Who's Afraid of Christian Nationalism?
The Ideological Battle Against a Christianity that Changes the World
Why does the prospect of Christian Nationalism terrify secularists? Because Christian Nationalism is a threat to Secular Nationalism.
Debates over “Christian Nationalism” have been standard fayre in the US for the last half-decade or so, especially over Stephen Wolfe’s book on the subject, and Doug Wilson’s “Mere Christendom” vision. Where this was once seen as a “fringe” topic, over the last couple of years it has gained significant and sustained attention from the national US press (including high profile interviews of Wilson on Tucker Carlson, and more recently on CNN).
Naturally, such a vision tends to invoke the predictable bucket of slander from the evangelical Sanballats and Tobiahs of our times, with some Christian leaders in the US (including Russell Moore and Phil Vischer) teaming up with various secular allies to make a documentary about what they see as the rising “threat” of Christian Nationalism. As far as I can see, their failing credibility as leftist evangelical sell-outs only seems to have helped the Christian nationalist cause rather than hindering it.
Is Christian Nationalism Invading Britain?
Even if some of us have been writing and speaking about these themes for a little time already, it seems that the Christian Nationalist conversation has finally migrated to our Island too. That is, people now seem to be “allowed” to talk about it. The problem, however, is that the weighing scales for such a conversation are already very much tilted. The most recent example of this was the viral Sky News piece on Bishop Ceirion Dewar, a good man who has spoken boldly on various socio-political issues and the need for Britain to return to Christianity. Suddenly, secular journalists are alarmed by “the rise of Christian Nationalism in Britain”.
The essence of Sky reporter Tom Cheshire’s critique of Christian Nationalism is the fear of an “American” brand of Christianity infiltrating Britain. By this, I think he means the kind of Christianity that actually wants to make a socio-political difference—perish the thought! The funny thing is, what is now usually described as “fringe, extreme-Right Christianity” hurling across the Atlantic is, in fact, the kind of Christianity Britain exported to America in the first place. It is the kind of Christianity that does, in fact, still believe its beliefs, and therefore seeks to apply those beliefs to everyday life for the good of society and for the good of all people, even people whose views or actions they may need to oppose.
Often it feels as if many people are simply catching up with the concept of politically active Christianity, a Christianity that is not entirely toothless. Such a Christianity was entirely normal for lots of Church history, but is usually seen as wild in the eyes of our modern secular society. Why? Because modern secular society likes its Christianity nice and tame, the kind of Christianity that wouldn’t dare to cleanse a temple, let alone a parliament.
Even basic displays of public faith are now deemed dubious. When asked about his Sky News report on a chat show, for example, Cheshire spoke of being worried by “how many crosses we saw” and “the Lord’s prayer being read” at Tommy Robinson’s recent Unite The Kingdom ally. One has to ask: would fewer crosses and no prayers be less concerning? Is there a certain amount of public Christian expression or influence that is “permitted” at such events without causing such concerns? If so, why?
Clearly, the average secular person has become accustomed to a weak, effeminised, and politically inconsequential form of Christianity, the kind that keeps one’s beliefs “private” and ensures, above all, that they never bring them to bear upon the public sphere unless under the strict surveillance of their secular overlords, who are apparently there to ensure that people don’t end up meaning their beliefs too much.
The Dubious Anxieties of the Secularist
A few weeks before the recently viral Sky News piece, Prof. Alice Roberts of Humanists UK had already written a much-read article, where she said: “We need to be very clear about this. Rising Christian nationalism is a threat to us all.” This sounds sufficiently terrifying to stop anyone going near it. But look at how she defines it:
“Christian Nationalism is the name for an ultra-conservative form of religious nationalism that seeks to fuse politics with Christianity, and for the government to promote, or actively enforce, religious interests and their favoured policies. It is opposed to the separation of church and state and to all forms of religious pluralism – such as learning about other beliefs and cultures. More generally, it advocates very conservative Christian social policies, such as rolling back the human rights of LGBT+ people and abortion rights.”
