Christianity and Nationalism: A Review Article

 By Richard Gamble - Posted at The Ordained Servant:

The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2022, 488 pages, $24.99.

In 1918, at the height of America’s wartime prohibition of alcohol, the liberal Christian Century promised its readers that “Christianity plus science will bring in the Kingdom of God.” Today, we are as likely to doubt science as to trust it, and such optimism seems naïve and even ludicrous. But that mathematical formula captured the essence of a bygone era’s faith in science and progress, a faith celebrated a century and more ago by a cadre of Protestant leaders in the name of advancing God’s work in the world.

This was the social gospel at high tide, and this was Christian nationalism. The progressives could have easily substituted “nation” for “science” and proclaimed that “Christianity plus nationalism will bring in the Kingdom of God.” In the crucible of reform, the phrase “Christian nationalism” was common among the social gospelers, whether in reference to domestic politics, America’s role in the World War, or missionary activity in India and China. This was a “national gospel,” the phrase some Canadian scholars have adopted to identify the social gospel movement in Canada. Used judiciously, this alternative label minimizes our preconceptions about the relationship between theology and activism and illuminates an aspiration that brought together liberals and conservatives for the sake of saving and sanctifying the nation.

So prevalent was the rhetoric of Christian nationalism and “muscular Christianity” on the theological and political left in the Progressive Era, that it can appear in hindsight that the social gospel held a monopoly on these ambitions. I gave that mistaken impression in my own work on the social gospel and World War I more than twenty years ago. But Christian nationalism was not a monopoly of the left wing of the church. It was broadly evangelical, in some cases Reformed.

“National gospel” also helps clarify today’s Christian nationalism but for opposite reasons. Our understanding of Christian nationalism does not assume that it is a product of the Left in church and state. Far from it. The dominant narrative blames the Right in church and state, especially MAGA Republicans, when in fact it was manufactured at least as much by the liberals. Critics and promoters alike miss this. The lovers and haters of Christian nationalism, and even more dispassionate observers, miss how strong the movement once was on the Left.

A good history of the origins, public expressions, and purposes of Christian nationalism needs to be written. It will require a careful historian. The trending, academically fashionable field of Christian nationalism, like the older study of civil religion, tends to be dominated by sociologists, political theorists, journalists, and theologians. Historians have had less to say about it, for reasons unclear to me. Historians like to rain on everybody’s parade. They resist, or ought to resist, the temptation to use the past to give us more reasons to believe what we already believe. History is messy, contradictory, and filled with surprises. History does not follow human logic; it does not think geometrically or syllogistically. It resists simplification. It does not keep good company with system-builders. Indeed, historical understanding, along with sound theology and ecclesiology, is the best antidote I know of for the dangers of ideology, the taking of one true thing about the world and inflating it into madness, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis.

It is hard to miss the controversy over Christian nationalism that has been brewing in the media, academia, politics, and the pulpit for twenty years at least. A quick search of the phrase on amazon.com shows its prevalence and increasing fashionableness as an academic or pseudo-academic topic. Whether it will grow into something more than a tempest in a Twitter teapot is hard to gauge. But there are reasons to be alert to its claims and potential influence in both church and nation. Many of the opponents of Christian Nationalism are shrill and alarmist. Their books are often hasty and shallow. Defenders, for their part, often pursue their cause with crusading zeal and glib dismissal of objections. Their books, too, can be hasty and shallow. A common tactic on social media is to dismiss critics as “Boomers.” Surely we can do better than that.

Continue here.

HT: Gamble On Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism | The Heidelblog