Essay
America
Comment
Conspiracy theory
Nationalism
9 min read

Christian Nationalism: an uncontrollable ideological fusion

In America, Cross, Flag, and Nation have become fused into a single, toxic entity. Jared Stacy dissects the increasingly influential ideology of Christian Nationalism.

Jared holds a Theological Ethics PhD from the University of Aberdeen. His research focuses conspiracy theory, politics, and evangelicalism.

Christian Nationalism

If you follow US politics, you’ve likely heard the term “Christian Nationalism.” According to Google Trends, the phrase peaked in popularity last summer, right around the public hearings of the January 6th Commission. But its popularity often obscures a near total lack of consensus on what it means. 

Today, “Christian Nationalism” has political potency because it taps into primal identities, theologies, and moralities. You hear about it because commentators and academics need a way to narrate the social and political world. Tribes need it too. Yet, there are deniers. Evangelist Franklin Graham claimed that “Christian Nationalism” doesn’t exist. Many have come to understand it as a liberal dog whistle, either to discourage Christians from political activism or as a form of persecution itself. Still others, like Republican Representative Marjorie Tyler Greene, embrace it for themselves and campaign on it. For all its popularity, we need particularity.  

Which Christian Nationalism? 

When you say “Christian Nationalism” my response is “which one?” There are sociological, historical, political, ideological, and theological ways to define this term and their relation. The definition I prefer is the theological confusion of “white” with “Christian” and “Christian” with “American”. This confusion marks a transformation of theology into ideology, with social and political consequences. We won’t unpack that here. I’m using it as a starting point to show the variety of approaches to understanding the term. 

Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry describe “Christian Nationalism” as “a cultural framework—a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives and value systems that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.” Their study, published in Taking America Back For God, surveyed Americans on five questions. Questions included whether or not the government should declare the US a Christian nation, or whether it should allow prayer in schools. Based on the responses, they were able to categorize responders into types that reflected adherence to their definition. These types were Rejectors, Resisters, Accommodators, and Ambassadors.   

What Whitehead and Perry describe as “Christian Nationalism” I would have called mere “Christianity” in my American upbringing in evangelical spaces. We can see here the germ of confusion over the term. What sociology names as “Christian Nationalism” can be understood as mere “faithful” Christianity within particular Christian communities.  

It’s not that we ought to pick one over the other. It’s that we need to engage with multiple disciplines in sketching these borders, including theology. The problem that exists in the void of sociological or political accounts is how the idea of faithfulness to the church has been tied to and conditioned by socio-cultural norms and ideological commitments.  

American Christians may need to distance themselves from the American Jesus

Christian Nationalism in history

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts his finger on this problem. He argues that, in the United States, white American identity and Christianity come together as “an identity without difference”. This fusion occurs when churches are determined by the story of America, a particular telling of its history. He writes,  

When Christians in America take as their fundamental task to make America work, we lose our ability to survive as church. We do so because in the interest of serving America the church becomes unwittingly governed by the story of America… that story is meant to make our God at home in America. 

Hauerwas helps us turn to the historical in understanding Christian Nationalism. Here, we are met with a persistent historical idea of a “Christian Nation” and its influence on the United States.  

This idea preceded the United States and is as old as Christendom itself. Puritan minister John Winthrop called the Massachusetts Bay Colony as “City on a Hill” in 1630. Winthrop’s application to the Puritan colony has been stretched to its limits. Today, it still shows up in political rhetoric referencing the United States. 

The historical idea of a “Christian Nation” has always been politically potent. But it has a distinct American flavour through the Constitutional disestablishment of religion in the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments after its adoption in 1787).  

In his remarkable judicial history of religious freedom, David Sehat argues that while the Federal government rejected the idea of a State church, there was significant State level establishment of Christianity well into the 19th century. Beyond that, Sehat shows there was a significant socio-cultural movement of evangelicals which functioned as a de facto Christian establishment amidst de jure disestablishment.  

In the Fifties, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled to prohibit teacher-led prayer and enact integration in Jim Crow America. Sehat’s account interprets these rulings as a significant blow to the presumptive moral establishment. Today, you will hear constant appeals to a Judeo-Christian morality as the necessary proviso for a functioning democracy. These appeals often contain the claim that, at some point, the US has departed from this contract. My point is that this historical idea of a Christian nation is complex. But it is also a live question, actively shaping the political situation in every era. 