Ah, there we are. Well, heaven forbid that those ancient legal human rights to baby murder (1967) and same-sex marriage (2013) be revoked. They have produced such good fruit, after all, when we think of the tens of millions of dead babies and the brazen advances of transgenderism off the back of the “baptising” of homosexuality in both society and church!
Once again, the secularist’s tactic is to smear what are entirely normal historic Christian beliefs as “ultra-conservative,” misrepresenting what they actually stand for in order to distract from what they stand against, such as the secularists’ own “religious interests” and “favoured policies” which are already “actively enforced”. Do not all societies have interests and policies? And do those societies not “actively enforce” them? After all, isn’t that why the police will take action against street preachers if you ask reasonable questions which may happen to offend Muslims? Isn’t that why it’s currently illegal to pray inside your head near an abortion clinic? Yet apparently, it is only the Christian Nationalists who desire to “actively enforce” their moral standards on others!
Roberts’ problem is apparently not with Christian faith itself, but merely the kind of Christian faith that actually makes a difference, that actually opposes worldviews and morals which are detrimental to human flourishing:
“What I should be very clear about is this isn’t about personal faith - which is important to many. It’s about the political power of organised religion - when it fuses with the state. That process - which happened in the Roman Empire - eventually saw one religion being promoted to the exclusion of all other faiths and worldviews.”
Once again, the Secularist believes they hold the keys to inclusive tolerance, that if you put them in charge, then “all” faiths and worldviews are welcome (“all,” that is, except for Christian Nationalism, it seems)
“As a humanist, I am also a fierce secularist - in the sense of the term that promotes freedom of (and from) religion…Everyone should be free to follow their own faith or worldview without interference from the state. And our rights should be protected from those who would wish to remove them on religious grounds.”
Once again, we must remind our secularist friends of what is actually happening in their tolerant utopia as we speak. Look on the Christian Concern website and see the sheer volume of cases which prove the very opposite of the secularist’s case: every week Christian Concern receives multiple enquiries from Christians whose beliefs and rights are being opposed and oppressed, including by “interference from the state,” all under the watchful eye of secularism.
The secularist claims they tolerate “all faiths and none”, but only if you agree that Secularism is lord of all faiths, and only if you submit to their idea of how your faith may (or may not) be expressed. As noted, one of the faiths they certainly do not seem to tolerate is “Christian Nationalism”. Why is that? Because it declares that “Christ is Lord” in a way that moves the belief beyond the privacy of our hearts to affect what we actually do with our hands and feet and lives that that faith might actually change the world in which we live, as Christians have done for centuries.
Ultimately, secularism does not like the idea that Christianity might come out to play. This should make you suspicious, and should explain why some people will go to such lengths to caricature “Christian Nationalism” in an uncharitable light whenever possible. At root, their ruling ideology is threatened. And so it should be. Secularism has wrought more destruction and moral desecration to society in the last hundred years than we’ve ever seen in human history. While it postures as freeing society from the interference of religion, in reality it enslaves religion to socio-political impotence under its own Secularist lordship.
In this sense, it’s actually perfectly understandable why a secular person would be worried by the perceived threat to the values they cherish (however much they misunderstand about how an actually Christian nationalist would go about bringing Christian values to bear upon society). What is more perplexing is the cabal of evangelical leaders who continue to oppose a public approach to Christianity on supposedly “Christian” grounds.
The Dubious Anxieties of the Evangelical
The national mourning over the assassination of the Christian apologist, Charlie Kirk (who was effectively a Christian nationalist, for all intents and purposes, in that he was calling the US back to its Christian roots and values) renders the vision of something like Christian Nationalism no longer just a fringe issue for online debate, but an urgent necessity for everyday Christians. There is only so much trauma and humiliation a culture can take before its people will rise up and say, “enough!” What kind of nation do we want? A secular nation? An Islamic nation? A former nation? You will have some kind of nation. Why not a Christian one?
