478. Christian Nationalism, Part Three

Since we began this topic two weeks ago, I’ve discovered very many editorials and articles about it in the press and online. I had no idea we’d be in fashion.

A quick review, with a little additional information I’ve come across:

Remember, Patriotism is a good thing. (See the first Post of this series.) Sadly, Christian Nationalism is giving it a bad name.

“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. Popularly, Christian Nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.” (from Christianity Today, February 3, 2021)

No. The truth is that at its founding, there seem to have been a good many Christians in the United States, and eight out of the thirteen original colonies had established Churches. However, according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, America was founded not as a Christian nation but as a religious nation with all “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”, and with freedom for all religions.

Our Founding Fathers valued religion and thought it indispensable. This is from George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens…” To make the point that this applies to all, Washington wrote to a Jewish synagogue in Rhode Island those same sentiments.

Here are some quotations from a few of the Founding Fathers regarding their personal beliefs, which range from “believing Christian” to valuing only the teachings of Jesus: https://www.learnreligions.com/christian-quotes-of-the-founding-fathers-700789

” Dominionism is one of the most significant, yet little-known ideological forces in the U.S. and increasingly, globally. This theological idea has been gathering strength for a half century and is transforming conservative evangelical Christianity into political movements that are driving contemporary politics…. This narrative denies the Enlightenment roots of American constitutional democracy… Dominionism is the underlying ideology that gives an agenda to Christian nationalism… Dominionism promotes religious supremacy, insofar as it does not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.” (from politicalresearch.org)

“The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is also called ‘Charismatic Dominionism.’ This stream of Dominionism uses a mobilization strategy called the “Seven Mountain Mandate” [sometimes said to have been revealed by God to three Evangelical pastors in 1975]… which….divides the seven leading areas of society that must be dominated by the correct kind of Christians: religion, family, government, education, business, arts and entertainment, and media.”  (Political Research Associates}

“The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a global movement led by so-called apostles and prophets, who according to NAR beliefs must hold the highest governing offices in the church. The movement’s overall goal is to bring God’s physical kingdom to earth; the reason it hasn’t been able to do this for the past nearly two thousand years is because apostles and prophets have been absent. They alone are authorized by God to give essential new revelation that the church needs to accomplish its mission, including working miraculous powers and raising up an end-time church army to usher in the kingdom.” (from Crosswalk.com – Evangelical Presbyterian)

They are the true Church? They have recovered Apostolic Christianity after a 2000 year hiatus while the Holy Spirit was off somewhere else? Says who? They do. Nobody else.

“As the U.S. Capitol building was under siege January 6, four of the six protest permits issued that day were to independent charismatic Christian groups [of the New Apostolic Reformation] that had spent the previous two months waging a spiritual war focused on overturning the election… Eight days prior to the attack, 15 of these independent charismatic leaders held a meeting for more than two hours at the White House with ‘high-level Trump administration officials’ to talk about a spiritual war strategy that would ‘join the natural to the spirit.’ But in the January 6 Committee hearings, Christian nationalism was mentioned only once.”  (from Worldwide Baptist News)

This article goes further into the subject above and describes a Christian world which is, well… bizarre, from the Orthodox point of view: https://baptistnews.com/article/the-new-apostolic-reformation-drove-the-january-6-riots-so-why-was-it-overlooked-by-the-house-select-committee/

Also, I’ve discovered that not all radical Evangelicals agree concerning Christian Nationalism. At the conclusion of this Post, I’ve included videos from 1) one that is deeply into Nationalism, and 2) one that strongly disagrees.

This is a political proposal of The Heritage Foundation, which includes the Christian Nationalists’ goal of turning many of their “biblical principles” * into national law – such as protecting human life from conception onwards, supporting the “biblical” definition of the family and so on.

• Some of which are in the Bible, some are not.

Here are two descriptions (from different perspectives) of what Project 2025 proposes:

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/project-2025-heritage-foundation-christian-nationalism-rcna103510

https://www.vox.com/politics/360318/project-2025-trump-policies-abortion-divorce

Speaking for myself, I agree with some of this in principle – supporting the traditional family, trying to limit the number of abortions –  though whether it should be dealt within this context, in this way, is a whole other question.

