If I had only one question to ask a proponent of Christian Nationalism, this would be my first: What do you believe about the First Amendment? Granted, many of my Christian heroes from the past would not have agreed with the principle of religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment. The Bible does not mandate the First Amendment (though I think it can be supported from, and arises out of, Christian principles). The reason I would start here is that increasingly, I think the issue of the First Amendment is the quickest way to determine what kind of Christian Nationalism we are talking about.

I am not a Christian Nationalist, but I almost could be.

In my 2021 article, “What to Do With Christian Nationalism,” I argued that there were two problems with Christian Nationalism. 

First, no one agrees on what Christian Nationalism is. I cited Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, who summarized Christian Nationalist beliefs in six statements: The federal government should (1) declare the United States a Christian nation, (2) advocate Christian values, (3) not enforce the strict separation of church and state, (4) allow religious symbols in public spaces, and  (5) allow prayer in public schools. (6) The success of the United States is part of God’s plan. By that definition, a majority of Americans believe one or more tenets of Christian Nationalism. I could almost support all six of those statements, depending on what is meant by words like “declare,” “advocate,” “success,” and “strict separation.” The Whitehead-Perry definition never stuck. There is still a wide range of views on what people mean by Christian Nationalism.

The second problem I identified was that no one was actually arguing for something called Christian Nationalism. If that was generally true in 2021 (and, in hindsight, I’m sure I missed some early voices embracing the term), it is no longer the case. In the last four years, there have been many people—in books, in blogs, on podcasts, in speeches, on X, and in personal conversation—eager to own the label Christian Nationalist and, in many places, argue strenuously for it. 

For my part, while I never liked the term, I was (and still am) in favor of certain principles that some people may call Christian Nationalism. In April 2022, I wrote another article on Christian Nationalism, this time commending what Presbyterian pastor and Princeton Seminary professor Samuel Miller (1769–1850) called “enlightened patriotism.” Miller had no patience for newer voices of “infidel fanaticism” that wanted to reject the religion of Christ and throw off the restraints of a religious and moral code. Miller insisted that without sound doctrine, Americans could not truly be moral, and without morality they would be miserable. The duty of Christians, therefore, was “to labor unceasingly to impart sound doctrine to all classes of people for the sake of our beloved country.”

These two paragraphs go to the heart of what I was arguing in 2022 and what I still believe today:

Importantly, Miller’s “enlightened patriotism” did not entail a state church (like Anglicanism in Virginia) or a Presbyterian establishment (like the Scottish Kirk). Every “species of alliance between church and state is forbidden and can never fail to become a curse to both.” Miller did not want an officially Christian nation, but he did hope for a nation that was demonstrably Christian. In fact, he believed sound doctrine was the best medicine for the health of the republic: “You cannot take a more direct and certain course to render the insidious demagogue despised, and to deprive the profligate votary of ambition of all his influence; to inspire a love of liberty, and to promote the prevalence of the purest patriotism.”

Miller’s prescription for America would not have been controversial in Albany [where he preached this message], in the Presbyterian church, or in almost anywhere in early 19th-century America. Miller’s evangelical audience was not hoping for a reunion of church and state. At the same time, neither was his audience nervous about a full-throated appreciation for the inestimable blessings of American self-government and constitutional liberties. Miller’s “Christian nationalism”—to use the contested term—was not a political platform as much as it was the widely shared assumption that (1) Christians had good reason to be thankful for America, (2) Christianity has been instrumental in the founding of America, and (3) Christianity had a key role to play in preserving and passing on the privileges that belonged to free Americans.

Many people, when they hear “Christian Nationalism” they think of the sorts of things Samuel Miller took for granted:

• Many of our founders were sincere Christians, 
• America was founded on many Christian principles, and 
• The health of America depends upon the virtue that comes from Christianity.

I say Amen to all of this. America should not be a secular nation with religion hidden away in the privacy of people’s homes and churches. 

I hope Christianity continues to have a prominent place in the public square, even a privileged place (as it has for most of the last 250 years). As Christians, we should not approach cultural engagement as an effort to negotiate favorable terms for our own surrender. We ought to argue for prudential policies and good laws that flow out of the best of Christian political thought.

