Righteous leaders in just communities and societies can make a huge impact. We do our best to follow Christ, whether we’re in good times or bad, whoever our leaders are. Ideally, though, we want our leaders to be righteous branches, too. I stumbled on a survey from PRRI taken in 2023. It said that 54% of people who believe in Christian Nationalism agree with this statement: “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.” I couldn’t believe how similar this statement was to what Jeremiah was talking about – judgment, even violence, that restores a wise and just king!
I was astounded, but also… I realized I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what Christian Nationalism was. It turns out that I’m not alone in that. A Pew Research survey from February of 2024 said that a little over fifty percent of adult Americans said they hadn’t heard or read anything about Christian Nationalism at all. It also doesn’t help that some people use “Christian Nationalism” as a catch-all insult for any Christian politics that they don’t like. Nowadays, some folks are claiming that title for themselves.
When he wrote to the Thessalonian church, Paul said, “test everything; hold fast to what is good.” This is crucial because Christian hope is not false hope. That’s why we’re called to listen, to learn, to test whatever claims the banner of Christ, including Christian Nationalism. It seems that Christian Nationalism is more of an array of ideas than a specific, uniform belief. It begins with ideas that are easier to agree with: that Christianity has been an important part of the history of our nation; that when we make laws, as Christians we should make sure that we are being guided by Jesus’s moral lessons. On the extreme end, Christian Nationalists talk about merging Christianity with government like the Puritans did.
According to their online manifesto, the New Columbia Movement believes that: “Democracy has been the greatest political experiment of our time, and it is a failed one.” According to them, the reason things are so bad right now is that people can’t be trusted to vote for what’s right. A leading Christian Nationalist voice, Stephen Wolfe, suggested that the best path for American righteousness would be to have a great man as our leader who he calls a “Christian prince.” This “prince” would have all the power of the legislative, judicial, and executive branch. Wolfe believes that would give him the vantage point to ensure that the right choices were made. Under this model, the point of government is to pursue the highest good for its people. Well, what’s a greater good than getting everyone into heaven? But people have so many beliefs. What happens to them? What would Christian faithfulness look like?
The New Columbia Movement considered the difficulty of having such a diverse society ruled by a Christian state. Non-Christians could be kicked out or the government could try to force everyone to be Christian. They acknowledged that neither of these were ethical, safe, nor practical. They concluded that: “In the end, there is only one solution to America’s cultural diversity, and that is to take the same approach as the Romans… Subjugated people were allowed to retain their personal culture but were unified with the rest of the Empire under a Roman high culture.”
Now, if there’s one thing that Jesus was familiar with in his earthly life, it was the corruption, the violence, and the injustice of the Roman Empire, right? He didn’t need to imagine what such a system would look like or reinstate one. Goodness, he could have deposed Caesar in the blink of an eye and seized his throne if he wanted to. Luke 4 specifically tells us that when Jesus was tested in the wilderness, the devil tempted him, showing him all the kingdoms of the world. The devil said, “I will give [you] all this authority and their glory… If you…will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus squarely rejected this temptation. Jesus rejected it, but we don’t always want to. We’re drawn to the idea that our way could rule the day. We want righteous branches that put us on top. Yet, our hope is in Christ and he didn’t choose the path of domination; he chose the path of the cross.
Resources:
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehoiakim
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah
– https://www.prri.org/research/support-for-christian-nationalism-in-all-50-states/
– https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/03/15/christianitys-place-in-politics-and-christian-nationalism/
– https://wherepeteris.com/americas-civic-religion-and-the-dangers-of-christian-nationalism/
– https://newcolumbiamovement.org/manifesto/