Christian nationalism

Review: Bring Back Your People

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Cover image of "Bring Back Your People" by Aaron Scott

Bring Back Your People, Aaron Scott. Broadleaf Books (ISBN: 9781506494555) 2025.

Summary: A blunt discussion of how to reach out to those who have embraced Christian nationalism.

You might know “Randy.” He (or she, in this case Brandy) may be a sibling or relative. Maybe a next door neighbor. Or it could be your auto mechanic, or hair dresser, or a favorite waitstaff at a restaurant you frequent. Randy embraces ideas of American greatness, often coated with an icing of Christianity. As I write, Randy is probably in hog heaven. And you may be dismayed and wondering where do you go from here.

Aaron Scott has worked with a lot of Randys in his ministry. He helped start a church among the rural poor on coastal Washington State, many of whom have been attracted by Christian nationalism. He offers a blunt, plain-spoken ten-step guidebook to talking with the Randys in our lives. He begins by discussing the tenets of Christian nationalism and why they attracted Randy. Often it came down to someone talking to Randy and caring about him and offering a vision and ground game of how his life and community could be better. And sadly, more progressive folk probably never did.

That’s the starting place: talking to Randy and caring about his life. Sometimes, that means getting past the things that get under your skin to see the person and taking time to really listen. Scott also takes a deep dive into American history and how white supremacy, nationalism, and white evangelicalism have sadly walked together. Randy may well be where he is because a church embracing Christian nationalist ideas has taken him in and provided a place of belonging. Many progressive folk have nothing nearly as compelling to offer.

Scott shows how so much of the political rhetoric of both parties tries to recruit the poor while preserving the wealth of a tiny number. He believes the answer is mobilizing a people’s movement that calls both to account. He also recognizes this could be emotionally and physically dangerous. He discusses honestly assessing these to navigate both safely and strategically. He also argues that progressives need a religious strategy. Spirituality matters to Randy, yet progressives often shun it like the plague. All of this so that you can offer Randy a new home, one speaking compellingly into the real-life issues of one’s own community. He argues that we have to stop blaming people and “pledge allegiance to the bottom.”

In sum, Scott seeks to rally the church, not to the cause of American greatness, but to the 140 million poor in our country. He offers a bracing call to get to work. Christian nationalism has succeeded by relentless organizing that has extended into poor communities. Yet they are not delivering for the poor, an opportunity to “bring back” people like Randy. But it means talking to Randy, organizing to reach and serve Randy, and taking Randy seriously rather than dismissively.

As I mentioned, Scott speaks bluntly. His writing is laced with profanity (but that’s often the language Randy uses). While progressive both theologically and politically, he is critical of the abandonment of the rural poor by many progressives. His approach is one that goes beyond the church truly being the church to community and political organizing. It doesn’t strike me as an approach to healing the divides but rather of outdoing the opposition. I’m not sure I agree with that but Scott makes me ask hard questions about how we are caring for the Randys in our lives.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: Disarming Leviathan

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Cover image for "Disarming Leviathan" by Caleb E. Campbell

Disarming Leviathan Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, Caleb E. Campbell. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514008515) 2024.

Summary: Focuses on how we discerningly engage people who embrace Christian nationalism with grace and truth.

There is our political discourse. And then there are our relationships with family, neighbors, co-workers, and those who provide us goods and services. Maybe they are people who are part of our church community. For example, they say things that would identify them with Christian nationalism, the idea that America should be run by Christians and protect and promote Christian concerns over those of others (author’s definition). We may think that is off, both theologically and constitutionally. But why, and how do we engage with people we love who hold these views.

Caleb Campbell, as a pastor has struggled with this. He identified 300 people who were no longer friends because they parted ways on these things. This changed when a representative of TurningPointUSA told him that while politics was important, she just wanted to follow Jesus. Then he asked her how she had met Jesus. And she shared that it was at a TurningPoint USA rally. Then his whole paradigm shifted from seeing her as an “enemy” to to a mission field. She was a sister in Christ who had been discipled into a distorted version of Christianity.