Celebrating our Christian heritage, promoting Christian ideas in the public square, and having elected officials who are committed to historic Christianity and eager to see Christian churches protected and flourish—if that’s Christian Nationalism, most evangelicals in this country would be for it. And so would I.

Why Not Christian Nationalism

And yet, I am not a Christian Nationalist. When asked why not, I usually rattle off four points. 

(1) There is still no shared understanding of what the term means. Many proponents equate Christian Nationalism with support for some kind of church establishment and for the use of the state’s coercive power in matters of religion. I am opposed to both of these things.

(2) The most prominent book making the case for Christian Nationalism, though not without some merits, has many serious problems, including a blurring of nation and ethnicity, a decentering of the importance of the church, a call for a “Christian prince” to “suppress the enemies of God” and to install a “measured theocratic Caesarism,” and a final section that rails against everything from living under a gynocracy to the presence of overweight PCA pastors who (presumably) have low testosterone and chug vegetable oil.

(3) Nationalism refers to a set of political and ethical commitments that arose at the end of the eighteenth century and was then shaped throughout the nineteenth century by romanticism and the industrial revolution. Championing Christian Nationalism is not the same as recognizing that for most of American history many Americans would have thought of their country as a Christian nation. Paul Marshall helpfully distinguishes between religious nationalism and religion-infused politics. Religious nationalism refers to a movement or ideology “promoting the interests of a particular nation, a group of people who believe they have a shared historical, cultural, lingual, or religious heritage, and commonly wish to have a state that expresses that heritage.” This is not the same as asserting that religion has been a significant shaping force in a country’s history, nor is it the same as arguing for key political principles on religious grounds. Religious nationalism,  by contrast, usually calls for the state to protect the religious interests of one group, while marginalizing or suppressing other groups. “In so doing,” Marshall explains, “it treats the members of the dominant religion and/or language, ethnicity, and culture as the core citizens and others as second class.”

(4) Increasingly, the loudest voices arguing for Christian Nationalism are marked by juvenile insults steeped in online jargon from the dissident right. What’s more, some of these proponents traffic openly in racist ideology, antisemitism, and Neo-Nazi sympathies. The most strident Christian Nationalism proponents on social media are often a potent combination of oafery and demagoguery.

In short, I don’t believe the term Christian Nationalism is necessary, helpful, or wise. There are better ways—more precise and more accurate—to describe what serious Christian political thought might espouse and what robust Christian engagement in the political sphere might look like.

Six Questions

Having explained why I agree with some of the convictions that could be labeled “Christian Nationalism,” and yet why I don’t embrace the term, let me lay out several pertinent questions. These questions can be read as implicit statements, since it will be clear in explaining each question what I believe, but I also hope they will be read as genuine questions. There are varieties of Christian Nationalism, and it is not always clear whether the various proponents agree on the particularities of their theology or their political prescriptions. I do not believe that everyone associated with the label Christian Nationalism or who appreciates some of its emphases holds to everything I will speak against in these six questions. If I discover that some self-styled Christian Nationalists believe close to the same things I believe, I’ll be grateful for that clarity. It may also be the case that many people in the pews think they like Christian Nationalism but haven’t really thought through the ramifications of the most popular rhetoric. 

Here, then, are six questions for Christian Nationalists and for those who are drawn to their vision of a more aggressively Christian magistrate and a vision for church-state relations that moves beyond the classic liberalism of the last 250 years. 

1. Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
2. When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
3. What is the purpose of civil government?
4. What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
5. Was the First Amendment a mistake?
6. What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

(Note: the reader will detect, if he hasn’t already, that I am writing specifically for an American context, assuming our history and tradition. I hope that some of my arguments can be useful in other contexts as well.)

Question #1: Do You Unequivocally Renounce Antisemitism, Racism, and Nazism?

That is to say, do you hold to any of the following: (1) a disdain for Jewish people and a belief that a secret cabal of Jews are responsible for a litany of evils in our world, (2) a disdain for non-Whites and a belief in the mental and spiritual inferiority of Blacks, and (3) an appreciation for Adolf Hitler and a belief that Nazis were the misunderstood good guys in World War II? I know I haven’t provided technical definitions for these isms or sought to substantiate my insinuation that all three are sinful and abhorrent. But that’s the point. Most people don’t need a lot of nuance to condemn antisemitism, racism, and Nazism. I commend Christian Nationalists like Doug Wilson who have called out these destructive sympathies on the right. It should be a simple thing to reject these ideologies and make clear that they have no place in conservatism, in Christianity, or in Christian Nationalism.

