NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.
As a couple hundred scholars and ministers gathered on the University of Notre Dame campus last week to discuss Christian Nationalism, several people questioned if, in light of recent events, such a conference could even occur in a year. Not just because of the rise of Christian Nationalism in the new presidential administration but also the direct attacks on institutions of higher education and voices of dissent.
“People on the election day wanted cheaper eggs,” said Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. “You’re going to get expensive eggs. You’re going to get people renditioned. You are going to get people in your neighborhoods taken out of your neighborhoods. You are going to get persecution.”
“This is what Christian Nationalism has wrought,” she added. “It is a takeover. It is a takeover of a nation that was founded on democratic principles.”
Noting that she’s been particularly focused on challenging Christian Nationalism since the Capitol insurrection in 2021, Butler mentioned she’s “tired as a Black Catholic woman fighting not just for justice within the boundaries of this country but also in the church.” She lamented that as a result of the embrace of White Christian Nationalism, “Christianity has destroyed democracy in America.”
“You need to understand that this brand of Christian Nationalism does not want a Christian world, nor does it want democracy. It wants power,” Butler added. “There’s nothing right now that has anything to do with Christianity. … Every time you hear this word Christian Nationalism, you need to understand that people are using God to persecute other people.”
Speaking at the annual Catholic Social Tradition Conference led by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns and cosponsored this year by Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Butler contrasted what she’s seeing in a Christian Nationalism-fueled administration with the Catholic social teachings at an institution like Notre Dame.
“Part of Catholic social teaching is to think about the preferential option for the poor. But I’m here to tell you that this administration is about the preferential option for the rich,” she explained. “That’s Christian Nationalism. That’s believing in a leader who panders to Christianity but at the same time is taking meals out of kids’ mouths, is taking medicine away from people all around the world.”
From left: Anthea Butler, Brian Kaylor, and Reggie Williams speak at the Catholic Social Tradition Conference at the University of Notre Dame. (Word&Way)
Given all of what has transpired in just two months of the new Trump administration, Reggie Williams, a professor of theological studies at St. Louis University, called Christian Nationalism “the most pressing crisis today” since it’s “a variety of the faith that blends Christian authoritarianism indistinguishably with patriotism, resulting in moral justification for mass use of violence.”
“Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘One cannot worship this false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time,’” added Williams, author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. “Yet, in our time, the phenomenon [of Christian Nationalism] is upon us with nearly as great a force as any other time in U.S. history. I submit that this is the most important conversation that we can be having today as the concept of White Christian Nationalism so profoundly shapes the structure of our life together and the future of our presence on this planet.”
After the conference kicked off with these words of warning last Thursday (March 20), the next two days included presentations on types of Christian Nationalism as found in Catholic, evangelical, charismatic, and mainline Protestant spaces. I gave a talk on the latter, largely drawn from Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism. But the goal wasn’t just to sound the alarm and educate. The conference also focused on what needs to be done to challenge Christian Nationalism in the country and in churches. So this issue of A Public Witness takes you inside the conference to hear from some of the nation’s leading scholars as they offer ways to push back against this dangerous ideology.
Engaging Adherents of Christian Nationalism
Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, echoed Butler’s comments about the complicity of Christianity in pushing Christian Nationalism and endangering democracy.
“Too often we hear that politics has hijacked religion. And on some level, I understand this framing,” she said. “Sociologically, we can see that religion tends to be downstream of politics — much as religious believers like to insist the reverse. Moreover, to those who have seen their own religious communities embrace a set of values contradictory to what they believe to be the core values of their faith, it certainly can seem like a hijacked situation.”
“But this language runs the risk of absolving religious figures — pastors, theologians, publishers, leaders of parachurch organizations, and people in the pews — of responsibility, not just in capitulating but in proactively bringing us to this place,” added Du Mez, who is a professor at Calvin University and a research fellow at Notre Dame.
Du Mez then noted that the current rise of Christian Nationalism and the embrace of Trump did not just happen. Rather, it came after decades of deliberate political and religious work — including by many Christian leaders like Bill Bright, W.A. Criswell, Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, and Lance Wallnau. She insisted their work in developing theological teachings and transforming churches and denominations “didn’t become political down the road; it was political from the start.”