In the pages that follow, Campbell first addresses understanding the mission field of Christian nationalism. He differentiates it from patriotism and conservativism and considers it under three I’s: Ideology, Idolatry, and Identity. He uses the image of leviathan, the sea creature symbolizing chaos and evil opposed to the peaceable, good rule of God. By contrast, leviathan works through distorting scripture, fostering anxiety and rage, creating an “us versus them” culture, demanding ultimate allegiance, and making false promises. Then he exposes how the leviathan of Christian nationalism harms us. His most memorable image, describing the syncretic tendencies of mixing nationalism and Christianity is to describe it as the “poop in the brownie mix.”

If we understand leviathan, how do we disarm it? How do we engage with our neighbors? The question is how we steal past watchful dragons and build trust. And how do we set tables instead of flip them? Campbell enumerates several steps: 1) Start with hospitality; 2) Lead with questions; 3) Connect on shared values; 4) Use shibboleths (passwords) and avoid red flags; 5) Honor the good; 6) Engage in humble subversion; and, 7) Offer open invitations to future conversations. Then he offers models of what conversations on various topics would look like, practicing these principles. I would have loved to also hear stories of those who had turned from Christian nationalism to authentic Christian faith through such conversations.

He concludes with hope–not in argument but in Jesus and his power. What is valuable in his approach is that he combines clear eyed discernment of what is wrong with Christian nationalism with love for people that looks for common ground, doesn’t insult their intelligence or motives, and lovingly engages with them, asking questions and exploring ideas rather than offering diatribes.

This is hard work. At times, the sections unpacking Christian nationalism seem harsh. But I would argue that this is necessary. What is wrong in false teaching and those who expound it as teachers must be met with firmness and clarity. Yet those misled by such teaching to stray from the truth of the gospel of king Jesus must be gently helped back onto the path of discipleship. Perhaps the example of the good shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine for the one lost sheep should capture the attention of all of us who care for such things.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory

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The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, Tim Alberta. New York: HarperCollins, 2023.

Summary: A several years-long study of why much of the evangelical movement turned to hard right, nationalist politics, ignoring character and embracing the pursuit of power to enforce its vision of American greatness.

Tim Alberta, a writer for The Atlantic, who had written articles critical of the former president, was stunned in the summer of 2019 when his father, an evangelical pastor outside Detroit, died suddenly of a heart attack. What stunned him even more was that a number of people at his father’s funeral, instead of offering comfort and condolences, took him to task for what he had written. One, a family friend, left him a letter accusing him of being a traitor. Subsequently, conversations with his father’s successor, Chris Winans, told a tale of controversy during COVID over church closures, mask mandates and more. Winans watched many depart for a church down the road preaching a political gospel people wanted to hear instead of the counter-cultural gospel of Jesus Pastor Winans preached.

All this set Alberta on a cross-country quest to understand what was happening in much of American evangelicalism, from a tent church in the South, to the ministry of Robert Jeffress, to the campus of Liberty University. Alberta remains a faithful Christian and this book is not an exvangelical hatchet job. Much of the book allows leaders in their own words to talk about their embrace of an American greatness gospel, motivated by an idea of reclaiming a white vision of America in the 1950’s, even as boomers from that era began to die off and the actual population of the country became far more culturally diverse. He questions the flip-flop from the excoriation of Bill Clinton for his moral failures to the embrace of a president just as flawed, if not more so. He received no good answers, just the justification that the needs of the hour required such a man. Some interviewees expressed quiet reservations not reflected in their subsequent public rhetoric.

He also chronicles the stories of the wounded. Russell Moore was a former leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church, a man of impeccable religious conservatism who nevertheless opposed the former president and also stood up against sexual abuse in the church against its executive leadership. He was forced out and left the denomination. David French, fought for religious liberty cases on university campuses and at one time wrote for the National Review. When he wrote against the former president, the threats became so bad, both he and his wife began carrying firearms. One of the most courageous was a Liberty University professor, popular with students being fired for not obeying the administration. He refused to resign, accept a severance package and sign a non-disclosure agreement. He offers an account of Rachael Denhollander, fighting for anti-abuse policies in the Southern Baptist Church while forced out of her own congregation.

