As you’re probably aware, the term “Christian Nationalist” has been getting quite a bit of airtime in the last couple years. However, of the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of articles being written about the deadly threat that Christian Nationalism supposedly poses to the United States, most seem unconcerned about offering a strict definition.

Most of what our progressive thought-leaders seem to define as Christian Nationalism reduces to Christians simply being Christians: evangelizing, not putting their children in pagan government schools, and standing up to the senseless slaughter of millions of babies. As for that last point, let us be quick to recognize that progressives believe that your desire for the survival of unborn American citizens is a threat to our “Democracy.” Regardless, clear definitions of Christian Nationalism remain elusive from the mainstream media that would seek to frighten us with this threat (a threat apparently so pervasive and deadly that it requires constant coverage).

So, Christian Nationalism has again made an appearance in the news, this time on NBC, with something that gets us closer to a definition of whatever it is they’re so afraid of: a Christian Nationalist in the flesh, appearing for an interview—Pastor Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, ID.

You may not have heard of the little town. Moscow is a small town in northern Idaho with a population of around 25,000. It is home to the University of Idaho and is just a few miles away from Washington State University. What little reputation Moscow has is mostly as a college town. And, as college towns tend to be, politically speaking, Moscow has historically been a deep blue dot on a very red map. However, the town’s appearance on NBC showed it to be anything but a bastion of progressivism: the segment sounded the alarm on (or at least attempted to) the town’s incipient Christian Nationalist takeover.

One stated goal of Pastor Wilson’s church, Christ Church, is to “make Moscow a Christian town.” This, of course, has non-Christians and Christians alike nervous about “theocracy” (though the fear, in many cases, is ecclesiocracy, not theocracy simpliciter) or Erastian governmental structures. In reality, Wilson is simply trying to realize the most basic of Christian confessions: Christ is Lord (Rom. 10:9). And so, Wilson, Christ Church, and the Christians in Moscow, have begun to live like that confession is true. Christ is Lord, so His lordship must be realized in every area of life: worship, family life, education, government, business, eating and drinking, and anything else under the sun. In other words, Christ Church has pointed out that the Gospel is a totalizing claim: there is nothing in this world exempted from Christ’s claims of lordship. He is King of kings, Lord of lords; all must bow the knee.

On the ground, this has resulted in an immensely fruitful ministry for Pastor Wilson and his church. Out of Pastor Wilson’s efforts has not only been born a thriving church community but also educational institutions, a Reformed denomination, and a publishing house. Each of these ventures has been fruitful in its own right, reaching countless Christians all around the world.

And this is what the progressives are afraid of. This is what NBC news wants you to be afraid of: Christians acting like serious and faithful Christians—building faithful institutions; seeking to make your town, county, and nation obedient to Christ; and, above all, building a culture that is centered around the right worship of God.

Congratulations—if you think any of those things sound like a good idea, the media says you’re a Christian Nationalist and represent a grave threat to America. Of course, this should produce nothing in us but the deepest joy. What a privilege to be castigated and vilified for holding fast to our Christian confession. And it should inspire you to be even more serious about your “Christian Nationalism”—we’re gaining on them and they’re getting nervous.

No matter how great the woke monster may seem, no matter how impenetrable the walls of American secularism appear, the Gospel truly is a potent weapon, the kind of weapon that makes God-haters tremble and try to dismiss it with a wave of their hand. So, as the old hymn says, “Shout on, pray on, we’re gaining ground! Glory hallelujah!”

In the aftermath of the events of January 6, 2021, the narrative is becoming more and more fixed. Simply stated, it claims that the vast majority of Americans who voted for Trump were gun-waving, white supremacist, insurrectionist, Christian nationalists, who need to be marginalized, if not purged from society. For many reasons, we need to continue to challenge that narrative. And recent world events involving Russia, China, and Canada provide a perfect opportunity to push back against that misleading and caricatured narrative.

To be clear, having voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, I do not want him to run again in 2024. And I am sympathetic to the argument that, in many ways, did Trump more harm than good, especially in his post-election behavior and in the damage that was done to our Christian witness when he looked to him as some kind of political savior. (I know that strong Trump supporters find this perspective utterly outrageous, but that’s a battle I am not here to fight.)

But the purpose of this article is not to offer a retrospective analysis of the Trump presidency. Rather, it is to respond to those who cannot possibly understand how God-fearing, Bible-loving, morality-espousing people could vote for Trump. We actually had some very good reasons.

Let’s start with the recent events in Canada and Prime Minister’s invoking of the Emergencies Act in an attempt to crush the Freedom Convoy protesters. According to reports, he “invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the country’s history to crack down on protests against his vaccine mandate — just days after the Biden administration urged him to use ‘federal powers.’”

How much of this came directly from President Biden? Only those involved know for sure.

But if true, an obvious question arises: Could you imagine the Trump administration encouraging this kind of extreme crackdown against freedom-loving, peaceful protesters? Could you imagine Trump telling Trudeau, “Yeah, you really need to crush this resistance”?

