Christian conservatism and Christian realism vs. Christian nationalism
Most of what is written about Christian nationalism is silly. Critics and analysts sweepingly deride conventional Christian conservatives as Christian nationalists. By some counts, there are, by this definition, tens of millions of Christian nationalists. Sometimes even civil religion, with its homage to a vague deity, is labeled Christian nationalism. If so, all presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden are Christian nationalists.
Sometimes the target of these critics of Christian nationalism are folk religionists who conflate God and country. They sometimes sport paraphernalia with American flags draped around the cross. These folk religionists typically aren’t aware they are Christian nationalists. They don’t publish articles, much less books. And they typically don’t have articulated policy agendas, just an attitude that God and country should be interchangeably honored.
But, in a somewhat new movement of thought leaders, some more intellectual Christians do consciously self-identify as Christian nationalists. Media coverage typically fails carefully to distinguish them from more traditional Christian conservatives. The self-identified Christian nationalists have an agenda that fulfills the worst nightmares of many secular progressives. They are useful for progressive media to spotlight. But these self-identified Christians nationalists also are commanding greater attention among some especially young Christian conservatives who despair over current cultural trends hostile to traditional Christianity. So, they do merit serious attention.
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Christian nationalists are distinct from conventional Christian conservatives in several important ways. The former are typically post-liberals who want some level of explicit state established Christianity. The latter have been and largely still are classical liberals who affirm traditional American concepts of full religious liberty for all, with limited government. Both groups want a “Christian America.” But the former want it by statute. The latter see it as mainly a demographic, historical and cultural reality, or, at least, an aspiration.
The most sophisticated contemporary articulation of Christian nationalism is Stephen Wolfe’s book A Case for Christian Nationalism, published by Canon Press in 2022. Canon Press was founded by prominent Calvinist theologian Douglas Wilson of Moscow, Idaho, who advocates an ecumenical confessional state with the Apostles Creed inscribed into law.
Wolfe draws upon early magisterial Reformed Protestant thinking in favor of a more specifically Reformed Protestant confessional state that suppresses the outward display of “false” religion while not trying to govern human hearts. Wolfe extols “a measured theocratic Caesarism” and prays for “a Christian prince, a great renewal.” He explicitly writes as a Calvinist for a Calvinist audience.
Nearly all self-identified Christian nationalists are Calvinists, typically Presbyterian like Wolfe, but often theologically Reformed Baptists. The latter can be confusing because traditional Baptists are most associated with religious liberty.
It’s also important to note that the vast majority of American Calvinists and Reformed reject this call for a Christian confessional state. They note that the Westminster Confession of 1646, which articulated Reformed doctrine and called for civil magistrates to suppress false religion, was revised in 1789 by American Presbyterians to delete the latter.
Self-identified Christian nationalists do not like the 1789 revision, of course. And they favorably reviewed Wolfe’s book. So too did “National Conservatism,” founded by Israeli biblical scholar Yoram Hazony, which liked its theme of social unity through religion.
National Conservatism’s 2022 Statement of Principles, which was signed by many prominent conservative thinkers, vaguely echoed Christian nationalist themes by declaring Christianity “should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private,” with Jews and “other religious minorities…protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions,” and with all adults “protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes,” but not evidently in their public lives.
Public neutrality about religion, with a state granting equal rights to all regardless of faith, is deemed by this statement, and certainly by Christian nationalism, as subversive to morality and social cohesion.
Christian nationalists are almost always some form of Protestant integralists. Catholic integralists want a society where the Catholic Church is paramount in society including in civil law. Both Protestant and Catholic integralists believe the state cannot be neutral. Either it will establish the “true” faith, or it will establish a false one, which is currently, as they define it, aggressive secularism. They both believe that a truly Christian society will have a government pointing to the highest good, and that magistrates are God’s shepherds for directing the people towards the truth. Coercion in religion is necessary to protect society and individual souls, they believe.
Coercion and religious freedom are where Christian nationalism is most distinct from traditional Christian conservatism. The modern Religious Right was founded in the 1980s by Baptists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who, in the tradition of their faith, saw religious freedom for all as sacrosanct.
They were, as are most Christian conservatives, American exceptionalists and enthusiasts for the country’s founding charters and for democracy. Both were, coincidentally, Virginians who appreciated the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, crafted by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They were, like most Christian conservatives, descendants of the Second Great Awakening that followed the American Revolution, which was voluntarist, democratic, hostile to state churches, and launched a tradition of moral and social reform through political action.
Christian nationalists are typically skeptical if not hostile to the Second Great Awakening’s legacy. They prefer the First Great Awakening, led by Calvinists like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, and mostly still tied to established churches. But even more so, hardcore Christian nationalists revere earlier Christian commonwealths such as the seventeenth century Puritans, or Scotland under John Knox, or Geneva under Calvin, whose models they deem instructive if not binding. More moderate Christian nationalists will try to argue the U.S. Constitution, even while disavowing religious establishment and religious tests for public office by the federal government, did not preclude established religion for local government.