He portrays his own father’s embrace of the culture wars and efforts to reclaim American greatness, and how the seeds that bore fruit in 2015 were sown many years earlier through Falwell’s Moral Majority and Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition. Combine that with congregations nourished on talk radio and conservative cable news networks and you had a populace discipled, not by the gospel of Jesus but by the gospel of America. Instead of a vision for a global kingdom of God, what mattered was the kingdom of America. Instead of zeal for the greatness of God, it was zeal for the greatness of America. In short, what Alberta portrays is political idolatry in the guise of Christianity.

What’s troubling to see is people from rural pastors to Jerry Falwell, Jr., using this gospel to build their own kingdoms, drawing off people from other congregations with the lure of their false gospel. For some, there is power and glory in their nearness to earthly political power. And while all this is happening, many Gen Z children are heading for the exits, and many others as well.

Alberta concludes where he began, at the church his father once pastored. He’s heartened to find that, despite all the wounds, Chris Winans has persisted, pursuing a strategy of “pull, don’t push” with his people, offering sound teaching to make them question their own beliefs. The church had replaced its losses and was leaning into a vision of faithful presence in the culture rather than “owning the libs.” He entertains the hope, even as he wonders how this all will work out that this “hidden gospel,” hidden in quiet acts of everyday faithfulness will lead to a new revealing of Christ.

Jesus said we cannot believe in both God and Mammon. This is the kind of choice and the kind of divide that runs through the accounts of this book. I’m increasingly struck through recent reading that the draw of Mammon is the belief that it works. That seems the only justification people offer for embracing a political faith so opposite the teaching of scripture. What is not said is that in so doing we are saying that we don’t believe in the way of Jesus, the way of loving enemies, of expanding the reach of his rule to “sinners,” Samaritans, and even Gentiles, and walking the way of the cross. Are we willing to persist in what is foolish and weak, believing it reflects the power and wisdom of God?

Part of the challenge is that our attention, on social and news media, is on the gospel of Mammon. During his remarks at his father’s funeral, and in a recent interview, Alberta repeatedly offers the challenge that if we claim to place Jesus first, that we spend more time in scripture, in reading nourishing Christian books and taking in podcasts and sermons, than listening to the media of Mammon. Perhaps, in this season of Lent, fasting from this media and feasting on the word of God may be a start. Hopefully, it will remind us whose kingdom, power, and glory we are called to seek.

Review: American Idolatry

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American Idolatry, Andrew L. Whitehead. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2023.

Summary: Drawing on sociological research showing the association of racism and xenophobia with Christian nationalism, argues of the dangers of the idolatries of power, fear and violence to the American church.

My exposures to Christian nationalism are of the anecdotal character–the heartbreak of pastors whose people forsake sound teaching for a message of nationalism laced with fear and calls to the assertion of power or even to violent uprising. I also know the heartbreaking work of walking alongside young people “de-constructing” their faith because of alienation from churches that have become captive to such messages, which seems so unlike what they’ve encountered of Jesus in the gospels.

Andrew Whitehead articulates with academic rigor the concerns I have in my personal encounters. He writes as someone growing up within evangelicalism who wrestles with whether it is possible to be both Christian and patriot (yes) and how Christian nationalism is different from both. As a Christian, he argues that Christian nationalism is an empty, hollow philosophy rooted in idolatries of power, fear, and violence. As a sociologist, he notes studies that show how the embrace of Christian nationalism is one of the best predictors of both racist and anti-immigrant attitudes.

He begins with defining Christian nationalism as the conviction that civic life should be organized according to a particular form of conservative Christianity. This includes a moral traditionalism that maintains social hierarchies (between men and women, economic classes, races, and outsiders) and supports authoritarian social control to maintain those boundaries, including the threat and use of violence. He spends a chapter defining this, noting that signs of this in churches are American flags in sanctuaries, messages of fear or self-interest from the pulpit, “Celebrate America” services around July 4, defense of seeking access to power, comfort with the use of violence, and us versus them thinking.

