There is a contradiction at the center of American Christian politics that we have not named clearly enough, and our reluctance to name it is costing us.
Michael Mellette
Within a significant faction of the MAGA-aligned evangelical world, two things are held simultaneously: a professed devotion to peace, Christian values, and national flourishing — and an eager anticipation of apocalyptic global conflict as the precondition for Christ’s return. Prominent voices celebrate geopolitical escalation in the Middle East not as a tragedy to be mourned but as a divine program to be welcomed. John Hagee has argued that the United States has a theological obligation to support Israeli military expansionism precisely because it will trigger the events described in the Book of Revelation.
Think about what that actually means. The children of American soldiers who would fight such a war are not abstractions. They are neighbors. They are, under the terms of Matthew 22:39, to be loved. One cannot sincerely love them and simultaneously pray for the geopolitical conditions that would send them to their deaths.
The Logic of the Problem
James 3:11 asks: “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?” The answer is no, and yet this is precisely what apocalyptic nationalism asks us to accept. A political theology that claims to love its neighbors while hoping for their destruction is not merely hypocritical. It is incoherent.
Augustine was explicit that even a just war must be prosecuted with grief rather than enthusiasm. A Christianity that greets the prospect of global conflict with excitement has abandoned this moral gravity entirely. Isaiah’s words to those whose hands are full of blood are unambiguous: “Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening” (Isaiah 1:15). The prophetic tradition does not assume that religious fervor and divine approval travel together.
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
“Watch out for false prophets,” Jesus said. “They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:15-16). The metaphor identifies a precise danger: not outsiders who openly oppose the faith, but insiders who use its symbolic authority to pursue ends contrary to its core commitments.
Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry’s work on White Christian Nationalism documents how this operates, Christian symbolism borrowed, Christian vocabulary deployed, while the actual content of the Gospel is quietly replaced by tribal power and national dominance. John Calvin understood the most serious form of taking God’s name in vain not as casual profanity but as the invocation of divine authority to sanctify human wickedness. When a political actor claims that God wills war, that bloodshed advances the Kingdom, or that violence against enemies is righteous, they commit what Calvin regarded as the gravest possible offense against the Third Commandment.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne traces how American evangelical culture substituted a martial, domineering masculinity for the self-giving love at the center of the Gospel. The warrior replaced the servant. Conquest replaced kenosis. Researchers have found that those who most strongly identify with Christian Nationalist ideology are also more likely to endorse political violence. That is not the fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians 5. It is evidence of a different tree.
Natilyn Hicks / Unsplash
What It Is Doing to the Church
When Christianity becomes publicly associated with nationalist aggression and eagerness for war, it presents a face to the world that is, by any honest reading of the New Testament, a misrepresentation of the faith. Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace identified the close association between conservative Christianity and partisan politics as a primary driver of religious disaffiliation among younger Americans. When a religious tradition becomes identified with a political movement, those who reject that politics reject the religion along with it.
Jesus’s command in Matthew 5:16 is that his followers’ lives should cause others to glorify God. When the public face of Christianity causes observers to turn away from God rather than toward him, the church has failed in one of its most basic callings. Andrew Whitehead has described Christian Nationalism as a cultural framework that uses Christian language while being only tangentially related to Christianity as a theological tradition. The concern is not with Christians who hold conservative political views or believe in the literal return of Christ. The concern is with a specific configuration, one in which eschatological hope is weaponized, national identity is sacralized, and the moral obligations of Christian love are subordinated to political combat.
That configuration is not merely bad politics dressed in religious language. It is apostasy, all the more dangerous because it is not recognized as such by its practitioners. Jeremiah’s warning about false prophets who cry “peace, peace” when there is no peace is not ancient history. It is a present description.
What Is Required
A renewed theological emphasis on neighbor-love is not optional. The parable of the Good Samaritan redefines the neighbor not as a member of one’s own tribe, but as the one in front of you who needs help. Jesus in Matthew 5:44 extends this further: the neighbor includes the enemy. A political theology that cannot accommodate enemy-love has departed from the Sermon on the Mount.
The church has faced internal corruption before. In each case, the response that proved faithful was a return to the sources, to Scripture, to the example of Christ, to the costly demands of a faith that centers on a crucified Messiah rather than a triumphant warlord.
The fruit of the Spirit is love. The fruit of apocalyptic nationalism is war. These trees are not the same.
Michael Mellette is an independent researcher and philosopher whose work examines authority, accountability, and the ethics of power. His papers are archived at PhilArchive and Zenodo.
