Examining Christian Nationalism: God, American Politics, and the Church

Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today, we are going to be addressing Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism has become a much bigger topic in our national conversation, specifically with a survey that came out from Neighborly Faith about Christian nationalism and some new statistics that we could look at. The Public Religion Research Institute previously put some things out early in 2023. But the Neighborly Faith study really revisits this, and it was just released in December. I think we also need to be looking forward to Rob Reiner's documentary on Christian nationalism and the sort of fervor that has arisen around his statements regarding Christian nationalism being both a danger to the country and a danger to Christianity. And so today, Richard and I are going to discuss Christian nationalism. We're going to look at the Neighborly Faith study a bit. And this is really kicking off a short series with Thinking Christian that's going to evaluate some of the statements that Christian nationalist adherents, based on these surveys, strongly agree with and or disagree with. And we're going to be looking at those in theological and biblical perspectives and trying to understand where we as Christians should really land if we're being guided by the scriptures. James, I want to start this discussion with the op-ed you wrote, Christian nationalism, a theological problem for the people of God. Boy, that's saying a lot. Lots of good insight on Neighborly Faith study. The most important is that Christian nationalism doesn't pose an alarmist threat that the John Birch Society is going to be making a big comeback or Joe McCarthy isn't on a witch hunt again. He's dead, number one. However, you bring up a huge point that while Christian nationalism is not a threat to the USA or our country, but it is a threat to the church. Is it an image problem or is it more than an image problem? Based on the survey results, it seems to be more than an image problem. So what I would say is there's the image problem. So there's a couple of people, Rob Reiner, who I mentioned kind of is in the intro. He's doing a documentary. I believe it's called God and Country, where he is evaluating Christian nationalism. And I think there probably is a danger in the political realm to Christian nationalism. In other words, and maybe the better way to phrase it, it's not so much a danger as it is a thorn in the side of politics. I don't envision any time soon the United States kowtowing to Christian nationalists and declaring the United States a Christian nation. And so it's almost more of a bother that is going to distract our lawmakers, if that's even possible, you know, to distract them more than they already are from actually dealing with the problems that they're supposed to be dealing with as lawmakers. And so we've got this, again, the statement from Rob Reiner, or this documentary from Rob Reiner. There's also been a statement by James Carville, who is a political analyst, who said that Christian nationalism is more dangerous than Al-Qaeda. You know, again, to some degree, I understand what he's gesturing toward. I don't agree with the statement. And I think it's unnecessarily extreme. Right. I think the better way to phrase it is to say that Christian nationalism is going to gum up the works of government. And it certainly doesn't do the political system any favors. Right. But I don't think there's any danger in this sort of Christian morality, generalized moralizing about Christianity actually taking over the United States and influencing policymaking. I just don't see it. So Christians are really becoming more of a stereotype of themselves. On some level, I think what's happening is, and this is where I see it as a danger to the church. You know, the church and the state are actually distinct. It doesn't matter what we think about them. Right. Don't like, you know, eliminate from your mind your opinions or preferences regarding this issue. The church and the state are two separate things as defined by the word of God. Romans 13, 1 through 7 talks about the governing authorities. The governing authorities are clearly separate from the church. The governing authorities are appointed by God. The governing authorities have delegated authority from God, largely in the realm of justice. So they are trying to sustain a level of justice within civil society and creating a, to the extent that they're capable, a peaceful society. The church is doing something different. We aren't operating on the level of sort of dominion. In other words, you know, Romans talks about the governing authorities aren't given the sword for nothing. The church is not given the sword at all. Right. We have a whole different fight that we're fighting. And I would say that that's defined more in Ephesians 6. