Why Christian Nationalism is Anti-Christ

"Then Ilúvatar spoke and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'" - The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkein

So, it's been a while since I have written a post. I’ve been trying to think about how to continue the discussion from my last post on Christian Nationalism as an Anti-Christ ideology, as well as touch on some of the recent political and world events. We have the US House in disarray, war in Europe, and a war beginning in Israel after the terrible terrorist attack by Hamas. As I have been watching many people's responses I have been trying to wrap my head around what should be the appropriate Christian response to these events. Christians are called to be meek, merciful, peacemakers, etc. (Matthew 5:2-12); so as it relates to any loss of life, I think a good place to start is to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). On a personal level we should do anything we can to call for and promote peace in all our interactions, we should continue to love our neighbors as ourselves, and forgive our enemies. However, as much as we do that personally, and advocate for that in the world, it is also important to understand that the role of government is separate from the role of the individual Christian. This idea will lead directly into the discussion on why Christian Nationalism is Anti-Christ, but it also shapes my thinking as governments engage in defense, and violence. There has been much Christian writing on the topic of pacifism and the idea of just war, but wherever you land on that spectrum personally (and I’m still not sure where I land at this moment); it should be clear that God has established government to rule; and part of the duty in that rule is to sometimes bear the sword on this earth. Abraham Kuyper points out that: “the government bears the sword which wounds; not the sword of the Spirit.” (1) Throughout scripture there is a distinction between what the government does, and what the Christian does.

Government is established to provide for the common good by the orderly structuring of society, and protection of the citizens of that country. In their best forms they execute justice equitably and allow their citizens to flourish in safety. When something happens in our world like the Hamas attack, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or any of the hundreds of other terrible things that happen each day, we Christians feel the pain and sadness that comes from the loss of life, and also anger at the lack of justice we see in these actions. No matter their reasons, we can feel these pains deep in our souls, because we know that this is not right. It is not right that Hamas killed over 1000 Israeli civilians, it is not right that thousands more Palestinian civilians are being caught in the crossfire and killed. This is a terribly broken situation. There is no easy way out of it. However, I am what I guess would be called a realist. I understand that the sole reason Hamas exists is to kill every single Jew they can get their hands on. As long as Hamas exists as an entity there will never be peace in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank.

With all that being said, I can understand the reaction of the Israeli government. All governments are built to act for the common good of their citizens, and sometimes that means bearing the sword that wounds. Sometimes, to bring justice and peace to this earth, until Jesus comes back, a sword will have to be wielded. We have seen it in the Bible, in history, and we are seeing it today. Just as the Allies fought against Hitler and the Nazis in the 1940s; sometimes for evil to be defeated here and now it may be that God ordains a violent means to achieve that from the temporal powers. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but when I read the scripture I see a duality of responsibility, and the gospel has come to individuals, not governments, therefore we should not be surprised when governments attempt to exercise their God-given authority. I don’t know how exactly this works, and how exactly this looks in practice, but as stated above, as Christians I know we are meant to love God, and our neighbor. We should fight for justice and peace as much as possible. As governments use their power and sword to right wrongs, to bring peace and order, we should be the first to hold them to account, we should always call for as much restraint as possible to stem the deaths of innocent people, we should not cheer for violence and war, but we should not be surprised by it. I’m not sure we should try to put a Christian ethic of peace on the government at all times for these same reasons. There is much that governments can do wrong, but they can also do right, and good.

With this as the backdrop I want to now continue more fully into the discussion on why I think Christian Nationalism is Anti-Christ. One of these reasons is as I stated above. God has ordained governments with a certain level of power, sometimes that power means violence and death. As individuals, as the Church, God has called us to be people of love and peace. So I do not think any government can ever be Christian because of the powers that it has been vested with. It was written of Jesus in Isaiah “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench: he will faithfully bring forth justice.” (Isaiah 42:3) He was also “despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). If we are to be like Christ, and if the purpose of Sanctification is to make us more like Christ, how can we claim that a government that wields the power of life and death is upholding these qualities? How can a government that has to make moral compromises ever faithfully follow the way of Christ? In my opinion, it cannot, so this is the first flaw of Christian Nationalism. It ostensibly attempts to institute the laws of God, and legislate the way of Christ when this is not the character or purpose of government, or the Gospel.

