Christian Nationalism has many definitions, which makes the term unhelpful. Secular progressives label any conservative Christian political activism as Christian Nationalist or for that matter, any mention of God in public life. God and country folk religionists who literally drape the flag around Jesus have received this title. More intellectually serious advocates of a Calvinist confessional state, such as the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, a 2022 book, eagerly embrace the term.

Rusty Reno of First Things magazine advocates, in an article also called “The Case for Christian Nationalism, offers a more thoughtful version of this brand, which he equates with Christian social renewal. He argues that nationalism promotes the common good but without constraints it can become bellicose. Christianity can provide the “braking mechanism.” He explains:

Christian nationalism tempers the native ­idealism of America, which has not been immune to utopian aspirations. After the revolution, some embraced the notion that American society would inaugurate a new order for the ages (novus ordo seclorum). At best, this sentiment reflects an exaggerated patriotism. At worst, it mandates an American-led global revolution. The Christianity in Christian Nationalism disabuses its adherents of this disastrous fantasy.

And:

The self-limiting character of Chrisitan nationalism rests in more than Augustine’s ­distinction between the city of man and the city of God. Christianity promotes forms of life that by their very nature militate against overweening political projects.

And:

Christian nationalism is the most likely source of political renewal that instills both humility and purpose. 

These thoughts are lofty. But the chief proponents of Christian Nationalism today do not evince humility and instead advocate overweening political projects. Reno rejects “theocracy,” but self-identified Christian Nationalists, at least the intellectuals, want a confessional state that will punish apostasy and blasphemy. The nonintellectual advocates usually articulate a less systematic arrangement, where the government promotes or privileges Christian beliefs.

Even if desirable, which is disputable, is either attainable? With up to one third of Americans religiously unaffiliated, and with many if not most professed Christians opposed or ambivalent about a political “Christian Nationalist” project, the aim seems fantastical. How would Christian Nationalism gain political traction among more than a small minority of Americans? Rather than attract support, its banners likelier would undermine Christian political witness.

Reno hopes that Christian Nationalism would combat “debilitating nihilism and renew the moral foundations of the nation.” But political projects that morally renew a society are rare. More typically, there is a change in popular attitudes and practices, from social forces outside of politics and government. It is unlikely that any political solution will meaningfully reduce pornography, for example. Such vices will always be with us, although they fluctuate with changing social attitudes.

The Temperance Movement, mostly fueled by churches or Christian groups, across decades, often successfully reduced the consumption of alcohol in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Prohibition was an enormous political victory but unsustainable. Alcohol abuse will always be with us. But public attitudes can reduce it.

Court rulings and legislation against racial segregation of course were vitally important. But they were preceded and accompanied by changing attitudes about racial prejudice, which always contravened Christianity, even as churches abetted it. Desegregation would not have worked without a population that was, if often grudgingly, largely affirming it.

Both Temperance/Prohibition and Civil Rights were spiritual and mostly bipartisan movements that surged through public opinion, generated by churches and civil society, only later enacted in law, unsuccessfully for the former, more enduringly in the latter. The same could be said for women’s suffrage and the larger drive for legal equality for women. Does Christian Nationalism have the capacity to surge through public opinion on a bipartisan basis?

Significantly, Temperance/Prohibition and Civil Rights, while backed by many churches, did not identify as exclusively Christian and appealed on a wider basis. Notably, America, with the rest of the Anglosphere, unlike continental Europe and Latin America, has never had Christian political parties. The reasons are historically complex but relevant.

Even if Christian Nationalism gained political power, would it endure, or would it shatter, like Prohibition, only to be recalled as a failed experiment that ignored human nature? And how does Christian Nationalism, as Reno defines it, substantively differ from conventional Christian political conservatism of the last 45 years? (Christian Nationalists who advocate for a confessional are decidedly different.)  How would it be more successful?

Reno rightly observes: “The larger the ranks of the soldiers of Christ, the more likely that America will see a new birth of freedom.” All who are Christian, and many who are not, hope for a redemptive increase in Christian influence in American society. Will the banner of Christian Nationalism gain new Christian adherents? In 1980, 85-90% of Americans identified as Christians. Today it is 60-65%. It is unfair, presumably, to blame conservative Christian political activism for this decline. But it is notable that the movement did not prevent this decline. Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 because he thought most Americans shared his social conservatism. Few if any would claim the same today.

Reno thinks it “strange” when Christians shrink from the “’Christian’ element in Christian nationalism.”  After all, he asked:

 Wouldn’t the nation be better off if Christianity exercised more influence in public life? Doesn’t the prayer that all things will fall under the lordship of Christ include the nation, however indirect that lordship can and must be until he returns in glory?

The answer must be “yes, of course” to more Christian influence in every area of society. But will that influence advance under the political banner of Christian Nationalism? And is increasing Christian influence chiefly a political project? Is it not chiefly the converting and discipling of individuals, whose Christian witness and behavior will suffuse society?

There are the instructive words of the hymn “I Vow to Thee My Country:”

We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

As to Christ’s Lordship, He is of course already securely Lord, no matter what happens on earth politically or otherwise, which He sifts and judges. We do serve Him by advancing authentic righteousness in society. But that cause is always complicated by the wheat and tares among us. It is not a project of installing the “right” people in power. And righteousness often advances in providentially unexpected ways, sometimes through actors we deem adversaries.

Reno admits that Christian Nationalism is “very unlikely to become the beating heart of the American right.” But he wants to bring its “wisdom” to “whatever coalition emerges that seeks to restore America,” which includes recognizing the limits of “all political enterprises.”

Amen to the last point, which seems much more Christian Realist than Christian Nationalist. And rather than “restoring” America, an exercise in nostalgia, perhaps the goal of Christians is redemptively to renew society, moving it forward. A Christian Realist view, different from nearly all forms of Christian Nationalism, is that social righteousness advances haphazardly. There are rarely clear sheep and clear goats in this advance. Everyone is self-interested and short-sighted to various degrees. Yet Providence presides.