The mainstream media and Christian organizations and leaders paint Christian nationalism as at best an error to be avoided and at worst a devilish enemy to be opposed. If you have never heard a word in its defense, please consider the following questions.
Jesus taught that the family as we know it will not exist in heaven (Mark 12:18–27). Does that mean there is no such thing as a Christian family?
Similarly, we can expect no schools and businesses as we know them in heaven. Are “Christian school” and “Christian business” thus misnomers?
There will be people from “every … nation” in heaven, but nations as we know them will not be there. Does that mean there can be no such thing as a Christian nation in this life and it is therefore wrong to attempt to build one?
The message Jesus began to preach is called “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23; Mark 1:14). A kingdom is a community of communities—villages, towns, whatever. My church is striving to build one of those “villages”—a fractal, if you will, a part of a whole that has all the characteristics of the whole.
A kingdom has someone in charge; in our case, it is the God who made heaven and earth. The subjects of the kingdom have a way to access the one in charge; in our case, it is through Jesus and his death on the cross. Kingdoms have laws; ours begins with prohibitions against taking life or property, betraying trust, and besmirching reputation and goes on to commend grace, mercy, and compassion. Kingdoms bring due consequences for violations of those laws—here the fractal analogy breaks down because congregations and their networks deal with issues different from those of the larger polity, but in both cases, “we do this; we don’t do that”; the smaller units should deal with issues in consideration of the welfare of the larger units. Finally, a kingdom needs an ultimate goal; ours is eternal life with our creator, redeemer, and sanctifier.
Christian nationalism is simply the idea that the gospel affects not only individuals and congregations but whole societies. Jesus has commissioned his people to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 24:19); he said that “repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (Luke 24:47). The title of my church’s in-house publication, Spreading Branches, alludes to the idea that the gospel benefits societies—nations—that befriend it (Matt 13:32; cf. Dan 4:12, 20–21). My own view is that by “nations” he meant any group of people “that calls us us and them them,” not the current nation-state, with flags and a privileged few who lord it over those who cannot defend themselves (Luke 22:25). Either way, though, the gospel is to affect society, even people who do not believe.
Any community in which life, property, trust, and reputation are safe is by nature—by definition—just. Justice uninterrupted leads to peace, and peace to prosperity. Is that not what we want for our children?
Cotton Mather famously lamented that godliness—sincere devotion to Jesus for who he is—gave birth to prosperity and the daughter killed the mother. No society is perfect, and what happened to Mather’s society will eventually be true of any society that travels the road of godliness. But is it an insult to God to try to build, maintain, or reclaim such a society?
Christian nationalists are often accused of wanting “political power for its own sake.” What does that look like in measurable terms? Can our brethren in much of the world be forgiven for wishing and praying that God would grant them enough political power to have relief from the persecution and run-of-the-mill chaos they—and other innocents—are currently suffering? What evidence is there for the charge that Christian nationalists’ goal is to become the privileged few who push nobodies around? Or is the goal to bring due consequences to murderers, thieves, frauds, and slanderers so that innocent people can “live a quiet life, and to attend to [their] own business, and to work with [their] hands” (1 Thess 4:11) and spread the gospel?
If wanting to see not only our homes and churches but our society at large characterized by justice and peace is a good thing, then Christian nationalism’s specific imperfections, not its goals, are the proper objects of criticism.
