Why Christian nationalism is a global problem

As the January 6 hearings in the United States are in full swing, the world is reminded once again of the role played by Christian nationalism in making the Capitol insurrection possible. As they stormed the Capitol, we see the rioters brandishing Bibles, wooden crosses, Christian flags, and signs declaring “Jesus Saves”. We see them singing praise and worship songs and kneeling in prayer as they cried out to God to overturn the election results and save the country. Breaching the Senate chamber, Jacob Chansley, the horn-wearing, self-proclaimed “QAnon Shaman” led the rioters in a prayer in which he thanked God for “allowing the United States of America to be reborn” and for “allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government”. He saw the uprising as an opportunity to send a clear message to the enemies of God: “this is our country, not theirs”.

At its core, Christian nationalism is a political ideology that advocates for the fusion of a particular form of Christianity and a country’s civic and political life, and for a privileged place for Christianity in the public realm. This theology is at once both descriptive and prescriptive: Christian nationalists believe that their countries are defined by Christianity and that their governments and citizens should take steps to keep it that way. In the case of the Capitol insurrection, the rioters were literally trying to take back their country for God.

Christian nationalism has also been linked to a host of alarming attitudes among self-professing Christians — including racist, misogynistic, authoritarian, homophobic, and violent views. Research has discovered that Christian nationalist beliefs correspond to opposition to interracial marriage, transracial adoption, and gender parity, support for voter suppression measures, and risky COVID-related behaviour. Because Christian nationalism is by definition an ideology of exclusion — one that distinguishes the true members of a political community from usurpers — it overlaps easily with other systems of marginalisation, including white supremacy, patriarchy, and political authoritarianism.

The fact that the vast majority of scholarly work on Christian nationalism has examined its effects on the views of American Christians, coupled with the visible presence of Christian nationalism during the 2021 Capitol insurrection, has perhaps obscured the reality that Christian nationalism has also been surging in different forms in various other parts of the world. As I argue in my recent book, The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation, Christian nationalism is a global problem.

In Europe, a cultural — as opposed to creedal — version of Christian nationalism has bolstered far-right political parties and political leaders with an authoritarian bent. Decrying the threat to Christian civilisation stemming from the presence of Islam, these parties and politicians have supported measures such as banning the public wearing of Islamic dress, prohibiting Muslim immigration, and repatriating Muslims to their countries of origin. Accumulating evidence suggests that attacks against Jews, Muslims, and their holy places have been sharply increasing in various European countries, fed by Islamophobic sentiment and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Tragically, Christian nationalist identitarianism has frequently been at the root of this extremism.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine has been strongly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church and its leader, Patriarch Kirill (a KGB informant during the Soviet era), who sees Putin as part of God’s plan to restore a Greater Russia and has referred to the Russian leader’s reign as a “miracle from God”. Under Kirill’s leadership, the Russian Orthodox Church has legitimated Putin’s regime by providing spiritual support for the domestic and foreign goals of the Kremlin. Putin himself has espoused a Christian nationalist ideology that sees the resurgence of Russia on the global stage as intrinsically tied to the country’s spiritual rebirth, resulting in Russia becoming an “Orthodox power”, as he explained on a state visit to Greece in 2005. To date, Russia’s war in Ukraine has resulted in the deaths of well over 3,000 civilians, a war that has been made possible, in part, by Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism has also been surging in the developing world, with tragic consequences. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the region of Central Africa — especially the countries of Uganda and Central African Republic. In Uganda, a particularly bizarre and vile form of Christian nationalism, fused with occultism, has given rise to one of the world’s most brutal terrorist organisations, the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by the infamous warlord Joseph Kony. The Lord’s Resistance Army achieved widespread notoriety for its gross violations of human rights, including murder, mutilation, mass abductions, trafficking of children, and use of child soldiers in its operations. Since its inception, the Lord’s Resistance Army has kidnapped more than 100,000 children. The objective of the group, as articulated by Kony, is an explicitly Christian nationalist one: for Uganda to be a country governed by the Ten Commandments.

In the small, impoverished, landlocked nearby country of the Central African Republic, Christian nationalism has figured prominently in a civil conflict that has killed or displaced tens of thousands of people. The conflict has been fuelled by Christian militias known as the Anti-Balaka, who have waged a religious war against the country’s minority Muslim population, forcing the exile of entire Muslim communities to the neighbouring states of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan. The victims of the violence appear to have been targeted solely on the basis of their religious identity. In 2014, the human rights watchdog Amnesty International referred to the situation in the Central African Republic as a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing. The war Christians have waged on Muslims can be traced to Christian nationalist beliefs and the subsequent development of a close alliance between Christianity and the state.

In Brazil, Christian nationalism has been thriving in the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, a conservative Catholic who claims to govern with the guidance of God in accordance with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Bolsonaro’s time as president has seen over 660,000 COVID-related deaths in Brazil and one of the world’s highest COVID death rates. Dismissing the pandemic as a “little flu”, the Brazilian leader strongly backed evangelical pastors who refused to shut down their churches, and opposed measures that have proven successful in curbing the pandemic elsewhere: lockdowns, masking, and social distancing. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil has taken a sharp authoritarian turn with the president’s campaigns to intimidate the Brazilian Supreme Court, threats to change the country’s electoral laws, attempted crackdowns on the free press, and efforts to effectively suspend the country’s access to information law. Brazil’s democratic backsliding could threaten the stability not just of that country but the whole of Latin America. Still, Brazil’s Christian nationalists remain firmly in Bolsonaro’s corner.

These cases show that Christian nationalism is not merely an academic concern that has little relevance in the real world. It is, in its myriad forms, an ideology that has been implicated in some of the greatest tragedies that have roiled the world in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Christian nationalism is a global problem, plaguing Western and non-Western countries alike. It is also a problem found in each of Christianity’s major branches: Protestantism in the United States, Europe, and Africa; Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia; and Catholicism in Brazil.

The global church today finds itself in desperate need of a theological reset that rejects Christian nationalism in all its manifestations if it hopes to maintain its gospel witness and bring hope to a broken world. Thankfully, a critique of Christian nationalism has been arising from within the church itself. A number of theologians, pastors, and Christian intellectuals have challenged Christian nationalism on the grounds that it represents a form of idolatry that corrupts the Christian salvation message. They argue that, when Christians look to the state for their identity, they necessarily obscure their identity in the body of Christ and undermine true fellowship in the universal church. In pledging their lives and loyalty to the nation, Christians accept the state’s claim to supreme authority and have broken the very first of the Ten Commandments. Christian nationalism, they argue, is a false gospel that presents a profound problem for ecclesial identity in Christ. Because it conflates the identity of nation-states with the identity of the church, Christian nationalism necessarily produces outcomes that belie the gospel, causing great harm to the soul of the church in the process.

The amplification of these voices is paramount to countering the scourge of Christian nationalism that has swept across the world in recent times and the global tragedies it has helped produce.

Nilay Saiya is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is the author of The Global Politics of Jesus: A Christian Case for Church-State Separation.