Your Kingdom Come…Through my vote? A look at the phenomenon of Christian Nationalism

Written by Rev Richard Baird (Church and Culture Analyst at dia-LOGOS)

If solidarity cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed coercively. – James David Hunter

Few topics arouse as much passion as the issue of politics, and the body of Christ is no exception. Religion and politics as a discussion point is often simply avoided because we don’t want conflict. And yet politics affects us all.

Future historians may well remember 2024 as “The Year of the Election.” Time Magazine wrote : “2024 is not just an election year. It’s perhaps the election year. Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the European Union)—representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world—are meant to hold national elections, the results of which, for many, will prove consequential for years to come. ”

We once again get entertained with politicians promising heaven on earth and declaring how their particular policies are the answer to provide prosperity and security for the nation.

So let’s begin with a question:

What would you like South Africa (or whatever nation you live in) to look like?

Within the liberal democratic model that the country operates in, how would you propose to get South Africa to that point?

I’m sure if a poll were done at grassroots level of what we want South Africa to look like, there would be broad unanimity in the answer to the first question. We want a country where we feel safe, where we can prosper, where there is justice.

Question number two however would result I’m sure in very different opinions! That is borne out by the fact that South Africans will have 52 choices for the national ballot (this year South Africans will receive 3 ballot papers to cover national, provincial and regional).

One answer that is increasingly popular within the Christian community is to make the country Christian. This is understandable as we begin to realise more and more that we now live in a post-Christian society, and Biblical morality is no longer the norm (whilst it may not have been normative in the past, there was at least a broader recognition of the Bible’s moral code). The rise of left-wing wokeism means that a morality rooted in cultural Marxism, post-modernism and expressive individualism results in a value-system that is diametrically opposed to the Christian value system.

What’s a Christian to do?

Christian Nationalism argues that the government needs to be Christian and enforce Christian values.

I need to be clear on definitions here. In this instance, semantics really do matter. As a term, Christian Nationalism has been very broadly used, ranging from simple political engagement by Christians all the way to right wing white supremacy. Christian nationalism does not refer to a nationalist who happens to be Christian or vice versa. Indeed the debate includes what is Christian, what is a nation, and what is nationalism.

Getting a clear definition is furthermore important because, like cultural Marxism, Christian nationalism has also become a term that is bandied around and “seems likely to function for the left as ‘Cultural Marxism’ does for the right: a convenient pejorative for discrediting that person just to the right—or the left—of what you yourself find acceptable.”

Britannica encyclopaedia defines Christian nationalism as:

Christian nationalism, ideology that seeks to create or maintain a legal fusion of Christian religion with a nation’s character. Advocates of Christian nationalism consider their view of Christianity to be an integral part of their country’s identity and want the government to promote—or even enforce—the religion’s position within it.

A popular definition by sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead from their 2020 book, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States is “a cultural framework that blurs distinctions between Christian identity and American identity, viewing the two as closely related and seeking to enhance and preserve their union.”

As a term it needs to be distinguished from patriotism, which in my understanding is simply a love of and pride in one’s own country, and that is a good thing (as long as it doesn’t supersede love for God!). A love for one’s country is important for social cohesion and national identity and for helping to move the country forward. In this light, it is fully understandable why in South Africa the latest DA advert of burning a flag as a warning received such a mixed response.

Drawing on the above, for the purposes of this article Christian Nationalism is understood in essence as a fusion and enforcement of national identity with Christian identity: Christianity wrapped in the flag of the nation. One image I saw which illustrates this is a photo of a person holding a banner saying “Jesus is my Saviour – Trump is my president.” Think of it as right-wing wokeism. Please note those two words: fusion and enforcement. This is different from seeking to have Christianity influence the nation and seeking to persuade within the political arena the validity and better way of Biblical values.

Landa Cope puts it so well:

As God’s people we are called into civil governance for the glory of God and the good of the people. Our goal is not to perfect the world or nation but to offer God’s perspective, a better way, and allow society a choice.

From within this perspective, if a party which promotes Christian values and seeks to govern according to Christian values gets democratically elected, it would not, in my understanding, be Christian Nationalism.

But it would become Christian Nationalism if the country is defined politically as Christian and Christianity is enforced as the religion. If there is a fusion of national identity with Christianity in the sense of the nation has been uniquely chosen by God and if Christianity is enforced by the state as the religion, then we are venturing into tyranny territory. This would be dominion theology at work. We don’t become Christian through political power, we become Christian through responding to the love of Christ. If you seek to repress, there will be a point of explosion (whilst the factors were many, such as corruption and poor economy, the fact that the Arab Spring even happened within a context of Islam which demands obedience I think does serve as an example of reaching a breaking point because of repression).