Here’s the problem: Project 2025 makes these “Biblical” goals part of a much larger “conservative” (in my day it would have been considered “radical”) political agenda – for example, concentrating much more power in the executive branch of the US government, gutting funding to many federal agencies including the FBI, eliminating the National Weather Service and most environmental protections, mass deportations of illegal immigrants, and so on.

The Project 2025 Website says: “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.” * Whether one agrees with this or not, it’s certainly not part of the Gospel and the Faith of the Church.

• Mr Trump recently said he “knows nothing” about Project 2025. However many of his closest advisors have been and are involved in it. See: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html

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Now on to today’s promised topics:

1  What is “Separation of Church and State”?

These words are not found in any of America’s founding documents, but only in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson.

It’s time to define terms again:

Surely Jefferson meant only that there should be no established church. He could not have meant that religion should have no influence on the State, on public policy. Indeed it’s impossible: Jefferson applied his own religious views. Legislators legislate according to their consciences – we hope – and in a free society, Christians vote according to their “informed conscience”.

However, today a misconception of Separation is causing Christianity and religion in general to almost vanish from public life. * Anyone who is conscious has a philosophical or theological view of some sort, no matter how vague. Are only the viewpoints of formalized religions to be excluded? Most people in the media have a religion of some sort, but do they dare refer to it? Do our young people today learn about the profound effect religion has had on history – or is that too controversial to touch? Prayers in school? No. But prayers which begin each session of Congress? Yes. Inconsistent? Yes! You figure it out.

• Did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance did not originally include the words “under God”? They were added in 1954.

Now, here’s the opposite wrong interpretation from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.):“’The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church,’ Boebert told the crowd, which applauded. ‘I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk…. It was not in the Constitution, it was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does,’” (The Denver Post, July 24, 2022)

But how can the Church direct the government without revising our Constitution and Bill of Rights? without making non-Christians into second class citizens? Besides, it would raise the question: Which church, which church’s teachings should direct the government? There are so many choices. Might Orthodox also become second class citizens?

Here’s an interesting article by Father Stephen Freeman about what he calls the perpetual clash between Church and State: https://glory2godforallthings.com/2017/02/02/church-state-not-separate-war/

2  Christian Nationalism as a danger to the Church 

Most commentary concerns Christian Nationalism as a danger to America’s system of government. But it’s worse than that, especially for Orthodox Christians.

Actually for many Protestants, it’s less of a problem. Liberal Protestants tend to go with liberal politics and MSNBC. Conservative Protestants tend to go with conservative politics and Fox News.

But Orthodoxy is bigger than that, higher and wider and deeper. We come from somewhere else. The Orthodox Christian Faith can never be squeezed into the narrow confines of any political party, whether of the right or the left or the middle, or any form of government, including the American government. “The bed is too short to stretch out on, and the covering so narrow that one cannot wrap himself in it.”  Isaiah 28:20  When this is attempted, the result is that the Faith becomes deformed, distorted, narrow, untrue to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Think how this affects evangelism. The popular image of Christianity today is that it goes hand in hand with the right wing political agenda. Unchurched people who are seeking must wonder: “To be a true Christian, must I want to take health care away from the poor? must I ignore climate change and environmentalism?” (Tell that one to the Ecumenical Patriarch!)

“While faith should always be an inspiration for our political engagement as citizens, it is corrupted and deformed by efforts that make it a political program. It is no longer faith if yoked to political ideology. Even more, if the transcendent that can only belong to faith is imagined to co-inhabit a political movement or a political leader, the result is inevitably catastrophic for both faith and political life.” (Stephen Schenk, in US Catholic, April 12, 2023)

Dr Martin Luther King said “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

Class, please memorize this basic working principle:

Q. When you combine religion and politics, what do you get? A. Politics.

3  What can the Orthodox Church contribute to the discussion?

First, a basic principle: By canon law, Orthodox clergy may not hold political office. * The Church should influence society but should not be directly involved in politics.

• except for a few who did! like Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus who was also President of Cyprus between 1960 and July 1974, with a second term between December 1974 and 1977. (Orthodoxy, thy name is “inconsistency”.)

