Those familiar with the wider historical contours of Christian political theology find little new in the resurgent nationalism of our moment. Nationalist sentiment has come and gone, each time a different flavor, perhaps, but always the same recognizable brand.
I do not have space here to account for all the continuities between movements but will focus instead on one point of continuity that links all nationalist movements, Christian or otherwise: the utopian impulse. Christian nationalism succumbs to utopian seductions. It dreams of initiating today a political order reserved for the life to come and, as such, eschews the eschatological nature of Christ’s kingdom and the principle tasks of the church.
What is the question to which Christian nationalism is the proposed solution?
Its ascendancy has caught many by surprise, in turn sounding the usual alarms and provoking a steady spate of apologies. A glance at social media reveals a thicket of conflicting viewpoints and tangled reply threads that terminate in a slow realization that discourse is only getting less clear. We have received several accounts explaining why it has arisen, but have yet to consider how Christian nationalism is a solution. I suggest it is not so much a political
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