America is the nation that is the case-study of Christian Nationalism since it has made itself strongly felt there. Its not surprising that it is the hotbed of debate given that as a nation it was founded on Christian principles (protestant theology has a rich history of political thought, reminding us that thinking through church-state relations is nothing new!), and Christians are feeling the heat as their value system is routinely undermined and attacked. And with a new cycle of elections happening this year with a showdown between Trumpite Evangelicalism or Bidenist Catholicism, it’s not surprising that identity politics across the political spectrum is turning up the heat with renewed vigour. For example, a recent documentary movie by Rob Reiner called “God and Country” explores the issue of Christian nationalism (seen as a marriage of Christianity and far right-wing politics) in the USA, describing it as a threat to democracy. Rob Reiner in announcing the movie tweeted (or is that ‘X’d?”) on X that “Christian nationalism is not only a danger to our Country, it’s a danger to Christianity itself.” Rob Reiner is not a Christian and is left-wing in political thought. The docu-movie is based on the 2020 book “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” by Katherine Stewart. Although the target audience is meant to be Christians , and various Christians (apparently of the progressive variety) are interviewed in the documentary, I must confess based on the trailer (which you can see on YouTube) to wondering if all Christians are not perhaps being brushed with the same brush.

I say this because images of Christians worshipping in church are juxtaposed with the militancy of the Capitol hill riot. Certainly this is the perspective of Megan Basham writing for The Telegraph (UK) when she maintains that “They want to shame followers of Jesus from taking part in the very same political activities their secular counterparts do and convince everyone else that there’s something uniquely insidious when they do.”

Another example of the contentiousness of the debate (and there are many) is a book which reached Amazon’s Top 100 called The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe (2022). Wolfe’s ‘brand’ of Christian nationalism is interesting (and I would say disconcerting) as he argues for a “theocratic Caesarism,” for a national church establishment, and for a Christian prince to punish false teachers and to regulate external acts of religion—including professions of faith, ceremonies of worship, and the church’s doctrine (356–57) .” He urges American Christians to pray for God to raise up a “Christian prince”—a leader “who would suppress the enemies of God and elevate his people; recover a worshiping people; restore masculine prominence in the land and a spirit of dominion; affirm and conserve his people and place, not permitting their dissolution or capture; and inspire a love of one’s Christian country.” Wolfe concludes the chapter by urging the reader to “pray that God would bring about, through a Christian prince, a great renewal” (322).

Why this resurgence at such an intense level of Christian nationalism? At the risk of being overly simplistic, but certainly a contributing factor as already alluded to is how Christians are getting tired of having to be told to bow to the woke left in terms of their agenda. Christians are getting tired and fed up of being attacked because they refuse to affirm alternative values to their own. Any strong leadership that offers a clarion call and refusal to back down but forge ahead (even by force) is going to attract attention and followers, even if that leadership is flawed in its approach.

But the polarisation that exists politically and socially is really only the symptom of the global transition society seems to be going through, resulting in uncertainty for the future. Governments and corporations and institutions are finding themselves facing new realities and trying to understand the times, and adapting is easier said than done. What an opportunity for the church!

But is Christian Nationalism the way to go? Is this the only way to conceive of a Christian country?

South Africa provides an interesting case study between religion and politics. Ever since our first democratic elections in 1994, the 84% of professing Christians in our country (this statistic does vary, but there’s certainly enough for a Christian party to have an outright majority) have had the opportunity to vote for openly Christian parties, an option which manifestly has not been chosen (for example the most vocally Christian party, the ACDP, currently only has 0.84% representation in Parliament). As David Jeffery-Schwikkard obvserves:

Political parties connect the public with laws and governance. Although one would expect democratic political parties in countries with a religious population to pursue a religious policy agenda, the relationship is rarely straightforward. South Africa offers a clear illustration of this. While the public appear to be both very religious and socially conservative, members of parliament appear to be even more religious than the public, but less socially conservative. Counter-intuitively, South Africa’s laws and policies are among the most secular globally.

