As Hillsdale’s Thomas West notes, a serious Christian nationalism must engage in a potentially unpopular challenge to existing civil rights laws, which “frequently limit religion as practiced outside of the narrow realm of ‘religion as such’…. Civil rights laws protect the right of unwed mothers, gays, and transgenders to nondiscrimination—which means religious schools or businesses may be required to admit them or hire them, contrary to their Christian moral convictions.” In such a situation, where Christianity cedes the public square to state atheism, it can become functionally impossible “to follow and teach in daily life the moral beliefs of Christianity as understood by most believers.”

A time for choosing.
Advocating Christian nationalism may seem, at first blush, like a futile enterprise. We live in a country that is de-Christianizing rapidly. America is expected to lose its Christian majority by 2050 and be just 39 percent Christian by 2070. As even Mike Sabo acknowledges in his introductory piece on the subject, “Absent a nationwide crack-up, it could take a century or more for the Christian nationalist project to have any measurable effect at scale.”
Yet despite this, the debate over Christian nationalism has taken on mythic proportions in certain corners of the Right. Christian nationalism has a variety of definitions among those versed in the relevant arcana. As a layperson (literally and when compared with the initiates in these debates) I will adopt a broad and basic but serviceable definition: Christian nationalism is the view that America’s institutions should bear the influence of, and move people toward, Christianity. This definition could obviously include a large variety of policies and perspectives, but it has the virtue of encompassing the vast majority of the Christian nationalist project, while being broadly comprehensible to the average churchgoer.
Before examining the positive case for Christian nationalism, it is instructive to examine the arguments of some of its fiercest critics. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne, perhaps the most popular current critique of the white evangelical community, told an interviewer that “at the core of Christian nationalism in contemporary politics is really the idea of privileging certain views over others, in terms of determining our laws, in terms of even interpreting our Constitution, and in terms of implementing our democracy.”
Well yes, that’s actually the idea. As Christians we should privilege a Christian viewpoint, I think, rather than the godless viewpoint that has been forced on America, largely illegitimately, by the courts over the past several decades. Of course, this approach could be taken too far. Russell Moore, editor of the liberal quasi-evangelical magazine Christianity Today, cites the case of the Russian Orthodox patriarch who recently implied that military sacrifice in the war versus Ukraine would wash away all sins. Or witness the tight integration between church and a conservative state that can ultimately damage both, as we recently saw in Poland. But while a state which embraces Christianity too closely can cause a collapse in Christian faith from without, a fully-secularized state such as our modern one can also rot the moral foundations of a society from within.
That is to say, while Moore’s attack on Christian nationalism in Russia is fair, he goes too far when he claims that Christian nationalists use “Jesus’ authority to baptize their national identity in the name of blood and soil.”
This is not a description of Christian nationalism that those Christian nationalists I know would embrace. Of course Christianity is a universal religion—there are obviously certain core beliefs. But, as missionaries have learned over many generations, Christianity’s ability to embrace particularities is often as powerful as its universality. What leads people to the Gospel and keeps them in the community of believers can be almost infinitely varied depending on the cultural and national context. Simply put, “nationalizing” Christianity in the sense of localizing, particularizing, and institutionalizing it in a particular place and culture is necessary for the very real work of saving souls. A Christianity that excludes a national mission or that does not integrate with an existing cultural context is a Christianity that will likely fail to save souls for Christ.
Or, as noted Presbyterian theologian Carl Trueman wrote in a balanced and perceptive article: “To love one’s country, to be patriotic, is…not to sneer at every other nation or to look with scorn upon other peoples. It is simply the appropriate response of gratitude and love for the place where one belongs, that gives one an identity, that provides one with community and with purpose.”
Our Christian Nationalist History
So why promote Christian nationalism? One reason is that it has been shown to work in an American context previously. A version of Christian nationalism grew America from an obscure collection of colonies hugging the Eastern seaboard of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries to the world’s greatest economic and political powerhouse by the early 20th century. No founder seriously disputed the goal of encouraging Christianity among the populace.
Even the two most famous early examples of the alleged “separation of church and state” were public diplomatic gestures, not forthright descriptions of reality in the founding generation. Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he famously alluded to a so-called “Wall of Separation” between church and state, came from the least religious founder to a denomination concerned about their unfavorable treatment in Connecticut. And the notion that America is “Not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,” is found in the Treaty of Tripoli (1797) made with a Muslim power, a public declaration that was possibly shrewd diplomacy but did not really reflect American reality.
By contrast, the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, began by invoking “the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.”
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
That some now need to be able to see Jesus as female to see him as savior is nothing more than the assertion that his first-century Jewish human nature is insufficient for our present purposes. It is to demand that he be made in our image, rather than us in his.