Secondly, my biggest problem with Christian Nationalism can be best illustrated by Michael Flynn. Flynn, formerly a member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, is leading a Christian Nationalist speaking tour around the country. He speaks to pastors, and lay people who most often pay to hear him, but the content of what he says is what is most disturbing to me. In a recent event he told a group of pastors that they should: “put the Bible aside and read the Constitution during sermons.” (2) In the broader context that people need to read the constitution more than their Bibles. According to Michael Flynn, at some points it is more important to read a document created by men than what we consider to be Holy Scripture. None of this is hyperbole. Please, watch the link in the footnotes. What is then more disturbing is that the crowd hoots and hollers in support. They wholeheartedly agree! People, if at any point we think that reading the Constitution is more important than reading the Bible, we need to seriously examine our hearts. Because that is not the way of Christ. If anyone says that we need to put down the Bible, in favor of any document, that person is likely not a Christian. They are what the Bible calls a false teacher. As this ideology becomes more mainstream there are more people coming up every day speaking this kind of heresy. They are what Peter referred to in 2 Peter 2:1-3:

“But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” (my own emphasis added)

I truly hate when people twist the Word of God. They have taken the truth, and made it false. People like Michael Flynn his kind twist, lie, obfuscate, fearmonger, and parade around as charlatans to fill their own pockets with people's money and achieve their own prideful goals. They have found a large audience that is willing and receptive to their message because they have been primed for years by a media/political apparatus that is dependent upon their fear, and a lack of sound theological teaching and living. It is people like these that makes Christianity look bad in the world. They are blaspheming the way of truth out in the open, with pastors and “Christians” cheering them on.

This makes me angry, but it also makes me extremely sad. False Christian Nationalist teachers who twist the Word of God take what is meant to guide us into a beautiful, loving, fulfilling relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit; and distill it into a mean, spiteful, hateful political ideology. This ideology is small, it forces our faith to be small, and our god to be even smaller. We miss out on so much when we succumb to false teachings like this. Christian Nationalism as a political ideology is not even good, and has already been tried before, many times. All with spectacularly terrible consequences.

One of those instances I would like to touch on is when the Papacy in Rome ruled over much of the western world. Also known as the “Dark Ages.” Speaking of the conjunction of the temporal and spiritual powers in Rome, Kuyper writes: “as a natural result the world corrupted the church, and by its dominion over the world the church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life.” (3) This is what we see in our own lives right? There is a common saying, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” for a reason. We have seen people in local politics, managers in jobs, and definitely people in Washington grow to love their power and all the benefits that come along with it (most notably right now is Senator Menendez from New Jersey who is corrupt and should resign right now). It is a common trope in movies that some corrupt local sheriff or politician holds the good guys down because they don’t want to lose their power, money, etc. So why would we think the Church would be different? How would the melding of temporal power with the Church help? I know for many in the Christian Nationalist realm, the assumption is that the “Christian” side of the government would keep the rest from becoming corrupt and making un-Christlike decisions. But even a quick glance at history shows this to be misguided at best. Governments are run by humans. Humans can be good, Christians can be good, but we can all also make bad decisions that are very much un-Christlike. We can’t even keep the Church when it is all by itself completely pure. Just look at the recent sexual scandals in the Southern Baptist Church, and the ones from a few years ago in the Catholic priesthood. Heck, this is why there was a Reformation and we have protestant denominations today! True Christians saw the many flaws in the joining of temporal with earthly power and pushed back against it.