The next three chapters look at three manifestations of idolatry, which he describes, quoting Kaitlyn Schiess as the “capitulation to a different story and set of values. Idols make promises of protection and provision, and they require allegiance. He looks at the focus on using power to benefit “us” versus seeking the common good of all, and contrasts this with the approach of a Jesus who “turns the other cheek. For example, are we concerned with defending our religious liberty or protecting the religious liberty of all? Then he looks at how fear becomes an idol attracting followers by evoking fears around race, immigrants, and religion and contrasts this to the teaching of Jesus who calls his disciples to “fear not.” He notes for the example the evoking of the fears of the presence of immigrants leading to higher crime rates when in fact the crime rates among this group are lower. Finally, Whitehead considers how Christians have legitimated the use of violence in the assertion of power to attain the goals of conservative Christianity, as visibly evident in the January 6 effort to seize the Capitol building and prevent the Constitutional certification of the election and succession of the presidency. Whitehead believes this to be deeply embedded in our history both with Indigenous people and Blacks maintaining first slavery, and then racial subordination. Again he contrasts this with the command of Jesus to “lay down your sword.”

Chapters six and seven then discuss how power, fear, and violence associated with Christian nationalism are connected empirically with racism and xenophobia. He offers suggestions for readings and one of the most important suggestions he offers is for white churches to relinquish social control, sharing the example of Shalom Community Church’s reparations efforts and relnquishing all controls of funds collected to Black religious and community leaders. He observes how we will go on short-term mission trips but want to refuse entry of people from the same countries to the US. He profiles the Neighbor to Neighbor ministry that has worked to welcome immigrants and how it has replaced fear with joy.

In his concluding chapter, he speaks of the challenge to tell better stories than the idol stories the Christian nationalism has embraced. I think this is spot on. My sense is that the appeal of Christian nationalism is that it offers both a cause and a sense of being empowered, and yet these are not derived from the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom. I’ve been saddened oftentimes by not only how destructive and divisive is Christian nationalism. I’m saddened by how small it is compared to the grand narrative of the gospel that brings both personal and social transformation, breaking down every barrier, and accomplishing through spiritual power and the power of love what political power and armed violence can never achieve. Whitehead’s use of examples of ministries that are doing this are important–stories that can be seen and not just talk are necessary.

Whitehead’s book is also important in confronting where elements of Christian nationalism have crept into our churches. I wonder, though, how many such churches will read this. I suspect that a more significant audience may be those who have been part of such churches in the past who need to come to terms with this past, and perhaps the unconcious biases that they carry from these, even if they have reacted against the church. Reflection, lament, repentance, and embrace of the gospel offer a path of spiritual reconstruction, and this book can help point the way.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover

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The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, Lerone A. Martin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.

Summary: A study of how J. Edgar Hoover worked in concert with sympathetic Christian leaders to foster his vision of a White Christian America.

In 1966 a stained glass window at the Capital Hill Methodist Church was dedicated in honor of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, recognizing the “Christian stature and national leadership” of this man. As it turns out, this was no isolated event, as Lerone A. Martin shows in this book, based on research of thousands of newly released files, some of which Martin sued for under the Freedom of Information Act.

Martin does several things in this book. He shows how Hoover, reflecting his own Christian beliefs built the FBI as a white, male, Christian law enforcement agency focused on sustaining a white Christian America against the forces of communism and other groups (read women and people of color) who would dilute that vision. He documents how Hoover courted and worked with white Christian leaders, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical, who he deemed sympathetic with that vision after careful vetting. And he shows how these leaders promoted Hoover’s vision through their pulpits, platforms, and publications, fostering a broad Christian public who looked to Hoover as a spiritual authority.

