Political Power Won't Fix Christian Nationalism

In the last few years, some commentators have become concerned with "Christian nationalism," by which they mean primarily evangelical Protestants who support former President Donald J. Trump and believe that America is or ought to be a Christian nation. 

So-called Christian nationalists call themselves by a different name: patriots. Pastor Ken Peters even named his church in Lenoir City, Tennessee "Patriot Church." Peters was in part the subject of a recent National Public Radio report on Christian nationalism in America. In one of his sermons, "How Satan Destroys the World," Peters says, "Don't let the mainstream media or the left tell you that we were not a Christian nation ... You know why there's churches everywhere and not mosques? Because we're a Christian nation!"

The NPR report also profiles Reverend Tonya Barnette, whose interpretation of Christianity is directly opposite of what Peters preaches at the Patriot Church. Barnette is the youth pastor at the Church of the Savior, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, and she utterly rejects Christian nationalism. She says, "The goal is compassion, kindness, and care for the other. That's what Jesus did." She insists that those like Peters and congregants at Patriot Church fear "the nation changing so that it's not white, cis, straight, male Christians in charge only."

What is remarkable about the story is that the framing could be reversed. Barnette seems to fear Peters as a political reactionary, but she, too, wants America to become a Christian nation – just on the terms she propounds. Moreover, Barnette seems to fear Peters as much as she believes those like Peters fear her as a lesbian. If the desire to impose one interpretation of Protestant Christianity onto the nation makes one a Christian nationalist, then Barnette fits the bill just as well as Peters does. 

The problem, then, seems not to be with Christianity but with nationalism – in which the federal government imposes a single interpretation of the Christian religion onto the broader public. The chief motivation in both cases is the same: fear. Therefore, what is at stake in these versions of Christian nationalism is not true religion, but political power rooted in mutual suspicion.

Such a standoff has been the status quo in American Protestant churches arguably since before the Founding. Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists mostly favored the American Revolution, while Anglicans were more likely to be British loyalists. In the years preceding the Civil War, tensions over slavery divided Protestant denominations into northern and southern rivals. During the early twentieth century, Protestants further divided, largely on class lines, between upper classes desiring dogmatic revisions of biblical "modernism" and lower classes sticking to old-time biblical "fundamentalism." This division was also seen on issues such as Prohibition, censorship, and immigration. Catholics and Jews were not spared such divisions, either. 

From this, one can reach two important conclusions. The first is that "Christian nationalism" is as old as America and has taken many shapes. Second, the solution to the problem of Christian nationalism is to back away from using political power as a substitute for persuasion. 

What inspires fear both in Peters and Barnette is how state power can threaten the moral positions they hold. Thus, they look to the state to protect them from each other. Peters says, "We consider the left in our nation today to be a giant bully ... And when there is a bully on the schoolyard and somebody rises up and punches back, 'Hallelujah!' So we are thankful for Trump." 

Meanwhile, Barnette's demand for "compassion, kindness, and care for the other" has led to precisely the kind of bullying Peters fears, most famously in the legal harassment of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission sued Phillips, many conservative Christians looked to Republicans to defend them.

To prevent the escalation of various Christian nationalisms, therefore, requires a de-escalation of state power – a dim prospect at the moment, since neither side trusts the other and both have a credible fear of the other based on recent history. A starting point for both sides might be to look to the example of Jesus's death at the hands of the Roman state. Rather than standing in the crowd shouting "Crucify him!" perhaps both sides should join Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John at the foot of the cross.

James M. Patterson is Associate Professor of Politics and Chair of the Politics Department at Ave Maria University and is also a Jack Miller Center faculty partner.