Christianity Today on Christian Nationalism

In the September/October edition of Christianity Today, Russell Moore contributed an article titled The Uneasy Conscience of Christian Nationalism (which I am happy to recommend). In the piece, Moore cautions Christian nationalists that the eutopia they seek may not be the reality that they end up with. Indeed, he likens the current climate among Evangelicals of that bent to the moral equivalent of the selling of indulgences which prompted Luther to nail his paper to the door of the castle. He wrote: "In our time, the indulgences are more akin to a hotel’s green initiative than to the construction of St. Peter’s. The new Christian nationalism—like the withered old state churches of Europe and the secularized old social gospels of mainline Protestantism—defines Christianity in terms of reforming external structures rather than of regenerating internal psyches. Unlike the older theological liberalisms, though, Christian nationalists seek solidarity not in the actual mitigating of human suffering but in the mostly symbolic boundary markers of taking the right amount of theatrical umbrage at culture war outrages, at having the right kind of enemies, at 'owning the libs.'"

Moore went on to quote Philip Yancey (a longtime columnist at Christianity Today) about the fate of the Soviet Union: "Humans dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good, wrote T. S. Eliot, who saw many of his friends embrace the dream of Marxism. 'But the man that is - will shadow the man that pretends to be.' What we were hearing from Soviet leaders, and the KGB, and now Pravda, was that the Soviet Union ended up with the worst of both: a society far from perfect, and a people who had forgotten how to be good." He went on to conclude: "We should not pretend that we could not see the same thing with a lifeless, politicized dystopian Christian nationalism as we saw with a hollowed-out Soviet empire. What a tragic end it would be to wind up with a society as debauched as ever and a people who have forgotten how to be saved. The way forward is what it’s always been. As Luther said in his Heidelberg Disputation, 'The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. The theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.' Sometimes that means nailing a word or two to the castle door. Sometimes that might mean letting goods and kindred go. The whole of the Christian life is about repentance. That repentance must be about the renewing of our minds and the renovation of our hearts, not just the laundering of consciences that are no longer bound to the Word of God."

From my perspective, that's just about right. We can huff and puff about the culture wars, protest at abortion clinics, and insist on voting for the "right" candidate OR We can focus on repenting of our own shortcomings and sins, trying to live our best lives in the here and now, and helping others to be successful in the same pursuits. Bottom line, religious/spiritual does NOT equal political/civic. If we claim to be Christians, we MUST remember that our primary allegiance is to God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Kingdom of God!