Thinking through ‘Christian nationalism’

It’s hard for me to tell from my current location in Chicagoland, but I suspect that the ideas floating around, dubbed at times ‘Christian nationalism’, have also made their way to the fayre isles of my homeland, the United Kingdom. Certainly, at any rate, they have caused some waves in America. How do we think through the issue of ‘Christian nationalism’?

Part of the problem is the slipperiness of the term. After all, raised as I was in England, the idea of a ‘Christian nation’ hardly seems strange –though, even by then, we were acutely aware that England was in no real sense ‘Christian’ anymore, if it ever had been. But the Church of England was, and is still, the established church. It has legal standing; there are bishops who sit in the upper house of the Houses of Parliament. The laws upon which the countries of the United Kingdom base their legal existence are deeply rooted in Christian ideas. None of this can be denied by anyone who has given much thought to the matter. Why then the controversy over ‘Christian nationalism’?

Some of it no doubt is due to the little addition of the ‘-ism’ at the end of the word. It is one thing to be in favour of your own nation (sing the national anthem, support your national football team, fight for your nation’s integrity, etc.) but it’s another thing to be in favour of ‘nationalism,’ let alone be ‘nationalistic.’ Often the distinction is made between being patriotic (good) and nationalistic (bad).

Some of the controversy is also no doubt due to the different history, and legal status, of the Christian church in America versus the church in England (and particularly the Church of England). Those who claim that the American Constitution and the founding fathers were not influenced by Christianity at all, are either ignorant or telling lies. Yes, there was a large smattering, perhaps even preponderance, of deistic theology among the founding fathers. But that deistic theology was rooted in a broadly speaking Christian ethic. Plus, there were genuine Christians among the founding fathers (John Adams, for instance) even while others (like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson) laid no claim, by the evidence, to an orthodox Christian faith. That said, the American experiment was to have a Christian-influenced culture without a formally established church. There was to be freedom of religion (not, though, freedom from religion). It’s a delicate balance, to be sure. And the kind of freedom that was being espoused assumes differences between, let us say, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Lutherans. Not so much differences between Christianity and Islam, or Christianity and ‘woke’ atheistic Postmodern neo-Marxism. Those latter ideologies mix like oil and water, not like different flavours with a broadly speaking similar moral ethic.

Further, we might say, the controversy is stoked by an overly simplistic attempt to solve problems that Western society has been attempting to solve (with moderate success) for thousands of years. What exactly is the right relationship between the church and the state? Did Constantine have it right? If so, are we supportive of the Spanish Inquisition? And the Crusades – even if we admit that each of those bugbears of anti- Christian rhetoric are far more textured and need to be contextualised to understand what were the right and wrong motivations.

We must add one final stick of dynamite to the difficulty of solving this particular controversy. Surely, at a theological level, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was right to insist that there is no such thing as a ‘Christian nation’. Biblically speaking, we can have regenerate individuals who are therefore Christian. And we can have regenerate churches that are therefore Christian. But there is no such thing as a regenerate nation. At its core, then, we are talking in terms that make little sense semantically. Yes, we can have a more or less influenced-by-Christianity nation; and a more or less influenced-by-Christianity school. But the theological idea of a converted individual, and a regenerate church, cannot really be applied to a nation.

Whence the way forward? My conviction has been that Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount – to His disciples, those Galilean peasants – that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world is the core nexus that we need to think through. I’ve preached on it recently here. I’ve also long loved John Wycliffe’s concept of a ‘communicative lordship’ ‘befitting the condition of disciples’ ‘on the way to acquiring an eternal lordship’.