One of my concerns is that whilst we might have seen some Christian leaders speaking up and expressing concern about flags and marches, we still haven’t got people dealing head on with the underpinning ideology. I hope that this ideology is becoming clearer. If not it might be helpful to watch this video of a podcast interview with Chris Wickland.
The helpful thing is that you have more than the single issue kind of speech that we might hear at the rallies. We actually get to hear the underlying philosophy articulated. What is more, is that this is the Christian version with an attempt to justify it from Scripture. It is important that we engage with this because it is a fundamentally dangerous and in the end anti-gospel idea.
To summarise what the idea is, it’s best describes as ethno-cultural nationalism.I’m using that term because people struggle with labels like “fascism” due to its specific historical connotations. There are three key elements to this.
- The nation, focus is on specific national identities.
- Ethnicity: Those nations primarily represent a specific ethnic group. They are mono-ethnic.
- Culture: The focus is on the specific cultural identify of a nation, its history, politics, arts, religious identity etc.
Christian Nationalism argues that all of these things are good and important but only are truly possible and make sense if the religious identity is Christian and so the Government and people submit to Christ as true King.
It is helpful to observe a couple of things here. First, this may not appear on the surface as “racist”, certainly as we usually understand racism. Proponents would insist that they are against prejudice based on skin colour. This also helps us to understand why we might see people from different ethnic backgrounds lending their support to the cause. This is first because the primary emphasis is on cultural nationalism. This provides the primary boundary markers. Hence, you can to some extent be included within the specific expression of nationalism, providing you accept the host/dominant culture. Secondly, the view is based on the idea that each nation, and therefore each ethnicity has its place. This will first of all be geographically. Nations have borders. The issue then isn’t for example with an Asian or African ethnicity, providing those particular people groups are within their territory. That order though, has frequently been about place in society as seen with apartheid and segregation. That’s why, whether or not it is present in the current situation, white supremacy seems to be never far away from ethno-cultural nationalism.
The argument we see being made from professing Christians for this form of nationalism, especially as Christian nationalism can be summed up as follows.
- God intentionally orders the nations and sets their borders in place.
- God deals with nations, so that we are to disciple the nations.
- The original word for church, Ekklesia comes from the idea of an assembly of people to exercise government. Therefore, the Government is Christ’s government in the world.
Let’s deal with each of those in turn.
First, yes we find Scriptural references to God ordering the nations and setting their boundaries. However, a little bit of common sense tells us that this does not mean that God has set in stone specific ethnicities and nations, allocating them to specific places. Certainly, we would struggle to argue that the United Kingdom and the United States, which did not exist as nations and whose territory was occupied by completely different people groups are envisaged within the pronouncements of people like Paul. The point is very simply that all we see in history is providential. God is in control. When the Romans took over much of known world., God was sovereign over that, working out his purposes, just as when the Empire fell. Similarly, God’s sovereign hand has been at work as maps were redrawn in the 20th Century, even as people drew artificial lines down through tribes and nations. God was sovereign in the coming together of the United Kingdom but will be sovereign if Scotland wins independence just as he was providentially at work in the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Secondly, the claim that we are to disciple nations is based on a flimsy interpretation of Matthew 28. It is very clear that the early church took the command from Jesus as meaning to make disciples from the nations and baptise them, not to disciple and baptise national entities.
Thirdly, as I’ve mentioned in a previous article, to be sure the word Ekklessia was used to refer to a Roman practice of assembling people to rule their provinces from. However, the word predates that practice as a Greek word. Moreover, Jesus and the apostles did not need to draw on a Roman idea when naming using the word. The Hebrew Scriptures and their telling of Israel’s history very clearly have the idea of God’s people being assembled to hear him and worship him. It’s this and not the Roman concept that informs New Testament usage. Mind you, even if we did allow the Roman concept, the point that Jesus does indeed exercise his rule through his church does not mean, that we somehow act as the government of individual nations. It does mean that it is through the church that more and more people are brought to the place where they bow the knee to his Lordship and receive his salvation.
The justification for Christian (ethno-cultural) nationalism relies on bad exegesis (in fact its eisegesis -reading things into the text) leading to a fundamental misreading of God’s Word.
Faithroots 