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Christian Nationalism, When Faith Becomes a Cover for Hate
Christianity and nationalism are not the same thing.
Loving your country is not the same as believing your country is superior to another. Taking pride in your history, culture or community does not require you to despise somebody else’s. Christians can participate in politics, debate public policy and hold strong views about the direction of their country.
The problem begins when Christianity and nationalism become fused in such a way that national identity is given religious authority.
At that point, Christianity can cease to be the faith guiding the politics.
Instead, Christianity becomes the language being used to justify the politics.
And that distinction matters.
Christianity Does Not Belong to a Nation
Christianity existed long before any of our modern nation states.
It has crossed borders, languages, cultures and political systems for centuries. Christianity is not English, Scottish, Irish, American, French, German or Russian.
It is Christian.
The moment we suggest that Christianity somehow belongs more naturally to one nationality, ethnicity or political movement than another, we should stop and ask what we are actually defending.
There is nothing wrong with valuing a country’s Christian heritage.
There is a considerable difference, however, between saying:
“Christianity has played an important part in the history and culture of my country.”
and saying:
“This is a Christian country, therefore people who are different do not truly belong here.”
Those are not the same proposition.
One acknowledges history.
The other can turn religion into a boundary between those who belong and those who do not.
Loving Your Country Doesn’t Require an Enemy
Patriotism can be remarkably simple.
I love my country.
That statement requires nothing from anyone else.
- It doesn’t require me to believe my country is better than yours.
- It doesn’t require me to dislike foreigners.
- It doesn’t require me to fear another religion.
- It doesn’t require me to exclude immigrants.
- And it certainly doesn’t require me to hate my neighbour.
The problem with extreme nationalism is that identity can become dependent upon opposition.
There has to be a them against which we define us.
Christianity can then provide a powerful vocabulary for legitimising that division.
Suddenly the people we oppose are not merely politically different.
They are portrayed as threats to our values, our culture, our way of life and perhaps even to God.
That is an extraordinarily dangerous transition.
When Christianity Becomes Camouflage
Extremism rarely needs to introduce itself by saying:
“We would like you to hate these people.”
People are far more likely to resist such an obvious proposition.
Instead, hatred can be dressed in much more respectable language.
- We are protecting our values.
- We are defending our heritage.
- We are protecting our children.
- We are defending Christianity.
- We are standing for righteousness.
Some of those claims may even describe perfectly legitimate concerns.
The important question is what follows them.
What are we being asked to believe about another group of human beings?
What behaviour are we being encouraged to accept?
Who are we being told to fear?
Who are we being told doesn’t belong?
Who are we being encouraged to stop seeing as our neighbour?
Putting the word Christian in front of an ideology does not automatically make that ideology Christian.
Its actions still have to withstand examination.
The Test Should Be What It Produces
Perhaps Christians should apply a very simple test to any political movement seeking to recruit Christianity to its cause.
What does it produce?
Does it produce love or hatred?
Humility or superiority?
Service or domination?
Reconciliation or division?
Compassion or contempt?
Does it encourage us to see the humanity in people with whom we disagree?
Or does it teach us why those people deserve our hostility?
This doesn’t mean Christians cannot disagree strongly with others.
Love is not the absence of disagreement.
Tolerance does not require abandoning conviction.
And compassion certainly doesn’t mean believing that every idea or behaviour is equally right.
But Christianity places constraints on how we treat people even when we believe they are wrong.
That is the difficult part.
Christianity Is Not About Political Domination
There is another danger when Christianity becomes intertwined with nationalism.
Faith can become less concerned with transforming the believer and more concerned with controlling everybody else.
Political victory begins to substitute for spiritual purpose.
The important question becomes:
“How do we make everyone else live according to our beliefs?”
rather than:
“How should our beliefs change the way we live?”
That distinction connects directly with righteousness.
If righteousness is about our right standing with God, Christianity should constantly cause us to examine ourselves.
What happens when we instead use Christianity primarily to examine, classify and condemn everybody else?
Faith becomes an instrument of power.
And once faith becomes an instrument of power, people who claim to be defending Christianity may find themselves defending things that bear remarkably little resemblance to the Christianity they claim to protect.
You Can Be Politically Conservative Without Hating Anyone
This distinction is particularly important because opposition to extremism should not become an accusation against everyone with conservative Christian beliefs.
- A Christian can hold traditional views.
- A Christian can be politically conservative.
- A Christian can believe strongly in national sovereignty.
- A Christian can want controlled immigration.
- A Christian can disagree profoundly with progressive politics.
- A Christian can love their country.
None of those things inherently requires hatred.
The dividing line should not simply be left versus right, conservative versus progressive, or religious versus secular.
The more important question is:
When does legitimate political disagreement turn into the dehumanisation of other people?
That is where Christians ought to become particularly cautious.
Because once we stop seeing another human being as our neighbour, it becomes considerably easier to justify what happens to them.
Who Is My Neighbour?
Perhaps that is the question Christian nationalism ultimately has to confront.
Christianity does not give us the comfortable option of loving only the people who resemble us.
- Not only people who share our nationality.
- Not only people who share our politics.
- Not only people who share our religion.
- Not only people whose behaviour we approve of.
The command to love becomes meaningful precisely because sometimes it is difficult.
It is easy to love us.
Christianity asks what happens when we encounter them.
And Christianity repeatedly turns them back into our neighbour.
Christianity Doesn’t Need an Enemy
There is something else worth remembering.
Christianity does not need hatred to survive.
It doesn’t need fear.
It doesn’t require an enemy against whom Christians can unite.
And it doesn’t become stronger because political leaders wrap themselves in Christian language or Christian symbolism.
Faith should be capable of standing on its own.
So when someone tells us that Christianity is under threat and then conveniently identifies a group of people we should fear, resent or exclude, perhaps Christians should pause before joining the campaign.
Ask what is actually being defended.
Ask who benefits from our fear.
Ask what we are being encouraged to do to our neighbour.
And, most importantly, ask whether the behaviour being justified in the name of Christianity actually resembles the Christianity we profess.
Don’t Confuse the Label with the Faith
There is nothing inherently wrong with Christians participating in politics.
There is nothing inherently wrong with patriotism.
There is nothing wrong with Christians arguing passionately for the society they believe is right.
But there is something profoundly wrong when Christianity becomes a respectable cover for hatred.
- Calling hatred Christian doesn’t sanctify the hatred.
- Calling exclusion Christian doesn’t sanctify the exclusion.
- Calling extremism Christian doesn’t sanctify the extremism.
- And declaring ourselves righteous doesn’t make everything we do righteous.
Perhaps the distinction is ultimately very simple:
Christianity doesn’t need nationalism to make it stronger.
Nationalism can use Christianity to make itself appear righteous.
Christians need to recognise the difference.
Because if defending Christianity requires us to hate our neighbour, then perhaps the most important question isn’t whether we have defended Christianity successfully.
It is whether Christianity was what we were defending in the first place.