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood. We wrestle against the, you know, the spiritual authorities, the powers, the principalities. And so the church and the state are distinct not only in function, but in actual substance. The two are separate. The two are distinct. And I think that a lot of what's happened lately has been, you know, because we are a government in the United States of the people, for the people and by the people, Christians are, and I would say are certainly allowed and maybe should participate in government. Right. But either way, we have a voice in government that many Christians around the world simply don't have. And so what we've got is we've got a church that can participate in the state. And I think in Christian nationalism, at least the forms of Christian nationalism that are pernicious and problematic, those two ideas that we have a church and we have a church that can participate in the government because it's of the people, by the people and for the people, there has begun to be a fusion or a merger between church and state that collapses the distinction between church and state. And that I think is the real theological problem for the people of God. You have said on a number of occasions, and I love this statement, that the separation of church and state set apart sacred versus secular. That's right. And how does Christian nationalism defeat our main goal as Christians to participate in discipleship? This is the interesting thing with Christian nationalism from my perspective. It is diminishing the church by elevating the state. So in other words, by collapsing the two, what's happening is that the state's power and authority is being expanded beyond what God has actually delegated to it. And so we're asking the state to do things that the church should probably be doing. That's the real problem. That's the crux of the issue. And so we get into these issues of, you know, one of the statements that's put out and strongly agreed with by those classified as Christian nationalist adherents by the Neighborly Faith study is faith can make people better citizens. Yeah, that may be true. Maybe faith can make people better citizens, but I actually don't think it should make people better citizens because to suggest that faith makes people better citizens assumes that there is a complete and total alignment between faith and what it means to be a better citizen. And what I would say is that within the United States, even just in a democratic system, right, a constitutional republic,

Right, where the people have a lot of voice with regard to policy and legal structure and all those kind of things, representatives, everything that we have rights to in the United States. Even within that context, Christians should be pushing back. We should have a lot of friction with our government, right? Because the reality that our government often tries to implement is not the reality that assumes God exists. And so even just something simple like faith can make people better citizens is really a wholesome idea. It's an idea that has a lot of sentimentality to it. Like we want to say, oh, yes, nostalgically, let's think back to Leave It to Beaver and those wholesome times where, you know, pornography on the internet wasn't rampant or, you know, critical race theory wasn't running everything or, you know, the liberals weren't in charge of society. But the reality is that wasn't Christian either. Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, we, we can look at it and say faith makes us better citizens. I agree with it to a point, but to strongly agree with it or completely agree with it. I absolutely think it's the wrong move. We need to qualify these statements and understand them from a biblical and theological perspective. And if we're unwilling to do that, what I would argue is we're elevating the state and what it means to be a citizen over what it means to be a Christian. With a statement such as, you know, you say, wait, it sounds so good. Faith can make people better citizens. But then you really look at it and you say, how, how deep can that go? That doesn't go very deep, does it? No, I mean, so if you just think about the basics, the blocking and tackling of Christianity, right, our savior was crucified by a religious institution that refused to recognize that he was the Messiah, son of God. And by a political institution that was unwilling to put up with or deal with the unrest of that religious society, right? And so what we see in something like, let's say John 11, right? This happens after Jesus raises Lazarus, right? He raises Lazarus from the dead. And some of the people who witnessed this go to the Pharisees and the Pharisees and the chief priests of the law come together. Right. Caiaphas is actually the high priest at that point. And he says, listen, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but, you know, this gets out. This is going to cause a problem with Rome. Like Rome is not going to like this. They're going to see this as a real problem and they're going to bring the hammer down on us. Right. Right. And so what is Caiaphas say? He says, have you not learned? You know, sacrificing the life of one person is better than sacrificing an entire nation. And then the gospel of John goes on and says, he does not say this of his own accord. In other words, this is a prompting from God to drive Jesus toward the resurrection. But the reality is that we serve a savior who was the lamb of God. He was the innocent savior who did not do anything wrong. Right. And yet he was crucified. And so as we think about what it means to have faith, we cannot assume