People sometimes ask, “What would a Christianized nation look like?” I’m glad you asked. Thankfully, God actually set up a nation one time and gave them a law. So we don’t really have to guess. We can just look at the nation God established and the law he gave them. We can study the Torah and see what God wants a nation to look like. The other nations were supposed to be able to look at Israel, marvel at the wisdom of her law, and recognize that her God must be the true God (Deut. 4).
Yes, of course, there is much in Torah that was unique to old covenant Israel and her place in the story of redemptive-history. But there are universal principles embedded in Torah that all nations are obligated to follow because they represent God’s own justice. This is sometimes called “general equity theonomy.” (“Theonomy” means “God’s law.”) The Christian tradition provides a great deal of guidance in interpreting the Torah, sorting out the unique from the universal.
Nations are covenantal and moral entities. Nations can make God their King (Psalm 33:12) or an idol. Nations can do righteousness or wickedness, and will be judged accordingly (Prov. 14:34). Nations can make God happy or angry. Nations can sin, nations can repent, nations can seek forgiveness, nations can please God. The Bible recognizes these kinds of corporate actions. The Bible establishes various levels of government and various types of accountability, for individuals, families, churches, nations, etc.
If God has nothing to say to nations, nations can do what they want. They are autonomous. Who cares what they do, and who can say what is right or wrong? But if nations are under God’s authority, they must do God’s will. They must obey what God says in his Word. They must be theonomic. That’s really the issue: Are nations accountable to God? Do nations as nations have obligations to God?
This is the heart of the Christian nationalism debate: should nations be autonomous or theonomous? Are nations a law unto themselves, ruled by a human dictator, or the 51%, or some other humanistic authority? Or are nations under God’s law, obligated to do his will?
Politics is always connected to culture. Politics is always tied to authority and law. Politics is about ethics. In other words, politics is never neutral. It is always religious at the core. It’s not a question of whether but which – not whether or not a nation will have a god, but which god it will be.
Scripture is clear that all authority comes from God and is established by God (Rom.13, 1 Per. 2). Civil government derives its legitimacy and authority from God himself. Surely if God established civil power, God has opinions, so to speak, on what that power is for and how it ought to be used.
Some who object to the possibility of a Christian nation have no problem recognizing there can Islamic and Hindu nations. They fail to see that secularism itself is a religion – the religion of man, the religion of statism. Every nation has a religion – it’s just a question of which religion. Others will object that this sounds like a Christian version of Sharia law. But it’s not. Christian nationalism is as different from Islamic nationalism as Jesus is different from Allah and Mohammad, as different as Torah is from Sharia. I suggest reading over Psalm 119 and asking yourself if you love God’s law the way David did. God’s law is good. God’s law is wise. God’s law is compassionate. God’s law defines righteousness and justice. If we dislike what we find in God’s law, we are putting ourselves above Scripture, we are sitting judgment of God himself, we are believing the serpent’s lie that we know better than God. The problem is not with the law, the problem is with our rebellious hearts.
Thus, it is the obligation of every nation to be a Christian nation – to recognize that Christ is king, that its civil power is ordained by God, and to obey the principles of civil law found in the Bible. While this might sound tyrannical to those who despise God or who are ignorant of his Word, it’s actually the best safeguard against tyranny. For example, we learn in the Bible that civil power is only concerned with outward action, not the heart. Not all sins are crimes, and the state is not concerned with sin in general, but only those sinful outward actions that God authorized the state to criminalize, punish, and suppress. The sin/crime distinction is one of the cornerstones of biblical political theology. We also lean from Scripture that while a civil magistrate can promote faith and repentance (eg, the king of Ninevah in Jonah; Darius in Daniel 6), faith and repentance can never be coerced. Thus, another biblical principle of civil government is that the state cannot force conversion; there must be freedom of religious belief. While religious action can be regulated (eg, Constantine rightly outlawed pagan sacrifice; America has refused to allow polygamy or drug use in the name of religion), religious belief remains free. Further, we find that God established civil laws that protect life and the family. Murder (including of the unborn and elderly) is a capital crime. Various forms of sexual perversion, such as adultery, bestiality, and sodomy should be criminalized and suppressed because they egregiously violate God’s design for the family and strike at the heart of a stable, orderly society. And so on.
Just as every nation has an obligation to be Christian in the sense that civil law and social custom are shaped by biblical principles, so likewise, every Christian citizen has a duty to seek the Christianization of his nation.
Does the notion of a Christian nation seem implausible? Far fetched? It’s really not. Most likely, your grandparents lived in just such a nation, albeit a compromised one. There have been many Christian nations, with varying degrees of faithfulness and consistency over the course of history. And, God-willing, there will be again.
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ADDENDUM: Should the Christian state outlaw idolatry. Consider the Reformers:
Martin Luther:
“The magistrate must root out idolatry and false worship, for God commands that His truth be upheld and blasphemies suppressed by those He has set in authority.” (1525)
John Knox:
“It is the duty of the magistrate to suppress idolatry and superstition, that the true worship of God may flourish, as commanded by the Almighty.” (1554)
John Calvin:
“Magistrates are bound to defend the worship of God and to purge their realm of idolatry, which provokes God’s wrath against the land.” (1559)
Jan Hus:
“Rulers, as ministers of God, must cast down idols and false teachings, ensuring that the true faith is upheld in their governance.” (1414)
Deuteronomy 13 has implications for the state even in the new covenant, though I would not apply it directly since aspects of it are connected to Israel’s special role in redemptive-history (see Poythress’ discussion in the book The Shadow of Christ in the law of Moses).
The magistrate can protect and promote the true faith and true worship, suppress expressions of false religions, and give the church space to carry out her evangelistic mission.
But exactly what that looks like will probably from one context to another.
When the Reformers talked about uprooting idolatry, they had Roman Catholicism at least partially in view.
I would not go that far today.
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