Speaking of the reformation, some of those early fathers had this to say about the joining of the Church with earthly power:

“For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate that they are stupid and false.” (4) - John Calvin

“No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government… Christ’s government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians.” (5) - Martin Luther

“The governments ordained by God for the two communities consist, on the one hand, of ‘the sword’ and ‘the civil law,’ and the other, of ‘the word of Christ’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’; the former constrains wills through external demands and sanctions, the latter harmonizes them freely and inwardly. Both regiments serve ‘the kingdom of Christ’ in the struggle for human souls against ‘the kingdom of the devil,’ but only in strict separateness. Their confusion, always the devil’s work, occurs when any human authority tries to legislate and enforce true Christian faith, thereby usurping the Spirit’s work and denying both divine freedom and human conscience.” (6) - Martin Luther

This all goes to say, that many people beyond myself have seen the folly that comes from trying to join the Church with political power. It is Anti-Christ in that the practitioners who support it must twist the words of the Bible, these false teachers confuse the word of God with the word of man. And in the case of some, they elevate the words of men over the words of God. That is precisely what Christ warned his Church about. But somehow, we seem to have forgotten that important lesson.

Thirdly, by attempting to set up a Christian Nationalist state, its supporters see problems in the world, and try to fix them by something that is not God, nor God ordained. Tim Keller says it nicely:

“In the biblical view of things, the main problem is sin, and the only solution is God and his Grace. The alternative to this view is to identify something besides sin as the main problem with the world and something besides God as the main remedy. That demonizes something that is not completely bad, and makes an idol out is something that cannot be completely good.” (7)

Some of the big issues that many advocates for Christian Nationalism fight against today are the LGBT community, the border, CRT, and Socialism. They have identified the roots of these as “woke ideology,” or variously “Marxism/Socialism.” And the remedy they are prescribing is not to bring the Gospel to their enemies, it is not to love their enemies, it is to somehow legislate Biblical principles and defeat these social issues through political power.

It takes great pride and vanity of heart to believe that we know better than Jesus. These leaders assume to know better than Christ what this world needs. When Jesus came to this earth, he did not set up a temporal government. In John 6:15, when the people were about to take him by force to make him king, Jesus “withdrew to the mountain by himself.” To support Christian Nationalism, we who are “no better than our master” (John 13:16; 15:20) would presuppose that we were in fact better and that we knew better than him. Somehow, we who are sheep are supposed to know better than the Shepherd? I don’t buy it. Christ had the opportunity, and the means to establish a temporal government here on this earth. Yet he explicitly chose not to. That is because the Kingdom of Christ is a Kingdom not of earthly power, it is spiritual, relational, it is already but not yet. The way of Christ is to submit, to love, and to do things that this world finds foolish. Not because it will bring us power, stability, or a “guaranteed” safe future for the next generation, it is to follow the way of Christ because that way leads to life, and life eternal. It is the way our Savior walked so we should be loath to follow any other path. This is how it was in the Garden, in the Old Testament, God did not initially grant Israel a king. Their ruler was God. In the New Testament, this same pattern is followed Jeremiah 31:31-34 speaks beautifully of the new covenant that was coming, and has come in Christ. There is no longer a temple we must travel to, but God says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is the vision of the new reality that Christ has ushered in. It is not a temporal power that we must struggle over and hold onto and fight for. What we have been given through faith in Christ is a deeply personal, intimate relationship.

To recap, Christian Nationalism is an Anti-Christ ideology because first, it intertwines the Gospel of Peace with governmental power, which must harm and do many things that are anathema to the Gospel. Second, there are no good faith proponents of Christian Nationalism. All serious advocates for this ideology twist the word of God to fit their small, angry, ideas. Thus warping the true intent of the Gospel, and spreading a false gospel in its place. Third, advocates for Christian Nationalism try to prescribe something else other than God to solve the world’s problems. Out of one side of their mouth they claim that Christ is king and they are building his kingdom, when it is really a government made in their own image they promote. Their solution for problems is not more of God, it is more government, more laws, and more hate. Until next time, thanks for reading!

1) Kuyper, A. (2007b). Lectures on Calvinism. Cosimo, Inc.

2) /www.threads.net/@patriottakes/post/CvujRc8rzl7/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

3) Kuyper, A. (2007). Lectures on Calvinism. Cosimo, Inc.

4) O’Donovan, O., & O’Donovan, J. L. (1999). From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, 100-1625. Pg. 675

5) Ibid. Pg. 587

6) Ibid. Pg. 582

7) Keller, T. (2009). Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. Penguin.