that it's going to make us better citizens if what we mean by that is that we are going to have a harmonious relationship with the state. On some level, theologically, it may be correct that having faith would make us better citizens. In human reality, we're almost always going to come against the rub of, listen, the political authorities don't like anything that we're saying. And so we're not better citizens. We're now criminals. We're now hate mongers. We're now horrible human beings. We're whatever. You know, the societal determinant of that is just the basic understanding of who we are as Christians. If they hated Christ in the world, the world will also hate us because Christ has taken us out of the world. So when you see that and, you know, I, I go back to January 6th, you know, the insurrection. I think that's probably where your mind was going when we were talking about that. I know I've worked with some of these organizations. It's totally off the rail from where they were from a real intellectual standpoint. We're talking people who are are academics and we're talking about the people who I looked up to. How could that happen in such a short period of time? I'm talking 10 years, the last 10 years. I think there's at least a couple factors in it. Number one, we very seldom reckon with the idea that God uses nations in a particular way in the Old Testament. So if I look at something like Jeremiah 25, right? Jeremiah was a prophet. He's prophesying against Israel. He's prophesying against Judah. And he's telling them that Babylon is going to come in and basically take the nation into exile because they have not repented and turned back to the Lord. Babylon's success is necessary to God's plan. And when I say that, I say it very intentionally because there are a lot of people who believe that America's success is necessary, crucial to God's plan. But in Jeremiah 25, what we see is that as essential as Babylon's success is to God's plan, God also said that he's going to punish Babylon for the actions they take on the way to being successful. And so when we talk about it in terms of, let's say, America, is America's success critical to what God is doing? Which is another one of those statements that's on the Navally Faith report. The statement is actually the success of the United States is a critical part of God's plan. And adherents to Christian nationalisms agree with that, strongly agree with that. If what they were saying was, yes, the United States has to succeed in order to fulfill some critical part of God's plan, but their ongoing success is never secured. And in fact, based on biblical data, what we can see is that their success is highly likely to involve a fall. I can agree with that sort of a statement. Right. Unfortunately, what I think this statement is saying, the success of the United States is a critical part of God's plan, is that the United States has somehow found itself in a covenant relationship with the triune God. And that relationship will result in blessing as long as the United States doesn't go too far afoul of some sort of moral standard. And I can't agree with that statement. That statement, I think, is theologically incorrect. For one, you know, you have no biblical evidence to suggest that the United States has any sort of covenant relationship with God. And so to claim that America has some sort of covenant relationship with God is really sort of reverse of what usually happens in biblical covenants. Right, right. God initiates the covenant. He calls the nation. He calls Israel. He calls the church. You don't really see America in that. America counts amongst the nations. And so we should be understanding ourselves as a nation like the other nations in the scriptures. Now, in saying all that, I am not suggesting that Christians have no responsibility or no impetus to call the United States to account. Right. In Romans 13 again, what we see is that the nations or the governing authorities rest under God's authority. They have a delegated authority from God. And so the church serves in part a function of reminding these nations, all of these other nations, that they sit underneath God's authority, even if those nations refuse to recognize that they actually sit under God's authority. Our job is not necessarily to force those nations to recognize God's authority. That is not what we do. We live in a certain way. We proclaim the gospel in word and deed. I say that a lot. What I really mean by it is this. We live differently. We live according to God's law, the law of Christ. We live in terms of faith. And the way we live demonstrates to those governing bodies, to those principalities and powers that oversee all of the realm of the earth. It demonstrates to them the manifold wisdom of God. And so when we live non-anxiously, when we don't worry about where our food comes from, where our clothes are going to come from, where our money is going to come from, when we just walk obediently with God regardless of those things, we demonstrate to the world that there is a different way to live and ultimately a better way to live. It isn't a question of, should we be speaking prophetically and theologically to our government? I would absolutely affirm that. The trouble I see with Christian nationalism...

