A growing movement seeks to blur the line between Church and state by imposing Christian values on others, which goes against the teaching of the Church and poses a threat to democracy.
We live in an hour when a significant minority in the US Church—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—increasingly believes that the way to save both the American Church and America itself is to embrace Christian nationalism. Many American conservative Christians, feeling themselves threatened and even victimized by something called “secularism,” seek a champion who will defend them from it and give them power to fight it and whatever else they believe threatens our Christian heritage. The thinking goes that the Gospel calls us to bring Christ to the world as Lord, so let’s have an America controlled by Christians and make the state impose that even (and perhaps especially) on those who do not acknowledge the Gospel. To question that is to exalt godlessness over God. People who subscribe to this thinking believe that if we will only give the state the power to impose “Christian values” on what they perceive to be an increasingly godless society, then all will be well, and America will be great again.
Accompanying this is typically a notion of America as being somehow “chosen” by God in such a way as to set it above and against other nations. This seemingly justifies our right to protect our border from an alleged “invasion” by desperate refugees as well as to purify the nation from so-called enemies within.
The promise, to many, seems to be simplicity itself. Once upon a time, America was full of prosperous, hard-working Christians who reverenced family values. Then the sexual revolution, the welfare state, scary minorities who kneel at the national anthem and say their lives matter, and godless liberals took over and America lost its greatness. All that can be restored if we make the state the protector of Christians and weaponize it against the forces of godlessness.
The Roots of Christian Nationalism
It is not a new idea. At the outset of Jesus’ ministry, he deliberately went into the wilderness to face exactly this temptation to impose the kingdom by law, blood, iron, force, and fear. As Matthew reports:
“Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, ‘All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.’ At this, Jesus said to him, ‘Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve’” (Mt 4:8–10).
Several factors contribute to the confusion that leads many Christians to fall for Christian nationalism.
The first, as is always the case with false teaching, is that it exploits and exaggerates real Catholic teaching (just as the devil did when he quoted Scripture in the effort to get Jesus to sin during the temptation in the wilderness).
Specifically, it exploits and exaggerates the second greatest commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We may well ask, “What could possibly be wrong with loving your neighbor as yourself?”
Nothing—as long as we clearly understand what is meant by “neighbor.” Because one of the temptations we face is to limit “neighbor” to a particular category of persons. And if we give that idea its head, we can (and have many times in history) come to the dark spiritual place where a particular class of neighbor becomes the only class that matters, while others are categorized as outsiders, foreigners, enemies, and even subhuman vermin fit only for extermination. “Love your neighbor” gets whittled down to “Love your kind,” and loving your kind becomes the pretext for oppressing, jailing, exploiting, enslaving, and even exterminating those who are not our kind.
This is why the command to love one’s neighbor is the second, not the first, greatest commandment. The love of neighbor must be subordinated to the love of God, precisely because God commands us not merely to love those we call neighbor, but those he calls our neighbor: namely, everyone, including even our enemies.
This is not to deny the legitimacy of loving one’s own kind. The Church teaches us that the love of family is perfectly legitimate. Indeed, it teaches us that the family is the “‘the domestic church,’ a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1666). The Church has long insisted that the union and fruitfulness of marital love are a sacramental image of and participation in the life of the Holy Trinity and that the family is the basic building block of civilization.
But here’s the thing: Building blocks are for building. Specifically, they are for building the kingdom of God. And so Jesus, living in a culture that takes for granted the primacy of family ties, national pride, and blood relationship, shockingly declares: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26).
He does not, of course, mean that we are to wish harm and damnation on our family or ourselves. Rather, he means that nothing, not even the love of one’s own kind, is to take priority over the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God takes priority over the family, and the family exists as a kind of preschool for the kingdom. Disobedience to God on this point can be seen in such things as clan warfare in Romeo and Juliet, in bloody gang struggles on the streets of Los Angeles, and in slaughter between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
A Healthy Patriotism
The Church likewise commends the virtue of patriotism, the love of one’s people, native land, and culture (which is simply the love of family extended). This particular species of the love of neighbor is also normal and healthy and can engender all sorts of virtues as it teaches us to be grateful, not only for our family and loved ones, but also for the enormous gifts of love we have received from our community and our ancestors, who gave us everything from a state of ordered liberty instead of chaos or tyranny to an infrastructure we could never have invented ourselves that provides us with everything from pencils to penicillin, water to waffles, literacy to lettuce.
