Christian nationalists should stop making the fallacious claim that conservative Christians who reject Christian nationalism do not want Christian nations. Just as people can reject the concept of antiracism while hating racism, Christians can reject the concept of Christian nationalism while wanting Christian nations.
We were all unfamiliar with the term “Christian nationalism” until a couple of years ago. However, some people are demanding that we should agree its ideology.
Most of us had never heard of the term until the media blamed Christian nationalism for the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol Building in 2021. The media attempted to make Christian nationalism synonymous with evangelicalism. That seemingly prompted all sorts of professing Christians to embrace the term.
From what I’ve read, there are 4 or 5 kinds of Christian nationalists. In a sense, this is mostly why I am not a Christian nationalist. I don’t think it’s wise to describe myself as a Christian nationalist when some of the people who embrace that label are completely unbiblical.
If the term was older than 2 years in mainstream culture, I would probably think differently. But I don’t think it’s worth fighting for a relatively new word with so many connotations.
The different kinds of Christian nationalists include: the New Apostolic Reformation movement, some theonomists, Kinists, and according to leftists: all Christians.
The New Apostolic Reformation is generally a more political version of the Word of Faith or prosperity gospel. It’s made up of professing Christians who believe humans lost dominion over the earth to Satan after Adam’s sin. According to them, God has restored the offices of apostles and prophets to lead Christians to take back dominion from Satan that rightfully belongs to humanity. They say there are 7 areas that Christians need to regain dominion over. The government is one of these areas.
However, there’s an entirely different group of Christians who are also calling themselves Christian nationalists: theonomists. Simply, theonomists believe God’s judicial laws for Israel in the Old Covenant are the standard for all nations. Therefore for some theonomists, “Christian Nationalism” seems like a simpler term to describe their beliefs.
I recently wrote an article about a group of professing Christians called Kinists. I said, Kinism is an ideology within some Reformed circles that teaches that a person’s so-called race makes them “kins” or related to people within their racial group. According to Kinists, all white people have a shared ethnicity and culture that should be preserved. Therefore they support racial segregation in communities and families. Meaning, they’re especially opposed to “interracial” marriage.
Kinists have also taken the Christian nationalist label.