The nationalism is that we're starting to lose the ability to see critically and theologically to our government, or we're aiming for a point at which we would no longer need to see critically and theologically to our government because the government is actually theological. The government is actually Christian. And so what would we say to that? The church is to be an alternative, and if our nation turns into that alternative, there is no more alternative. Point two, public schools should allow teachers to lead and encourage prayer. That's coming up on Thinking Christian. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide. Or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Christians need to stop listening to the world and start listening to God so that thinking Christian becomes as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. This is Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Point two, public schools should allow teachers to lead and encourage prayer. Yeah, so this is one of those, in the Neighborly Faith study, this was one, I think it was the second highest strongly agreed with statement. The public schools should allow teachers and coaches to lead or encourage students in Christian prayer. Number one, I have some questions about the statement, right? Which should give you a sense of how I would actually answer this, right? I think that within the American system, what we often assume is that the public schools should be free of religion. I don't actually think that's possible. What I would say is, even if they are free of religion, they'll never be free of ideology. There's always going to be some way of thinking that is embedded within the educational system. And so that way of thinking could be Christian. It could be Muslim. It could be atheist. It could be whatever it is, but it's always going to be something. There's always going to be something there. I think the ideal in public education, if you were really to ask people, is going to be, they'd probably frame it in terms of neutrality. I don't. I don't believe that education is neutral. What I believe is that the public education system is designed to help form the next generation to become good citizens of the United States. That's a big part of what education does. It is a discipleship program that forms students less in the image of Christ and more in the image of some ideal notion of what it means to be American. As such, when we start to talk about teachers and public educators leading students, even in Christian prayer, I tend to think it sends the wrong message. Now, I'll qualify that and say, do I think that Christian teachers and coaches could lead Christian students, press them, encourage them as other believers to pray and witness to their faith in a public school setting? I absolutely do. I think that's an important part of what Christians do, regardless of what the rules are. If we meet another Christian student, you know, if a coach meets a Christian student or vice versa, I think there's a mutual encouragement, a bond we share that transcends the legal structure that we're set within. I do not think it is particularly wise for Christian coaches and teachers to encourage non-Christian students to participate in Christian prayer. The context in which that would happen, if you agree with my, and this is definitely like it's a connected argument, so there would be a lot of people who disagree with this, but in the simplest form, if we believe that education is a discipleship program to help make students into good American citizens, and we add Christian prayer into that mix, I am concerned that Christian prayer becomes viewed as something that makes us better citizens, as opposed to making us truly Christian. And so I think the context is problematic. That does not deny, I don't think, Christian teachers and coaches living out their faith in front of students. You know, I think the Kennedy versus Bremerton School District ruling where the coach was praying on the 50-yard line, I think that was the right decision. As a personal profession of faith, that should not be precluded despite the fact that he is a coach at a public school. And so, you know, the fact that other students join in, great. If that's spontaneous, that's awesome. If it's forced, it's problematic. You know, students are forced to go through a curriculum at a public school, right? They're forced to take certain requirements at a public school. If Christian prayer begins to feel like one of those requirements, we're definitely making a misstep, right? Because if it becomes equated with, oh crap, I have to take geometry this year, that's not what we're looking for. You're right. It's not what we want. And so we want students to see true expressions of faith and to be drawn to that because they recognize the hope that is within us. We want them to hear and respond to the gospel spontaneously and through faith, not through coercion. And so while I think it would be fantastic, and I do believe that teachers and coaches have a vast, tremendous influence and opportunity to bring non-Christian students to Christ, I have trouble with the framing of this statement because it assumes some things, or maybe it doesn't assume some things that I'm concerned need to be there. I think it really does need to be an individual practice, an allowance of individual practice, as opposed to a regimented, let's say a prayer before class kind of vibe. I just don't believe that that is actually helpful. Well, and you know, you go to the, again, the Old Testament, you think about Daniel and you think about Daniel praying when it was illegal to pray. You think about the persecuted church in other countries and they sometimes have to go underground to do what they do. But Daniel, we'll go back to the example of Daniel, who made up, he actually did pray publicly or at least by his window, right? It wasn't in his personal life. And just to show that, you know, I worship God. I worship the one true God. I think that analogy, bringing Daniel into that, is exactly what you're talking about. It's really helpful. And I think that Daniel overall offers a really helpful paradigm for the way Christians are to integrate with the culture and with the political culture. I would just say one thing, you know, as we think about prayer in schools, and again, as I look at this statement, which was stated in Neighborly Faith study, as public schools should allow teachers, coaches to lead or encourage students in Christian prayer. I think part of my reticence in agreeing with it is the way it omits the church from the equation. There's part of me that says, yeah, yeah, teachers and coaches, Christian teachers and coaches should encourage Christian students to pray Christian prayers at school. Christians should encourage people, you know, should encourage other Christians