South Africa’s history is a massive lesson to teach us to ‘proceed with caution’ with respect to Christian Nationalism, and may be a contributing factor to the reluctance to vote for Christian-based parties. The Nationalist Party was deeply Christian in its eyes, it was undergirded by a theology which saw the Afrikaner as a chosen people and its apartheid policy was given its grounding in Dutch Reformed theology which understood segregation as being sanctioned by God. As Daniel Malan, a Dutch Reformed Minister and a former Prime Minister declared in 1948:

Our history is the greatest masterpiece of the centuries. We hold this nationhood as our due for it was given us by the Architect of the universe. [His] aim was the formation of a new nation among the nations of the world…The last hundred years have witnessed a miracle behind which must lie a divine plan. Indeed, the history of the Afrikaner reveals a will and a determination which makes one feel that Afrikanerdom is not the work of men but the creation of God.

The relationship between the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Nationalist Party was so intertwined that the DRC was often referred to as the “National Party at prayer.” Unfortunately, as history has shown, the Nationalist Party was not exactly famous for listening to the parable of the Good Samaritan and loving its neighbour. Blaise Pascal was right: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” This truth is borne out by atrocious acts of terrorism from Muslim extremists, all the way down to toxic leadership in the local church using God’s name as justification.

And therein lies the rub: Christians are not immune to the temptations of power. From an opposition point of view, one needs to understand that the concept of Christians being in power is a horror nightmare, as it evokes images of oppression and scenarios such as in The Handmaid’s Tale. Regretfully, the term ‘evangelical’ is also becoming more known for its political stance as opposed to theological.

It would be good if we could prove Christian detractors wrong.

What is a Christian Country?

I don’t want to look like I’m letting the side down, so let me state that I would love a country to be Christian. Even cultural Christianity is better than no Christianity, a fact which even atheist Richard Dawkins admitted to in a recent interview by referring to himself as a cultural Christian (i.e appreciating the results that Christianity has brought to a nation, but just not believing the tenets of the faith).

From what I have encountered, the type of Christianity being promoted in Christian Nationalism just isn’t Christian. I think Francis Schaeffer put it well: “We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: ‘We should not wrap Christianity in our national flag”

But we must understand that all laws are based on values, and designed to punish those who don’t hold to those values. As Christians we believe that God is our ultimate value, and His revelation of what He wants to see in society is therefore something worth pursuing. As Brad Littlejohn explains:

If we are not going to proclaim God in our laws and institutions, we shouldn’t be surprised when our adversaries proclaim Dionysius there instead. The aim of politics is living well together. To live well, we must pursue virtue, and to pursue virtue, we must have a concept of the highest good. Every society therefore will punish blasphemy against its supposed highest good. A century ago, we punished people for publicly mocking an infinite Creator God. Today, we punish people for publicly mocking the idea of an infinite, self-creating man—a man able to turn himself into a woman.

We’ve seen what happens when Christian values are not adhered to as a norm. Lives get damaged through false ideologies ranging from communism to gender, and that will simply pave the way for more destructive ideas to be passed as law. When God is the ultimate value, accountability is par for the course. When man is the ultimate value, the sands shift with the tide and as William Ralphe Inge so wisely put it “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” It makes sense then to persuade society on the value of embracing Christian values into law because the truth of Scripture is transformative to society: it insists on justice and non-corrupt officials and taking good care of the poor (along with caring for refugees and immigrants)! In terms of our cultural mandate, Christians must not shy away from promoting Christian values in the civil sphere, because while our faith is personal, God never intended it to be private. Christians belong in Parliament (indeed, one of my personal heroes of faith is my friend and colleague Cheryllyn Dudley who served as a MP for 20 years, seeking to bring Christ into the heat of the ideological battlefield that is Parliament. Another hero from a bygone era is William Wilberforce who used the political system of England to abolish slavery). As Abraham Kuyper so famously said: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

Does it sound like I’m contradicting myself? On the one hand wanting a Christian country, but extremely wary of Christian nationalism but nonetheless calling us to promote Christian values? Forgive me, but this is one of those scenarios where my train of thought is still boarding at the station…

So let me try to distill the various thoughts:

Firstly, the debate on Christian nationalism I think has resulted in a convenient blurring of boundaries between church and state by those who oppose Christian engagement with politics. The hypocrisy is quite glaring. We have imposition on our values by the woke movement, but they don’t want the right-wing to impose theirs. There is a difference between religion and state and church and state. There isn’t a government in the world that doesn’t operate from within a religious outlook, whether it be secularism, wokeism, Hinduism, communism or Islam or Christianity. A country can have a government that is Christian in its values and outlook, and still respects the boundary between church and state. This is because of the principle of sphere sovereignty, recognising that the church and state both have distinctive functions. A truly Christian government won’t favour one religion over another because of the right to conscience.

