477. Christian Nationalism, Part Two

I’ve found so much information on this topic… I’ll try to hold this down to these two Posts. If I’m in error anywhere, please let me know.

Why does Christian Nationalism exist?

Some say Christian Nationalism is just racism. Sometimes it is, as in the Charlottesville Riot in 2018. It definitely is anti-immigrant and contains elements of Zionism. But it’s more than that. American Christian Nationalists are essentially American social/religious fundamentalists.

I don’t sympathize, but I think I understand. They (and I) suffer from Religious Culture Shock.

Let me speak personally for a moment.

I remember the days when Christianity seemed an integral part of American life, at least where I lived. I grew up in the 1940s and ’50s in a village in rural Ohio. We had 307 residents, all Protestants, as was most of our county which had one small “Catholic” church.

Our county employed a Bible teacher who visited public grade-schools every week or so, telling us stories out of the Scriptures, illustrated on a flannel board. (I remember Jesus ascending, pulled up by a string till He disappeared behind the board, which I thought that was pretty funny.)

I can’t remember if we had prayers at school, but they wouldn’t have been controversial. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Andrews (God rest her soul), had us memorize Psalms. On Good (Holy) Friday school let out, and all of us together marched up the street to attend services at the nearest church.

Religion seemed to be assumed everywhere. Protestants and Catholics were still suspicious of each other, but religious institutions were trusted and were growing rapidly. It seemed as if almost everybody went to church. .

In the afterglow of World War II, we all knew that America was the best of nations. Politicians didn’t say “you’re in my thoughts”; it was “in my prayers”.

The many movies and TV shows with religious themes were pretty hokey, but they were there. Couples living together outside marriage were “living in sin”. Homosexuality and abortion were hidden. When somebody made a Biblical allusion, most people knew what they were talking about.

Some change has been for the better: In those days many Caucasian-Americans regularly said the most awful things about African-Americans, without being challenged, and it hardly occurred to anyone that they were treated unjustly. Inter-racial marriage was scandalous. Women were often put down and kept in “their place”. And more.

The biggest change is that, in ways I can’t altogether describe, religion (largely Protestant Christianity) is no longer just “in the air”, built into American society. I admit that now and then I miss the comfortable old settled “White Protestant America” I grew up with.

Times always change, but I think the social/religious changes in my lifetime have been faster and more profound than in most previous generations. Religious Culture Shock.

The question is: How do we cope with it?

Some Christians have just gone along with the flow and have become secularists in many respects. Others have searched deeper into history and theology for truth and guidance. (I became an Orthodox Christian.)

Still others are trying to rebuild the past as they believe it once was. These are the Christian Nationalists.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century the Christian Fundamentalist movement tried to go “back to the Bible” and recover  the fundamentals of Christianity as they imagined it was in “Bible times”. They got some things right, but many things wrong. Let’s not go into that here.

In the same way Christian Nationalists are trying to recover the fundamentals of “Christian America” as they imagine it was in times past. They’re getting some things right, but many things wrong:

1 As we saw last week, the United States was not founded to be a Christian nation, but rather a nation with no established religion, which allowed freedom for all religions.

2 To accomplish this many Christian Nationalists have turned to radical pentecostal, charismatic religious politics (or should we now call it political religion?) which we looked at last week – and which is very different from the forms of Christianity that existed in “the old days”.

3 Their worst mistake: They think a legal union of “church” and state – essentially the establishment of Christianity as the national religion – will allow them to recover Christian America as it was in the old days.

However, it wasn’t like that in the old days. I know. I was there for some of those days, as I described above. For one thing, “old time” American Christianity was nothing like the radical pentecostal free-wheeling kind of  Christianity they’re attached to. Also, after Viet Nam, Iraq and a few other misadventures, it’s not so clear these days that the United States is going to save the world. For another, American Christianity did not have to be enforced in the old days. It just “was”. Nevertheless, to accomplish their goals, instead of bringing people to actual faith, Cnristian Nationalists propose a legal control system, so that their brand of Christianity can dominate American society, with everybody else essentially second class citizens. What the Christian Nationalists have in mind is more peculiar, more rigid, more legalistic, and far nastier than the past actually was. It feels entirely different.

Please understand: I would be a happy man if all Americans freely turned to Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox social teachings and moral standards. But I ask you: Do you want to live in a country that has dominion in all aspects by legalized radical Protestantism?

So now we come to Christian Nationalism on steroids.

The New Apostolic Reformation

NAR is the movement whose intent is to put the radical principles of Christian Nationalism and Dominionism into effect in an organized way.

They call this the Seven Mountain Mandate – said to have originated in 1975 when three well-known Evangelical leaders, Loren Cunningham, Bill Bright and Francis Schaeffer received a message from God to this effect. They didn’t say how. Proponents of the 7MM call on Christians [radical charismatic, Fundamentalist, Pentecostal, free-wheeling Christians, that is] to take – or as they see it “retake” – control of seven spheres (“mountains”) of cultural influence: Religion, Family, Government, Education, Media, Arts/Entertainment, and Business.

The plan of the New American Reformation is, in one way or another, to move on from the patterns of the Sixteenth Century Protestant Reformation (and even farther from the ways of the Apostolic Church) and set a new style of leadership by new apostles and prophets supposedly appointed by God. The purpose: to make Christian Nationalists dominant not only in American religion and family, but in positions of power in national and local * government positions.

