When it comes to the rise of Christian nationalism, our problems are as relational as they are political. Here are ten things I’m learning alongside the congregants and seminarians I serve that may be helpful—if not hopeful—for your faith community.
- White Christian nationalism (WCN) is a symptom of a larger crisis of belonging.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” ravaging the country. The epidemic has physical health consequences; shockingly, lacking social connection was about as dangerous to our bodies as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation also has consequences on the social body.
Hannah Arendt, a Jewish philosopher who studied the rise Nazism in Germany, identified totalitarianism as a form of “organized loneliness.” Loneliness prepares people for totalitarian domination, destroying the public space between people and pressing them together in the “iron band of terror,” she argued.
When psychological and social needs are unmet, and crises and chaos arise—even if they are crises manufactured by politicians’ or pundits’ propaganda—simple explanatory narratives provide comfort and someone to blame. Networks of those who take comfort in these simple narratives provide a sense of belonging.
We need the complexity of human communities to make the best sense of our lives and to provide care amid crises and chaos. According to the Surgeon General’s advisory (p. 38), the more diverse these social networks are, the better. They help stimulate our creative thinking and our ability to consider different perspectives. Even small social interactions, like conversations in line at the grocery store, help to cultivate social trust and increase empathy.
What’s good for the cultivation and care of community is also medicine for the treatment of WCN and the factors that give it rise. Make this a top priority in your church’s countering of Christian nationalism.
- WCN is a symptom of the erosion of social trust and the rise of cynicism.
We should all be good skeptics, questioning what we are told to believe and holding truth claims up to the light of scrutiny. Instead of skeptics, though, many of us are becoming cynics. And there’s a big difference.
Cynics develop a pervasive outlook of distrust toward others and a sense that things will always go from bad to worse. Cynicism is carefully cultivated in our social lives. From memes shared on social media to the public statements of politicians, our trust in other people is under constant assault.
As the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab director, Jamil Zaki, says, “By eroding trust, cynicism steals our present together and dampens the futures we can imagine.”
We also tend to overestimate our reasons for mistrusting others. This leads to false polarization, or the degree to which people of differing political parties overestimate the ideological divisions that exist between “our side” and the “other side.”
Remember that most Christian nationalists you know don’t know they’re Christian nationalists. They haven’t signed a creed or received a membership card. The people in your pews, your town and grocery store, and at your family’s holiday dining table aren’t the politicians or pundits from talk radio. They’re your parishioners, your cousins and your neighbors.
You can maintain your skepticism about various beliefs and political positions but lean into as many relationships as you can with a sense of trust in the other person. This will beget the trust of others in you.
- You can’t argue people out of their beliefs.
Our greatest temptation is to decry the irrationality of our Christian nationalist neighbors, to poke gigantic holes in the conspiracy theories that uphold their beliefs, to make a solid theological or political case for why they’re wrong for thinking and believing and behaving the way they do.
If we get our argument laid out just so, we’ll be poised to take down our Christian nationalist neighbor when the opportunity time arises to debate!
But even if we’re right, it doesn’t work. Here’s what does work in fostering genuine conversations, which quite often help people loosen their grip on perspectives and beliefs that may be harmful: relationships.
Our beliefs, values and perspectives on the world all emerge biographically and in relation to others. We don’t just have a collection of simple beliefs we can be argued out of, even with the most convincing evidence. We have deeply held stories that help us live in the world—for better or worse—and values that are attached to a sense of who we are and how we make sense of the world.
Focus less on the simple beliefs attached to Christian nationalism and more on the ways people story those beliefs and attach them to deeply held values.
- Change is a relational process, and we can hone our conversational skills.
People change their minds, perspectives and behavior toward others almost always in a relationship. This rarely occurs in isolation. If you want to be part of helping others step away from Christian nationalist stories and into new narratives, there are some skills to hone:
Learn to listen deeply to people’s stories, even when they are uncomfortable to hear. Assume there’s some commonality between you and your conversation partner, and name it when you find it. Lean in with curiosity where there are differences.
Learn to ask questions from a place of curiosity, not defensiveness. No leading questions. No rhetorical questions. Just questions that you don’t already know the answers to that will help you know something about your neighbor.
(Tip: Experiment with getting “why” out of your vocabulary as it nearly always invites defensiveness. For example, change “Why do you believe that?” to “How did you come to believe that?” Do you hear how that immediately reduces the feeling of defensiveness?)
Learn to hear what people value, how they came to value those things, and how those values inform their views. These don’t have to be their “political” values. It can also be their “people” values – what makes for living a good life with others.
Learn to tell the story of what you value and how you came to value it in rich personal detail. Don’t speak for others’ views, even those who share your political or religious perspectives. Find connections between your story and that of your conversation partner.
Learn to thank others for inviting you into their lives through the stories they’ve shared with you.
(“I’ve Never Thought of It That Way” by Mónica Guzmán is an excellent resource for honing these skills. The organizations Braver Angels and Vote Common Good are helpful organizations to connect to for further resourcing.)
- Affective polarization may be a bigger concern than ideological polarization.
We too easily believe that all our beliefs are rational. But much of our polarization is not ideological polarization, but affective polarization. This is the polarization that results from our positive feelings toward those who are “like us” and negative feelings toward the other (or between people of different political parties).
The media fuel affective polarization. Anger and fear are the two strongest drivers of this polarization. These are usually helpful emotions, signaling that something we value is being threatened. When those arise, we should listen carefully to what is behind people’s anger and fear (and our own).
Dangers arise when anger and fear expand from simple emotions to a pervasive outlook on life.
Fear can erode our trust in others and increase our sense of insecurity, leading us to believe that we—or the values we hold dearest—are in constant danger, even when they aren’t.
