Christian nationalism is among the many most contentious points dividing American Christians as we speak. Persistent questions concerning the formal standing of Christianity in politics and tradition have cut up households, ended friendships, and sown dissension in lots of church buildings, even amongst those that share deep commitments to the authority of Scripture, the individual and work of Jesus Christ, and the hope of the resurrection.
The label “Christian nationalist” was as soon as primarily deployed as an accusatory bludgeon to sentence believers who asserted their Christian values too formally or vocally in public areas. At its most absurd, a cabin crew member aboard an AirAlaska flight was lately charged with “creeping Christian nationalism” after wishing passengers a “blessed evening” as they departed their flight.
However extra critical issues about it emerged after an indignant mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. They have been looking for to disrupt the constitutional means of certifying Joe Biden as president with some bearing indicators in tribute to “King Jesus” and clearly desiring to “Take America Again for God.” Since that point, Christian nationalism has dominated the nationwide dialog about religion and politics.
As debates over Christian nationalism multiplied, some began to personal the label, sporting it proudly. For these, Christian nationalism turned a potent technique to push again towards the darkness (i.e., leftist woke radicals). Accepting the label turned a subversive technique to take the struggle to the enemy and start the method of setting issues aright. Some Christians jumped on board. Many others didn’t.
A number of ink has been spilled lately attempting to defend, critique, and clarify Christian nationalism. Whereas a critical subject like this calls for critical research, an excessive amount of writing on the topic dives too deeply into the dense thickets of political concept and American constitutional historical past. For these in search of a fundamental introduction and an accessible level of entry, I’m happy to suggest a brand new guide by Michael W. Austin, “American Christian Nationalism: Neither American nor Christian” (Eerdmans, 2024).
Austin is a professor of philosophy at Eastern Kentucky University and a ruling elder at Covenant Community Church (PCA) in Richmond, Kentucky. The guide combines his immense abilities as a educated ethicist along with his shepherd’s coronary heart for Christ’s church. The result’s a concise (78 pages), clearly-written overview of the topic that instructs, clarifies, and rebukes. Austin doesn’t try a full-blown Christian concept of presidency, however as a substitute addresses the broad ideas espoused by the motion, evaluating every on their deserves.
He gladly concedes that lots of the opinions and actions generally filed underneath “Christian nationalism” neither warrant the label nor fall underneath his critique. He acknowledges that some critics have drawn the circle of Christian nationalism too extensively, encompassing each faith-informed problem to the secular left. Being brazenly—even vocally—Christian in American public life and cultural engagement doesn’t robotically make somebody a Christian nationalist.
What, then, makes somebody an American Christian nationalist?
Definitions matter, particularly with regards to a topic so simply misunderstood and extensively mischaracterized. Austin takes pains to outline American Christian nationalism in mild of arguments made by folks like Stephen Wolfe, Dusty Deevers, and others who embrace, espouse, and defend it. He argues that American Christian nationalists consider the next:
1) America was based as a Christian nation.
2) The U.S. authorities ought to promote Christianity because the official tradition of the nation.
3) Christians ought to actively take dominion over America to implement biblical norms.
4) Christians within the U.S. ought to prioritize American pursuits over these of different nations.
5) Christians ought to fuse their nationwide and religious identities into one.
Whereas Austin is evenhanded and even handed in assessing American Christian nationalism, readers shouldn’t mistake his fair-mindedness for a reasonable stance on the topic. His perspective is unambiguously clear. Even within the title, Austin believes American Christian nationalism is “neither American nor Christian.” He considers it dangerous to the nation and a hazard to the church. Full cease.
The stability of the guide is split between the case he makes on every of those two factors.
First, he demonstrates that Christian nationalism violates a few of America’s most elementary and enduring values. The primacy it offers to very peculiar variations of Christianity undercuts America’s longstanding commitments to liberty of conscience and freedom of expression. In related trend, placing the thumb on the size for Christians and Christian ideas begins to disintegrate our equally vital dedication to equality.
Austin observes a number of the less-than-subtle ways in which Christian nationalists have superior racialist and misogynistic proposals alongside the identical vein. And he lastly notes that the Christian nationalist “America first” mentality weakens longstanding commitments to American ideas of service.
A reader may marvel at this level, Properly, so what? Are Christians obligated to undergo American values? Couldn’t Christian nationalism maybe reform the nation in ways in which higher replicate biblical norms and produce biblical outcomes? Austin solutions emphatically no. Christian nationalism is as unChristian as it’s unAmerican.
Within the second, extra substantial, a part of the guide, Austin demonstrates the numerous ways in which American Christian nationalism subverts, corrupts, and contradicts Christian values.
The place Scripture calls us to pour out ourselves in humility and love for the great of our neighbors, Christian nationalism invitations us to don a warrior ethic of energy to dominate and management them. The place Scripture urges us lovingly to make disciples of all nations, Christian nationalism calls us to grab the levers of state energy to implement isolationism, protectionism, and the exclusion of immigrants.
In the long run, Christian nationalism weakens our bonds with believers around the globe, hurts our witness to our unbelieving neighbors, and trades the embracing mild of the gospel for the militant sword of coercion and exclusion.
Our nation as we speak is crammed with struggling, corruption, and all method of wickedness. It’s deeply marked by the numerous thousands and thousands of sinners who name it house. Christians are proper to critique, problem, and lament the diabolical forces that undercut human flourishing in any respect ranges of society. They’re additionally proper to look to Jesus for a life-giving imaginative and prescient of hope and therapeutic. However that imaginative and prescient, Austin warns, bears no resemblance to the false guarantees and corrupt beliefs present in Christian nationalism. I’m grateful for his boldness in saying so.
Jay Inexperienced serves as professor of historical past at Covenant College.
