What the Christian Reconstructionists could not do a generation ago has happened, thanks to progressives and their radicalized views.
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Conservatism without Christ is like trying to build a house of bricks but without any mortar. Christ is the arche and telos, the one in whom all things are bound together and integrated. Apart from Christ, conservatives may have a lot of bricks, but they can’t actually build anything lasting.
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