To be grateful for and loving toward those who have, by their pains and sacrifices, given our country so much, whom we can never repay except with thanks, is perfectly fitting. Such love is right and proper and honors God as well as family and country.
But such patriotism is the dead opposite of nationalism. For nationalism is to healthy patriotism in a people what the satanic sin of pride is to the virtue of healthy self-love in a person. The command is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Pride is the will to exalt yourself as you despise your neighbor, which in the end is to exalt yourself as you despise God. And multiplied by millions of hearts and minds and endowed with billions of dollars and the force of arms, it can and has resulted in some of the most immense bloodbaths in human history.
Not unrelatedly, as White Christian nationalism was germinating in the years after 9/11, one of the arguments many conservative Christians made was that America was facing something called “demographic winter.” The claim was that Muslims were outbreeding the godless sexually libertine West. So it was essential that those who reverence “Judeo-Christian values” boost their numbers in America or be swamped by a tide of Islam.
But then, suddenly, the argument shifted. At about the same moment, a Black Christian with a foreign-sounding name was elected president under the completely false accusation that he was not a real American citizen and a Muslim to boot. The discourse shifted sharply among conservative Christians to the supposed deadly peril of refugees “invading” America’s southern border.
Virtually all these refugees were Christians, seeking only a chance to work, to raise their families, and to practice their faith—the very stuff that Christian nationalists said would restore our country’s greatness. But they were Black and Brown, speaking languages that made Christian nationalists uncomfortable. And so the lie was revealed: The issue was not that they wanted more Christians, but more Whites. The goal was not to “defend the Gospel” but to defend White privilege.
Not a Chosen Nation
And that brings us to the central internal contradiction of Christian nationalism: It is a complete oxymoron, like “married bachelor.” The fundamental nature of the Gospel is that it is intended for all human beings, that there is no preferred nation, that pride is a sin and love is a virtue, and that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
America is not a chosen nation. It is a human invention. To be sure, it has many virtues, much to be grateful for, and many good people. But it is, like all human things, fallen and afflicted by sin, and its people are, like any other, in need of salvation. Any greatness we possess should be an occasion for humble gratitude to God, not for swollen pride that we are the authors of our greatness, superior to all other people. The Gospel arms us to do battle with our own sins, not with the least of these, the poor, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.
God, in short, is not Caesar’s servant, and Caesar is neither God’s savior nor ours. To be sure, Caesar has a God-given role in the affairs of human beings. As Paul says:
“[T]here is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer” (Rom 13:1–4).
The state exists, therefore, to ensure that justice and the common good are upheld, and, insofar as it does that, it does God’s will. But ensuring justice does not mean “ensuring White Christians are always top dog, no matter what” for the very good reason that all human beings, not only the White Christian ones, are made in the image and likeness of God.
But the issue runs deeper than that because the attempt to make Caesar the savior of Christianity is, in the end, an act of idolatry by its very nature. The Church already has a Savior. The attempt to use the might of the state to impose the Gospel on the “godless” is guaranteed to fail. For the Gospel itself teaches that we are saved, not by the law, but by grace working through faith in Christ. Its very essence is freedom because “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). To attempt to force a population of unbelievers to live by Christian values that are completely the fruit of Christian faith in Christ is not only impossible [since, as Jesus himself says, “I am the vine, you are the branches” and “Without me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5)], but it is guaranteed to create a backlash as Caesar tries to force people to do what is impossible for them for reasons they cannot for the life of them understand.
And, of course, all this is further complicated by the question “Whose Christianity is to be imposed on the ‘godless’?” Some argue, for instance, that some Christian theology is so fundamental that it must be imposed on all and civil punishments visited on those who do not practice it (this is common among those who want civil laws to punish certain pelvic sins). But there are things far more foundational to Christian teaching than sexual morality or the dignity of the human person: namely, the dignity of God, whom we are commanded to love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Shall we punish atheists? Muslims? Jews? Non-Trinitarians? Pagans? For Catholics, the Eucharist is God the Son, fully present in his body, blood, spirit, soul, and divinity. Shall Caesar, as savior of Christianity in America, punish those who fail to adore the Eucharist? Or if Caesar is Protestant, shall he punish Catholics and other apostolic Christians as idolators?