Christian nationalists are less American exceptionalists than are traditional Christian conservatives. And in this regard, they differ from the folk religionists who conflate God and country. Stephen Wolfe, in his book, is not interested in American patriotism or very much in America in general.
As a postliberal, he can’t cheerlead for American founding principles. He wants a premodern Christian society. Christian nationalists typically differ strongly with Christian conservatives about America’s role in the world. The former are more isolationist and more concerned about restricting immigration. Christian conservatives, especially the modern Religious Right, have advocated for an aggressive U.S. foreign and defense policy. They championed U.S. victory in the Cold War. And they supported the Iraq War, which Christian nationalists deride as proof of traditional Christian conservative bankruptcy.
There is a similar divide currently over support for Ukraine. And, beneath the surface, Christian nationalists are less enthusiastic for Israel than are Christian conservatives. The latter, besides being internationalists, are also Zionists. Theology for most Christian nationalists precludes a vigorous Zionism.
Christian conservatives have favored limited government and free markets, of which Christian nationalists are suspicious, preferring aggressive trade protections, a national industrial policy, and a regulatory state in the right hands. Christian conservatives want the U.S. to advocate for religious freedom internationally, about which Christian nationalists are suspicious or at least less interested. Christian nationalists want protections for Christianity mainly in the U.S., much less so overseas, and are not much interested, if not opposed, to advocacy on behalf of freedoms for other religions.
Christian nationalists, as seen in Wolfe’s dream of a theocratic prince, are more open to the strong man view of history. Typically, Christian conservatives are more suspicious of political strong men, which they would deem cultic and authoritarian. Christian nationalists, nearly always staunch Calvinists, have a strong view of social hierarchy. Some quietly oppose voting rights for women. They have more trust in the “elect.” A strictly Reformed confessional state would require infant baptism, precluding Baptists. Christian conservatives, who usually have been Baptists or generic evangelicals, are usually more democratic and unstructured.
Across 40 years, Christian conservatives were routinely accused of being theocratic. But their leaders, beyond wanting traditional morality and public rhetoric about God, almost never wanted religious establishment. They disavowed the Christian Reconstructionists of past decades who wanted “biblical law.” Christian nationalists don’t want biblical law in terms of Old Testament punishments. But they do want a state establishment explicitly favoring Christianity against other religions.
Christian conservatism has mostly been a populist movement mobilized by parachurch groups and leaders. Christian nationalism is more intellectual and has far fewer adherents. But its intellectual prowess enables it to insinuate itself into postliberal wider circles. Christian nationalists sometimes disparage traditional Christian conservatism as failed and archaic.
Old Christian conservatism was classically “liberal,” grateful for the legacies of John Locke and America’s Founding Fathers, who distrusted centralized power, favored checks and balance, and prioritized religious freedom for all. Christian nationalism is newer, shinier, more provocative, brasher. It proudly strives actually to become what critics falsely claimed about Christian conservatism.
In 1981 the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s founders agreed on a statement “Christianity and Democracy,” drafted by prominent Christian conservative intellectual Richard Neuhaus, backed by fellow Christian conservatives Michael Novak, who was Catholic, and Carl Henry, who was Baptist. Its vigorous affirmation of democracy, human rights and religious freedom would preclude endorsement by today’s Christian nationalists. But most Christian conservatives could still support.
Here's one important quote from that statement:
We readily acknowledge that democratic governance is unsatisfactory. Everything short of the consummation of the rule of Christ is unsatisfactory. For Christians, it is precisely the merit of democracy that it reminds us of this truth and sustains the possibility of humane government in a necessarily unsatisfactory world. There are tensions and contradictions within democratic theory and practice. Especially problematic are relationships between the individual and the community, between formal process and substantive purpose, between popular participation and power elites. We do not deny these and other problems.
Rather, believing that democratic theory and practice is still developing, we would encourage in the churches a lively examination of the problems and their possible resolutions. Such an examination only begins with the basic outline of democratic governance set forth in this statement and should be informed by the maxim framed by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
And:
Religion is both freedom’s shield and central sphere of action. “For religion,” Pope John Paul II has declared, “consists in the free adherence of the human mind to God, which is in all respects personal and conscientious; it arises from the desire for truth and in this relation the secular arm may not interfere, because religion itself by its nature transcends all things secular.”
Religious freedom consists of many parts: the freedom to believe, to worship, to teach, to evangelize, to collaborate in works of mercy and to witness to the public good. Where religious freedom is violated, all other human rights are assaulted to their source.