300 years after Winthrop, Rev. Gerald L.K. Smith used the term “Christian Nationalism” in the 1930’s and 40’s as part of his “America First” and “Christian Nationalist Crusade” political movements. Smith was in many ways fascist-lite, especially in his anti-semitism and in his advocacy for a near theocratic Christian capture of the State. His preaching & activism featured a mix of blood & soil nationalism, conspiratorial narratives, and Christian moral teaching. In many ways, Smith stands as a historical harbinger of the political situation today. 

Covert and overt Christian Nationalism 

Today, you are more likely to hear US Christians sympathetic to the ideas associated with Christian Nationalism claiming the Founding Fathers were all practicing evangelical Christians, not Enlightened deists. You will hear nostalgia for an American past marked by Judeo-Christian values. You won’t hear nuanced historical narratives like Sehat. 

Much of this is diffused through culture today through the widely discredited work of pseudo-historian David Barton. Barton has been associated with right wing figures and politicians like Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck. His New York Times bestselling book on Thomas Jefferson was retracted by a Christian publisher for historical claims “not adequately supported.” 

The theo-political claim that America ought to be a Christian nation today is fueled by the historical claim that it was a Christian nation. This history is complex. As are the theologies and corresponding politics which emerge from them. Though various political orders exist, how the church relates to the State is never a settled question. 

In the US today, there are two main streams, two understandings of “Christian Nationalism” which are converging with great political force. I call these the covert and overt forms of Christian Nationalism. 

Overt Christian Nationalism is most concentrated in the ideas and practices of the New Apostolic Reformation. This movement, though lacking institutions or hierarchal organization, is called by some of its advocates as a “Fourth House of Christendom”. It emerged from the teaching of C. Peter Wagner, who was one of the founding advocates of Church Growth techniques at Fuller Theological Seminary.  

In the last stages of his career, Wagner used spiritual warfare paradigms and Pentecostal theology to both narrate the success of his church growth techniques in the past, and envision their expansion into the social and political world. Wagner’s ideas coalesced into a new expression of Dominion Theology married with the prosperity gospel. This theology fuels the Christian capture and control of what Lance Wallnau calls the “Seven Mountains of Influence”. Media, entertainment, business—these are all mountains of influence for the church to rightfully claim as it combats darkness in the world. 

Covert Christian Nationalism is most concentrated today with Reformed, magisterial Protestants like Douglas Wilson and Stephen Wolfe. Both have recently published books advocating for, among other things, the construction of a Christian political and social order.  

Historically, much of these ideas emerged from Christian Reconstructionist thought. What makes these ideas covert is the strategies used to realize their Christendom. And what is significant is the way disestablishment (religious liberty) is central to this strategy. Gary North, a key figure in the Religious Right best summarized covert Christian Nationalism in 1982:  

“we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God. Murder, abortion, and pornography will be illegal. God’s law will be enforced. It will take time.” 

Wilson, in line with the covert strategy, has created something of a moral enclave in Moscow, Idaho. It is Christendom in a microcosm, and harkens back to the Magisterial Protestantism that prefigured the modern State. The New Apostolic Reformation, through prosperity preachers like Kenneth Copeland and prophecy figures like Lance Wallnau seek Christendom in macrocosm. If covert Christian Nationalism builds moral enclaves, overt Christian Nationalism rides the waves of new media, it seeks wealth and purchases the inside access to Trump’s evangelical court. 

The political host 

To understand the political potency of Christian Nationalism in the present, we have to recognize first that it is diverse. Both overt and covert forms of Christian Nationalism are theologically at odds in several ways. But theological diversity does not rule out political unity. This unity comes through utility, in the concentrated form of a willing political host.  

Both overt and covert expressions of Christian Nationalism are often unified by and concentrated in willing political hosts. These variations of Christian Nationalism, reflected by Christian communities and increasingly by mere social groups with little or no religious affiliation, can always converge around and concentrate in a political host.  

This is why foreign observers of the United States might just equate Christian Nationalism with the rise of Donald Trump. Trump, both his candidacy and his presidency, makes possible the paradoxical unity between overt and covert Christian Nationalism. Either expression can narrate his rise to power as accomplishing their goals, serving their purposes, in their way. There’s something to be said for treating this utility as a form of idolatry. 

