If I understand it correctly, Christian Nationalism is a movement which hopes to bring their vision of Christian values to bear more strongly upon our common culture and government today. They would like to emphasize the Christian nature of our national identity as a rebuke to the more diverse and inclusive movements within our American society in recent years. While I’m all for people being motivated by their faith to participate in the political process, I am concerned that mixing faith and politics, especially the necessarily coercive role that government must have, is not a good idea. Simply put, I fear that Christian Nationalism is not helpful to either the Christian faith or to our nation.
It is too simple to say that America was founded as a Christian country. Like most things, it is more complex than that. True, most of the original colonists were Christians; however, for many, the main reason they braved the North Atlantic in those tiny boats, was to get away from other Christians who wanted to impose their version of our common faith upon them. All our founders were agreed that the newly formed United States of America should never have a national Church, like the one in England.
Our founders were of many different minds about the Christian religion. Thomas Jefferson snipped out all the miracles in the Scriptures to produce a much thinner and more acceptable Bible upon which to base his skeptical faith. Not only Christianity, but the Scottish Enlightenment shaped our culture and society. That’s why we have a free enterprise capitalist economy today. America was founded by people who had different ideas about both Christianity and what sort of country America ought to be. We are at our best when we protect each other’s views, especially those different from our own.
This is even more important now, when Christianity is one of many different religions followed, or not followed, by Americans today. Occasionally folks are so convinced their religious and political views are the right ones that they can’t imagine anyone else could possibly see things differently. Even worse, they believe that if people aren’t willing to change their minds, then the thing to do is to expunge those ideas, and if necessary, the people who hold them, from our society. Examples abound: The Inquisition, the Crusades, and the Reformation; as well as the rise of the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany of the Second World War and the communist revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba, and elsewhere in our modern times.
Here’s a reliable clue to imminent danger: coercion. If your movement is determined to force others to see things the way you do, it is neither Christian nor American. If your vision of God or for the country is so much better, show me, convince me, but don’t tell me that I’m not a Christian or a patriotic American if I don’t agree.
Rev. Doctor Mike Cordle, Highlands, retired United Methodist Church minister