Is America really experiencing a dangerous outbreak of “Christian nationalism” that poses an existential threat to our nation?
You might think so, if you’ve been paying any attention to progressive politicians, activist media types and the Churchy Woke, who are working hard to convince Americans that our nation is virtually under siege from racist, white “Christian nationalists” intent upon installing a theocracy that would force everyone into political and religious submission.
Among other things we could call them, these Leftist alarmists are nothing if not accomplished gaslighters. But it benefits them to disparage Christians as scary, destabilizing revolutionaries, since that helps distract your attention away from the fact that the Left’s own, active revolutionaries are working hard even now to dismantle this country.
Shall we revisit what the Left is actually doing to our nation, as we’re being conditioned to fear drooling hordes of terrifying “Christian nationalists?” Millions of illegal aliens are flooding unimpeded across our borders; murderers, rapists, drug addicts and robbers are destroying our major cities, under the approving watch of Blue Mayors; sky-high inflation is busting the budgets of everyday Americans; Democrats are waging an intentional war on our nation’s energy independence; the most obscene LGBTQ+ activists and other sexual deviants are being allowed to target children in our schools and across our media, while some are even attaining high positions in government; and our own FBI is targeting and raiding the homes of pro-life activists.
It’s all happening under the leadership of a Democrat president and vice president who’ve been widely recognized as two of the most corrupt, immoral, mentally deficient and/or mentally underperforming embarrassments that our nation has ever seen. Eighty million people voted for these two? That’s another subject altogether.
Looking at these times under Progressivism, millions of clear-thinking Americans, and especially American Christians, don’t just see what’s happening as a little upsetting. For those of us old enough to remember our defeat of the Nazis during WWII or the falling of the Berlin Wall, all of this is patently unthinkable. Daily, we ask: What has happened to the United States of America? Where did our country go?
Well, to you-know-where in a hand basket, folks. That’s obvious. But Leftists are more than willing to ignore the train wreck that’s upon us, in the vain expectation that, eventually, they’ll get their Valhalla of a perfectly green economy with unending “equity” out of the coming rubble of a republic.
And they have the gall to think Christians are nuts?
That’s what they want you to think, though, because you have to vilify Christians and Christian ideals if you’re going to wreck America. So enter the “Christian nationalism” scaremongering. There’s a long history to the term, and you can go down the Google rabbit hole on that, if you want, so I can keep this article relatively brief. But as we know, the Left especially started seizing upon the concept during the Trump years, ramped it up even more after Jan. 6 and now keep touting it to the high levels of government, in order to paint a false picture of all patriotic, Bible-believing Christians as The Enemy.
What is “Christian nationalism?” That depends on who you ask. There are some Christians who do embrace the term. Some are theonomists or believers in postmillennial eschatology, so their theology drives their ideology in various ways — but none, so far as I know, are dangerous. And yes, it also may be that there are some vigilante oddballs out there who might attach the term “Christian” to some wayward view of taking America back through decidedly anti-Christian means. But if the latter do exist at all, they’re not speaking for the vast majority of Christians and probably aren’t Christians at all.
What’s clear is that a lot of modern definitions of “Christian nationalism” that come from the Left are just plain overwrought and wrong. Maybe intentionally so. Some say it’s a movement of millions of Christians who want to turn America into a theocracy (not true). Others say it’s millions of regular Christians who want to force-convert everybody to Christianity in order to reclaim our “Christian nation” status (also not true).
Even when Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene said the relatively uncontroversial statement, “We need to be the party of nationalism, and I’m a Christian. And I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists,” The Washington Post immediately insinuated that Greene’s innocuous sentiment clearly has dangerous racist undertones, writing, “Academics and extremists use the term Christian nationalism to refer to an ethnocultural, nationalist ideology — in this case, defining American identity as exclusively White and Christian, and aiming for a government that favors that group’s beliefs.”
I’m sorry — “exclusively White and Christian?” Who is saying this?!
In Christianity Today, author Paul D. Miller wrote, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way,” adding: “the term ‘Christian nationalism’ is relatively new, and its advocates generally do not use it of themselves, but it accurately describes American nationalists who believe American identity is inextricable from Christianity.”
Again, these quotes could invite several days’ worth of clarification, caveats and refutations. But that’s for another day. The point is that while there are undoubtedly some people out there whose views do comport with those publications’ extremely suspect definitions of “Christian nationalism,” those definitions are just not what most Christians believe — especially those of us who love our nation, believe in its Bill of Rights and its Constitution as a whole, recognize God’s sovereign hand in its miraculous creation and ongoing sustenance and can see His righteous hand of judgment on us now.
Are we a “Christian nation?” It depends what you mean by that, and most Christians would say that it is, in the sense that America as we inherited it was fashioned by the blueprint of the Bible. Have we so quickly forgotten who came over here on the Mayflower (Christians) and the reason that they risked everything to get here (religious freedom)? Regardless of the fact that not all our Founders were born-again Christians, it’s simply undeniable that the Christian worldview was dominant among them, too, and that our driving founding ideals are all rooted in Scriptural concepts. (If you want more details, pick up some historical books on the subject, such as “The Light and the Glory” by Peter Marshall or “What if the Bible Had Never Been Written?” by D. James Kennedy). The question is: Why is it so unfathomable that a Christian would point out historical facts, unless to modern Leftists, Christianity itself is what is unfathomable?