regardless of the setting. Right. Right. But where does that initial impetus and encouragement come from? Where's the real press? It comes from a local congregation. It comes from the body of Christ as a whole. And so why is it that we're concerned about public school prayer as opposed to looking at it and saying, should the church be encouraging all Christians, particularly Christian students, to pray in a public school setting? We've individualized this to teachers and coaches. We're asking individual teachers and coaches to put their livelihoods on the line to some degree. We're asking public officials who have no particular interest in creating disciples for Jesus Christ to change policy so that this can happen. When in reality, we have all the resources available to us that we would ever need to encourage prayer in a public school setting. We're just ignoring it because we continue to look past the church and toward the government. And I think that really is sort of, it encapsulates the problem that I have with Christian nationalism. Yeah. It's that the church becomes a non-issue and essentially has no authority, no influence, no anything. It's just sort of there. But what we really need is influence in the government. Yeah. And I just find that to be theologically myopic. It's a real deep problem that we need to deal with. Right. Before we go to the third, do you have anything else to say about, you know, the only thing I'll say about public schools, I wrote an op-ed probably last year on including theology in school curriculum. Got a lot of good feedback on it. I actually think I changed my view on it to some degree. While I would love to see non-Christian students be introduced to some sort of a more generic theological thought. In other words, I think it's a problem that students aren't introduced to transcendence in school. When they're not introduced to the idea of transcendence, the idea that there is a God, even if they don't specify who that God is. I think what happens is they become trapped in a more narrowly observational, the world is really just made up of what we can see sort of mentality. The qualification I would make to what I wrote in that op-ed is this. I would love to see public schools require some sort of a theological requirement, some sort of a requirement to look beyond a school curriculum in evolution or, you know, social sciences or what have you. I would love for them to require something like that, but allow it to be implemented by local religious organizations. Right. Because I just think that denying students the sort of disciplines that I know I've been benefited by by studying theology, by thinking about even just something as philosophical as deism, not even Christian theology, but philosophical deism. I think it is really limiting the way that students and younger generations think about the world around them. Right. It's sort of foolish for them to think that the world is made up of only what we can see. And I find that to be deeply problematic, but I would definitely revise my opinion on this and say, probably public schools are not the best people to teach theology. And perhaps, you know, that requirement could be fulfilled in other ways, depending on one's faith commitments. Yeah, you say that, and I think about when I went to high school, which is a long time ago, but we actually had an English class called Bible as Lit and going over Bible as lit and taking it as literature really strengthened my faith in a lot of ways because you're reading this. There's a lot of things when you think of the biblical history and you think of the world history, you can get a lot from the Bible. But it also does strengthen your faith in that way if you are of that persuasion. Now, the other thing, too, is that the church actually, the local church, there were about 14 of us who went to the same church in our high school. I grew up Roman Catholic and we had actually had the priests from the congregation come in and he would take us to the church and we would spend one day a month. Right. And that was it was just part of the community. And it was funny because we used to think, you know, it sounded like prison because it was called release time. That's kind of like prison. Yeah. You're being allowed out in the yard. Right. It's just good behavior right now. That's right. Or it was bad behavior. So anyhow, it was really good. And this this one priest, I still have some of his books. Very strong theological influence and a real mentor to people. I mean, you hear pretty bad things about the Catholic Church, especially in my generation. This this guy was really solid. And so, yeah, I do think those kind of things have been it's unfortunate that those kind of things have been weeded out. And this is one of those things that I tend to argue a lot is the First Amendment precludes the establishment of religion. And I actually think that's a good thing. I don't think that, you know, obviously, I would distinguish between the church and the state. That's what this whole conversation has been about. And so I don't think that the state should require or establish one religion over another. I think that's really problematic, particularly for Christianity, which is not a we don't convert people by coercion. We convert them because they're convicted by the Holy Spirit. And so, you know, having an established religion complicates matters from a religious perspective and particularly a Christian perspective. Where I think the founders sort of missed it and probably couldn't have anticipated it is that religion is only one kind, one species of coordinated belief system where groups of people come together and understand how the world operates as one body of people. And so today what we have, and there's several writings on this, John McCourt has done a lot of work on it. James Lindsay has done it, you know, talking about woke as a religious movement. And in other words, what he's saying is that or what these people are arguing is that there are these ideological sort of movements that are not classified as religions, but that have features and characteristics analogous to religion. They just don't meet the full criteria to qualify as religion. Now, the difficulty with that is that the government can establish those. And we're seeing some of that happening. We're seeing some of that establishment work. You know, atheism is technically a theological position. And so if we get to neutrality, which is functionally atheism, right? Does God exist? I don't know. It's at least agnostic, if not atheistic. Right. But that neutral setting is, number one, really impossible to sustain or get to. And number two, it's actually an ideological perspective that government is now using coercive force to nail down. And so my problem with the First Amendment Establishment Clause is not that I don't think it shouldn't be there. It's that I don't think it is sufficiently nuanced to deal with what we're dealing with today. That's the difficulty with it. And because it prohibits the establishment of religion, religion often is handicapped as we seek to figure out how to interact within, let's say, a public school setting or within society as a whole, because we have an extra barrier to get through. Right. The sort of idea of separation in church and state, which I know isn't in the Constitution, but the establishment of religion by the state is an extra barrier that we have to get through, whereas other ideological movements that may or may not be, quote unquote, religious don't have to get through that barrier. Well, good. I do, in the coming shows, I do want to talk a little bit about the whole woke that we see so much, really, in the political world, more of a catchphrase than where it really came from. And, you know, I think people don't understand that. But I don't want to go much into that.