In the end, every attempt to make Caesar the savior of the Church is like the attempt to use the One Ring to save Middle Earth. Caesar is neither God’s savior nor ours. He is, at best, God’s very imperfect servant. That is why the Catechism warns (676): “The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.”
And it is also why the Church, having rejected the Americanist heresy over a century ago, went on to give us the Decree on Religious Liberty at Vatican II.
“For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come” (Heb 13:14).
15 thoughts on “The Dangers of Christian Nationalism ”
St. John Paul II once said that nationalism is a good thing. He was referencing his own country of Poland, of course. It was Polish nationalism that enabled it to overthrow the Soviet hegemony.
Today, the nation-state of Hungary is likewise doing its best to maintain its culture amongst the larger EU. It is Hungarian nationalism that seems to be saving it.
Here in the U.S., I don’t know of anyone who thinks of U.S. nationalism in racial terms. I also believe the U.S. has a right to control its borders and determine who can immigrate to our country or not. It’s about maintaining what little social harmony and cohesion remains in our country. That’s what the MAGA movement is all about. Anyone who knows American history knows that the U.S. was a Protestant Christian country in its origins. The first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is all about freedom of conscience. But that didn’t mean removing religion from the public square.
Before 1960, it was quite common for there to be a generic Protestant prayer in the public classrooms. It was Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan, Jr. who changed all of that. He served from 1957-1990 and was appointed by Eisenhower. Brennan was also a Catholic, if my memory serves me correctly. The recent Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia thought Brennan was the most influential justice of the latter 20th century as a result of many of his rulings.
I remember reading in a Catholic newspaper an incident in Italy about a Muslim immigrant who was demanding that a Christian cross in the town center be removed since it offended him!! Well, if that immigrant didn’t like the Christian culture of Italy, then he shouldn’t have immigrated there to begin with. I suspect the corrupt Italians even accommodated him by removing that cross since they wanted to be in the good graces of the corrupt EU.
The problem today is that the Left is not about separation of church and state or freedom of religion but rather freedom from religion. During the French Revolution, the revolutionaries were anti-religious. Today, the far Left is the same. They want their secularism to become the new state religion.
I wonder what Mark P. Shea thinks about counties like communist Cuba or other communist dictatorships in the world. Christians aren’t faring too well over there. Kamala Harris could easily win the election in November. If that happens, it will be a disaster. Mark Shea comes across to me, from reading his article, as more than likely to vote for Harris this November.
It is passing strange that so many Catholics in the US can read an article rooted in Scripture and the teaching of the Catechism and conclude that the author is a Communist. But then, they frequently conclude that about the Holy Father too, so I reckon I am in good company.
Thank you for giving voice to my heart felt belief that our role as Christians is not the legistration and enforcement of our beliefs but the conversion of first ourselves and then those among us who have not discovered God’s love.
Mike, MAGA is about dictatorial control and demonizing “the other.” How the author of this article chooses to vote is irrelevant. He did a brilliant job of dismantling a really ugly movement in the US.
Tom, I agree. I have already sent this article to people in my parish. Blessings!
Lydia, Harris has an excellent chance of winning the election this November mainly due to demographics. The older generation is dying off and the younger generation will be voting after years of indoctrination in our public schools. That’s just the way it is. Facts are stubborn things. If the Democrats succeed in winning this November, then they will proceed in dismantling this once great country as we’ve always known it. There will be a lot of chaos, of course. Possibly even some push back. Only time will tell how bad things can get.
Brace yourself Mike, but there are people in this country who have no plans on voting for Trump, an adjudicated sexual offender and convicted felon. Shocking as it may seem, many in this country want to be rid of the man and his ridiculous family. I pray that this country may know peace again.
Above, you wrote, “Here in the U.S., I don’t know of anyone who thinks of U.S. nationalism in racial terms.” Now you write, “Harris has an excellent chance of winning the election this November mainly due to demographics.”
Pray tell, what “demographics” do you mean? If you mean “More people are likely to vote for Harris than for Trump” why then, that is how democracy is supposed to work, right? But one senses that you mean something…. else. One almost gets the sense that you mean older whites are dying off and being replaced by younger and browner people. It is, after all, the core belief advocated by the Great Replacement Theory that has been promoted by figures like Tucker Carlson and many others on the Right for years. If that’s not what you mean, you should probably work on using clearer language, because it’s certainly *sounds* like what you mean.
