Christ & Culture: 3 Ways to Resist Christian Nationalism

My final semester in college, I took a course that would eventually change my life. Christ and Culture encouraged my fellow classmates and me to ask basic questions about what it means to follow Jesus in American culture. Is America a Christian nation? Was it ever? Should it be? Should Christians have power over culture, and what has happened to the marginalized when we were in power? 

As a naive undergraduate who didn’t even know it was possible to be a Christian and not be a Republican, I had all the answers. I believed in American exceptionalism, that there was a special place in God’s heart for the United States and that God blessed America even at the expense of other nations. Why? Because we were given a Manifest Destiny. We are righteous. We are God’s chosen people. 

Interested in learning more about the Church’s sordid relationship with power? Check out our podcast episode “Unholy Trinity: Power”!

Of course I believed that. Starting at a young age, we are indoctrinated both implicitly and explicitly to believe that God loves the US more than other countries. Our righteousness—and therefore our special status—is proclaimed everywhere from our money to our pledge to our Superbowl ads to our pulpits. This fusing of Christianity and country is so complete that, in many minds, the two are no longer separate entities, but one in heart and purpose. To pledge allegiance to one is to pledge allegiance to the other, and to fight for one is to defend the other. Onward Christians soldiers, right?

But at some point during that semester, I realized something disturbing. I’d been lied to. Worse, I had allowed myself to be lied to due to my willful ignorance and nationalistic pride. And I couldn’t even blame QAnon. 

That’s why on January 6, as I watched Christian nationalists storm the Capitol building in righteous indignation, I realized just how ill-equipped evangelicals are to live in a post-Christian culture. It’s somewhat understandable. Evangelicals have been the major voting bloc for the Republican Party for decades, linking Church and State as consensual partners to bring about their political and social ends. They’ve sought to control culture by co-joining clergy and President, Bible and sword, God and civil authority. They’ve only known a world in which the Church legitimizes the activities of the State and the nation enforces the morality of the Church. But if we’ve learned anything in the last month, it’s that this version of Christianity is violently, yet slowly coming to an end. And none too soon. A new report shows over a quarter of white evangelicals believe core QAnon conspiracy theories, the most of any religious group. 62% of them still believe there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election—despite numerous experts and high courts refuting their allegations. And more damning than all? “41% completely or somewhat agreed with the statement ‘if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves even if it requires taking violent actions.’”

It should be painfully obvious by now that out of the myriad of religious factions in America, white evangelicals are particularly susceptible to authoritarian leaders, conspiracy theories, and the temptation to use violence to protect their own interests. One of the most important questions the American Church faces today is, how do we deradicalize evangelicals? How do we unmake Christian nationalists who are so quick to resort to terrorism in Jesus name? Below are three ways we can resist the malignant temptation to wed the cause of Christ with nationalism. 

1. Remember Our Roots

In its infancy, the Church was an underground, anti-imperial band of cultural misfits living on the margins of society. They had no power, little wealth, and shared all they had in common. They were universally nonviolent. And though they were hunted, persecuted, and oppressed, they prospered as a community of resistance to the brutal normalcy of the Roman Empire. This fledgling community saw the cross of Christ as the central political event in all of history, and realized the blasphemy of identifying any earthly political order with the reign of God. That is, until the fourth century when Constantine arranged a little marriage between the bride of Christ and Caesar. Ever since then, Christians have been the great defenders of empire, colluding with the powers that be to carve out our own, mostly white “Christian nation.” 

But as Christians, our task isn’t to join in any nationalistic cause or promote slaveholder religion, but rather to remember we are members of an alternative, global community whose social, economic, political, and ethical allegiances are to Christ alone. Our fealty is to the global kingdom of God and can never be reduced to any national identity. We are not Americans first, but rather, in the words of ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, “a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people.” 

2. Follow the Way

“From his first testing in the desert to the last one in the garden, Jesus’ unceasing temptation was the plea of the crowds and of his disciples to strike out on the path of righteous kingship” by bringing His kingdom to fruition through power and coercion, writes theologian John Howard Yoder. Yet He never became a violent revolutionary. Whenever the disciples wanted to use force to bring about God’s good ends, He rebuked them. Peter, raising his sword in Christ’s own defense, was admonished: “‘Put away your sword,’” Jesus told him, ‘Those who use the sword will die by the sword’” (Matt. 26:52). The way of violence is not the way of Jesus. He chose to fulfill his kingdom through weakness, not coercion—which might be why the religious leaders of His day and ours would rather follow Barrabas the insurrectionist rather than Jesus the nonviolent resister. 

And if we keep in mind that Jesus reveals the very nature and character of God, we have to deal with the reality that Jesus was poor, powerless, vulnerable, and an enemy of the state. He entered the world as a disenfranchised baby and left the world as a defenseless man on a cross. In his book Following Christ in a Consumer Society, Father John Kavanaugh discusses this at length. He asks, “Why did God reveal himself in the form of a poor peasant? There were so many other options. Why not enlist the elite who could really change things? Why not use the benefactions of power and prestige? In every cultural frame, Christians must face up to this kind of God. We must ask ourselves anew: What kind of God does this reveal?” Mostly, a God who apparently loses to the powers that be, which is probably why we have such contempt for the cross. 

3. Speak Truth to Power

For decades, white American evangelicals have become the de facto mouthpiece for Christian nationalism, spouting lies, promoting conspiracy theories, and openly promoting racist policies at home and abroad. Televangelist Paula White, a member of Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory council, went so far as to claim God ordained the Trump presidency. Stranger still, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of a megachurch in Dallas, turned “Make America Great Again” into a hymn. How bizarre. How utterly unprophetic. 

The last thing we need are more courtly priests and pastors willing to cozy up to power. We need a counternarrative, prophets who speak truth to power. People like Dorothy Day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Oscar Romero. We need saints, not militants, people willing to get dirty for the cause of Christ. Maybe that’s what author and missionary Lesslie Newbigin meant when he wrote, “The place of the church is thus not in the seats of the establishment but in the camps and marching columns of the protestors.” Instead of a powerful, nationalistic Christianity, we need a prophetic Christianity—a Christianity that calls into question the very empire in which we live and move and have our being. And in a world ripe with domination, divided by racism, entrenched in patriarchy, and ruled by the wealthy at the expense of the poor, our role is not to seek power, but to be prophetic. 

Thankfully, Western Christians no longer enjoy the seats of power, but rather find ourselves participants in a pluralistic culture. And, much like the first three centuries of Christian history, this new era provides an incredible opportunity to purify the message and methods of the church, not least of which is to resist polluting the Gospel with our will to power. The end of “Christian America” will create space for the recovery of authentic forms of faith. In fact, “Post-Christian” America may well prove to be far more Christian than Christendom.