Yeah, because it's going to come up this week. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna do a whole episode on that. Right, right. Well, number one, I think before we go to the third point, we better take a break. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Hey everybody, welcome back. We are going to discuss this. So the way I structured this op-ed that I wrote for the Washington Times was around the top three statements that Christian nationalists adherents strongly agreed with. And so the third of those statements, the first had to do with faith making us better citizens. The second had to do with the public school teachers and coaches should be allowed to lead and encourage students in Christian prayer. And the third one, which we've already referenced, but we're going to go into a little bit greater depth in, is that the United States is critical, the success of the United States is critical to God's plan. And so this is an area where I've written a little bit as well. And I think my Old Testament background actually is sort of a help in this arena. The New Testament doesn't deal with a lot of nations, but the Old Testament is sort of all about the nations. And so that's the third statement we want to really want to consider. Yeah, and before we do that, I want to, I guess we should really cite where this study is coming from. It's a group called Neighborly Faith. And talk a little bit about who they are and kind of, do they have an agenda or the objective? You know, who are these people? You know, as far as I can tell, they're really an objective group. I actually know the, I worked with previously the director of Neighborly Faith. We haven't corresponded for a long time, but I just messaged him on LinkedIn and just said, hey, I really appreciate the study. And so, but yeah, they're just a group that does this sort of research. And they've done one on politics and younger evangelicals that I found really helpful as well. But this one really hits at the heartbeat of some of the, I think, theological problems that the church needs to really wrestle with as opposed to broad evangelical trends related to politics. And so I tend to gravitate toward this study. But yeah, you can get it at Neighborly Faith. If you just Google Neighborly Faith Christian nationalism, it should come up. It's actually a free download. And so they make the study and all the data available. And I would say one of the things that I found about this study that was really troubling was something that I saw in the Public Religion Research Institute study earlier this year. You can also look that up. It's PRRI.org for that one. But in both studies, what seemed to be apparent was that there is a greater proportion or a disproportionate number of born again Christians or evangelicals included in Christian nationalist adherence than anyone else. And so what we have here is, I think, probably an educational problem in part where the church has just not been particularly strong enough in educating believers about their relationship to governing authority and how the church is distinct from the state and what the relationship between church and state may look like. We have largely been sort of embedded within a Christian nation sort of narrative. Now we're going to get into, you know, is America a Christian nation sort of conversations in later episodes. So I'll sort of set that aside for the moment. But when I look at the statements with which those classified as adherents to Christian nationalism strongly agree with, what I see is a theological myth. The Bible simply does not teach these statements. It would not affirm these statements without some pretty significant qualifications. And I think that's really where I sort of land on this Neighborly Faith study. The statements, I think, are appropriate to help classify who is and who isn't a Christian nationalist. And they provide a spectrum of adherents and sympathizers and, you know, different categories. The study is definitely worth reading. It's very interesting. We'll link it in the show notes. But at the same time, my interest and my primary interest is really not in, you know, whether Christian nationalism is a threat to the United States. My primary interest is, what are Christians thinking and how can we help Christians be more faithful followers of Christ? How do Christians think Christians? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think that's a good way to, maybe a good show could be How to Think Christian. Yeah, make a really good podcast, right? Thinking Christian. Yeah. Call it Thinking Christian, I think, because that'll torture us a little bit. So, Neighborly Faith, by the way, is neighborlyfaith.org if anybody is... Thanks. Yeah, neighborlyfaith.org. Yeah, I just looked it up. I love technology in that way. Yeah, yeah. There's so many things I hate about technology, but... But anyhow, let's talk about that third point. The success of the United States is a critical part of God's plan. That's, I mean, every one of these, it's either loaded or it's trite. I'm not sure. Yeah, but I think they're trying to get at sort of these core assumptions of people. Where are they coming from? Yeah, it's really possible that, you know, would I strongly agree with that? I