Ryan Sanders: Here’s where Christian nationalism comes from, and what it gets wrong

(Ryan Sanders is a veteran journalist and communicator, an ordained minister, and an opinion writer. He serves on The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board.) One year ago, a political mob invaded the U.S. Capitol by force, interrupted the functions of government, injured police and chanted its intent to lynch the vice president. In the months since, America has sought to make sense of that event. We have asked ourselves what could possibly have driven people to such dramatic action. Sure, there was the “big lie” about a rigged election. There were QAnon conspiracy theories and Kevlar-clad militiamen. But there was something even stronger right there in front of the TV cameras. Alongside the Trump flags and the Confederate flags were symbols of religious devotion. Some rioters carried Christian flags and wore clothing bearing the slogans “Jesus 2020? and “Jesus is my savior. Trump is my president.” The ideology on display that day is a misplaced vision of American identity called Christian nationalism.

It’s a line of thinking popular among some conservative white American evangelicals, which is right in my wheelhouse. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, was ordained in a conservative nondenominational megachurch, and studied at a conservative evangelical seminary. This is my tribe. A year after the insurrection, I think it’s worth exploring how some of my people got to this dark place and how our nation might find its way out. Christian nationalism is not new, and it’s not hard to understand, despite the head-scratching coverage of many in the national press. It is a strain of religious heterodoxy that seeks to meld religion and politics into an unholy mixture that contaminates both. It holds that, like Israel of the Old Testament, America is God’s chosen instrument to fulfill his purposes on Earth. Its adherents believe that America was intended, both by its founders and by God himself, to be a Christian nation, and that defenders of that birthright are divinely appointed to reinstate it by means of political power. Consider, for example, the views of Ken Peters, pastor of Patriot Church in Knoxville, Tenn., who encouraged his congregation to attend Trump’s rally on Jan. 6. “I believe we are the greatest country next to Israel. I got to give God Israel as his chosen people in the Old Testament,” Peters told documentary filmmakers in 2020. “America’s the greatest country that’s ever existed in the history of the world, and it’s because of Judeo-Christian values. … We’re about to lose this country as we’ve always known it. It’s about to become something completely different. … I don’t want it.”