In my last post I promised I would define “Christian nationalism,” and why we ought to be Christian nationalists. It is actually rather simple. If we are Christians and we live in a nation, we should be Christian nationalists. First, we need to understand what nationalism is, and realize why it is so critically important in our time as it stands in stark contrast against globalism (when you see that word, think tyranny). The modern nation-state is a relatively new phenomenon in the history of the world. It only goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the 30-Years War in 1648 that established the concept of a sovereign nation with well-defined boundaries. Prior to that, military power determined boundaries which were ever shifting based on that power. Nationalism, however, refers to more than merely geographical boundaries, and on the political and cultural left it is considered downright dangerous. Unfortunately, there are many Christian leaders from various traditions, otherwise conservative, who also think nationalism is a negative, especially a kind of patriotic populist nationalism.
For these Christian leaders it isn’t so much the nation-state that is the problem, like it is with the globalists, it is thinking our nation is better than others. This criticism is specifically geared toward Patriotic Christian Americans who embrace something called American exceptionalism. For some reason with these folks, loving America and thinking it is the most exceptionally blessed country in the history of the world is something to be avoided. They’ll often warn that America is not a theocracy like ancient Israel, but I don’t know any Christian who thinks it is. God, however, has a relationship to every country on earth, and blesses or curses these nations to the degree they look to him as the ultimate governor and ruler of the nation. America is no doubt judged more harshly because she has been blessed most singly, and since I’m an American in America, that will be my focus in these posts.
Having said that, I will continue the discussion with Brexit, the movement in the UK to pull out of the European Union. The election to confirm England’s exit from the EU was on June 23, 2016, but the debate had been going on for a while. The two sides were predictable and the precursor to same dynamic that led to the very unlikely election of President Trump. The cultural elites, globalists all, thought Brexit had no more chance of passing than Trump had of winning later that year. They also thought British patriots were deplorables, in the infamous assertion of Hillary Clinton’s about Trump’s followers. I bring this up because it is of the same kind of patriotic nationalism that made the MAGA, or Make America Great Again, movement possible. Christian nationalists ought always to cheer on nations that stand against the globalists who think nations only get in the way of the enlightened globalist agenda.
This brings me to the Christian part of “Christian nationalism,” and why it is necessary. Secularism as commonly understood is an illusion that some kind of moral or metaphysical neutrality exists where religion won’t get in the way of a harmonious society; religion stands in the way of that. The wars of religion, which weren’t really wars of religion but an excuse for the power I mentioned above, are what led to the intellectual elite’s obsession with secularism. The problem that created war and misery, in this view, was religion. If only we get rid of religion, or at least make it a purely personal thing, then people will stop making war and killing people. John Lennon’s great secular anthem Imagine says it pathetically well:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
A better secular globalist’s wet dream could not be found, lies built upon delusional lies. The religion and state-hating communists of the 20th century butchered a hundred million human beings in the throes of such lies; living life in peace, not so much. Such is the existential battle we now face, although seemingly not in such stark life and death terms. But make no mistake, the totalitarian leftists we now battle are every bit as deadly, if not as apparently bloody. Christianity, in fact, is the only hope for a truly harmonious society, one built on the commitment to Truth. We can have Christ or chaos.
I wrote recently that this commitment to truth is the dividing line in Western culture. This commitment is why not everyone has to embrace Christianity in the culture for the civilization to be Christian. In the entirety of Christian Western civilization there was never a time when everyone embraced Christianity. Rather, it was the Christian worldview, its morals, manners, and mores that were widely accepted. That is a more complicated battle, but a more hopeful one because victory is not determined by mere power. The totalitarian left’s only value is the will to power that serves their ideology, while truth is not relevant to them. Those who believe in Truth, however, can appreciate and embrace the worldview, morals, manners, and mores of Christianity without embracing the risen Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
This is a deeply significant point that I don’t think most Christians have really thought through, and there are a growing number of non-Christians, agnostics, and atheists who affirm that Christianity is central to, and necessary for, Western civilization to succeed. In other words, we have allies in this existential war against the totalitarian left who are not Christians, and this is also deeply significant. It also gives us reason to hope that the fundamentalist secularism that has been suffocating Western culture for the last 60 years will not last. It cannot last, or Western civilization is doomed. Thankfully, Truth is more powerful than lies because he who is The Truth exists and rules over all things (madidate on Ephesians 1:15-23 if you want hope). We have no idea what God in his providence has in store for America or Western civilization, but not fighting for it is not an option. If we complain, we must fight.
I hope to flesh all this out in, God willing, another book, but the point of these posts is to address what Christians might be able to do to save this greatest experiment in republican government in the history of the world. I will address that in my next post.
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