A History We Can Learn From

Calling Out Christian Nationalism. Again.

This is not the first sermon I’ve written about Christian nationalism. And it will not be the last. I have been moved by the Spirit to write what I do. I hope through God’s grace that you may be in a place to receive it. That’s why I chose the handle that I have. The Invisible Reverend. I am the least important person here. My words are just the path between you and God. I hope they do their job.

There is a ridge outside a small New England town where a weathered wooden sign at the trailhead declares that the settlement founded there was “a shining city on a hill.” The plaque borrows Jesus’s language and hands it over to civic pride, smoothing out the rough edges of a community that was as earnest as it was severe. It is a beautiful sign, beautifully crafted, offering such a tidy story that you almost forget the mess underneath. I stood there on an early autumn morning, reading those words while knowing full well that the same community they praised once exiled neighbors, punished dissent, and imagined itself God’s special project.

Memory is funny that way. It trims the parts that make us uncomfortable. It turns complexity into storybook simplicity. And if you wait a generation or two, the stories harden into myth. Myth, if left unchallenged, becomes theology. And theology, if it forgets Jesus, becomes something else entirely.

I often think of a line from one of my favorite films, set during the time of the Crusades. A distressed medieval bishop says, “The law goes too far. I ask myself, would Jesus do thusly? There is much done in Christendom of which Christ would be incapable.” The first time I heard that line, it hollowed out my chest a little. Because it names the truth we resist: Christians can become deeply invested in things Christ himself would have been incapable of doing.

That line hits close to home for me. I am a product of pioneers who pushed into the American West, propelled by a theology of Manifest Destiny. I live on stolen Native American land because the local tribe was exterminated in an atrocity. Later, religious officials covered it up. They declared that it did not matter. The land had been given to the righteous white settlers, they believed, taken from the supposedly cursed dark skinned people. When that is the narrative you inherit, it becomes dangerously easy to confuse divine blessing with human violence. It becomes easy to call atrocity providence, to label theft a sacred transfer, to treat history as though God were the author of cruelty.

So today, I want to walk carefully and honestly. Not to shame our past, but to free us from the lies that still cling to our faith. The gospel does not flourish in denial. It flourishes in truth. And truth always opens the door to healing.

Context and Setting

Christian nationalism is not new, and it is not uniquely American. The temptation to fuse God and nation is as old as ancient Israel. It is as old as Rome. It is as old as any people who believed that God needed their sword or their laws or their boundaries to accomplish divine work.

But let me be clear about what we are witnessing right now. This is not theoretical. This is not some abstract theological debate. This is happening today, in courtrooms and legislatures and school boards across this country.

In February 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” under state law. The Chief Justice, Tom Parker, wrote a concurring opinion that quoted Genesis, the Ten Commandments, Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth-century theologians. He declared that human life “cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”

And on the very same day that the ruling was issued, Parker appeared on a podcast where he espoused what is called the “Seven Mountains Mandate”—a theology that calls for Christians to take dominion over seven areas of society: government, religion, family, business, education, arts and entertainment, and media. He said, and I quote: “God created government. And the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking for those of us who understand. And we know it is for Him.”

Let that sink in. A sitting Chief Justice of a state Supreme Court believes that government has “gone into the possession of others” and needs to be reclaimed for God. Not governed with wisdom informed by faith. Not led with humility before the divine. Possessed. As if the government is a territory to be conquered in a holy war.

And he is not alone. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has deep ties to leaders in this same movement. He has said that the separation of church and state is a “misnomer”—a fiction invented by progressives. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both just simultaneously exploded in their graves. The movement Parker and Johnson are connected to aims to establish what they consider “God’s kingdom on Earth” by taking control of these seven areas of society (NPR).

This is the ideology woven throughout Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for the next administration. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as enemies of the republic( The Fulcrum). It calls for eliminating the Department of Education, for cracking down on what it calls “woke ideology,” for removing terms like “gender equality” and “reproductive rights” from federal law and regulation.

According to the most recent data from 2024, about thirty percent of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers (PRRI). This is not fringe anymore. This is mainstream. And it is dangerous.

Scripture gives us that warning again and again. When the people of God turn faith into tribal identity, prophets rise up and let them have it. Among them is Amos, a prophet I have a particular affection for. He is wonderfully crusty and stubborn, a man who cared for trees from Tekoa, who is not impressed by anyone’s religious performance. He delivers his message like someone dragging a trash can across gravel in the middle of the night. He does not flatter. He does not soften. He tells Israel exactly what God thinks of their selective reading of Scripture.