Five years ago, there was no such thing as a “Christian Right” in the UK. Today, such a movement is emerging faster than the established leaders and churches can adjust to interpret it. As I have been arguing in various posts, British evangelicals have refused to reach the Right because they have become ideologically subservient to secular multiculturalism. This is why they often cannot fathom Christians who oppose mass immigration or who promote national identity, and end up seeing such people as potentially abandoning the faith by trading the Gospel for “Right wing politics”.
This lack of awareness among Christian leaders leaves them ill-prepared to deal with the challenges and opportunities of the present moment, which they cannot seem to see as having anything to do with the advance of the kingdom of God. They have become so influenced by secular liberal norms (whilst claiming to conserve orthodox Biblical convictions) that they are astonished that Right wing issues might actually concern faithful Christians. They appear to have no conception that their fears over some nationalist movement “corrupting” Christianity are more secular than they realise.
John Stevens, head of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, displays a classic example of the distinctly British form of evangelical prudishness regarding Christian Nationalism. He recently declared such anxieties in no uncertain terms:
“I have been saying for some years that, with the failure of overreaching liberal progressivism, the great cultural threat that evangelicals will face is authoritarian fascist nationalism. This is antithetical to the gospel and the way of Jesus, but it has attractions to conservatives who have convinced themselves that the most important thing is to fight a culture war against the left, and who will ally themselves with anyone to achieve their goal.
Sadly what I have warned about is increasingly coming to pass. Right-wing Christians and Christian Nationalists, especially in the US, have allied themselves with those who seem to drink from the wells of overt racism, white supremacy & anti-semitism. This is nothing new. It always been a feature of the far right. It is a mistake to think that it is only the radical left and Islamists who are deeply anti-semitic. Views that were once beyond the pale are now routinely espoused on social media, and are attracting young men on both sides of the Atlantic.”
I don’t have time to dissect all of Stevens’ incorrect assumptions here, but I will merely point to the fact that, from his assessment, it seems that anyone who claims the label “Christian Nationalism” in any positive sense becomes an automatic promoter of racial hatred.
These issues are not without complexity, of course, but Stevens’ catch-all interpretation lacks understanding whilst presenting itself as the informed, prophetic voice when, in fact, it is the voice that continues to aid the propping-up of wordly secularism as the political “norm”. He even refers positively to the scaremongering of someone so obviously compromised as Russell Moore: “Russell Moore challenges evangelicals to make the stark choice between Christ and Hitler. It really has come to that.” Has it? Says who? Russell Moore…?
Despite critiquing the Left in some ways, Stevens is unaware of the extent to which he is unduly influenced by the leftist agitations and fears over Christian Nationalism, which are so vague that it renders the term little more than a stick with which to hit people. For example, some of the characters associated with the movement (e.g. Nick Fuentes) are not representative of what most people mean by it. Some of what Fuentes has said even in recent months is so obviously abhorrent that it should be clear to anyone that, while he may profess to be a Catholic, and while he undoubtedly has significant political influence upon millions of disenfranchised young men, the Christianness of his “Christianity” is extremely dubious.
Does this mean we shouldn’t seek to reach the likes of Fuentes, however crudely he speaks? Not at all. But the obvious deficiencies show why it is dubious to look at someone like him right now and say: “Look! This is where all this talk of Christianity and politics and Christian nations leads!” Is it really that inevitable? Must we remain enslaved to the liberal secular order simply because there are some who refuse to submit to it in ways that are unpalatable?
Ironically, the supposed problem with “Right Wing” thinking/action is that it is inconsiderate, thoughtless, reactionary fear-mongering, lacking sufficient compassion for people who are different. As I’ve been at pains to point out of late, the very same attitudes are often present in those who oppose Right Wing thinking/people! There is a perpetual and increasingly irrational fear that Right Wing issues/people harbour some unique monopoly on socio-political evil. There is also an unignorable ignorance on display regarding what a considered reflection on Christian Nationalist thinking might actually look like.
