What Is Christian Nationalism?
Spiritual Life
Audio By Carbonatix
By James Spencer, Crosswalk.com
In January 2011, a student at Southern Methodist University asked former President George W. Bush about the challenges facing democracy. Bush’s answer was simple: the rise of “-isms.” In particular, Bush spoke about isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. These, he warned, have a way of appearing in history together. He described them as corrosive to the kind of open, confident society America aspires to be.
Bush was offering a political diagnosis, and it was a perceptive one; however, he didn’t address the theological contours of the problem. Any system that we implement in a broken world will also be broken. When we overestimate our systems, we lose theological perspective and become more confident than we should about our civilization and its strategies. For instance, in Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God, Veronica Ogle suggests that one of Augustine’s problems with the Roman Empire involves Rome’s willingness to claim victory despite its evident failure. She notes,
“It does not take long for Augustine to begin pointing out the many ways in which Rome fails to live up to its self-endowed reputation. Yet, what troubles Augustine is not just that Rome falls short of its self-image, but that it pretends not to—and, to a large degree, succeeds in this ruse.”
What Is Christian Nationalism?
The “-ism” de jour is nationalism, specifically Christian nationalism. This “-ism” is perhaps more dangerous because it wraps itself in Christian language, recruits the authority of Scripture, and presents itself as a faithful representation of Christianity. Bush was right to identify “-isms” as politically problematic. But the danger of Christian nationalism is not primarily that it is bad for democracy. It is bad for the church. It distorts its witness, worship, and theological integrity. It offers Christians a story about who they are that competes with, and ultimately displaces, the story of Scripture.
Taken on an issue-by-issue basis, I don’t doubt that Christians might find areas of agreement with the Christian nationalist ideology. However, Christian nationalism distorts the way Christians participate in the world because “it is not a set of ideas; rather, it is what enables, through making sense of, the practices of a society” (Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries). It is this distortion that lies at the core of Christian nationalism.
What is the solution? In part, we need a clear way for situating ourselves in the world—a theological framework that allows us to be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in a complex world. Such a framework needs to include at least four elements: (1) living as a Christian first, (2) developing a theological disposition, (3) committing to Theo-logic, and (4) engaging in discipled inquiry. We need this sort of framework because it provides constraints that enable us to live faithfully as the body of Christ. The elements of these frameworks may be summarized as follows:
A Theological Framework for Faithful Christian Witness
- Living Christian First
Allegiance to Christ must precede all reasoning and discernment, so that thinking and action emerge from discipleship rather than the world’s assumptions. Such allegiance involves reordering our loves, reorienting our attention, and responding faithfully to God. - Developing a Theological Disposition
Christians must cultivate a shared, theological sense of how the world works, shaped by God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ and by the world within the shared life of His body. - Committing to Theo-Logic
Theo-logic is a distinctly Christian way of reasoning with the grain of God’s reality as revealed in Scripture, forming patient, cruciform habits of judgment that resist cultural capture, outrage, and partisan reflexes. - Engaging in Disciplined Inquiry
Using a structured, disciplined approach to analyzing claims, habits, and cultural pressures with a calm, thoughtful, theological posture.
4 Ways to Apply a Theological Framework to Christian Nationalism
How might this framework be applied to Christian nationalism?
1. Christian nationalism tends toward syncretism—fusing Christianity with national or civilizational identity in ways that appear to keep Christianity primary.
Some CN advocates would argue that CN does not support syncretism but is simply recovering the truth that Western civilization and its liberties are the fruit of Christian roots. The problem is not that this claim is entirely without historical warrant, but that Western civilization and its liberties are not Christian in the biblical sense. They are inspired by select teachings from the Scriptures while not recognizing the Bible as the inspired word of God, which is the final authority for life and faith (see “When We’ve Lost Control of the Word ‘Christian’”). Incorporating Christian concepts does not make the whole system Christian any more than a Christian singing along to Bawitdaba makes a Kid Rock concert Christian worship. The result is a quietly divided allegiance that only appears to be Christian first. Western ideas that CN presents as derived from Christianity gradually become functional essentials of Christianity itself, quietly reshaping what allegiance to Christ entails.
Our love for Christ is to be unqualified. We love with all we are and have. There is no room for other loves or loyalties that are not governed and shaped by our allegiance to God. In drawing the United States or nationalism into Christianity, CN combines political elements with theological ones in such a way that God may still be viewed as the sole focus of our devotion when, in fact, our devotion to him has been divided.
2. Christian nationalism collapses the distinction between church and state, and in doing so, distorts the theological disposition Christians are called to cultivate—the shared sense that the way the world works is grounded in the fear of the Lord.
In the Old Testament, particularly in Israel, God was to be recognized as the nation’s Sovereign. That was part of the Old Covenant (Exod 20:2; Deut 5:1-6; 6:4-6). Though the people reject God by asking for a king “like the rest of the nations” (1 Sam 8:5, 7, 20), the basic dynamics of Israel’s life under God remain unchanged (1 Sam 12:14-15). The fear of the Lord lay at the heart of Israelite society. Recognizing the claim God had on their lives and acting accordingly—responding to God in obedience even when obedience didn’t seem to make sense—reflects the way the world works. Israel was to develop a theological disposition—a sense that following God’s instruction was an indispensable aspect of making sense of the world.