The recent outcry surrounding a sermon at Trinity College, Cambridge, in which a Junior Research Fellow apparently attempted to find transgender references in artistic depictions of the crucified Christ, is yet another incident that speaks to various pathologies set loose in our culture.
First, it is important to note that the idea that ascribing female genitalia, or subtle intimations of such, to Christ is not new with the advent of the trans issue. I recall similar arguments being made by Church of Scotland theologian Ruth Page in her book, The Incarnation of Freedom and Love, though she did so in the service of feminism not transgenderism.
Every era has its particular blasphemies but sometimes the blasphemers are merely repurposing the work of an earlier generation. This latest silliness may be shocking, but it also made me roll my eyes: another wannabe radical offering a retread of second-hand sacrilege as if he was breaking important new ground. Is this what Trinity College, alma mater of great minds from Newton to Wittgenstein, now rewards with research fellowships? Truly we live in a day of small things. And minds.
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Start by expressing your gratitude that God has adopted you into His family. Contemplate the power and might of the One you call Father. Take time to consider His majesty, and then ask Him to use your life to sing forth His praises. Express your desire to see the name of God revered, loved, and worshiped. 

Would you agree that, at times, the most challenging aspect of prayer is just getting started? What can we say that inclines our hearts to God’s will so that we are actually communing with the Lord and not merely murmuring religious words? Our Lord Himself shows us precisely what kind of prayer pleases God. Let’s consider His words. 
We Belong to a Family
Take a moment and read the model prayer in Matthew 6. Scan through verses 9-13 and notice all the first-person singular pronouns. Look for words such as my, mine, me, and I. What did you discover? It is surprising, isn’t it? They are not there!  
What we do find are first-person plural pronouns such as: “our Father in Heaven;” “give us this day our daily bread;” “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors;” and “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” These pronouns are more than just parts of speech; they send an important message. 
From the start of the Lord’s model prayer, we discover a focus on community. Prayer is something we do with the mindset of a family and congregation. Of course, our salvation is personal, but we are saved into a family.
There is no doubt that individual prayer is good and fitting for Christians, but it should also be our regular practice to pray with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Likewise, it is appropriate to pray for your own needs, but Jesus also teaches us to desire to pray with others in mind. This should comfort us as we remember that we bear the burdens of others as they do the same for us. 
Our Family Has a Father
We belong to a family, and our family has a perfect, righteous, holy, trustworthy Father. God is also our guide, protector, shield, and teacher. All the things we understand a faithful earthly father should be are perfectly exemplified in God. 
Knowing God in this way is a unique privilege and blessing to Christians. He is enthroned and highly exalted in Heaven, yet he is also near to us. You can say God is both transcendent (distinct from us) and immanent (near to us). While it is true that God Himself created all people and knit them together in their mother’s wombs (Psalm 139:13-14), only those adopted through the work of Christ can truly call Him Father. We have both a master/servant relationship and a familial one. He is our God, yet also our Abba Father.  
We begin our prayers with the blessed knowledge that God loves us and has chosen us as His sons and daughters (Ephesians 1:4-6, Galatians 4:4-7). We belong to a spiritual family, and our spiritual family has a perfect Father. This should flood our hearts with a well-spring of gratitude. 
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