Andrew Wilson writes here about the arrival of Christian Nationalism in the UK. He draws heavily on, and interacts with, this article by Tim Suffield. As always Andrew’s analysis is interesting, though I wonder whether we are further down the road than Andrew and Tim realise and that does have implications.
Tim suggests that there are 15 possible things that Christian Nationalism could refer to, so that:
“One of my concerns is that in my own circles people have started decrying ‘Christian nationalism’ without defining what they mean, which means that people in our churches who are, for example, at number 9 or number 15, think they’re being lumped in with number 12. We need to distinguish and clearly say what we’re disagreeing with.
I agree that there is diversity within what people have meant when they have used the term and to complicate matters, as well as perhaps there being people labelled Christian Nationalists who shouldn’t be, there are also lots of people who hold to views that might earn them that label who would insist that they are not.
In this article, I distinguished between two different things, one which is about Christian Nation-alism as I termed it, meaning simply those who want to see a specific nation and its politics influenced by Biblical and Gospel thinking. The other category is essential Christened Nationalism. What we might see when we look at the latter is that there is a range of diverse views within that and indeed, for some the emphasis will be more on the Christian bit and some on the Nationalism bit.
However, what I would suggest is this. First, that it is unsurprising and not that unusual for there to be diversity within a term. There is diversity within the concept of Eternal Functional Subordination. There were also a range of people on the “anti-penal[ substitution” debate back in the noughties. This did not prevent clear thinking and whilst some would have fallen outside the boundaries of the categories, this did not mean that diversity meant that people were always outside of the boundaries.
So with Christian Nationalism, I would argue that we can see where the boundaries are and what the range is in between. That’s because some of us have been observing the phenomena over time. We might observe some differences between viewpoints but we are also seeing links. Those links may be about people (Douglas Wilson seems to keep cropping up), theological themes, language or politics (you don’t tend to find many left-wing or even centre-right Christian Nationalists.
This has a couple of implications. First, yes, there are going to be pastors and leaders caught unprepared. That’s why I’m both a little frustrated that we lack national leaders ready and able to speak up on this and why I understand that we might be a long way back from getting that clarity. Secondly, yes, some people may be just unhelpfully attacking anything and everything as Christian Nationalism.
However, it also means that thirdly, just going through a list of propositions and ticking yes or no to your own view isn’t enough because those propositions don’t stand in isolation they link together. We need to be alert to how advocating for one proposition may have implications for another.
Fourth, it means that where Christians have spent some time already investigation, evaluating and critiquing Christian Nationalism, then their voices should be heard.
Faithroots 