Below is my opening statement at a Christian Nationalism panel hosted by a Hillsdale student group called Equip Ministries. I am grateful for the friendly exchange and for Hillsdale College for providing a venue for this discussion. It is clear that students are eager for it. The Heritage Room in the Hillsdale Library was bursting at the seams.
Answer to question 1 here. My answer to question 2 is here.
Question: “What is Christian Nationalism? Where does it come from? What are the historical/theological roots of CN? What are some basic hallmarks of a Christian Nationalist vision for the nation?”
Answer: First, I would like to express gratitude to Hillsdale for hosting this panel and to my fellow panelists for participating. Given the state of our society, many have grown weary and wary of the secular liberal order. And we do need to work on where to go from here—here being a rotting pile of social organization teetering on the crumbling lip of the outer darkness. If Hobbes thought the state of nature was nasty, brutish, and short, he should have seen the state of Rousseau’s social contract.
The question we have been asked to answer is: What is Christian nationalism? And I will attempt to answer that directly, but first an analogy. Anyone who has tried his hand at bread baking has discovered that this is both an enjoyable art and also one in which the fairer sex will always defeat him. Nevertheless, I have given it a go a handful of times and discovered that the leaven is essential to the rising of any loaf. In the same way, nations need a leavening agent—or, to put it more precisely, all nations have a leavening agent. You may enjoy unleavened bread, but our race has never tasted an unleavened nation.
Christian nationalism is the belief that Christ is the only viable leavening agent. It is the belief that Christ is Lord and nations should acknowledge Him as such. Christ is Lord, and nations ignore Him at their peril. As the wise man said, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
To change the metaphor, nations are like ships that will have some kind of transcendent anchor. It is not whether nations will have a god above them, but which god they will have. They will have the true and living God, or a knockoff of some sort. Nations will not all acknowledge their transcendent anchor in the same way. Some will be direct about it, others discreet. And any given people can throw off one anchor for another; they can swap gods for good or ill. But no nation can claim to be a secular entity not ordered by or to the sacred.
Thomas Aquinas nods, “Yes, natural law is indeed man’s participation in the eternal law.” Augustine confirms, “Yes, the seminal reasons are mapped by the eternal reasons.” Grandad approves, “Yes, the acorn does not fall far from the tree.” Lennon objects, “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try; no hell below us, above us only sky.” And it stands to reason that he adds later in his song, “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” If you get rid of the anchor, the ship will eventually break up on the rocks.
As far as the “nationalism” part of the term, a nation is any group of people who share a language, place, history, kinship, customs, governance, and beliefs/religion. Nationalism is the sentiment that nations are good formations for organizing people—opposed to globalism and tribalism—and that people should love and protect their own nation before and above others.
As to the origin story, I believe it is as old as nations themselves. The best I can do is cite a few historical examples, starting with our own land of the free, then looking to the Reformation. Christian nationalism, as defined, was certainly present at America’s founding. The U.S. Constitution assumes Christ is Lord. Article VII of the Constitution refers to the “Year of our Lord.” The Constitutional Convention met every day of the week except for the Christian Sabbath. The Constitution exempts Sundays when it sets a time requirement (Article I, Section 7, Clause 2). Historical documents and decisions acknowledge the authority of the Triune God (the Treaty of Paris; Holy Trinity v. the United States [1892]).
The Protestant Reformation is part of the history. Johannes Althusius opened his work Politica by saying that “piety” is the final cause of politics, and that piety concerned conformity to the Ten Commandments: “If you would deprive political and symbiotic life of this rule [the Decalogue] and this light to our feet, as it is called, you would destroy its vital spirit. Furthermore, you would take away the bond of human society and, as it were, the rudder and helm of this ship. It would then altogether perish, or be transformed into a stupid, beastly, and inhuman life.”
I will save particular points regarding the Christian nationalist vision for the discussion. Issues in play there include synods, blasphemy laws, establishments, religious liberty, biblical law, and natural law. But for now you have a definition of Christian nationalism—perhaps too capacious, but still getting to the heart of the matter. It is that which Nebuchadnezzar learned only after receiving a beastly heart and beastly ways: “the most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will” (Daniel 4:17).