He begins with the formative influences in Hoover’s life as a young man, including his strict Presbyterian upbringing, and aspirations to go to seminary and ministry. His father diverted him into the study of law, leading to work in the Department of Justice, leading a task force responding to a series of bombings targeting prominent Americans by radical elements. This forged his passion to uphold Americanism against anti-American elements, which he soon had power to pursue as the first director of the Bureau of Investigation, later the FBI, in 1924.

Hoover required, in his oath for agents, that they be both soldiers and ministers in this crusade to protect Christian America. A Jesuit retreat house in Annapolis led by Fr. Robert S. Lloyd, SJ, played a key role. Annual abd later,regular semi-annual spiritual retreats were organized with Hoover’s blessing for agents, with FBI leaders as retreat organizers, with Fr. Lloyd leading them in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. The militant character of the Jesuits fit Hoover’s vision of equiping godly soldiers for the nation’s good. Martin also traces the development of Masses and prayer breakfasts that emphasized the important of Christian values in the fight to preserve a moral America. Both the religious leaders Hoover worked with and the agents who participated were white, male, and nearly all Christian in religious identification. At this time, Blacks could only work in support roles like being chauffers and could not participate.

Hoover’s Masters of Deceit, a book against communism that became a bestseller, resonated with the nascent evangelical movement birthed out of the success of Billy Graham’s crusades and the rise of their own journal, Christianity Today. It was disturbing to learn how eager Carl F.H. Henry, the editor of Christianity Today was to publish articles by Hoover in the publication. Hoover was only too glad to comply, publishing a series of articles in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, reprinted by other evangelical organizations, published as booklets, and re-printed by Hoover and the FBI, and distributed widely at government expense to churches and anyone who asked.

In the process, Hoover became a kind of arbiter, a secular pope who determined what was orthodox and what was not. His FBI investigated the Revised Standard Version, published by the National Council of Churches, which Hoover considered a communist front. As civil rights developed and Martin Luther King, Jr. arose as a leader of the movement, Hoover turned the agency’s energies toward them, not to protect them against the vicious attacks of White authorities but to ferret out communist influences and discredit the movement, protecting the White southern establishment.

The irony Martin sees in all this is that while Hoover became a white evangelical hero, he was never one of them, not sharing their focus on conversion experiences and worshipping at a “mainline” church and keeping company with Catholics. Despite suspicions about his sexuality and relationship with Clyde Tolson, he was universally honored in evangelical circles, having his picture taken with Biully Graham and many others and honored at many evangelical gatherings.

I found it disturbing to see the lack of discernment among Christians of various stripes in becoming instruments of Hoover’s rather than Jesus’s gospel, amplifying his power and influence, even while he surveiled them! The temptation to claim Hoover as “one of ours” is evident, showing evangelicalism’s pathological attachment to celebrities to give them credibility.

Finally, while Hoover did speak against the more extreme elements of the Klan, we see the patterns of using government structures to maintain White power and to advocate for a version of White Christian nationalism and the ready complicity of White evangelicals who uncritically welcomed these efforts. Some will argue aganst this book that Hoover never promoted White supremacy. What Martin shows is that Hoover simply assumed White supremacy in how he recruited agents, ran the bureau and made religious alliances to advance his agenda.

While many trace the yoking of White evangelicalism to visions of American greatness to the Reagan years, Martin reveals to us that in fact, this was a pattern from the very beginnings of this movement. Some have suggested that racism is America’s “original sin.” This work makes the case that for the contemporary evangelical movement, White Christian nationalism is it’s version of “original sin” and that J. Edgar Hoover played a leading role as Tempter.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Religion of American Greatness

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The Religion of American Greatness, Paul D. Miller (Foreword by David French). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A conservative’s critique of Christian nationalism, distinguishing it from patriotism, and making a case against it both biblically and as an illiberal theory that is at odds with the American experiment of a constitutional democratic republic.

