More of the Way We Are Now

These days some people are talking up “Christian nationalism.” It is not clear to me what Christ and nationalism have to do with each other. The New Testament, unlike the Old, strikes me as a message of liberation from nationalism.


It’s true that America began as a Christian society and remained so until fairly recent times. However, our Founders did not found a “nation.” They founded a republican Union. And the materials that make a Christian society no longer exist except among a minority. ‘Christian nationalism” is merely an ideology. And like most ideologies is a theory about something that doesn’t exist.

American Christians should be patriots who love their land and people, not nationalists who love their government, especially a government that is a force against both Christianity and patriotism. And American Christians should recognise that our Lord created different varieties of humans, all in His image, who needed to keep to their own given boundaries.


The last thing American Christians need is more nationalism. “Christian nationalism” is just a weak and sad revival of the old Yankee Puritanism which has done so much damage to our society, It is a blasphemous claim that America is the righteous chosen nation---a belief, as General Lee said, that makes a bad government--- aggressive at home and abroad.

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The other evening I somehow persuaded myself to watch the annual Country Music Awards for the first time in years. I shut down in less than an hour, having given up any hope of ever hearing any “country music.” The show was a gaudy Hollywood spectacle driven at a frantic New York pace. There was not a thing about that was “country” or had any relationship to what was once known as country music. One of the more authentic recent country songs is rightly titled “Murder on Music Row.”



Of course, the term “country music” was a sales gimmick to avoid having to call it Southern music even as it swept the world with its talent and humanity. If you really want to know about this aspect of our Southern culture take a look at Joseph Stromberg’s recent book from Shotwell Publishing, Southern Story and Song.