“To understand biblical authoritarianism and certainly how to counter it, we have to understand this history, how this system came to be, and how it has been ruthlessly enforced,” she added. “Now, as then, there are powerful alliances between pastors, political leaders, and wealthy businessmen to ensure that the system endures unchallenged or, at the very least, that those who dare to challenge it will pay a price. … We must also recognize that we are up against enormous odds. This has been true for the past five decades or more, and increasingly so in recent years, recent months, and even recent weeks.”
Drew Strait listens as Kristin Kobes Du Mez speaks at the Catholic Social Tradition Conference at the University of Notre Dame on March 21, 2025. (Brian Kaylor/Word&Way)
Despite the odds and in recognition of the long process of indoctrinating people into the ideology of Christian Nationalism, Caleb Campbell wants more missionary efforts to reach those who have adopted such beliefs. He said this is necessary since it is not just a political ideology but also a spiritual ideology and a tribal identity.
“American Christian Nationalism is a mission field to reach. There are missiological tools that we can apply to reaching a people group that we’re calling American Christian Nationalism,” said Campbell, an evangelical pastor in Phoenix and author of Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor. “I want to invite you to thinking missionally that the way forward is 100,000 kitchen table conversations over the next decade. You heard it in the sessions earlier. We did not just get here over five years or eight years. This has been discipled into people for decades, and the way forward is to connect heart to heart.”
Campbell noted that Christian Nationalism is “a religious idolatry. It is a form of syncretism and empire worship.” But he added that people with such a worldview find it reassuring as an answer to their fears and their desire for a better world. Ever the preacher, Campbell compared this attitude to Peter reaching for a sword when soldiers came to arrest Jesus.
“Peter has an impoverished imagination about power. Think about what Peter’s doing when the mob comes to take Jesus. He is terrified. He’s going to lose what? Jesus. He wants to protect Jesus. … What does Jesus tell him to do? Put it away. Why? Here’s the deal: not because we should be powerless, but because the cruciform way of being in the world is actually the most powerful,” Campbell said. “American Christians are reaching for Christian Nationalism because they think it’s the most powerful thing that they can use to protect themselves and their way of being in the world. And so the answer must be to address the fear with the cruciform way of being.”
Hugh Page, a theology and Africana studies professor at Notre Dame, similarly acknowledged that trying to engage with those who hold to racist ideologies (including among many who embrace Christian Nationalism), is worrying. But he still sees it as necessary for building what King and others have called the “Beloved Community” where everyone is treated as equals with respect and justice.
“Building ‘Beloved Community’ is messy,” said Page, author of Israel’s Poetry of Resistance: Africana Perspectives on Early Hebrew Verse. “That I think is the thing that terrifies me most today. That we know we have to engage those who are fundamentally opposed to liberal, multi-racial, democratic thought. And at the same time think about how to build a community that embraces all of us.”
From left: Caleb Campbell, Keona Lewi, and Hugh Page, Jr. speak at the Catholic Social Tradition Conference at the University of Notre Dame. (Brian Kaylor/Word&Way)
Battle for the Bible
The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection showed how the Bible is used to inspire a Christian Nationalistic agenda. That was a claim particularly pushed by Drew Strait, a New Testament professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. He sees that as illustrative of the “myriad ways the Bible has been wielded by contemporary U.S. Christians to lord their power over others.”
“I call these uses and abuses of the Bible for political propaganda, theologies of oppression, direct and cultural violence, and megalomaniacal purposes ‘biblical authoritarianism.’ Put simply, any time the Bible is used to lord power over others through direct, cultural, or structural violence, it functions not as an authoritative text but as an authoritarian text,” said Strait, author of Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism. “Pundits often blame Christian Nationalist radicalization on evangelicalism, the Republican Party, Fox News, and Trump. No question, these are all legitimate vectors for radicalization. However, an equally if not more influential medium for radicalization is biblical authoritarianism since the Bible, broadly speaking, is the foundation narrative for many loyalists across these platforms. Biblical interpretation therefore matters for challenging Christian Nationalism and deserves a place at the table of peace and human security studies.”