And we still engage in selective reading. We love the comforting parts. We stitch them on pillows. We put them on bumper stickers. Yet we often ignore the harder commands about loving the outcast and the foreigner. Instead of letting faith shape our politics, we tend to let our politics shape our faith. We turn the Bible into a proof text for whatever identity marker matters to us most. Evangelical. Traditional. Liberal. Progressive. “True Christian,” whatever on earth that means. And while we are busy defending our categories, Jesus could walk right among us, and we would miss him. That is not speculation. That is exactly what happened during his earthly ministry.

A Look At Scripture

Let us take a look at the Sermon on the Mount (my favorite passage in all of scripture) and read it as the political manifesto it actually is. Matthew 5:14 says, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Here is what we have done with this text: we have turned it into American exceptionalism with a Jesus sticker. We have made it mean that America is God’s chosen nation, that our democratic experiment is divinely ordained, that our military might is somehow evangelism by other means. We baptize our nationalism and call it discipleship.

But that is not what Jesus meant. Not even close.

Jesus is speaking to ordinary people. Peasants. The occupied. The powerless. His “city on a hill” is not a political empire. It is a community of mercy and justice. Light is not about dominance. Light is about visibility. The world sees God not through a nation’s triumphs but through a disciple’s kindness. Not through our wars but through our washing of feet. Not through our flags but through our love for enemies.

When John Winthrop stood on the deck of the Arbella in 1630 and quoted this passage to justify the Puritan mission, he was not interpreting Scripture. He was conscripting it. He was making Jesus a founding father before there were founding fathers. And we have been doing it ever since.

And now Chief Justice Parker does the same thing. He reads Genesis and declares that Alabama’s constitution reflects God’s eternal law. He cites Thomas Aquinas to rule on IVF. He turns a twenty-first-century medical technology into a theological battleground, and then wonders why people are losing access to fertility treatment.

This is what happens when you confuse your theology with the law of the land. People get hurt. Women who are desperately trying to have children lose access to care. Doctors become afraid to do their jobs. Women and infant mortality rates rise in the world’s richest country, life expectancy drops, and all of it is baptized in the language of protecting life, as if God’s will can be discerned by a 7-2 vote of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Now turn to Deuteronomy 10:17-19. “The Lord your God is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Let that land on you. God is not partial. God does not play favorites based on nationality. God loves the stranger and commands the people to do the same.

That is a direct contradiction to Christian nationalism, which almost always casts the stranger as a threat. The immigrant. The refugee. The foreigner. Christian nationalism demonizes and others immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and non-Christians, claiming these people are “un-American”. Christian nationalism builds walls and calls them holy. It denies asylum and calls it stewardship. It separates families and quotes Romans 13 as justification.

But Deuteronomy says no. Love the stranger. Because you were strangers. Because you know what it is like to be powerless in someone else’s country. Because your God is the God who does not show partiality.

If your theology makes you fear the stranger more than love them, your theology is not from Christ. It is from somewhere else. And that somewhere else usually involves power protecting itself. That is someone coming up to you and preaching to you “another gospel.”

Then Amos speaks. In Amos 5, God says through the prophet, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.”

That is strong language. That is ancient divine side-eye. God is not interested in worship that forgets justice. Amos stands beside every modern church that blesses its own political identity more than it blesses the hungry and the hurting. He stands beside every congregation that sings about God’s love on Sunday and votes to gut social services on Tuesday. He is the prophet who tells us that our liturgies cannot compensate for our neglect.

Christian nationalism loves worship. It loves the symbols. The flags in sanctuaries. The “God Bless America” after every prayer. The conflation of patriotic hymns with spiritual songs. Project 2025 even asks: “What is the proper balance of lives saved versus souls saved?” as if closing churches during a pandemic was a greater concern than people dying. The Fulcrum.

But Amos says that God despises worship when it is divorced from justice. When it is performance. When it is a cover for cruelty.

You cannot sing “God Bless America” while refusing to care for the least of these and expect God to be pleased. You cannot drape the cross in the flag and call it faithfulness. Amos would have dragged that flag right back out of the sanctuary and set it on fire in the parking lot as an object lesson.

Next, Matthew 4. The devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. Every nation. Every empire. All the power. All the glory. And Jesus refuses.

This may be the most politically subversive moment in all of Scripture. Jesus declines the one thing Christian nationalism insists the church must have: power. Jesus knows kingdoms are always compromised. He knows that ruling by force is incompatible with ruling by love. He knows that the kingdom of God can never be imposed. It must be lived.