Anger adds energy to do something about fear. This moves us toward resentment toward those we identify as our “enemy,” hostility or hatred toward others, combative thinking, and even vengefulness.
Even when the motivation behind fear and anger is manufactured propaganda serving a political purpose, the emotions are real and work on us. Listen for the emotions embedded in the stories of others about their beliefs and values and get compassionately curious about those.
- WCN is about living into a particular narrative, not holding isolated beliefs.
When fear and anger become the emotional material of our stories, we need to do more than argue about the validity of the “causes” of those fears and anger.
We need to listen to people’s fear and anger, as hard as that is—especially when we can see how political propaganda and maybe even conspiracy theories have shaped those emotions. But remember: the emotions are real, even if they originated from a falsehood.
Listen for what anger and fear tell you about what people care about most. Get curious about those things. And listen to your own anger and fear that alert you to the fact that someone is getting close to something you’re feeling protective of.
The stories we tell about others affect how we treat them and how they treat us. We need to help one another live larger stories – ones with more complexity and room for flourishing emotions beyond fear and anger.
We need experiences of grief to hold together when times are hard and losses are real. We need experiences of gratitude to help curb the always-looming cynicism and orient us toward goodness. We need experiences of wonder that open us outward toward others and the wider web of life in curiosity and awe.
Cultivate those complex emotional experiences and expressions with others to help expand our stories beyond the simple narratives of fear and anger.
- There is a role for ministries of justice in this time.
The politics that attaches itself to and flows from Christian nationalism is genuinely dangerous. And some of us are more in danger from the resulting policy than others. Women, BIPOC people, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people and those experiencing poverty– these are our neighbors most at risk from the law and public policy that stems from WCN.
Ministries of justice and solidarity are vital for keeping people alive, connecting them to a caring community, and protecting them from the passage of laws that intend to harm them.
Find a space in this wide panoply for your faith community to enter. It may be immigration justice, LGBTQ+ justice concerns in your school system, economic justice impacting your city, or a whole wide variety of concerns that animate your faithful action. You don’t have to do it all. In fact, you can’t. Pick a place to start and go.
But don’t do it alone. In nearly every state, faith community organizations are working together for a more just and less violent community. Sometimes, it is your state’s council of churches or interfaith organization. It may be your local chapter of Faith in Action. Or a group may be organized around more specific concerns, such as Boston’s Muslim Justice League.
Don’t let those whose well-being is most targeted by WCN stand alone. Commit to embodying your solidarity. Join with others in that vital work. Organize.
- There’s a role for ministries of reconciliation in this time.
There’s also important work to be done to repair the rifts that have opened between and within Christian communities. Sometimes, the most difficult relationships to maintain are with those who share the sacred texts and traditions we hold dear yet come away with vastly different understandings of how they inform their lives.
The ministry of reconciliation is hard. In many ways, it’s more challenging than justice work. Repairing broken relationships between people, between and within congregations and poles on the political spectrum will be long and careful work. There are no quick fixes to fractured relationships.
Remember, you’re not working on a relationship with the guy you just heard on talk radio. Don’t imagine your worst nightmare of a white Christian nationalist pundit that you’re going to have to invite over for tea.
Imagine the person you already know who goes to the church down the road that preaches Christian nationalism. If you’re a pastor, imagine the pastor from that church who you’re probably never going to engage in pulpit exchange, but who you might invite for coffee and conversation. Imagine the people around your dinner table at Thanksgiving.
- We must protect the most vulnerable to the harm of WCN while also forging relationships with those supporting the perpetration of harm.
One of the most pressing concerns of my seminary students goes something like this: My faith community is committed to standing with the marginalized (BIPOC people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, etc.), and inviting Christian nationalists into the church feels like it would put people already made vulnerable by the politics of WCN even more at risk.
But the church is not the only place to “invite people into conversation.” It is likely a more difficult place for people to come together across political and theological differences anyway (unless those differences already exist in your church). Find other places to connect with people who may be sliding into WCN.
If your church is a haven for people facing the onslaught of WCN’s violent rhetoric and public policy, keep doing that work! It may be the only safe space some in your city have. We need churches that adhere to a gospel ethic of standing in solidarity with the most vulnerable and at risk from social, political and spiritual violence.
And for many churches, there are already people within your congregation for whom Christian nationalism is alluring. We’re not talking about inviting Christian nationalist pastors, politicians, and pundits into your pulpit so you can better understand them, and they can do spiritual violence to your congregation. We’re talking about more carefully and compassionately attending to those who are already there, in the pews, every week.
Finally, there are many for whom the rhetoric and public policy of WCN have become spiritually, psychologically, and physically violent. Those embodying more protected, privileged and powerful societal positions have more room to do the difficult relational work without risk of further harm.
- What we do now isn’t just about addressing WCN. It’s also preventative for what might come after WCN.
White Christian nationalism is not going away after the election, no matter who wins. It has always been with us in some way or another, punctuating the history of the U.S.
Yes, spend time learning all that you can learn, or care to learn, about white Christian nationalism. It’s an important concern for Christian communities in the U.S. These are our faith siblings, sacred texts, and common life. We can’t look away because it is uncomfortable or ignore the situation because we don’t know how to solve it.
But please spend just as much time learning how to talk compassionately with others about divisive concerns, how to cultivate communities of robust diversity, how to guard your hearts against cynicism and lean into relationships with trust, and how to engage in ministries of prophetic justice and pastoral reconciliation. If our problems with Christian nationalism are as relational as they are political, our solutions must also be as relational as they are political.
Cody J. Sanders, PhD, is a Baptist minister serving as associate professor of congregational and community care leadership at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Previously a parish pastor and higher education chaplain at Harvard and MIT, he is the author of several books on religion, ministry, and LGBTQ+ concerns.