• You are probably aware of their attempt to take over school boards.

Last week I quoted something from the Heritage Foundation which seemed to me pretty much on target.

However, now hear this: The Heritage Foundation is sponsoring “Project 2025” *, which aims to accomplish these Christian Nationalist goals. At this point religion and politics are so enmeshed that they are indistinguishable. * Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts said in a recent interview: “We’re in the process of taking this country back….We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”  – !  Note: Former President Trump has very recently disavowed Project 2025. However, many of his closest advisors are involved with it.

•  This is dangerous, not to mention impossible. Christianity and the social teachings of the Church cannot be squeezed into the narrow theories of any political party, whether of the right or of the left or wherever.

Forgive me for quoting Wikipedia, but this is the best summary I’ve found of the situation.

Long a fringe movement of the American Christian right, [NAR] has been characterized as “one of the most important shifts in Christianity in modern times.” The NAR’s prominence and power have increased since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US president. Theology professor André Gagné * author of a 2024 book on the movement, has characterized it as “inherently political” and said it threatens to “subvert democracy.” Many notable American Republican politicians such as Mike Johnson [Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives], Doug Mastriano, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, [also Sen. Josh Hawley, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn] and influential activists such as Charlie Kirk have aligned with it.

• Chairman, Department of Theological Studies, Concordia Lutheran Seminary, Montreal

Questions about Christian Nationalism

1  Let’s be blunt: Where do these people get off thinking they speak for God? for The Church? They base their claims on the words of self-appointed so-called “apostles” and “prophets” and off-beat interpretations of the Scriptures. They are in fact a tiny bunch of breakaways (at least five times removed) from The Church. They compare to the Montanist heretics of the Third Century, who claimed dreams and prophecies revealed God’s will and gave them authority. Who says so? They do. Nobody else.

2  They say they want to impose Biblical standards on the United States. That means almost nothing. We can find many things in the Bible. Which standards?

Surely not Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

Do they mean The Beatitudes? * I’m thinking not.

• “Blessed are the poor in spirit….Blessed are those who mourn… Blessed are the meek …Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Blessed are the merciful… Blessed are the pure in heart…Blessed are the peacemakers….” Matthew 5:3-12

Do they mean the Biblical teachings against abortion – to which they often refer? Sorry, folks, there aren’t any.

Some want the Ten Commandments displayed in public places. * Good standards. However, according to the Bible, they have not been the Law of the Church since the First Century. Read about the Apostolic Council in Acts 15.

•  Louisiana now requires it in schools.

If they want religious words displayed, wouldn’t this summary of the Law and the Prophets be better? which Jews and Christians alike believe is the key to living. (Also it’s shorter!) The Koran has similar teachings.

Perhaps just “Love your neighbor as yourself” would be still better.

3  Is America God’s chosen nation? superior to other countries with a God-given mission to the world? as many American Christian Nationalists believe. This is a long-held idea, going ‘way back: “Manifest Destiny”. President Reagan called America “the city set on a hill”.

No. The Church is God’s chosen Nation, the City set on a hill. Matthew 5:14

God bless America! and all that is good in her, which is a whole lot… but let’s be Biblical again.

“But you [the Church] are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God.” 1 Peter 2:9-10 Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” John 18:36

“We are a colony of heaven on earth.” Philippians 3:20

Christians should support earthly authorities: “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.” Romans 13:1 After all,  Jesus said: “Pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”Matthew 12:17

But earthly nationality is secondary. The Church is “super-national”.

The Epistle to Diognetus (First Century) summed up our relationship to the nation like this:

”Christians] live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign. . . . They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws; indeed in their private lives they transcend the laws. They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted.”

Phyletism is the Orthodox term for identifying the Church with any one nationality or nation. This false doctrine was condemned at a pan-Orthodox Synod at Constantinople in 1872. The Bishops declared, “We renounce, censure and condemn racism, that is racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds and dissensions within the Church of Christ, as contrary to the teaching of the Gospel and the holy canons of our blessed fathers…”

The Church or the Christian Faith should never be confused with the destiny of any single nation or race. The great danger of Phyletism is that it limits Orthodox people to one narrow national, racial or political way of looking at things. Orthodoxy is multi-cultural: for all the world, all peoples. Orthodoxy is super-cultural: wider, broader, deeper, higher, wiser than any one nation or culture.

We should take note of how Our Lord Jesus Christ went out of His way to make this clear regarding Jewish nationalism. How often He made foreigners the heroes: the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan leper who alone returned to give thanks, the Roman centurion of whom He said. “I tell you many will come from east and west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of heaven, but the sons of the Kingdom [the Jews, or us if we are unfaithful] will be cast out into the darkness”.

John the Baptist warned,“If God needs sons of Abraham, He can raise them up out of these stones.” Matthew 3:9

And so it is if God needs Americans… or if he needs Orthodox.

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“I’ll try to hold this down to two Posts.” said the Blogger. Ha!

Next Week: Part Three.

1) “Separation of Church and State”? Time to define terms again.

2) Why Christian Nationalism is a danger to the American form of government, and far more dangerous to American Christianity.

3) What the Orthodox Church can contribute to this discussion.

Week after Next: I think we’ll go back and visit Saint Mary Magdalene whose feast day is July 22.