While the fear of the Lord and the covenant relationship with God are unique to Israel in the Old Testament, that particularity does not suggest that God’s authority was somehow limited. Instead, God’s relationship with Israel was designed to make Israel an example to the nations that would lead them to submit to God’s authority (Deut 4:5-6; Ps 67:1-2; Isa 49:6). The particularity was intended to provide a witness within the world that would demonstrate God’s presence, reveal the reality of God, and draw the world under God’s authority. Today, the New Covenant community formed by faith in Christ and empowered by the Spirit is that particular community. Expanding this particularity out to a whole nation and calling that nation “Christian” marginalizes the necessity of faith and the Spirit, assuming that the principles and creeds will do what the Law of God never could—solve the problem of human sin.
Though certain expressions of CN continue to emphasize discipleship, they also seek political influence and declarations from rulers that would establish the United States as a Christian nation. Tying political entities to Christianity without faith and the Spirit is a fool’s errand because the United States is not part of the New Covenant of God, nor does it have its own sacred covenant with him. As such, the way CN suggests the world works only ends up including theological language rather than reflecting a true theological disposition. Only the Holy Spirit can do what CN’s creeds and political arrangements cannot—turning hearts of stone to flesh and moving God’s people to keep his commandments (Ezek 36:26-27).
3. CN undermines the kind of patient, cruciform reasoning characteristic of a Christian theo-logic, framing the situation as a civilization under siege that can only be rescued by returning to being a Christian nation. In addition to generating reactive, partisan reasoning that theo-logic is designed to resist, it puts forth a false hope.
Consider, for instance, that if the United States were a Christian nation at its founding and has now drifted so far that CN is needed to correct its course, the tenets of a Christian nation established at its founding were not sufficient to keep the nation from drifting. The nation-state is temporary. It is used by God for a time. Assuming that re-establishing a Christian nation will prove more durable is, at best, unproven. When the primary question becomes "how do we take back the culture?" rather than "what does faithfulness to Christ require here?", the logic of the movement has already shifted from theological to political, even if the vocabulary remains Christian.
This shift in logic matters because cruciform reasoning is slow and costly in ways that political movements cannot afford to be. The cross does not offer a strategy for winning; it offers a pattern for faithful witness that includes suffering, patience, and the ongoing witness of a people set apart rather than a nation designated “Christian.” CN's pursuit of political influence and legal declaration as the means of establishing Christian order reflects the logic of the state rather than the logic of the cross. It assumes that the right people in power, passing the right laws, can produce what only the Spirit working through cruciform witness can achieve.
4. Disciplined inquiry, which involves the practice of testing claims, action, and cultural trends through theological conviction in the life of the church, exposes Christian nationalism as a problematic “-ism” for the church.
CN's central claims do not, in my estimation, emerge from faithful engagement with the whole of Scripture. CN regularly applies texts addressed to Israel and the New Covenant community directly to the United States as if the U.S. stands in a covenantal relationship with God. Psalm 33:12, 2 Chronicles 7:14, and the exodus from Egypt are often used to claim a supposed theological status for the United States (See Serpents and Doves for fuller treatments of these texts). This is not a minor exegetical point, but a foundational category error.
CN’s claim that America is a Christian nation is also undercut by the nation’s own founding logic. For instance, what if liberalism, which may be understood as a political philosophy centered on individual liberty, is the fundamental feature of the United States rather than Christianity? The founders may have appealed to God-language, but the underlying system affirms the sovereignty of the individual and individual liberty. The God-language and moral frameworks instituted by the founders fit within liberalism rather than defining it. Yet liberalism allows subsequent generations to step away from that language and those principles through relatively structured change processes as the consent of the governed shifts, and crucially, it treats God’s identity as a matter of opinion rather than a settled reality. Though CN advocates claim that this sort of individual dignity and liberty was drawn from Christianity (see, for instance, Pete Hegseth’s comments at the 2026 National Religious Broadcasters Convention from 4:21-5:44), CN has no structural answer to this problem. Even granting its historical claims about the founding (which I do not find compelling; again, see Serpents and Doves), A “Christian nation” built on liberal foundations is only ever a generation’s consent away from ceasing to be Christian.
CN, then, aims at a symptom rather than an underlying cause. Even if the movement could shift the government in a Christian direction for a time, it wouldn’t last. Like the era of the judges, the people would eventually do what was right in their own eyes.
Conclusion
Bush was right to identify “-isms” as politically corrosive. But the danger of Christian nationalism is not primarily political. It is likely not good for the republic, but it is far worse for the church. It disorders our loves, distorts our theological disposition, replaces cruciform reasoning with the logic of the world, and recruits Scripture to serve a national vision rather than submitting to God’s word. CN does not begin with Christ. It begins with a vision of national identity and invites Christ to legitimize it.
This critique is not a call to political disengagement or indifference to the common good. Christians are called to love their neighbors and to attend to the well-being of society. Bearing witness in the political sphere may well be appropriate. But that witness is governed by our allegiance to Christ and flows from a cruciform, theo-logic that is willing to suffer loss today in light of a sure, future victory. We may wish to revitalize our nation, but the church does not depend on our nation’s policies or proclamations.
Nations rise and fall. The Roman Empire that crucified Christ is gone. The empires that preceded it are gone. The United States, whatever its virtues, will one day be gone. What endures is the body of Christ, bearing witness in every nation and across generations to the Triune God whose kingdom has no end.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Samuel Schneider
James Spencer earned his PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an MA in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College. By teaching the Bible and theology, as well as evaluating modern social, cultural, and political trends, James challenges Christians to remember that we don’t set God’s agenda—He sets ours. James has published multiple works, including Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politics and the Art of Bearing Witness, Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Christ, Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody, Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Min, and Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology. His work calls Christians to an unqualified devotion to the Lord. In addition to serving as president of Useful to God, James is a member of the faculty at Right On Mission and an adjunct instructor at Wheaton College Graduate School. Listen and subscribe to James’s Thinking Christian podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Life Audio.
