An AI-Generated image of “Christian nationalist in a field” where a person is in a rolling field with lush trees and a blue sky with fluffy clouds in the background, red flowers in the foreground. The person is facing away, toward the trees. At first glance, it looks like they’re holding a large cross and an American flag, but as you look more closely, you realize that the image is just… not quite right. The more you look at it, the more you realize that the different pieces just don’t go together.
Christian nationalists teach that America was founded as a Christian nation and seek to return to this fictional past. Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy through the negation of separation of Church and State. Christian nationalists demand Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American one must be a good Christian, as narrowly defined by the movement. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.
Freedom of religion is a touchstone of American democracy. The claim that America was founded as a Christian nation designates people of other faiths and of no faith as second-class citizens in their own country. Rather than seeing beauty in the wide variety of humanity in America, Christian nationalists single out one segment of society and hold up those who espouse an abridged version of Christianity as the exemplar for all. And while Christian nationalists overtly focus on religion, racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric often is employed.
Christian nationalism truncates the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The emphasis is on personal salvation and often downplays or ignores the social responsibilities of the Gospel. In his book, The False White Gospel, Jim Wallis describes an exercise he and some fellow seminarians took part in. “We took an old Bible and set out to find every single Scripture about the poor and the oppressed, about wealth and poverty, about injustice and justice. Then we took a pair of scissors and cut every verse that we found out of the Bible: every single verse about the poor was removed. When we were done, all of those verses had fallen to the floor – about two thousand verses in total! We were left with a Bible full of holes.” (pp.118-119) Not only were large chunks of the prophetic writings in the Hebrew scriptures gone, but one out of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke were cut out. The essential nature of ministry with the poor and the oppressed in the Christian faith cannot be overstated. Christianity is not meant to be a private religion, but one with far-reaching implications as Christians reach out in love and seek God’s justice for all.
Furthermore, Christian nationalism is about exclusion, and so runs against Jesus’ inclusion of all people. In the “Great Commission” at the end of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus sends the disciples out to all nations. In the “Parable of The Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37) Jesus answers the question, “Who is my neighbor?” In making the hated outsider, a Samaritan, the hero of his story Jesus is turning our world upside down. Our neighbor, according to Jesus, is the “other”, the “enemy”. It is the Samaritan who bound up the wounds of the robbery victim left for dead on the side of the road, not the respected religious leaders who passed him by. Who is my neighbor? Anyone and everyone.
In the end, proactive, self-sacrificial love is the hallmark of Jesus’ ministry and the essence of why Christians call Good Friday “good”. Jesus’ death on the cross was for all people, no exceptions. The God who sent us his beloved Son loves all people, no exceptions. We who bear the name of Christian are called to share the love shared with us by the God in whose image all are made.
– The Rev. Julie Calhoun-Bryant
An AI-Generated image of “Christian Nationalist in the United States Standing Alone in a Field”