I think not.

Yet, when it came to international policy and America’s role in the world, those of us who voted for Trump felt far more confident in his leadership than the leadership of Biden. Does this make us violent white supremacists? Or, put another way, when it came to the massive implications of our international policies, was there no justifiable reason to vote for Trump?

As for Russia, while Trump’s critics claimed that he was either too friendly with Putin or actually admired him, others saw things quite differently.

Writing for the Jewish Press on July 24, 2018, Daniel Greenfield claimed that, “Trump Stood Up to Putin, Obama Appeased Him.”

He wrote, “The architects of Obama’s appeasement of Putin have been some of the most militant voices denouncing Trump. . . . Instead President Trump has steadily reversed Obama’s tide of concessions to Putin.”

He continued, “The media is outraged over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But when that happened, Ukraine asked for weapons and the only aid that Obama offered their country was MREs. It took months for Obama to come through with boots and tires. Meanwhile Trump has delivered actual weapons.

“Why did Obama refuse to provide Ukraine with weapons? According to senior officials, to avoid antagonizing Moscow. Trump isn’t afraid of Russia. Obama however was shaking in his loafers.

“While Trump approved anti-tank missiles for Ukraine, Obama slow-walked shipments of boots, putting them on trucks instead of planes so that they took months to arrive, so as not to upset the Russians. Meanwhile the Trump administration cut the red tape by dipping into its own European stockpiles.

“In the time it took Obama to ship boots to Ukraine, Trump shipped Javelin missiles.”

And he closed with this: “Unlike Obama, President Trump sold weapons to Ukraine. Unlike Obama, he bombed Assad and took on Russian mercenaries. Unlike Obama, he provided Poland with working Patriot missiles. Unlike Obama, he didn’t base his foreign policy around fearing to offend Moscow. Unlike Obama, he stood up to Russia.”

The fact is that many of us who voted for Trump felt that he would do a better job of standing up to the world’s strongmen than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would do. (For a relevant Twitter poll, see here.)

As for China, allow me to share two personal anecdotes. While in Australia in early 2020, shortly before the COVID travel restrictions, I was picked up at the airport by a Chinese national who was now an Australian citizen.

When I asked him for his views on Chinese President Xi, he told me plainly that he thought he was dangerous. When I asked him for his views on President Trump, he said, “He’s a hero.”

In fact, a colleague of mine who has spent almost all his adult life living and working in China, and who is well-connected to the underground Chinese church, told me that every Christian he knew in China was praying fervently for the reelection of Trump. And when Trump lost, many of them wept.

More broadly, a Bing search for the words how Trump stood up to China (not in quotes) yields pages of articles and videos with headlines like this: “It Takes a Trump to Stand Up to China” (The Hill, December 6, 2016); and “Finally, a President Stands Up to China” (Townhall, August 28, 2019).

To be sure, Trump had more than his share of critics when it came to his Chinese policies, with CNN claiming in July 2020 that, “Trump blasts Beijing in public, but privately Trump org imports tons of Chinese goods.”

But the fact remains that America just competed in the Beijing Olympics, with our athletes being urged not to protest and our official diplomatic protest seeming quite tepid, even with its reference to China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Really now, if we truly believed that China was guilty of “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity” shouldn’t we rather boycott the Olympics? Why not put teeth in our words?

Obviously, I cannot imagine the pressures President Biden is under, and the purpose of this article is not to throw stones at him. (How many Biden-bashing articles have I written?) And, to repeat, I do not want to Trump to run again in 2024 for quite a few reasons.

I’m simply reminding those who broad-brush and smear all of us who voted for Trump that international policies were a major consideration for many of us, with those policies potentially affecting hundreds of millions of lives. (And I’ve not said a word here about our policies with Iran.)

That is hardly a matter of white supremacy or dangerous Christian nationalism. This is matter of worldwide humanitarian concern.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s a rambling piece of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism; or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riots.

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Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s an insubstantial dollop of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism (or nationalism); or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riot.

Schor cites Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

[W]hen [Russell Moore] saw a “Jesus Saves” sign displayed near a gallows built by rioters, “I was enraged to a degree that I haven’t been enraged in memory. This is not only dangerous and unpatriotic but also blasphemous, presenting a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ that isn’t the gospel and is instead its exact reverse.”

Moore is right, a sign saying “Jesus Saves” displayed near a gallows built by lawless rioters is dangerous and blasphemous. But why does this sign enrage him more than when former constitutional law professor and then-president of the United States Barack Obama cited Scripture as his justification for endorsing the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages? Why does it enrage him more than when self-identifying Christians currently serving in Congress defend the legalized extermination of humans in the womb? Why does the lawless rioters’ signage enrage Moore more than what our elected leaders say and do?