Christian nationalism happens when God is used to service politics, and the focus is on power and imposition of values. In the USA, when the term Christian Nationalism is used, it gets associated with the extreme right-wing, white supremacy variety, and this version is not averse to using violence to establish itself (as evidenced by the Capitol riots). If that is what Christian Nationalism is supposed to look like, I need as many barge-poles as you can get to distance myself from it right. It’s reactionary and uses fear and victimhood language to strengthen its position. As Carl Trueman rightly points out, Christian Nationalism is identity politics on the right. Tragically, this extreme form of Christian Nationalism is what all Christians are now being associated with. As Timothy Keller commented on the Capitol Hill riot:

“It will be many years before the sights and sounds of evangelical religious symbols and language in the Capitol riot will fade from national consciousness. We have all been stained with it ”

But wanting a Christian government doesn’t make you a Christian Nationalist. I suspect that in South Africa a lot of Christians have fallen into the trap of thinking that the separation of Church and State means you must have a secular party. It is odd that Christians gladly vote for political parties whose values are in opposition to those of the Christian faith…and then pray and ask God to heal their land! (Tip: have a look at the websites of the Christian parties and see if they advocate for a clear separation between church and state).

Put differently, I fully believe that the kingdom of God should invade politics (how can it not because to proclaim Jesus as King is a political statement), but politics should not invade the church, which is what Christian Nationalism seeks to do. But we invade through persuasion and influence, not force. If I understand Scripture correctly, our calling is to disciple the nations, not nationalise the Christians. Put differently, it’s a bit of an oxymoron to put these two words together: Christian Nation, because both represent very different entities and modes of operation (for example A Christian serves others, a Nation serves itself; a Christian lays down his life for others, a Nation defends itself militarily)

Secondly, while the roots of democracy can be found in Protestant political theory, the liberal-democratic model still remains a man-made secular system. It’s not perfect but its probably the best political model to date. The downside is that debates and ideas immediately get cast into a binary framework of us vs them (we even speak of the official opposition). In reality, conservatives and liberals can both claim Christian influence in a lot of areas, but they’re also guilty of missing the plot as well! This resurgence of Christian Nationalism just serves to highlight the game of opposites and culture-war thinking. It’s not a swinging of the pendulum anymore, it’s a metronome on full speed! Again, what an opportunity for the church to ask God for wisdom to reveal a better way.

Thirdly, I think my ambivalence is rooted in my dual citizenship. I am also a citizen of heaven, and this is where my primary loyalty lies. The only truly Christian country will not be a country, but a cosmic-wide and beyond kingdom comprising of people from every tribe and nation under the kingship of Christ. That’s a kingdom I want to promote even more.

My king came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. He didn’t go storming Pilate’s palace. If ever there was an opportunity to play into nationalistic fervour it was on that day. He didn’t. Even when standing before Pilate Jesus made it clear: My kingdom is not of this world.

Governments will not make a country Christian: the church fulfilling its mandate will do that. Constantine legalized Christianity and made it the official religion, but the Roman Empire was far from Christian.

At the end of the day, it is up to the church to fulfil the mandate that Christ gave, and that alone will truly “Christianise” the nations. No matter who is running the country, we continue to promote and advance the kingdom of God. In the meantime, it is my prayer that God’s values will influence parliament, and that Christians who serve in Parliament will be godly and distinctive and beautiful in their witness. And with elections just around the corner, I do make one final plea: please, please, as a child of God, do not vote your fears. Vote your values (and don’t be upset with those who vote differently to align with their values). That’s what democracy, with all its flaws, is all about.

Sources

https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/

See my booklet “Help! What’s all this woke stuff?” available for purchase See Brad Littlejohn Christian Nationalism or Christian Commonwealth? A Call for Clarity (December 7 2022) @ https://adfontesjournal.com/web-exclusives/christian-nationalism-or-christian-commonwealth-a-call-for-clarity/

Carl Trueman in https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/12/identity-politics-on-the-right https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-nationalism

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/05/the-myth-of-white-christian-nationalism An insight from Kevin De Young: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/christian-nationalism-wolfe/ Landa Cope “God and Political Justice” (Seattle:YWAM publishing, 2015) p27 https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2024/04/trumpite-evangelicalism-or-bidenist-catholicism https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/11/reiner-christian-nationalism-documentary/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/12/christian-nationalism-rob-reiner-movie-evangelicals/ Cited in https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/christian-nationalism-wolfe/ Ibid.

James D Bratt, “Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat” (Grand Rapids:Wm.B.Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013)p.xx. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/12/identity-politics-on-the-right https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/christian-nationalism-heresy-or-hype/