But the idea that Christian Nationalism will simply vanish if Donald Trump is incarcerated or fails to win the election ignores its historical persistence and its theological claims. Sociological attempts to name Christian Nationalism, and political or social attempts to contain it, like the January 6 commission, are helpful but are also provisional. This is because they are unable to disrupt the theological claims which fuel it.  

A final word 

Which brings me to the primary problem I believe Christian Nationalism poses. This article has tried to connect its social and historical reality to its current political potency. But its main error seems to me to be its move towards supremacy. Jesus’ rejection of political power in the wilderness and his resistance to political power through the Cross are lost in the rising tide of Christian Nationalism.  

Catholic Church historian Fr. Hugo Rahner notes that the church has always given a “yes” and a “no” to the State. We need more thinking on what should properly be the church in America’s “yes” and “no”.  

Christians have no natural or divine claim to authority over others on the basis of their confession. If the Church in the United States aims to address the political reality of Christian Nationalism, it must begin here again, as to what Jesus’ rejection of and resistance to political power actually means today. And in order to do this, American Christians may need to distance themselves from the American Jesus, only then to discern the things they have picked up and called “Biblical” which are merely ideological. Disillusionment proceeds divestment. Without this disillusionment and divestment, perhaps the political hosts of Christian Nationalism will continue to rise with the sanction of certain forms of Christianity in the United States, and around the world. 

Review
Books
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Comment
Psychology
7 min read

We don’t have an over-diagnosis problem, we have a society problem

Suzanne O’Sullivan's question is timely
A visualised glass head shows a swirl of pink across the face.
Maxim Berg on Unsplash.

Rates of diagnoses for autism and ADHD are at an all-time high, whilst NHS funding remains in a perpetual state of squeeze. In this context, consultant neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, in her recent book The Age of Diagnosis, asks a timely question: can getting a diagnosis sometimes do more harm than good? Her concern is that many of these apparent “diagnoses” are not so much wrong as superfluous; in her view, they risk harming a person’s sense of wellbeing by encouraging self-imposed limitations or prompting them to pursue treatments that may not be justified. 

There are elements of O-Sullivan’s argument that I am not qualified to assess. For example, I cannot look at the research into preventative treatments for localised and non-metastatic cancers and tell you what proportion of those treatments is unnecessary. However, even from my lay-person’s perspective, it does seem that if the removal of a tumour brings peace of mind to a patient, however benign that tumour might be, then O’Sullivan may be oversimplifying the situation when she proposes that such surgery is an unnecessary medical intervention.  

But O’Sullivan devotes a large proportion of the book to the topics of autism and ADHD – and on this I am less of a lay person. She is one of many people who are proposing that these are being over diagnosed due to parental pressure and social contagion. Her particular concern is that a diagnosis might become a self-fulfilling prophecy, limiting one’s opportunities in life: “Some will take the diagnosis to mean that they can’t do certain things, so they won’t even try.” Notably, O’Sullivan persists with this argument even though the one autistic person whom she interviewed for the book actually told her the opposite: getting a diagnosis had helped her interviewee, Poppy, to re-frame a number of the difficulties that she was facing in life and realise they were not her fault.  

Poppy’s narrative is one with which we are very familiar at the Centre for Autism and Theology, where our team of neurodiverse researchers have conducted many, many interviews with people of all neurotypes across multiple research projects. Time and time again we hear the same thing: getting a diagnosis is what helps many neurodivergent people make sense of their lives and to ask for the help that they need. As theologian Grant Macaskill said in a recent podcast:  

“A label, potentially, is something that can help you to thrive rather than simply label the fact that you're not thriving in some way.” 

Perhaps it is helpful to remember how these diagnoses come about, because neurodivergence cannot be identified by any objective means such as by a blood test or CT scan. At present the only way to get a diagnosis is to have one’s lifestyle, behaviours and preferences analysed by clinicians during an intrusive and often patronising process of self-disclosure. 

