Yesterday, on Sunday, June 8th, Roman Catholic Pope Lew XIV led a Mass at St. Peter’s Square asking God to “open borders, break down walls (and) dispel hatred.” He further denounced “prejudice … we now see emerging also in political nationalisms.” It was obvious that he implied what is called “Christian nationalism” advocated by some evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics in the U.S. who are strong supporters of Republican President Donald Trump. His spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain is a Charismatic televangelist, church pastor, and self-proclaimed prophet who advocates Christian nationalism.
What Is Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalism is nothing new. It means that a nation should be Christian and that its laws and government policies should reflect this. Christian nationalists in the U.S. argue that the country was founded by Christian leaders as a “Christian nation” but that in recent decades the nation has been abandoning that heritage, especially as seen in its change in laws. Christian nationalists generally reject the U.S. Constitution’s supposed separation of church and state doctrine. In Pentecostalism, Christian nationalism has often been called Dominion Theology, meaning Christians ought to have dominion over society.
I have been an evangelical Christian all of my adult life even though many evangelicals would deny I am since my change in Christology. But I have always been against Christian nationalism. Evangelicals do not believe Deists were Christians, yet many of the most important founders of our nation were Deists, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. As to the claim that the U.S. was founded as a “Christian nation,” that is debatable. It depends mostly on how that term is defined. I think it is a worthless argument.
Pope Leo XIV Is an American from Chicago
Pope Leo is the first Catholic pope from North America. He was born and reared in Chicago, Illinois. But he lived and ministered as an Augustinian priest, missionary, and seminary teacher in Peru for over twenty years. In recent years, he has spoken out through social media against much of the ideology advocated by Donald Trump. Thus, it seems that his denouncement of Christian nationalism yesterday was pointed especially at the Trump administration and many of his MAGA crowd.
Pope Leo asking God yesterday to “open borders” and “break down walls” seems especially directed at President Trump. He won his first term as president in the 2016 presidential election with the foremost plank in his political agenda being to build a 2,000 mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to stop illegal immigration. Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, shortly before that election had gone to Mexico to hold an outdoor mass at that border in protest of Trump’s call for a wall, and about 200,000 Mexicans attended it.
Pope Francis Said Those Who Build Walls Are Not Christian
As Pope Francis was flying home to Rome in his airplane, reporters asked him about Donald Trump and his call for a wall. Pope Francis answered, “A person who thinks only of building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Ouch! Yet Pope Francis had said before that concerning homosexuals, “I’m not the judge”? Furthermore, the Vatican is surrounded by walls built in Medieval Times to keep out barbarian invaders. And the end of the Bible predicts that the city of God, called New Jerusalem, will descend from heaven toward earth, and it will be surrounded by a 144-foot high wall (Revelation 21).
Paula White-Cain Trump’s Spiritual Advisor
Twenty-four years ago, Donald Trump watched Charismatic televangelist Paula White-Cain preaching on TV. She also was a church pastor and is today a self-proclaimed “prophet.” Trump then phoned her and said she had the “it” factor. When Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016, he made her his official spiritual advisor, and she delivered the traditional invocation prayer at his inauguration that next January.
The day after the television networks declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election over incumbent President Donald Trump, Paula White-Cain publicly prayed to God in a Miami megachurch (it being televised) that God would nevertheless give the victory to Trump. She declared ecstatically, “I hear the sound of victory. It is done. … We break and divide every demonic confederacy against the election, against America, against who you have declared to be in the White House.” I think this White-Cain influence greatly fueled Trump in his deception that he won the 2020 election and that it therefore was stolen from him, which is a BIG LIE.
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