What is called “Christian” Nationalism a bad idea. The people who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted to prevent it. Not only that, but nationalism is not a Christian concept and much of what Christian nationalists advocate today is not very Christian. To the extent that there is disagreement about whether what they preach is Christian, the disagreement shows why advocating that our government adopt it is a murderously dangerous idea.
One purpose of the Constitution is to “insure domestic tranquility.” There is nothing better guaranteed to disrupt that tranquility than to invite those with different religious views to play capture the flag with our government by having it favor one religion over another.
The people who wrote the Constitution, even those who considered themselves Christians, wanted to keep religion out of government. That was a lesson history taught them in all too dramatic a fashion.
They knew that debates among Christians about what it meant to be Christian had a murderous history. The Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants in Europe lasted from 1618 to 1648 and, it is estimated, killed at least five million people. In England the war between those who favored an established church and those who did not resulted in the beheading of a King Charles in 1649, the removal of his son James II from the throne in 1688, and the suppression in 1745 of a rebellion that sought to restore the Stuart line to the throne. These were disputes among Christians.
Similar disputes continue today in other countries. In Northern Ireland, there are gates that keep Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods separate at night. And religious conflict is not limited to Christians. In the Middle East, Sunni and Shia Muslims still fight over the rightful heir to the prophet Muhammad in 632 A.D. In India, there are religious riots between Muslims and Hindus.
The root problem is simple. Religion is by definition a matter of faith. As the New Testament puts it, a belief in things not seen. There is no reason to expect people to agree when they are discussing things no one can see, and the probability of conflict rises with the strength of the belief.
And so, because the purpose of our government is, as the Constitution’s preamble also says, to “form a more perfect union,” it is necessary to confine government to those things which can be seen. On those things, there is at least some possibility of agreement.
The 1789 convention that wrote the Constitution did not open with prayer. The First Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1791, prohibits any “establishment” of religion. A 1797 treaty with Tripoli ratified by the U.S. Senate said that our country wanted peace with Muslim nations because “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
Even the pledge of allegiance, amended in 1954 to contain the phrase “under God,” does not say whose God. The existence of “a” God is not a source of great conflict. Those who believe in “a” God do not dispute it. Those who don’t today seem to consider it irrelevant or at least not worth fighting about.
But “Christian” Nationalism is a threat to national “tranquility,” and it is not even necessary to bring in conflict with Jews or Muslims to illustrate why. Disputes about what it means to be Christian are more than sufficient to do the job. There are plenty of things to dispute.
To begin with, Jesus was not a nationalist. He said his kingdom was not of this world. He did not take up arms against the Roman occupiers of Israel. He agreed that money with Ceasar’s face on it could be paid to Ceasar. He did not try to reform his government. He said peacemakers were blessed.
Jesus’ admonition to “turn the other cheek” would seem to be the exact opposite of the views of the foremost “Christian Nationalist” in our government, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He takes his text not from the New Testament but from the Old Testament book of Samuel in which God tells King Saul to kill every man, woman, child and animal in the Amalekite nation, which was near Gaza.
The New Testament quotes Jesus saying to care for the poor, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, and the stranger. That would seem to be inconsistent with taking illegal immigrants who have lived peacefully in the United States for years and committed no crime and locking them up in cages in the Everglades
Along the same lines, it can be argued that ignoring these instructions from Jesus while making social issues like homosexuality a litmus test is not exactly following Jesus either. He said nothing about homosexuality even though it was practiced in the Roman empire in which he lived.
No doubt arguments to the contrary can be made. Many may find these interpretations of scripture to be outrageous or even heresy. But, if that is the case, it simply proves that introducing religion into government would engender irresolvable conflicts over what is or is not “Christian.” Because no earthly power can resolve those conflicts, no government should try.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
