Thoughts on Christian Nationalism: Church Visit #1

I’m enjoying a short sabbatical. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, it’s an extended time of rest, as well as an opportunity to refresh one’s relationship with God. The church I serve evidently knows that a healthy church requires a healthy pastor. Thank you very much, Grace Fellowship, San Francisco!  

Among other luxuries, a sabbatical allows me to attend other churches. Rest begins by going to church and not being in charge.

Janice thought it would be good to start with a neighborhood church just three blocks from our house. I don’t get great vibes from it; kind of a mega-churchy vibe, I said, so I had reservations. We drive or walk by it all the time. It’s a huge building with a huge parking lot.

Janice: Oh, c’mon. It can’t be that bad. 

Grace Fellowship is about a 25-minute drive, so it was refreshing to think of just walking to church. So off we went.

Big Church in our neighborhood

We’re pretty fast walkers, but we slowed our gait upon seeing three flags waving in the parking lot—the American flag, the Christian flag, and a special flag commemorating the 250^th anniversary of the United States. We know enough about this thing called Christian nationalism to be leery of it. I’ll explain in a minute. But hey, just because a church flies these flags doesn’t mean they’re caught up in it. “Right?” I tried to convince myself.

 Against my better judgment, we kept walking until we reached the doors. They were open, so we walked in and through the foyer, where a nice lady handed us a bulletin. We entered the sanctuary and sat toward the back. Some very friendly people greeted us at different points.

“Welcome to Big Church, everyone (not its real name, lol), and Happy 250^th birthday, America!” celebrated the self-identified associate pastor/worship leader. It was the day after the Fourth of July, so I cut him some slack. And besides, there’s nothing wrong with affirming the birth of the nation. Still, my right shoulder twitched. And my hands, resting on top of the chair in front of me, tightened their grip.   

We sang some worship songs, most of them unfamiliar to us. I raised my hands in praise during the one song I knew. But then…the set ended with a modern, up-tempo version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I dry-heaved. I looked at Janice, my eyes pleading, “Let’s get out of here.”  But we stayed. I don’t know why, but we stayed. 

The senior pastor took to the pulpit. I have a lot of sympathy for preachers. I know the pressure, the expectation, the oppression of Sundays-a-comin. So I was rooting for him. I badly wanted him to connect with his people. He started out okay, though I found his demeanor off-putting, as he exuded a kind of muscular Christianity. Volume. Bravado. Triumph. Confidence bordering on arrogance. It didn’t help that he was a big, husky guy. Embarrassingly, such a display appealed to me at an earlier time, but I now abhor it (probably because I still have it in me).

His message started out fine, but it became increasingly clear where he was going: God has blessed America. Toward the end, he gave an example of a time when he hosted some friends from a faraway land. The foreign visitors marveled at the all-you-can-eat restaurant he had taken them to. “I grabbed the opportunity,” he boasted, “to teach them about how God has blessed this country. What abundance!”  

Now can we go?

Not yet. It’s almost over. The offering still had to be taken. The pastor prayed, and the ushers began passing the plates. The worship band took their positions up front and proceeded to lead us in…that’s right: “God Bless America.” Many stood up and put their hands over their hearts.   

I lost it. My body shook involuntarily. My skin turned hot (a fever?). My stomach threatened to eject breakfast. I wanted to scream, “Stop!” But I didn’t. Janice saw me reacting and finally said, “Okay, let’s go.” Right before we got out the door, the same nice lady tried to hand us a take-home-sized 250^th anniversary flag on a stick. Nicely (I think), we said, “No, thank you.”

Christian nationalism: why am I so allergic to it?  After all, I’m a Christian. And I love this country. Both are true, and I declare them unashamedly. But I am not a Christian nationalist, that is, I don’t meld my Christianity with my nationality and my nationality with my Christianity. I keep cross and flag separate. When I said Yes to Christ many moons ago, I pledged primary allegiance to the cross over the flag and everything else for that matter. As I grew in the faith, I began to see that when I confess Jesus is Lord, I’m also saying that Caesar is not.

When cross and flag get married, something is born that is neither Christian nor American.

It’s not Christian because it’s way too limiting for the God who blesses all nations. Tempting as it is to think that God has especially blessed America, we must resist. Because it’s not true. God hasn’t chosen America over the other 200 nations in the world. As far as I know, Israel of old is the only one that has ever legitimately claimed that. And even they couldn’t claim exclusivity when that time passed. “Lord, is it at this time that you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” asked the disciples, which, if they asked it today, would be, “Lord, is it at this time that you are going to make America great again?”

Jesus’ reply: “Listen to me, my boneheaded followers. I love you, but what part of ‘for God so loved the world’ did you not understand? I don’t know the time, but at some point, when the Father’s ready, peace and justice (the kingdom) will be restored to Israel…and all other nations that make up the whole world. You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of earth. Please get this through your thick nationalistic heads: I am not America first. I am world first.”

I wish I didn’t know that the ethnocide of indigenous populations, chattel slavery of imported Africans, and Manifest Destiny were undeniably a part of the founding of this nation. And yet, many today unhesitatingly declare its founding to have been thoroughly Christian. And many of these same people, who believe America has gone the way of destruction (led, of course, by the leftist Democratic party), feel compelled in the name of Jesus to take America back for God, to go back to the good ‘ol days when America was Christian. But I regret to inform you that it was never Christian to begin with.

Christian nationalism assumes an us-vs.-them posture in the world, and true America is always the good guys. Why? Because God is on its side. That’s the problem with melding faith and nation: America is ultimately infallible.

America is the idol of the Christian nationalist. Which explains why anyone who dares to criticize its actions is called all sorts of names: a hater, an ingrate, a socialist, a communist, a Democrat (heaven forbid!), and definitely not a Christian.

Ultimately, Christian nationalism is not Christian because it’s idolatrous.

It’s not American either. Does not high school history teach us that modern America was founded on religious freedom, not Christianity? The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” Please read that again. Moreover, it taught us that the earliest settlers were made up of Europeans escaping extreme religious restrictions and/or persecution. In fact, the First Amendment reads the way it reads precisely because the founders wanted to build a nation free from the dominance of one religion. The American experiment is at least in part to see if people of different religious persuasions can be a nation together. That means that America is as much for the Jew, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Atheist, and even the wackiest religion you can think of, as it is for the Catholics and the Protestants.  

I repeat: Christian nationalism is neither Christian nor American. It is a grape nut—an historically inaccurate, dangerous, idolatrous grape nut. It should make sense to no one.

enjoying sabbatical

And yet, there they were in that church singing the glories of America alongside the glory of God, as if it were the fourth member of the Trinity. I suspect that our experience in that church was typical of evangelical churches across the land. Sadly, I don’t have much hope that this will change. Nevertheless, I will keep preaching against it. More positively, I will, by the grace and power of God, keep preaching the beautiful truth of God’s global vision and God’s outrageously big love for all.  

“Where to next Sunday?” I asked Janice.

 “You pick this time.”