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I ask your pardon up front for talking about things American at a time when our economic well-being here in Canada has been attacked and the sovereignty of this nation has been trifled with by executive order of the President of United States and, if the polls are right, his actions are applauded by about 1/3 of the general American populace. These actions were taken for no valid reason. The resulting betrayal of trust has terminally injured what once was the fairest and most productive trade relationship between two sovereign nations that there has ever been. As an American living in Canada I’m struck with disbelief, anger, and disgust as I powerlessly watch the reputation of my homeland become that of being the poster child for betrayal, unreliability, and corruption.
Since there is no valid or reasonable why behind these actions we may move on to the next question of how this has come about. Well, it is no secret that the current president would not have been elected if he had not had the support of a large block of voters professing to be Christian and who voted for him because they believed he was God’s man for the task at hand, which was to make America Christian again. Regardless of the man being morally unqualified according to standards the same block of voters have put to every president since the 80’s, these Christians put him in office. How? He played into one of America’s foundational Christian heresies – Christian Nationalism.
Not everybody calling themselves Christian in the U.S. espouses Christian nationalism. Most of the mainline denominations have in recent months written statements condemning it. And, Christian nationalism isn’t just an American problem. We have a milder version of it up here in the Great White North. It made a resurgence back in Covid. At our General Assembly this past June the Presbyterian Church in Canada released a statement rejecting Christian Nationalism asking that the document be discussed throughout the denomination in the hopes of weeding Christian nationalism out. The document contained a couple of pages of background leading to this statement:
“Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to establish Christian cultural and political domination within a nation, claiming that a particular nation was founded as Christian and must remain ‘Christian.’ Such claims conflate religious and national identity and marginalize all those who are not Christian or who do not align with the particular values Christian nationalism promotes. This pursuit of cultural and political domination distorts the gospel and embodies teachings that do not reflect the love God showed to the world nor the ministry to which disciples of Christ are called.
We acknowledge that Jesus’ ministry began with his own rejection of political power and social influence (Luke 4:5–7) and that throughout his time of ministry and teaching he continued to eschew political power and influence.
We affirm that, as followers of Jesus, so too our focus should not be control over the social, political, and economic spheres of this world but rather, like Jesus himself, loving service to God through preaching and living the Word of love, caring for the marginalized, and ministering to those in need.
Since the church is called to faithful public witness to the gospel message of God’s love for the world, we therefore reject Christian nationalism as a sinful ideology at odds with the gospel and with the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Personally, as my biblical and theological education began among Mennonites at Eastern Mennonite University and Seminary, I am partial to a definition produced by a sister seminary, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary located in Elkhart, Indiana. It reads: “Christian nationalism, in short, is a worldview where one’s theological imagination is coopted by state power. It exchanges the church’s loyalty to the Lord of Peace for a false god fashioned by the myth of American exceptionalism. In fact, Christian nationalism is a form of political idolatry that distorts our knowledge of God and neighbor through a xenophobic, racialized and militarized gospel that is at odds with the life and teachings of Jesus.”[1]
Our passage from Romans is one that can and often does get used in support of Christian nationalism. Historically, it has served as the biblical basis of what was long ago known as the Divine Right of Kings. Back in the days of empires, kingdoms, and colonial empires Paul’s teaching here was co-opted to mean that emperors and kings ruled by God’s authority and therefore their actions were acts of God. Paul taught that the authority to govern is part of God’s ordering of creation and that those who govern are God’s servants for good and that they wield the sword for the good of society. We must therefore be subject to the governing authorities for to oppose them is to oppose God. So also, we must do good because the governing authorities only come after those who do bad. So, pay your taxes and tariffs and give respect and honour where due. Unfortunately, Paul didn’t say anything about what to do if a government is corrupt and abusive. It wasn’t until the 1500’s and John Calvin in the last chapter his Institutes of the Christian Religion boldly claimed that citizens had a right to overthrow a tyrant. Hence, a wave of revolutions over the following few centuries leading to democracy and voting became the way to limit or peacefully oust a corrupt government.
I am confident here that Paul was not granting a divine, carte blanche, free ride ticket to the Roman emperor or any other governing authority. They already claimed that power for themselves by the name of Zeus (Jupiter). Paul instead was writing to Christians who were often socially outcast and bullied because of their confession that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour and Son of God (titles the emperors reserved for themselves) and because of their refusal to worship the Greek and Roman gods and because of their egalitarian (all folks are equal) fellowship. At heart, this passage is Paul telling Christians throughout the Roman Empire to keep their heads down and not draw attention to themselves and their fellowships by resisting what they all knew was an evil empire bent on conquering for reasons of power-lust and greed. The Roman Christians would have remembered very well the very perverted and cruel Emperor Caligula followed by Claudius and the then emperor Nero. No Christian would have called any of those emperors a godly man nor thought of the Roman Empire as sanctioned by God. So, Paul was not trying to claim the imperial rulers or the empire were God’s special appointees on earth to rule in his name the way American Christian nationalists do with their current president and America.
So, this passage was not ever meant to endorse a particular nation or leader as being specially sanctioned by God. It therefore should not ever be used for that purpose today. In fact, the early church would have not been looking to a particular nation or empire to be serving God’s purposes on earth. They would have understood God’s kingdom coming on earth through the spread of the church which had no national borders. The only Christian nation on earth is the church universal. If we take the conversation Jesus had with Satan seriously when Satan was tempting him as well as Chapters 12-13 of the Book of Revelation, then we have to be warned that the political power embedded in nations at present is the domain of Satan. If it is true that power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately, then when Christians try to take control of their nation, they will get corrupted ultimately. Such is Christian nationalism. I would invite those espousing Christian nationalism to revisit the role political power plays in your loyalty to Jesus Christ and as an American living in Canada I would especially ask you to give a good ponder to what the commandment means, “Love your neighbour as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbour. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.” Amen.