Self-identified Christian nationalists who advocate a Christian confessional state are discomfited by the idea of “human rights.” They, along with Catholic integralists, argue that “error” has no rights. But traditional Christian conservatives, in their understanding of human freedom under God, which includes the ability to accept or reject the Gospel, affirm that civil society protects even bad free speech. A state the precludes “error” is ultimately a tyranny that will usurp the church. Christian Realism has a special concern about humanity’s inclination towards tyranny and to abuse power.
Self-identified Christian nationalism contrasts with Christian Realism, which stresses the world’s fallen nature, warning against excessive idealism and perfectionism. Advocates of an established Christian state, whether Protestant Christian nationalists or Catholic integralists, aspire to a regime of the spiritually enlightened in which human sin is somehow minimized. In reactionary fashion, they romanticize a past Christendom that partnered church and state, and which no longer exists because of its failures. They assume that God’s sovereignty requires the state’s ratifying specific theological assertions. But the Deity does not need these assertions. And believers in religious freedom believe God is dishonored by allowing the civil state to define Him.
Christian Realism inclines towards religious freedom because it does not entrust Christian theological truth to state authority. The institutional church itself has enough difficulty safeguarding faithful articulation of the faith. Christian Realism understands that all civil societies are comprised of fallen humanity and characterized by competing interests, individual and social. Nobody is immune from self-interest. Even enlightened self-interest is plagued by human frailty and ignorance. Well-intentioned human exertions often have unintended and tragic consequences. Crusades for righteousness often wreak more havoc than the vices they targeted. There are never ideal situations in which one side embodies righteousness and perfectly defeats the opposition with the result of peace and justice for all.
For Christian Realism, there is no idealized past, nor is there an idealized future, short of the eschaton, completed by Christ’s return. Instead, in our fallen circumstances, we try follow God by seeking the greatest good possible in constrained situations, understanding that we ourselves lack absolute wisdom. The Christendom of the past, with its ostensibly Christian princes and state churches, was largely preferable to the pagan societies it replaced. God was at work then, as He is now. Those social arrangements no longer exist for good reason. The corruption, hypocrisy, and tyranny they often fostered were rightfully resented. Early advocates of religious freedom, like John Locke and Roger Williams, had those failures in mind. They thought that Christendom was more faithful to Christ and good sense by rejecting state coercion in religion.
Christendom is not over but it has changed and improved in countless ways. There are about 2.5 billion identified Christians in the world, more than ever before, who are influencing the political arrangements of their societies, sometimes as minorities, sometimes as majorities. Christianity deeply shaped America and continues to do so. Christendom continues in a sense by making claims about human equality and dignity that originated in the Bible.
America also is, as we always have been, a sinful nation, falling far short of God’s standards. We no longer tolerate slavery, or racial discrimination, or the subordination of women, or child labor, or poisonous food and drink, or dangerous and exploitative workplaces, or sexual exploitation, or slum tenements, or countless other injustices. We have our own contemporary sins and insanities. In our times, as in the past, Christians at their best strive to leaven our society, realizing we often still contribute to our nation’s failures. Yet we trust God is redeeming, even as we too often fail, so there is always hope for the future.
The past offers lessons, but it rarely offers complete answers. State churches and authoritarian titularly Christian monarchs and strict confessional states, whether Catholic or Protestant, served a providential purpose in the past but don’t offer guidance for today. Christian Realism strives to appreciate these nuances as God works among us in different circumstances. We anticipate God’s full redemption but are not yet living under its completion. Escapist fantasies about the past or the future do not comport with the Christian understanding of sinful humanity. Neither do apocalyptic rhetoric, absolutist demands, or ingratitude for what Providence has provided today.
By exaggerating the glories of the past, and ungratefully ignoring providential blessings of the present, self-identified Christian Nationalists presume to accelerate God’s redemption through political nostalgia and a utopian theonomy that tries to complete what only God can finalize. Somewhat similarly, many obsessive leftist critics of Christian Nationalism imagine their own utopia by minimizing if not erasing traditional religion from public life, stigmatizing it as “christofascism,” among other epithets.
Christian Realism works to harmonize and reform society through mediating rival interests and leaning into Providence, whose works we know aren’t always visible to the human eye. It’s less theatrical than the polarities of our present times. But it is more attuned to human nature, patient about human affairs, and trusting in God’s purposes.
Both Christian Realism and traditional Christian conservatism strive to address the world as it is: sinful, yet still in God’s care, awaiting full redemption. Christian nationalism, like secular ideologies, is far more impatient. It wants the fullness of God’s Kingdom to be politically realized now. Such impatience is appealing but dangerous. Bearing patient witness to God’s promises for His creation is far more difficult. But this patience with faithfulness is at the heart of Christian discipleship.
Mark Tooley became president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) in 2009. He joined IRD in 1994 to found its United Methodist committee (UMAction). He is also editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence.
