The PCA's Report Can Help Us Move on from the Christian Nationalism Moment
By Samuel D. James - Posted at Digital Liturgies:
Published June 9, 2026
Last June, the Presbyterian Church in America’s General Assembly, under the leadership of moderator Kevin DeYoung, commissioned a denominational study and report on Christian nationalism. That report has now been released. I’m not a Presbyterian, but I have several friends who are pastors and teachers within the PCA, and I serve a Christian publishing organization with thick ties to PCA seminaries and churches. As such, I was eager to read the report, feeling it unusually relevant for myself and my work.Bottom line: I think the men behind this report have done an excellent job. This examination of Christian nationalism, both as expressed in older forms of political theology, and in new movements today, is biblical, fair, wise, and practical. What’s more, I think the report can help evangelicals situate Christian nationalist debate more accurately in its historical context, accomplishing two important things: 1) Creating space for legitimate, in-bounds disagreement about civil government’s relationship to the church, and 2) Taking away space for pernicious, sinful partiality and rhetoric.
These two things—drawing the lines of legitimate disagreement, while contrasting those against the lines between sinful speech and attitudes—offer a kind of clarity that can, I think, help evangelicals move out of the online turf war phase of political theology. To put it more simply: Christians who are serious about theology and politics need to move on from the Christian nationalism moment as it has existed thus far. This report can help them do that.