What first caught my attention with this book is that it is written by a White, theologically conservative, Afghanistan war veteran who served in the George W. Bush White House and at the CIA as an intelligence analyst, is pro-life, lives in Texas, and reads the Declaration of Independence to his kids on the Fourth of July. He is also a Georgetown University professor who offers a scholarly treatment that both carefully explains Christian nationalism on its own terms and offers a well-supported critique of it, both as a Christian and as a patriot who passionately believes in the American experiment.

He begins as all good academics by discussing what nationalism is and differentiates it from patriotism, which he supports. He offers this definition:

“Nationalism is the belief that humanity is divisible into internally coherent, mutually distinct cultural units which merit political independence and human loyalty because of their purported ability to provide meaning, purpose, and value in human life; and that governments are supposed to protect and promote the cultural identities of their respective nations” (p. 5).

He then looks at the American version of this, arguing that the particular cultural identity that American nationalists seek to protect is Anglo-Protestantism. What is problematic with this is that cultural identities have blurry boundaries that don’t align with political boundaries. The consequence is illiberal forms of government that marginalize and disadvantage ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other cultural groupings, treating them as second class citizens. Far from promoting national unity, this results in fragmentation and division.

The Christian, evangelical version of this takes a universal faith and weds it to identity politics, reducing it to a tribal faith rather than a faith for every tribe. Miller spends a good deal of time discussing the concepts of “nations” and “peoples” in the Bible and argues that the template of Israel cannot be used to uphold the United States as a uniquely chosen nation under God. He concludes that Christian nationalism is a form of idolatry. He traces the uneasy tension between nationalism and republicanism throughout the history of the Christian right.

Whereas other commentators of a more progressive bent automatically associate Christian nationalism with racism, Miller focuses on the illiberality of nationalism in how it thinks about race, inequality, and naming and remedying the sins of the past. Some may consider this a distinction without a difference, but I appreciate the measured tone and the focus on consequences rather than on the labels we apply.

He discusses the embrace of the former president’s form of Christian nationalism and its attraction for White evangelicals. One of the most telling aspects of this discussion is the suspicion of elites as well as the fear of elite efforts to restrict religious expression. I’ve experienced that in university ministry where universities used institutional power to attempt to restrict access of religious groups on campus (and I met the contributor of the foreword, David French, in conjunction with standing against these efforts). I observed the condescension with which religious convictions were treated. I chose to love those who treated me as an enemy but I can understand how this sense of grievance can be played upon to oppose and defeat “progressive elites,” something I think few progressives really grasp. Miller observes that “while conservatives are proud of their bubble, progressives deny they are in one.”

Miller concludes in arguing that national identity is not bad–we just need a better story than nationalism, one rooted in our history that both celebrates our ideals, especially as they have distinguished us in practice, as well as our ugly failures, that inspire us to overcome and strive for a better future. He argues for a kind of open exceptionalism in which we hold the nation up to the light of our high ideals combined with Niebuhrian humility that faces our national sins and failures. He believes pastors can do a better job in careful teaching that gives the lie to the idea of America as the new Israel, chosen of God and thinking beyond specific issues as to how to engage politically in a pluralistic society and the duties of responsible citizenship.

Miller is self-aware enough to recognize that many Christian nationalists won’t read his book. I hope some will because they will meet someone who actually cares about much of what they care for, who genuinely loves America, and is equally critical of progressives for their own brand of illiberalism. He writes as one who sees the religion of American greatness as an idol, a counterfeit version of the great vision of our faith of God’s love for all the nations of the earth. Miller is unwilling to see it reduced to one puny White evangelical tribe identified with a mere vision of national identity.

He also sees nationalist efforts, Christian or otherwise, as incongruous with our national experiment of a constitutional form of democratic republicanism. He alludes to writing not only a similar critique of progressivism but also a book outlining his ideas of a “framework of ordered liberty.” I hope he gets to write both of those books, but especially the third, which I think will offer great help for all of those who want to think politically beyond the issues that so often divide us.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Psychology of Christian Nationalism

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The Psychology of Christian Nationalism, Pamela Cooper-White. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022.

Summary: A discussion of the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, why people are drawn to it, and how to talk across the divide when one differs from those who embrace some form of Christian nationalism.