would, but what I'm assuming if I strongly agree with it is that the providence of God, in the providence of God, he allows certain nations to succeed, not perpetually, but for a time in order to serve his purposes. And once those purposes are served, that nation can fall away. And so, would I strongly agree with that statement if those are the assumptions that are lying behind that statement? Absolutely. Right? I think it was absolutely critical to the success of God's plan that Persia be successful over Babylon. Right. I think it was absolutely crucial that Babylon be successful over Israel. In both of those instances, in different passages, obviously, I'm talking Jeremiah 25 and Isaiah 49, the leader of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, is called my servant, called God's servant. And in Isaiah 49, Cyrus, who is the Persian ruler, is called God's anointed or God's Messiah. Right. And so, in each of these instances, you could sit back and say, yes, the success of those nations, at least provisionally and for a time, was crucial to what God was doing. It's critical. But to say that doesn't mean that, you know, this nation would also be punished for what they've done. Jeremiah makes that very clear. Again, Jeremiah 25 talks about the punishment of the Babylonians, that God is going to punish the Babylonians for doing what they've done. Right. And so, you've got this sort of dichotomy that needs to be dealt with and isn't dealt with in this state. And so, my assumption is, again, the way I understand the data, is that people are really saying that, no, this is probably getting at what's usually called American exceptionalism. Is that America is like the Blues Brothers on a mission from God. Right. And I don't mean to sound trite about that or insult anybody, but it's a really apt analogy. You know, I mean, the Blues Brothers movie in the 1980s, right, Elwood and Joliet go off to save a Catholic orphanage in which they were raised. They want to raise $5,000 to pay back taxes.

through this orphanage and throughout the movie, no matter what it is that they're doing, whether it's good, bad, or ugly, right? Elwood always goes back to, don't worry about it, we're on a mission from God. We're on a mission from God. We're on a mission from God. And to some degree, that's how I tend to read this question. Right. Is that America's success is crucial because America is on a mission from God. That there is some sort of an assumption of, you know, covenant loyalty between God and America that simply is not biblically available. It's not how God operates. Yeah, I mean, we just don't see it. What we see in Scripture is, we see Israel as a covenant nation that I would argue is, you know, sort of fulfilled in Christ, and that now the Gentiles are flowing into Jesus as the new Israel. And Israel's covenant commitments and mission are largely taken over by the church. The rest of that, all non-believing people at this point, all non-believing nations, are part of the nations or the Gentiles. And so we see this, 1 Peter actually talks about the Gentiles in terms of, usually it references people who are non-Jews. But in 1 Peter, he uses Gentiles to refer to non-Christians. And so you start to see this expansion. America falls squarely within non-Christian. It falls squarely within just another of the nations. And again, that is not to trivialize America, right? It's not to be unpatriotic. It's not to say that America has no distinct, unique, positive influence that it's going to have on the world, right? That's not the point. The point is that it has no covenant with God and that it cannot be a Christian nation. It can't be that America's perpetual success is a sign of God's blessing. Right. And it can't be that America's perpetual success is critical to God's overarching plan. It's just another nation. The church is what is going to be perpetually pushed forward. It's what won't end. We are part of the unshakable kingdom, that's Hebrews 12, 28, that is going to continue. Whereas America is probably going to last to some degree. But even when we look at that statement, if we look historically, my goodness, I mean, think about the number of nations that have a longer history than America that are ongoing that have no commitment to Christianity whatsoever. No, you know, no Christian influence in their founding. China. As far as I know, there's no Christian influence in China's founding. They are far older than the United States. They are increasingly more successful than the United States. How are we supposed to read that? Is this some sort of blessing from God, a covenantal relationship that we're missing? I don't think so. I think that God raises up nations for a certain time to do certain things that many times we're unaware of. And then those nations fall. And so to suggest that America needs to be successful in order for God to accomplish his plan, I think is, to some degree, true with the qualifications that I stated earlier. But it's also assuming an awful lot about what God's plan actually is and how America factors in it. I also think that it ignores many of the factors that we often just simply wouldn't ever know. So if we go back to Genesis 15, you know, God is telling Abraham that his people or his descendants are