We also understand that while we would pray for every American to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we are aware that not every American (fewer and fewer these days) is a Bible-believing Christian. Therefore, our “Christian nation” references are really owed not just to our historical roots, but also to the fact that Christianity has been the dominant religion here (albeit, often cultural Christianity) since the beginning. It must be pointed out anew, though, that the majority of Christians know we are a constitutional republic with freedom of religion — and we actually do love it that way.
What we don’t love is watching the intentional dismantling of virtually everything we hold dear and every biblical ideal that made America the greatest nation on earth. We happen to live here, and we’re raising our children here. Should we not be alarmed, as millions of non-Christian American also are, that America is quickly declining into the abyss?
It also doesn’t help that the Churchy Woke are helping their political counterparts to demonize all Bible-believing Christians. Recent case in point: Churchy Progressive leaders, including some denominational heads, just revealed that they’ve submitted a letter to the House select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, asking it to probe specifically into “Christian nationalism.”
Organized under the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty’s “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” effort, the usual Churchy Wokesters from the liberal Protestant mainline, the Emergent Left and the Jim Wallis Sojourners crowd state in their letter: “As Christian leaders who are deeply concerned about Christian nationalism and its danger not only to our constitutional democracy but in its distortion of Christianity, we urge you to focus questioning and discussion on Christian nationalism and the role it played in bolstering, justifying and intensifying the Jan. 6 attack.”
The Critical Race Theory-adhering, rainbow-flag-waving mainliners have a lot of nerve criticizing anyone else for a “distortion of Christianity!” These are the same people whose own longtime attacks on Scripture and biblical orthodoxy have managed to grind down their church populations to about nine elderly attendees every week.
How do they define “Christian nationalism,” you may ask? This way: “Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that merges American and Christian identities. Christian nationalism wrongly suggests that to be a ‘true’ American one must be Christian, and that ‘real’ Christians affirm certain positions in American political debates.”
You know, Churchy Leftists, it is possible to be two different things at once: a Christian and also an American. That doesn’t mean you’re “merging identities.” And what Christian has ever suggested or said that to a be “a ‘true’ American, one must be Christian?” In fact, we’re the sector of American society that is the most pro-religious liberty of them all, even while we gratefully enjoy that First Amendment freedom to obey Jesus’ command to spread the gospel and “make disciples of all nations.”
The letter goes on to say: “The term ‘white Christian nationalism’ acknowledges that Christian nationalism often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation!” They even write that “the ‘Christian’ in Christian nationalism is not necessarily tied to religious belief; instead, the term carries with it a host of assumptions of ethno-national identity inherent in the history of the United States …”
At this point, these Leftist rants remind me of the 1950 film, “Harvey,” in which Jimmy Stewart’s drunken character, Elwood P. Dowd, hangs out with a 6-foot-3 invisible rabbit named Harvey — a rabbit that only he can see.
You see, Leftists’ belief in a cabal of shadowy, dangerous “Christian nationalists,” much like Elwood’s belief in Harvey, has managed in the past few years to overcome, as Elwood said of Harvey, “not only time and space, but any objections.” “Christian nationalism” transcends any actual, consistent definition, it would seem. It transcends time and space. It transcends reality. That’s how powerful it is, folks. “Close your eyes … make a wish … count to three … and the Christian nationalist will appear … you only have to believe …”
How else do you explain the fact that only the Left can see dangerous Christian nationalists everywhere, while the alleged scary “Christian nationalists” themselves often can’t find any — and certainly none in the mirror? Frankly, this weird descent into the bizarre is not just an example of the human brain on secular humanism, postmodernism, relativism, Gnosticism or simple apostasy. It’s the brain on mental breakdown. It’s the soul on deception from the pit.
At this point, you could just dismiss it all in a fit of condescending laughter, were it not for the fact that these Wokesters said they submitted this letter because they “were approached by a committee investigator on the topic.” In other words, someone in the U.S. government is actively asking people who reject biblical orthodoxy to help them falsely demonize actual Christians.
I don’t know where this all ends, but all I’ll say in closing is what I’ve said for years now: if America is to be rescued, then it first needs a mighty revival. Not to be too simplistic, but if Americans by the millions were to repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, I think many current political problems would solve themselves. After all, what truly godly nation would put up with even a fraction of the moral and spiritual rot that is on constant display in America today? So let’s put first things first.
To that end, I really believe the church needs its own version or versions of the Scottish Reformer John Knox — a man of God whose grief over his nation’s spiritual decline will cause him to cry out in anguish, “Lord, give me America, ere I die!” That’s because if the Lord does will to pull this nation back from the brink, then the pulpits and churches of America first will have to come alive again in a blaze of biblical zeal and undergo reformation according to God’s Word. We could use another Martin Luther, too, for that task. Then, and only then, can we begin to dream of becoming a truly Christian nation again.
And I daresay the pilgrims would have agreed.