Beginning with the election of 2016, there has been a rise in what is termed “Christian nationalism,” fusing Christian hopes for national renewal with a movement setting out to restore “American greatness.” What is seen from within as a type of revival movement or a return to what is believed to have been lost to progressivism is perceived as a disturbing authoritarian and idolatrous movement with connections to white supremacism. What is more painful is that this movement divides families, friends, and churches, as well as the broader fabric of the nation. Deep differences with those close to us may lead to harsh words and estranged relationships.

What is this movement and why are people drawn to it? And how ought we (if we are able) to have conversations across these divides? These are the questions Pamela Cooper-White sets out to discuss in this book. She begins by discussing what Christian nationalism is, an overview of the history of its rise, and how this differs from patriotism. Cooper-White cites this definition: “Simply put, Christian nationalism is a cultural framework–a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems–that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life” (p. 13). She traces the rise of these ideas within white evangelicalism and the growing focus on “redeeming God’s chosen nation.” While patriotism is simply love for one’s country, “nationalism is the identification of that country with a historically dominant ethic, cultural, and/or religious group and a fierce loyalty to protecting that national identity” (p. 25).

Chapter two, the longest part of this work, focuses on why people are drawn in to Christian nationalist groups. Cooper-White traces this to our conscious desire to belong combined with a shared sense of purpose and values. She draws concerning parallels between Christian nationalist groups and tactics used by cults. She also delineates those shared values: sin as personal and not corporate, protecting white status and power, defending patriarchy, and gun rights. She also discusses unconscious motivations including groupthink, the power of leaders, especially narcissistic leaders, and trauma that leads to a “doer and done-to” polarity.

How then do we engage? Cooper-White suggests a triage:

  • Red light: STOP (at least here, at least for now)–talking with true believers. There are times when people are not open to conversation, or this is not a conversation that is good for us.
  • Yellow light: Tread lightly where we sense some openness. Often, the first step is to listen and show respect and curiosity.
  • Green light: Go deeper, gently, and wisely. Cooper-White goes deeper here, beginning with building and maintaining relationships, awareness of how new conflicts arouse old family dynamics, breathing, noticing our feelings, listening to understand more than speak, avoiding assumptions, making I statements, avoiding argumentation and debate, and admitting our own failings.

She also offers guidance where conversations threaten to become tense including awareness of power and social contexts, conducive and unconducive settings, and choosing our battles. Self-care, including channeling our energies into social activism may be helpful. We need to be aware that this is hard work.

The third chapter is one I found especially helpful, including the idea of triaging our conversations. Likewise, the definitional discussion of chapter one helps with understanding what it is we are talking about, and how we can love country without becoming nationalists, Christian or otherwise.

Chapter two on why people are drawn in was the one about which I felt conflicted. What I most agree with is the idea of group identity–how our affiliations do shape us. The description of values that draw people feels very much like an “outsider” perspective. I do not think this sufficiently reckons with the deep sense of offense many who would identify with these groups feel at being condescended to, marginalized, and treated as unenlightened yokels. Nor does it reckon with the genuine concerns about moral decline perceived by these groups. Even though outsiders perceive them as both enjoying a certain amount of white privilege and political influence, their felt and lived experience is very different. While some identify with Christ in these experiences and trust God to exalt when they are humbled and marginalized, others are drawn by strong figures who suggest they may take these matters into their own hands and take the country back. While there is much I would agree with in the author’s analysis, this felt a bit too much like the progressive version of the parallel echo chambers that divide us.

None of this should detract from the reality that Christian nationalism is a toxic movement. First of all, it idolizes both strong leaders and American greatness when God is greater. To the degree that it is allied with white supremacism, patriarchy and the abuse of women which is a scandal in evangelicalism, and the use of authoritarian means to accomplish its political ends, it is dangerous to the flourishing of a diverse, democratic society. The value of this work is both that it makes this clear while recognizing that people we care for have been drawn to this, people with whom we hope for continued relationships that change us all for good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.