Christian Nationalism Is Not New

Not only is Christian Nationalism not new; it is not especially American. Yes, to be sure, America adds its own wrinkle to Christian Nationalism. “American Christian Nationalism” is not exactly the same as any other Christian Nationalism. However…

My former colleague Philip Jenkins wrote an eye-opening book about World War I that has unfortunately been largely overlooked: A Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Philip is a historian who writes books about religions in history with special focus on Christianity. I highly recommend all of his books while noting that, as an evangelical theologian, I sometimes disagree with some of his points.

In the book Philip demonstrates clearly from original sources that World War I was, in the eyes of its major combatant nations, a holy war, a religious crusade. Yes, it was about imperialism, or fears of imperialism, and even oil, but it was fueled by each combatant country claiming to hold the religious high ground for the sake of civilization itself.

Most of the combatant countries were allegedly Christian, including America. The Ottoman Empire is the main exception. It was primarily Muslim.

Back to Christian Nationalism.

At that time, in the early 20th century, even many liberal Protestants were American Christian Nationalists. All you have to do to see that is read some of them including, for example, Walter Rauschenbusch whose book The Social Principles of Jesus I discussed here recently. His three main books—Christianity and the Social Crisis, Christianizing the Social Order, and A Theology for the Social Crisis—all exude American exceptionalism and Christian Nationalism. Rauschenbusch and his left-leaning Protestant social gospelers believed that America is God’s gift to the world and that one of its tasks is to spread the gospel of America to the rest of the world. First, however, according to Rauschenbusch, it needs to Christianize itself more fully.

Ironically, many, if not most, liberal-leaning “mainline” American Protestants rightly decry and criticize American Christian Nationalism while ignoring their own denominations’ roles in promoting it in the past. Of course, their spiritual-theological ancestors had a differing vision of American Christian Nationalism than that of contemporary conservative, evangelical Protestants.

Nevertheless, American Christian Nationalism has always been around, going back to the impulse of Manifest Destiny that drove so much of American imperialism in the 19th century and into the 20th century. Manifest Destiny was driven by the idea of America as a “light set on a hill” by God, to civilize the world. It went beyond that to justifying imperialism in the Mexican and Spanish wars.

This is an element of President Donald Trump’s imperialist vision that I think most commentators are missing. Not that Trump wants to Christianize the world but that he seems to believe that God is on America’s side no matter what the American government does. What else could possibly justify American exceptionalism, as believed by America’s Trumpists?

I would like to propose a different idea of American Christian Nationalism. It’s central message today is “America repent!” Return to God with deep repentance for past sins of imperialism that keep repeating themselves. Turn back to Jesus, the Prince of Peace who showed such compassion and empathy to the weak, the vulnerable, the outsiders.

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