Strait argued that such use of the Bible poses “difficult questions for clergy and seminary professors — myself included” about “imagining how to interrupt processes of radicalization and disengage adherents of White Christian Nationalism through more responsible and life-giving ways of reading the Bible to the common good.” He urged pastors to think about helping congregants develop “immunity for Christian Nationalism” by equipping them to read the Bible in ways not prone to go along with the ideology.
“One of the strangest realities about living in this moment is that Christian Nationalists and Christians challenging Christian Nationalism both appeal to the Bible as a sacred and authoritative text, and yet draw radically different and even opposing visions of discipleship and human belonging,” Strait added.
“I know I sound like a fundamentalist now, but in all seriousness, the closer we can stay to the biblical text, the more we’re going to keep our audience engaged in dialogue,” he added. “The second we move away from that, they’re just going to call you a leftist, communist, socialist. This is a huge challenge, but staying close to the life and teachings of Jesus in the biblical narrative is going to be absolutely critical for those of us doing this work.”
In particular, Strait highlighted the importance of finding “creative and thoughtful ways for talking about the anti-imperial nature of the early Jesus movement.” One of his seminary colleagues also stressed this.
Janna Hunter-Bowman, a peace studies professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary and author of Witnessing Peace: Becoming Agents Under Duress in Colombia, talked about the need to challenge the “imperial religion” of Christian Nationalism that leads to “weaponizing one form of Christianity — Christendom — against other forms of Christianity and other religious expressions.” In the face of such a Christendom, Hunter-Bowman insisted that a “moral minority” can bear witness to a different way of following Jesus and help “the moral structure of a pluralistic society.” She pointed to the example of early Anabaptist leader Michael Sattler, who was executed in 1527 by Catholic authorities for being an “arch-heretic” due to his defiance of imperial edicts.
“I began with Michael Sattler before the Holy Roman Empire because his witness excites our imagination to see the possibilities that open by refusing to participate in violence, in refusing the ‘common sense.’ To see the power of small movements of dissidents refusing imperial nationalistic framing of in-group, out-group opposition,” Hunter-Bowman said. “I hope it liberates us for creative non-violence, for exploring new horizons, and from the status quo of authoritarian powers that try to rule the world through terror, violence, and idolatry.”
Janna Hunter-Bowman (left) and Matthew Taylor (right) speak at the Catholic Social Tradition Conference at the University of Notre Dame on March 21, 2025. (Brian Kaylor/Word&Way).
Matthew Taylor, a scholar with the Institute for Islamic-Christian-Jewish Studies, similarly discussed the need to build “a movement of biblical interpretation and have that become part of the resistance to all this.” He insisted this is necessary since Trump is present because of “Christian supremacist theologies that have sanctified him and made him into a quasi-messianic figure in many Christian circles.” Thus, Taylor added, “If [Trump] is to be stopped and if MAGA is to be stopped, these theologies must be countered and dismantled.”
Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, argued that mainline Protestant churches and other congregations that want to offer a counter witness to Christian Nationalism need to work on increasing biblical literacy so that people in the pews are ready with some Bible references when confronted with the ways MAGA evangelicals and charismatics use Bible verses. In particular, he suggested a deeper study of anti-imperial themes in the Bible, like in the Gospel of Mark.
“The early church was deeply anti-imperial and anti-authoritarian,” Taylor explained. “They weren’t perfect. They didn’t always agree on everything. But where they were solid was that they resisted the imperial cult that demanded that they bowed to Caesar. That was why they were persecuted.”
“We have a new imperial cult in America that’s rapidly taking over. So we need to go and do New Testament Bible study,” he added. “What if we had a diffused network of churches and communities studying the Gospel of Mark intently with this anti-imperial lens as a way of putting some steel on the spine of resistance Christians?”
Taylor also connected this focus to another area rich in the biblical texts.
“We need to, as we tap into the anti-imperial themes of the New Testament, also tap into the anti-wealth themes of the New Testament,” he said. “Why have we seeded all the ground in populism to the right? Maybe I missed it, but where are all the sermons about what the Apostle James would say about Elon Musk? What would Jesus say about the growing oligarchy in the United States, and where are the sermons about that on Sunday morning? We need those sermons because that also will help to undercut this kind of authoritarian claim about power and biblical interpretation.”
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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