Despite the invidious nature of this diagnostic process, more and more people are willing to subject themselves to it. Philosopher Robert Chapman looks to late-stage capitalism for the explanation. Having a diagnosis means that one can take on what is known as the “sick role” in our societal structures. When one is in the “sick role” in any kind of culture, society, or organisation, one is given social permission to take less personal responsibility for one’s own well-being. For example, if I have the flu at home, then caring family members might bring me hot drinks, chicken soup or whatever else I might need, so that I don’t have to get out of bed. This makes sense when I am sick, but if I expected my family to do things like that for me all the time, then I would be called lazy and demanding! When a person is in the “sick role” to whatever degree (it doesn’t always entail being consigned to one’s bed) then the expectations on that person change accordingly.  

Chapman points out that the dynamics of late-stage capitalism have pushed more and more people into the “sick role” because our lifestyles are bad for our health in ways that are mostly out of our own control. In his 2023 book, Empire of Normality, he observes,  

“In the scientific literature more generally, for instance, modern artificial lighting has been associated with depression and other health conditions; excessive exposure to screen time has been associated with chronic overstimulation, mental health conditions, and cognitive disablement; and noise annoyance has been associated with a twofold increase in depression and anxiety, especially relating to noise pollution from aircraft, traffic, and industrial work.” 

Most of this we cannot escape, and on top of it all we live life at a frenetic pace where workers are expected to function like machines, often subordinating the needs and demands of the body. Thus, more and more people begin to experience disablement, where they simply cannot keep working, and they start to reach for medical diagnoses to explain why they cannot keep pace in an environment that is constantly thwarting their efforts to stay fit and well. From this arises the phenomenon of “shadow diagnoses” – this is where “milder” versions of existing conditions, including autism and ADHD, start to be diagnosed more commonly, because more and more people are feeling that they are unsuited to the cognitive, sensory and emotional demands of daily working life.  

When I read in O’Sullivan’s book that a lot more people are asking for diagnoses, what I hear is that a lot more people are asking for help.

O’Sullivan rightly observes that some real problems arise from this phenomenon of “shadow diagnoses”. It does create a scenario, for example, where autistic people who experience significant disability (e.g., those who have no perception of danger and therefore require 24-hour supervision to keep them safe) are in the same “queue” for support as those from whom being autistic doesn’t preclude living independently. 

But this is not a diagnosis problem so much as a society problem – health and social care resources are never limitless, and a process of prioritisation must always take place. If I cut my hand on a piece of broken glass and need to go to A&E for stiches, I might find myself in the same “queue” as a 7-year-old child who has done exactly the same thing. Like anyone, I would expect the staff to treat the child first, knowing that the same injury is likely to be causing a younger person much more distress. Autistic individuals are just as capable of recognising that others within the autism community may have needs that should take priority over their own.   

What O’Sullivan overlooks is that there are some equally big positives to “shadow diagnoses” – especially as our society runs on such strongly capitalist lines. When a large proportion of the population starts to experience the same disablement, it becomes economically worthwhile for employers or other authorities to address the problem. To put it another way: If we get a rise in “shadow diagnoses” then we also get a rise in “shadow treatments” – accommodations made in the workplace/society that mean everybody can thrive. As Macaskill puts it:  

“Accommodations then are not about accommodating something intrinsically negative; they're about accommodating something intrinsically different so that it doesn't have to be negative.” 

This can be seen already in many primary schools: where once it was the exception (and highly stigmatised) for a child to wear noise cancelling headphones, they are now routinely made available to all students, regardless of neurotype. This means not only that stigma is reduced for the one or two students who may be highly dependent on headphones, but it also means that many more children can benefit from a break from the deleterious effects of constant noise. 

When I read in O’Sullivan’s book that a lot more people are asking for diagnoses, what I hear is that a lot more people are asking for help. I suspect the rise in people identifying as neurodivergent reflects a latent cry of “Stop the world, I want to get off!” This is not to say that those coming forward are not autistic or do not have ADHD (or other neurodivergence) but simply that if our societies were gentler and more cohesive, fewer people with these conditions would need to reach for the “sick role” in order to get by.  

Perhaps counter-intuitively, if we want the number of people asking for the “sick role” to decrease, we actually need to be diagnosing more people! In this way, we push our capitalist society towards adopting “shadow-treatments” – adopting certain accommodations in our schools and workplaces as part of the norm. When this happens, there are benefits not only for neurodivergent people, but for everybody.

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