Kierkegaard on Christian Nationalism: “Will He Find Faith On the Earth?”

Kierkegaard, writing in Danish newspaper article, in the final year of his life (1855), reflects on the problem, as he saw it, of “Christendom” in Denmark–using Luke 18:8:

It is Christ’s own words: “Will the Son of Man, when he comes again, find faith upon the earth?” Consequently Chris sees a possibility that the situation at his second coming may be such that Christianity does not exist at all. Those words imply in addition that Christ more particularly considered that the fall from Christianity would happen with such craftiness, knavishly.

He does not seem to expect the situation to be such that there would be no one who called himself a Christian. After all, he does not say: Will the Son of man find no Christians?

What if he had imagined it to be this way: there will be millions of Christians, Christian states, countries, a Christian world, thousands of pastors carrying on their trade–but faith (what I understand by faith), I wonder, will it be found on the earth?

The falling away from Christianity will not happen openly, by everyone renouncing Christianity, no, but cunningly, slyly, knavishly, by everyone’s taking the name of being a Christian, supposing themselves in this way to be the most securely secured against–Christianity, the Christianity of the New Testament, which people are uneasy about and afraid of, and therefore industrial pastors have invented, in the name of Christianity, a confection that tastes fine and that people gladly pay money for.