Second, a lot of experience, both positive and negative. We have had 2000 years of dealing with Church/State relations, ranging at various times and places from being persecuted by the State, to almost directing the State – and everything in-between.

Orthodoxy has always formed a close bond with society and culture so that the Faith is connected with life, not just with Sunday morning. The modern nation state, with its sharply defined boundaries, is a relatively new development. Orthodoxy has associated itself with modern nations too. That’s why we have the national Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church and so on.

However, this close relationship can also be dangerous. Father Alexander Schmemann wrote in his Journal that one of the worst things that ever happened to Orthodoxy was its identification with modern nations, so that people cannot distinguish between the two – like those who think that to be really Orthodox you’ve got to be Greek or Russian or whatever. Some Evangelicals today have the same problem, when they can’t seem to separate their Christianity from Americanism.

When my wife and I were first looking at Orthodoxy almost forty years ago, a Ukrainian Orthodox woman, a good friend (memory eternal, Helen+), asked me, “Why do you want to be Orthodox? You’re not Ukrainian.” Someone I know was interested in Orthodoxy and visited a Greek church, where the priest told him, “I’m glad you visited. Now go back to your own church where you belong.”

The Orthodox ideal was established in the Byzantine Empire: “Symphonia” (συμφωνία) – Church and State working separately but in harmony. The Church took care of doctrine, worship, moral principles and the care of ecclesiastical institutions. The Emperor appointed the Bishops, and was responsible for running the Empire, including promoting or enforcing morality.

A tricky system. Occasionally it actually worked! However, often Emperors crossed the line: In order to ensure Orthodox Faith, Justin inserted the hymn “Only-begotten Son and Word of God” into the Liturgy. The heretic iconoclast Leo the Isaurian persecuted the Orthodox.

In Russia the same Symphonia is supposed to be the rule. However, usually the Czars dominated. Peter the Great fired the Patriarch and put the Russian Church under the authority of a “committee” for 200 years. Today in Post-Communist Russia, where about 50% of the people are Orthodox, officially there is freedom of religion – except that non-Orthodox are strictly controlled, some disallowed. The Russian Orthodox Church is in a favored position but, as we all know, Vladimir Putin now has the Patriarch under his thumb.

It’s interesting, by the way, that some American Christian Nationalists see Byzantium as the ideal. Some others prefer Russia, and I read that a few even moved there!

Another example: In Greece more than 85% of the people are Orthodox, but there is genuine freedom of religion. The Orthodox Church is not formally established, but it might as well be. Orthodox Bishops bless government assemblies and just about everything else in the country. But does the Church rule the State? No. When the Church of Greece formally opposed “gay” marriage, the government went ahead and approved it anyway. What’s the real relationship? I give up.

And now we American Orthodox (as do all Orthodox in the “New World”) are in a different situation: We live in a country where we are free to practice our religion, but where we are so small in number that we have almost no influence in the government, nor does the government pay much attention to us. How do we best relate to that? I don’t know. Do you?

Here is a good article on the subject, w b/06/church-in-the-political-arena/

So far as I can see, regarding Church and State in the modern world the Orthodox Church has few answers, many questions, and a lot to learn.

Final question: How would we react if Christian Nationalism – radical Evangelical religion coupled with radical right wing politics – becomes the law of the land, the official visible image of Christianity in America? What do you think?

There. We’re done. 

If I’d known how much written material there is on this topic and how difficult it is to separate truth from propaganda, I would never have tackled it. Also I had no idea this would run to three Posts. Thank you for hanging in. This has been a lot to cope with, so again, if you think I’ve made any errors, please comment below.

Next Week something easier: Saint Mary Magdalene and how she has been slandered.

Week after Next: This and That

P.S. Two videos of independent Evangelical churches, one supporting Christian nationalism, the other definitely not. These include their worship style (extremely different from ours) and long sermons. (We Orthodox preachers could never get away with this!)

1  Pro. Note: Much of Christian Nationalism is based on the Old Testament, not the New.

2) Con.

https://www.cornerstonechurch.net/2023-08-06-american-idols-christian-nationalism/