Curious Christian

I’m seeing a lot of US conservatives trying to problematise the phrase “Christian nationalism.” It really isn’t that complicated. Christian nationalism belongs to the broader family of religious nationalism: ideologies that fuse religious and national identity. Think Islamism, Hindutva, or religious Zionism. The particular theology and politics differ, but the basic phenomenon is recognisable enough. Christian nationalism isn’t simply Christians loving their country or participating in politics. The distinguishing feature is the fusion of Christian and national identity into a particular idea of what the nation should be.

The problem becomes clearer when we look at what this fusion can do. National identity can begin to acquire a sacred quality, while Christianity can become a way of defining who properly belongs to the nation, what the nation supposedly stands for, and which political causes are treated as Christian obligations. At that point, criticism of the nation or its political agenda can begin to feel like criticism of Christianity itself. The danger isn’t simply that Christians have political opinions. It is that the gospel can become entangled with a particular national story, so that defending the nation, its culture, or its perceived interests can be mistaken for defending the faith.

But Jesus gives us a different focus. His kingdom is not identified with any particular nation. He announces a kingdom that gathers people across ethnic, cultural and political boundaries, and he refuses to establish it through the coercive power of the state. His followers are called to love their enemies, welcome the stranger, seek reconciliation, and bear witness to a different way of being human. If Jesus is the image of the invisible God and the foundation for how we understand God’s character, then Christianity should not be used to baptise the interests of any particular nation. The church belongs to Christ before it belongs to any nation.

So perhaps the invitation is not simply to reject Christian nationalism, but to become curious about what it reveals about our understanding of both Christianity and nations. What if we could love our country without making it sacred? What if we could participate in public life without turning political allegiance into a test of Christian faithfulness? And what if the church became known less for defending a Christianised national identity and more for embodying the reconciled, multi-ethnic and counter-cultural community that Jesus envisioned? Rather than asking how Christianity can save the nation, perhaps we should ask how Christians can faithfully witness to Christ within it.