going to spend four hundred years in Egypt and then they're going to go over and they're going to take over the land of Canaan. And he says it's because the iniquity of the Ammonites is yet to be completed. And so a lot of the things that God is, we could say, managing, right, bringing into place, are due to factors that we may not fully understand. And so to make such a definitive statement and assume that America needs to be successful for God's plan to be completed, I just think is not biblically warranted. Right. Well, I think that really carries through all of the first three. I'm thinking, is there anything that you want to summarize what we have? And I really appreciate what... How can people get a hold of your op-ed piece? Yeah, so it was published by the Washington Times, so they can just Google me in the Washington Times and it'll probably come up. We'll also link the op-ed in the show notes so people can just go right there. But I think in closing, here's what I would say. In critiquing Christian nationalism, what I'm not trying to do is to get people to ignore the United States. I'm not trying to suggest that we shouldn't participate in our government. What I am trying to get people to do is to say, and to really think about our participation from a biblical and theological perspective. As Christians, I really strongly believe that we are people of the book and the body. In other words, we're people who sit underneath the authority of Scripture. It is the final authority for our life and faith. And that has to mean something even in our political participation. And so if the ideas of Christian nationalism don't square with what we see in Scripture, we have to at least qualify them, if not reject them. And so that's what I'm trying to do here. It is not a question of, hey, let's abandon the United States or let's isolate ourselves from the United States or let's stop participating politically. That's not at all what we're trying to do here. What we're trying to do is say, let's think soberly about what the Bible says in relation to politics and allow the Bible to guide and govern the way we think about our political participation. That's how I'd close this conversation. We're going to go into some of the other statements that were included in the Neighborly Faith report in subsequent episodes here. But I think that I want that to be the overarching tone. This is not about my perspective, your perspective, some sort of conservative or liberal perspective. Those are all fine, right, to the extent that they exist. But the reality is that all of those perspectives need to be governed by the word of God. And so that's what we're going to try to do over the next several podcasts. Which is actually what a good final word would be. We just let God speak. That's right. That's right. We should listen to Jesus. That's the basic message. If we could just do that for 15 minutes, that would really take care of a lot of shows. I mean, it would be really good. It's almost a guarantee you'd have better insights than we would. I know that too. The other thing too is that we will be talking a lot in the coming weeks because this is an election year. And we do. We should participate. We certainly don't have to participate. But it is very, very important that, and we live in a country where we can participate. And that's the great thing about this. This is going to be a topic that we circle back to multiple times over the next several months as we sort of gear up for the 2024 elections. We're also going to be looking at a variety of biblical passages more in depth on Useful to God. So the Useful to God podcast and our broadcasts on KLTK. We're going to be looking at very specific biblical passages that will help us understand what the Bible says about government, the distinction between church and state, and help us understand how we can go about participating in government and making decisions related to politics. And so I just encourage you both to continue listening to Thinking Christian, but also subscribe to Useful to God at UsefulToGod.com and check out what we're doing there. That's our Bible teaching program. This is more of our philosophical, theological kind of conversation program. And so I'd encourage you to listen to both. They both need to be there. And hopefully the two will reinforce one another. Through calm, thoughtful theological conversations, Thinking Christian offers a mix of interviews and discussions that highlight the ways God is working in the lives of his people and question the underlying relationships.

social, cultural, and political assumptions that keep the church from conforming more closely to the image of Christ. I want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian Podcast. Life Audio. A powerful prayer life does not require hiking a mountain to be able to hear from God. God can meet us right in the middle of our busy lives to help, guide, and speak to us through prayer. I'm Christina Patterson, host of the Teach Us to Pray podcast, providing practical teaching and encouragement on how you can make prayer a natural and consistent part of your everyday life. I promise it won't require hiking a mountain, but you just might develop the faith to move one. Listen and subscribe at lifeaudio.com.