Christian nationalism wants to take what Jesus refused. It wants to baptize political power and call it ministry. It wants to transform public schools, eliminate “woke ideology,” remove books perceived as pro-LGBTQ, and redefine human rights according to what it calls “God’s laws or natural law”. It wants to control the courts and the Congress and the culture, and it genuinely believes this is what faithfulness looks like.

But Jesus said no to all of that. He chose the way of the cross instead of the way of the crown. And if we claim to follow him, we have to choose the same.

Finally, Revelation 18. Babylon is the archetype of every empire that believed it was eternal. Every nation that confused its own glory with God’s. Every system that thought it could not fall. And Revelation pronounces judgment: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!”

Revelation critiques any nation that pretends to be divine. Christian nationalism stumbles here, because its central claim approaches Babylon’s central sin: believing the nation occupies God’s throne. Believing that America is somehow essential to God’s purposes. Believing that our survival as a superpower is tied to God’s kingdom.

It is not. God’s kingdom does not need America. God’s kingdom does not need any nation. God’s kingdom transcends every border and outlasts every empire. And the moment we forget that, we start building Babylon all over again.

Personal Application

I carry my own history inside my theology. I carry stories of pioneers who took land that was not theirs and told themselves God had endorsed it. I carry the voices of dozens of faithful and formerly faithful people crying out because of the cruelty done in Christ’s name. And I carry Amos’s voice rumbling in my chest each time Christians assume that their political identity and their Christian identity belong in the same sentence.

Untangling those threads has been a long work. But it has been liberating. When I realized that the gospel does not need a nation, the gospel grew larger for me. When I realized that Christ would not endorse things Christians had claimed were done for him, I felt relief rather than fear. Because it meant Christ was better than the stories we told. Better than the myths we inherited. Better than the nationalism we baptized.

What became clear is that Christian nationalism produces a faith that is too small for the God of Scripture. It narrows our compassion. It restricts our imagination. It blinds us to the stranger. And it convinces us that our political allegiance matters more than our discipleship.

But Jesus invites us somewhere better. Somewhere freer. Somewhere more honest.

Invitation and Reflection

So the invitation today is to step back from the myths and step forward into the truth. The truth is that the gospel does not need to be protected by political power. It needs to be practiced in radical love. The truth is that our nation does not need to be flattered. It needs to be loved with honesty, which means naming harm where harm has been done. The truth is that Jesus walks among us still in the form of the vulnerable, the marginalized, the people our national stories push to the edges.

And if history teaches us anything, it is that the people most certain of God’s favoritism are often the very people Jesus has the hardest time reaching. In every era, he has shown up in the faces of those the religious and political center fails to see.

Here is what I want you to hear: the kingdom of God is not a fortress. It is a feast. It is not an army. It is a family. It is not a conquest. It is an invitation.

When Chief Justice Parker quotes the Bible to rule on frozen embryos, he is building a fortress. When Project 2025 calls for Christians to take dominion over seven areas of society, they are recruiting an army. When they say the separation of church and state is a misnomer, they are preparing for conquest.

But that is not the way of Jesus. That has never been the way of Jesus.

The good news is that we can choose a better way. We can choose the kingdom that comes like yeast in dough, quiet and pervasive and transforming everything from the inside. We can choose the discipleship that refuses to bow to power, that refuses to confuse might with right, that refuses to mistake nationalism for faithfulness. We can choose the justice that Amos demands and the mercy that Jesus blesses.

We can choose the Christ who is still capable of surprising us. The Christ who is incapable of cruelty. The Christ who would never confuse violence for virtue. The Christ whose kingdom has no borders and whose love has no limits.

This is not easy work. It will cost you. It cost Amos his safety. It cost Jesus his life. And it will cost us our comfort, our certainty, our place at the table of power.

But here is the truth that makes it worth it: we were never meant to sit at that table anyway. We were meant to flip it.

Jesus did not come to make nations great. He came to make disciples faithful. And faithful disciples do not pledge ultimate allegiance to any flag. They pledge it to the Lamb who was slain, the one who loved the world so much that he refused to rule it by force.

So go. Walk gently, but walk boldly. The road is long, and you will be called unpatriotic by some and unfaithful by others. You will be told that you are letting government “go into the possession of others.” You will be told that you are abandoning America’s Christian heritage. You will be told that questions and doubt are dangerous.

But you will be walking in the way of the prophets, in the way of the apostles, in the way of Jesus himself.

May the God who sees you, knows you, and calls you by name walk every step beside you. May you have courage to love the stranger. May you have wisdom to name the lies. And may you have grace to choose, again and again, the kingdom that does not fade, the love that does not fail, the Christ who does not need our nations to accomplish his will.

Amen.