Just calling oneself a Christian no more makes a person a Christian than does a man calling himself a woman make him one.  Scripture teaches that “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Moore and others claim that the image of Christianity is now marred in the view of leftists, many of whom already hate Christianity and seek its eradication from public life. But is that true? Or are leftists cynically exploiting the indefensible acts of those who falsely claim to be Christ-followers? Are leftists using the signage and rhetoric of anarchists who bear no resemblance to true Christ-followers to further cow cowardly Christians and to turn them against courageous Christians like Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton?

Who is doing more damage to the church (small “c”): the Capitol rioters or the heretical wolves in sheep’s clothing who have infiltrated every denomination and are corrupting doctrine and leading flocks astray, including the Southern Baptist Convention? Some will argue that both groups damage the cause of Christ, which is true, but which should enrage Christians more?

Perhaps leftists hate—not the rioters—but those genuine Christians whom they can now slander by associating them with the acts of anarchists. And perhaps there’s another reason leftists hate genuine Christians.

Jesus forewarned Christians about their fate, but American Christians blinded by the freedom we have long enjoyed, can’t see the hatred Christ foretold even as they are cursed and cancelled:

 If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Schor bizarrely writes this in an article ostensibly about Christianity on display at the Capitol riots:

In the video shot by a New Yorker reporter during the siege, the fur-hatted Jacob Chansley—known as the “QAnon shaman” for his alignment with the conspiracy theory as well as his self-described spiritual leanings–delivered a prayer thanking God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.” While Chansley spoke, other rioters fell silent in apparent participation.

Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, was the tattooed, furry-chested, jammy-wearing, buffalo-horn accoutered anarchist who strutted into the Senate chambers with a cocky grin on his face. Why he is included in an article purportedly about Christianity is baffling. If crazy QAnon ideas have infiltrated churches as heretical views of sexuality have, they must be purged. In my experience, however, heretical views of sexuality are far more prevalent in churches than are QAnon ideas and far more dangerous.

Chansley is a “shaman” who follows his own syncretistic religion that includes elements of Eastern mysticism, chakras, auric/planetary frequencies, hallucinogenic drug use, and a weird movement called Ministry of Tomorrow (MOT).

Chansley was first introduced at age 11 to hallucinogenic drugs by his father, which raises an issue few are addressing: the importance of fathers. How many anarchists on the left and right grew up with good fathers in the home?

So, while Chansley may be a Trump-supporter, he is definitely not a typical hardworking conservative Trump supporter or a theologically orthodox Bible-believing Christian. He is, however, definitely a lunatic. The fact that some lunatics support Trump has as little to do with Trump as the fact that there surely are lunatics who support Biden. After all, lunatics and anarchists have to support somebody. Here’s more from Chansley/Angeli, but I don’t recommend wasting your time.

The fact that Chansley “delivered a prayer thanking God” during which “other rioters fell silent” does not mean Chansley is a Christian. Surely Schor knows that Muslims pray, Hindus pray, shamans pray, and Christian heretics pray, and they all think they’re praying to God.

Theologian John Piper offers a helpful explanation of the relationship between the diverse loves of Christians. The first love for Christ-followers must always be for Christ and his kingdom:

[N]ever feel more attached to your fatherland or your tribe or your family or your ethnicity than you do to the people of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ is more closely and permanently united to others in Christ, no matter the other associations, than we are to our nearest fellow citizen or party member or brother or sister or spouse.

But, Piper explains, many of our lesser loves have value too:

God means for us to be enmeshed in this world. We’re “not of the world,” Jesus says, but we are in the world, and we are supposed to be in it. … We may be in a city, a state, a country, and if I ask, “What is patriotism in this enmeshment?” my answer is that patriotism is a kind of love for fatherland — and I mean fatherland in a very general sense. It could be a city (Minneapolis), or a state (Minnesota), or a country (US, Brazil, China, Nigeria), or a tribe (Ojibwe, Navajo, Fulani, Kachin). And that love for these enmeshments, these belongings, is different from the general love that Christians have for everybody or for the whole earth. …

So, it seems to me that this is good, and that the goodness is implied in the Bible, and God created us to be in skin, in languages, in families, in cultures. He doesn’t mean for us to despise our skin or our language or our culture, but rather to be at home in them, and to feel good about them — of course, we have to add — up to a point. They’re all sinful, and so we never give them absolute allegiance. We never cease to be exiles and sojourners, even in our families and tribes and ethnicities — indeed, in our own bodies. …

In the end, Christ has relativized all human allegiances, all human loves. Keeping Christ supreme in our affections makes all our lesser loves better, not worse. Under his flag, it is right to be thankful to God that we have a fatherland, a tribe, a family, an old pair of slippers that just fit right.

The challenge for Christians in this time of turmoil and growing persecution is to hold fast to the whole counsel of God, rooting out heresy of all kinds; to proclaim the whole counsel of God even when the world hates us; and to come alongside those who speak truth in the public square and are mocked for doing so. We have no biblical warrant for speaking truth only when we’re guaranteed doing so will be cost-free.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Were-the-Capitol-Rioters-Christians.mp3

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