Question #2: When and How Does the Nation Act as a Corporate Moral Person?

Recently, Doug Wilson offered a defense and explanation of Christian Nationalism. The occasion for the post was the podcast conversation (mainly about Calvinism, but a little about Christian Nationalism) that I had with Hillsdale’s president Larry Arnn. I thought Wilson’s explanation was a friendly, good-faith effort to bring light (instead of heat) to a contested topic. 

In the post, Wilson details two ideas, noting that “almost all believing Christians accept both premises.” First, Wilson says all Christians agree that “true morality is grounded in the nature and character of the living God.” Non-believers can still behave decently, Wilson argues, but they are unable to give a coherent account of why they are obligated to behave in such ways. Absolute moral claims must have a transcendental grounding. I agree.

The second point we supposedly all agree on is where things get more complicated: “All nations, states, or tribes are moral agents. They make decisions and take actions that are either righteous or they are not.” You can see where this logic is heading. Every nation is going to have some religion. And if a nation is going to have a religion, it must have the true religion, and that means biblical Christianity. Every nation, like every individual, is going to be pleasing to God or displeasing to God, so Christians must insist that their nation be a Christian nation.

This sounds plausible, but the theological assumptions and political implications in this argument get murky very quickly. Let’s start with theology. While the Bible teaches that nations can be judged for their wickedness, this is not the same as saying that the nation as a nation is a corporate moral person. Robert Dabney (1820–1898), for example, argued that although a nation is bound to obey and worship the true God, this “obligation is nothing else but the individual obligation of all the members, and nothing more is needed to defend or sanction it than their individual morality and religiousness” (ST, 881).  In other words, an association of persons fulfills its religious and moral obligations through the individual members of that association, not as a corporate moral person. By Dabney’s logic, the way to make a Christian nation is to make the people in the nation Christians.

The political implications of the “moral agent” argument are even more dicey. Consider these lines from Wilson’s article:

So my version of Christian nationalism is simply this. America needs to stop making God mad. Abortion makes Him angry. Sodomy makes Him angry. Mammon-worship makes Him angry. Pornography makes Him angry. And the only way to avert the judgments of His anger is by repenting of our sin and turning back to Christ.

I agree with all that Wilson is stating here. But I am not sure I agree with the unstated implication about what this means for the legitimacy of Christian Nationalism. I too want America to stop making God mad. (It’s worth pointing out, as an aside, that the moral agency argument tends to only highlight ways that nations are wicked, rather than ever concluding, say, that America has more evangelical Christians than any other country and this makes God happy.) I love what Wilson says about repenting of our sin and turning back to Christ. But this seems to equate “moral agency” with Dabney’s insistence that individuals fulfill the nation’s obligations, not nations as such. While nations can outlaw abortion, sodomy, and pornography, no nation can effectively outlaw mammon-worship. I’m quite sure Wilson would say it’s beyond the scope of government to criminalize the love of money. But if that is so, then we have established that nations do not have to—and, indeed, should not try to—outlaw everything that makes God angry. It seems to me, then (but I’m not sure Wilson would agree), that nations can be called to account before God without insisting that the government of those nations make declaratory statements about Christian doctrine or suppress non-Christian forms of religious expression. 

Question #3: What Is the Purpose of Civil Government?

Many advocates of Christian Nationalism are champions of limited government. At the same time, they speak of government having authority to direct man to his highest and heavenly good. These two sets of convictions seem to be at odds. Is the purpose of government to protect God-given rights (e.g., life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness)? Or is government to be concerned with the whole perfection of man? One does not have to be a hardcore libertarian to appreciate that the United States Constitution is amazingly brief and quite constrained in what it is trying to accomplish. According to the Preamble, the people of the United States have come together as a political body with five goals in mind: establish peace, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. America’s constitutional order is not oriented to man’s heavenly good. It is designed to keep people safe, peaceable, prosperous, and free. That’s why I appreciate the candor of the Christian Nationalists who admit that their program requires a near total scrapping of our Constitutional framework.

