Schlepping my way across the campus of Colorado Christian University on Monday towards the lecture hall I had chosen as my destination, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. When the email landed in my inbox last week advertising the lecture “Christian Nationalism: Good or Bad?” hosted by the school’s think tank, the Centennial Institute, my interest was immediately piqued. I have taken a great interest in the conversations Christian communities are having amongst themselves in recent years about Christian nationalism, a force which threatens not just our shared democracy but also the particular faith which birthed it.
Those conversations have taken many shapes over the last half decade or so – many of which are empathetically covered in Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory – with faith leaders arguing for every vision from total Christian domination of government and society, to total Christian abdication of earthly politics.
The reason I thought I knew what to expect from Monday’s lecture, even though I had never encountered CCU theology professor Dr. John Wind’s work before, is because I am familiar with its host organization. I am also familiar with the role they have usually played in those important conversations: leaning much further towards the former than the latter; erring more towards dominion than abdication.
Under the guidance of longtime leader Jeff Hunt, CCU’s Centennial Institute spent the last decade becoming one of the state’s primary hubs for the hyper-politicized form of conservative evangelicalism which we call Christian nationalism: an iteration of American Christianity which tends to imbue the shibboleths of political conservatism with the same weight as Biblical teachings.
Hunt, who served as the think tank’s primary image-bearer and ambassador until his departure last year, embodies the movement like it’s his job. He claims America was founded as a Christian nation, believes America cannot exist without Christianity, and – in true movement form – has even rejected the concept of Christian nationalism entirely, calling it a “big scary boogie man” created by academics like Dr. Sam Perry and Dr. Andrew Whitehead. During Hunt’s time at the helm, the Centennial Institute was known for taking similar positions.
And so, as I took a seat in the back row of the hall, one of about one hundred guests, I assumed I was in for the Centennial Institute Special™: either a shameless politicization of the Christian faith, or a shameless baptizing of the conservative one. And many in the audience around me seemed to share that assumption, bedecked in MAGA hats and “Pro-Life U” sweatshirts. But then Dr. Wind took the stage, and I was left listening to what felt like a good faith effort to reconcile one’s sincere faith to one’s political involvement, and marveling at how far it diverged from the Centennial Institute’s usual take on the topic.
To the question posed in the title of the lecture – Christian Nationalism: Good or Bad? – Wind started by deflating the balloon. “It depends,” he said.
“If, on one hand, a person means by this term that Christians of European descent should rule America as a theocracy that makes second-class citizens of non-Christians…then the answer is bad, bad, bad,” Wind said, noting that even very few of the movement’s advocates would sign-on for that definition. “If, on the other hand, a person means by this term that the structure of nationhood is a God-designed means to promote human flourishing, and that Christians are responsible to be active in seeking the good of our nation from a distinctly Christian perspective,” he went on, “Then I think good, good, good.”
And like that, with butts in the seat, Wind revealed his “bait and switch,” as he called it, moving the topic of the conversation away from a debate about Christian nationalism and reorienting it on a thoughtful reflection on how Bible-believing Christians should engage in the public square.
At first, sitting in the audience, I thought it might be sleight-of-hand. That, like Hunt and so many leaders in the Christian nationalist movement have done, Wind might be trying to beat the allegations by toying around with definitions. As I sat and listened, though, I realized that he was doing something else entirely: he was not trying to reconcile his pre-existing faith with his pre-existing politics, he was earnestly prioritizing his faith and attempting to follow it to the answer it demanded.
That point was driven home for me when, across the seven points of his talk, he refrained from sounding like Jeff Hunt even once. In fact, he refrained from making a single argument I have heard before, and I have heard a lot of these arguments. It took me a while to realize that it was because he was not arguing at all.
In the hands of an interlocutor like Hunt — who decried the state’s lack of “Christian leadership” and referred to the Jewish Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General as “neo-Marxists” — there’s no real challenge in reconciling one’s faith and one’s politics: when you’re already completely certain in the absolute correctness of both, you can simply assume they are already reconciled. You can simply assume that your pre-existing political positions are a direct result of your faith, ignoring that millions of your fellow faithful have different political positions. Wind’s approach struck me not only as more intellectually honest than Hunt’s, but also as more faith-centric.
The bulk of Wind’s talk consisted of seven “words of wisdom for Christians in the public square,” and, in a sense, it was not really for me. Rather, it seemed targeted, however gently, at the MAGA hats a few rows in front of me. But perhaps that’s not right, either. Wind’s lecture was not a rebuke of political engagement by Christians, and it was far from a rebuke of conservatism; instead, it felt to me like an effort to de-prioritize those things in the conversation, and to re-prioritize the faith claims which Christians are supposed to believe are eternal, unchanging, and not bound to the political particulars of this time and place. And, in that way, it did feel like a rebuke of Christian nationalism, whether that was ultimately what Wind intended or not.
I suspect my praise might mortify Dr. Wind, who was almost certainly not attempting to appeal to lefty nonbelievers with his lecture. But my praise isn’t based on agreeing with him, it’s based on appreciating his ability and willingness to engage earnestly with the combination of faith and politics instead of falling back on the well-worn but ultimately hollow justifications preferred by Hunt and others.
I also suspect that Dr. Wind and I vote differently, that we probably differ from each other on a whole host of political issues, but I found his talk refreshing. Again, not because I agreed with him, but because I believe that the American church and American democracy would both be in less peril if more conservative Christians let their faith inform their politics than the other way around.
I also found Wind’s talk refreshing because, in the struggle against Christian nationalism, few things are quite as important as the conversations Christians are having with each other about it. I think there is great utility in broadening our secular awareness of the movement and its ideology, I genuinely believe that Christian nationalism poses an existential threat to the American way of life, but the well-meaning intellectual curiosity of agnostic liberals is not what will ultimately move the needle on the movement when it comes to deradicalization and disarmament. When it comes to pulling people out of the movement, no one is better positioned to do that than other Christians.
Though voices like Hunt’s command most of the attention surrounding the topic, they do not represent the majority of American Christians. In poll after poll, most Christians reject the core tenets of Christian nationalism; most Christians believe that their faith has led them to political positions which differ from those promoted by the Centennial Institute under Hunt’s leadership. For those of us on the outside looking in, we would do well to remember that allies can be found in the unlikeliest of places – even within the walls of the Centennial Institute.