You say facts are stubborn things, but present none for us to evaluate. Above, you claim that Harris, a Baptist, and Walz, a Lutheran, are somehow involved in a massive conspiracy to remove religion from the public square. Prove it. Documentation, please?
You likewise allege some conspiracy to dismantle the US. Prove it. Documentation, please?
Exactly the same claims were made about Biden, but the US is still here and doing just fine. Nobody is persecuting you. Religion and America have not been destroyed or even attacked.
Not to say that Christians are not persecuted on our soil. They are. But since they are brown and poor and refugees at the border, they do not matter to the Christians who cosplay at martyrdom when a coffee cup at Starbucks is not to their taste.
In addition, after providing zero evidence for your claims, you overlook the fact that there *is* a candidate in the race who really is making promises of “retribution” and vengeance, who really is repeating QANON calls for military tribunals and mass executions and incarceration of his enemies, who really has pledged religious persecution on our soil (of Muslims), and who really has not only committed, but been convicted of, felonies and fraud, as well as committing both rape and defamation of his victim, as well as launching the biggest assault on America’s constitutional order since the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. None of this seems to have fallen under your vigilant eye as it searches America for Enemies Within.
Finally, after your fact-free claims, you repeat the threats of violence (which you euphemistically call “pushback”) that are constantly made by that candidate and his base, the white nationalists who are the #1 cause of domestic terrorism in the United States.
Why anybody would take seriously any claim from those who talk as you do to represent anything approaching the gospel of Jesus Christ or the teaching of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of which He is Lord and Savior is beyond me.
One of the things I find most troubling in the Christian Nationalism movement is the desire for power. Jesus used His power to heal people not to rule them. He gave up all his power on the cross and he forgave us all.
Julia
Thank you for this excellent article on The Dangers of Christian Nationalism. I share the concerns raised by the author. However, what is even more concerning is the “post liberal” movement primarily among Catholic Intellectuals advocating for a “muscular government” – one that they control. Your state of Ohio Senator and Vice-Presidential candidate, JD Vance, a Catholic, has adopted some alarming stances and their potential impact on government policy.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/takeaways-from-ap-s-report-on-jd-vance-and-the-catholic-postliberals-in-his-circle-of-influence/ar-AA1pYS6B?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=81ccc4d229674dbfbac3cbcc82a3d720&ei=42
I do struggle being a Christian and all the political Division. Thank you for articulating a real problem in the US and for making me feel like I’m not alone. Praying for the friars. My uncle and godfather was a Secular in Peoria. Thanks for your ministry. 💕
Wow! Thank you for articulating what many in this country are feeling. I’m in the Bible Belt so I’m surrounded by it. I pray for calm and peace between neighbors. And I plan to share this article with my members of my parish prayer group. Thanks to St. Anthony’s Messenger for this article. Pace. —Dave
I was so heartened to see the cover of the September St. Anthony Messenger–that there was an article on “The Dangers of Christian Nationalism!” It is a timely and important subject and I thank the Messenger for tackling it. Mark Shea did a fine story of defining this, and how it came to be and why it is not right. That was fascinating. I love the Lord and strive always to serve Him, but I’ve long known that politics and religion do not usually intersect — more likely they collide. Glad to know I am not alone in seeing the growing Christian nationalism as troubling. It’s not how I believe Jesus would behave. He lived with compassion for all, not striving to control everyone.
When I see the hate and discord, misinformation and unbending postures of some who profess to be Christians it saddens me. My consolation is that God is in charge — not politicians!
My kingdom is not of this world? Unfortunately, our 38-year-old son no longer talks to us because he feels the Catholic church ” is in bed with the Republican party.” Despite our sworn assurances that neither my husband nor I have ever voted for Trump or would, he has decided not to associate with us based on our being Christian, with the conflation of Christianity and MAGA his operative reasoning and his belief in reproductive rights, i.e., the Catholic church wants to force women to have children they don’t want. I understand his idealism but I feel like politics has ruined my family and my life.
Don’t despair. Love keeps working away at the heart when we make rash decisions. Give your son love and time and prayer. God wants your relationship healed even more than you do.
I knew a Franciscan once who called friars “jovial anarchists.” I love this piece and I appreciate that a Franciscan periodical is covering it. Pax