News & Announcements

Christian Nationalism

We take up an issue that we started to explore last November. Christian nationalism is a political ideology and cultural framework that seeks to merge American and Christian identities. In this day when both American identity and Christian identity are undergoing massive shifts in definition and meaning, the reappearance and rise of Christian Nationalism (CN) is an alarming, reactionary response.

The focus of our discussion will be Tim Alberta’s article in The Atlantic, “My Father, My Faith, and Donald Trump” (November 28, 2023), adapted from Alberta’s important new book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in the Age of Extremism (Harper, 2023).

May 10 marks the 90th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration. Written primarily by Reformed theologian Karl Barth in 1934, Barmen was the manifesto of the Confessing Church during the Nazi period in Germany. Designed to prevent the capitulation of the churches to hostile cultural forces, it has been accorded authoritative status throughout the Protestant world, including the PC(USA), for its emphasis on the centrality and all-sufficiency of Christ. We will hold Alberta’s article and Barmen in critical tension.

Upcoming: May 5

“Here, in our house of worship, people were taunting me about politics as I tried to mourn.” Tim Alberta, The Atlantic, November 28, 2023.

Bibliography

• American Idols Podcast Andrew Whitehead, RedCircle, Fall 2023
• “The Real Origins of the Religious Right” Randall Balmer, Politico, May 27, 2014
• “As the 2024 election heats up, be wary of politicians who ‘textjack’ the Bible”Randall Blake, CNN, October 3, 2023
• “White Christian Nationalism, Out in the Open,” Annika Brockshmidt and Thomas Lecaque, The Bulwark, August 22, 2022
• “Civil Religion in America” Daedalus, Winter, 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, Religion in America (Winter, 1967), pp. 1-21
• “To Understand White Christian Nationalism, Look to Doctrine of Discovery, Jones Says”Jeff Brumley, August 22, 2023
• “America Doesn’t Need More God, It Needs More Atheists” Kate Cohen, The Washington Post, October 3, 2023
• “Christian Nationalism is Both a Smear and Savior to Many Christians” Paul A. Djupe, Religion in Public, March 18, 2024
• “Q&A With ‘The Flag and the Cross’ Author Samuel L. Perry on Christian Nationalism,” Kenneth E. Frantz, Religion Unplugged, April 8, 2022
• “One Reason the Trump Fever Won’t Break,”David French, The New York Times, October 1, 2023
• “Can America’s ‘Civil Religion’ Still Unite The Country?”Tom Gjelten, NPR, April 12, 2021
• “The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think”Robert P. Jones, Time, August 31, 2023
• “The Capitol Attack Signaled a Post-Christian Church, Not Merely a Post-Christian Culture”Russell Moore, Christianity Today, January 5, 2022
• “What Is Christian Nationalism?”Paul Miller, Christianity Today, February 3, 2021
• “‘Christian Nationalism’ Used to be Taboo. Now It’s All the Rage.” Molly Olmstead, Slate, August 5, 2022.
• “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism To American Democracy and Culture”Public Religion Research Institute and The Brookings Institution, 2023.
• “How Christian is Christian Nationalism?”Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker March 27, 2023
• “We Have To Come to Grips with History”David Smith, The Guardian, September 9, 2023
• “Views of the U.S. as a ‘Christian nation’ and opinions about ‘Christian nationalism’”Gregory A. Smith, Michael Rotolo, and Patricia Tevington, Pew Research Center October 27, 2022
• “The Political Theology of the Two Kingdoms,”Jakob de Roover, Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism, April 21, 2016
• “The Dangerous Heresy of Christian Nationalism”Brian Zahnd, January 19, 2021
• “The Theological Declaration of Barmen”The Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Bibliography for Understanding Christian Nationalism

Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America (University Press of Kansas, 2017).

Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (Eerdmans, 2021).

Pamela Cooper-White, The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide (Fortress Press, 2022).

Kristen Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2021).

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (Penguin Random House, 2023).

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Penguin Random House, 2018).

Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage, 2013).

Robert Pd. Jones, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

Kaitlyn Schiess, The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here (Brazos Press, 2023)

Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church (Brazos Press, 2023).

Find more resources on belonging

Explore our resources on connection, community, and belonging from this past September.

Belonging Articles