Last year I wrote an article detailing Robert Dabney’s argument against church establishments. These two paragraphs about limited government summarize the point I’m trying to make.

Dabney disagrees with [William] Gladstone’s contention that the proper end of human government is to foster the welfare of human beings in all things. Dabney calls this the to pan (Greek for “everything”) view of civil government, and he rejects it for three reasons: Romans 13:4 teaches otherwise; it is utterly impractical; and it renders every association of human beings an extension of the state. 

Dabney is especially exercised by this last point. If the proper object of the state is the whole welfare of man, including his highest and ultimate good, then there is no family and no church that exists originally and independently of the state. “The parent is but the delegate of the government” as the government concerns itself with man’s summum bonum in all things, including the family. Likewise, “ecclesiastical persons and assemblies are but magistrates engaged in one part of their functions” (ST, 882). The state that is, by its very nature and object, designed to be concerned with the whole welfare of man, is a state that can, and must, interfere in everything.

I know that many of my friends with an appreciation for Christian Nationalism also appreciate Thomas Sowell (b. 1930). I would urge them to recall Sowell’s distinction between the unconstrained vision of human nature and the constrained vision. Progressives tend to have an unconstrained view of human nature, believing in the great things government can achieve when human beings work together, freed from the ills of poverty, prejudice, and ignorance. Conservatives, on the other hand, usually hold to a constrained view of the human person, believing that human beings are inherently flawed, prone to abuse authority and mistreat others. I fail to see how the vision of Christian Nationalism, with its insistence that government ought to be concerned with the whole perfection of man, fits with a constrained view of human nature and accounts for the inherent corruption in every human heart (including, and maybe especially, in the hearts of those who exercise power over others).

Along these lines, I’ve said before that there are two ways we can conceive of civil government.

One way is to think of the best that government can (and should) accomplish if the right people are in charge—and then to design a government toward that grand end. 

The other way is to think of all the worst that government can (and often does) pursue because human beings are selfish and corrupt—and then to design a government that will frustrate these inclinations.

The American founding—with its emphasis on liberty, equality, and freedom—was oriented more toward the latter than the former. This is why James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 about the need for ambition to counteract ambition and for a realistic recognition that government will not be run by angels. The French Revolution may have believed in the perfectibility of man, but the American founders designed a government with imperfect human beings in mind.

I do not want government to direct its citizens to the highest, heavenly good, or to order society around true religion, because I do not trust the government to determine true religion from false religion, and because I do not trust human beings to wield this kind of authority well or wisely. I hold these convictions not in avoidance of Calvinist theology, but precisely because I am a Calvinist. A Reformed understanding of human nature should lead one to grant the civil magistrate less power in matters of religion, not more.

Question #4: What Does It Mean for the Civil Magistrate to Promote the True Religion?

Some recent proposals, instead of using the language of Christian Nationalism, have called more generally for the civil magistrate to promote true religion. I grant that one can argue for the “promotion” position without being a Christian Nationalist. The circles are overlapping but not identical. Nevertheless, I think the question is important in trying to determine what “promote” means and whether it is, in the end, much different from various Christian Nationalism proposals.

The argument, specifically as it relates to Presbyterians, is that even if American Presbyterians at the end of the eighteenth century rejected church establishments like the ones that existed in England or Scotland, they were still in favor of a “soft establishment.” That is, they were in favor of a pan-Protestant establishment whereby no Protestant denomination would receive government patronage above another, but Protestant Christianity as a whole would be upheld and promoted.

There is certainly some truth to this historical claim. The Presbyterians who revised the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1788 still assumed that the civil magistrate would be Christian and that Protestant Christianity would have a privileged place in the new American republic. They were not secularists or mere proceduralists. But I wouldn’t call their view a “soft establishment” because these Presbyterians equated the establishment principle with the specter of Anglican hegemony they were trying to prevent. In explaining the revisions to the Confession in 1788, and how the delegates approved a new understanding of the civil magistrate, Ashbel Green observed that governmental patronage for the church would be “a calamity and a curse.” Likewise, Samuel Miller celebrated God’s blessings to America in giving them “a land where the people, under God, are supreme”. 

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