What is Christian nationalism? The meaning, the verses it leans on, and why the midterms put it back in the news

What the term means

There is no single agreed definition, which is part of why the arguments run so hot. Three are worth knowing.

The critics’ definition. Christians Against Christian Nationalism, a campaign launched in 2019 by BJC (the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty), defines it as “a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian and American identities,” and says it distorts both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. On this view the problem is not Christians in politics; it is the claim that the nation itself belongs to Christians, so that non-Christian citizens are less truly American.

The survey definition. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) measures it with five statements, including “The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation,” “U.S. laws should be based on Christian values,” “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American” and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” People who agree strongly are counted as “Adherents,” those who mostly agree as “Sympathizers.”

The defenders’ definition. The political theorist Stephen Wolfe, whose 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism (Canon Press) argues for the idea, defines it in technical terms as the whole of a Christian nation’s laws and customs, carried out by that nation as a Christian nation, to pursue both its earthly and its heavenly good. Wolfe says this is not an attempt to bring heaven to earth. His critics, including many conservative Reformed reviewers, say his version leans toward an ethnically defined nation ruled by a “Christian prince”; he rejects their reading.

Notice what none of these definitions covers: an ordinary Christian who is patriotic, prays for their leaders, or lets their faith shape how they vote. Using “Christian nationalist” for all of that, as some commentators do, empties the word. Using it for nothing, as some defenders do, hides a real movement.

Who says yes to the name

Most politicians reject the label when it is pinned on them. A few have claimed it. At Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa in July 2022, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told an interviewer from Next News Network, “I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly: we should be Christian nationalists,” and she later called it “a good thing” when critics objected. Wolfe’s book made the case at length for a Christian readership, and the Idaho pastor Douglas Wilson, whose Canon Press published it, has defended the idea in print and in sermons. On February 17, 2026, Right Wing Watch reported, Wilson preached at the monthly Christian worship service Hegseth hosts at the Pentagon; Kaylor, a critic, had told the Associated Press in September 2025 that whatever Wilson may have been in the past, “he’s not fringe now.”

The reaction from other Christians was just as public. BJC said more than 10,000 Christians signed its statement within ten days of its 2019 launch, and Greene’s 2022 remark drew a fresh wave of Christian criticism. The argument is therefore not Christians against secularists. It is, to a large degree, Christians against Christians.

How many Americans hold these views?

In a 50-state study published on February 17, 2026, based on its 2025 American Values Atlas survey, PRRI counted 11% of Americans as Christian nationalism Adherents and 21% as Sympathizers, against 37% Skeptics and 27% Rejecters. Among Republicans the Adherents and Sympathizers together were a majority (21% and 35%); among white evangelical Protestants they were 67%. PRRI also reports that support is higher than average among Black Protestants (17% and 26%), which complicates the picture of Christian nationalism as only a white movement.

The wording matters a great deal. In 2022 the Pew Research Center found that 45% of US adults said the country “should be” a Christian nation, but when it asked what they meant, 48% of that group described broad guidance by Christian beliefs and values, and only 6% said laws should be based on Christianity. Most people who like the phrase “Christian nation” are not asking for a theocracy. At the same time, 54% of Americans told Pew they had heard nothing about “Christian nationalism” at all, and among those who had, unfavourable views outnumbered favourable ones by about five to one.

The verses it leans on

Supporters of a Christian America reach for a small set of passages. The best known is God’s answer to Solomon at the dedication of the temple, printed on countless “pray for America” posters:

¹⁴ and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.

Others follow: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Psalm 33:12), “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34), and the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), which some read as a mandate to Christianize nations as nations. Wolfe and others also appeal to Christian history, from Constantine to Protestant Europe’s established churches, as proof that Christian nations are normal rather than strange.

What those verses do not say

Read in context, the poster verse is a promise to Israel. “My people who are called by My name” are the covenant people gathered at Solomon’s temple, and the land is the land God gave them. A Christian may apply its call to humility and repentance to any people, and should; but the promise to “heal their land” was not made to the United States, or to any modern state. Psalm 33 makes the same point in its second line, which is often left off when the verse is quoted: the blessed nation is “the people He has chosen as His inheritance.” In the Old Testament that is Israel.

The New Testament then does something striking with Israel’s national titles. Peter gives them to the church, a people drawn from every nation:

⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. ¹¹ Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul.

The “holy nation” in the New Testament is the church, and its members live in their earthly countries “as foreigners and exiles.” Paul says “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20); Jesus told Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36); and when the devil offered Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,” he refused (Matthew 4:8–10). In Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek” (Galatians 3:28), and the final picture of God’s people is a crowd “from every nation and tribe and people and tongue” (Revelation 7:9). The Great Commission sends the church to disciple people from all nations, “baptizing them”; it does not tell anyone to capture a government.

But Scripture does not tell Christians to keep their faith out of public life either, and critics who suggest it does are also wrong. Jeremiah told the exiles to “seek the prosperity of the city” where they lived and to pray for it (Jeremiah 29:7). Jesus said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21), which limits Caesar as much as it obeys him. Paul says rulers are “appointed by God” (Romans 13:1), and the apostles still said “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). And “Righteousness exalts a nation” is a fair word to any people. Wanting laws that protect the weak because you are a Christian is not Christian nationalism; it is what Christians have always done. The line is crossed when the nation itself is treated as God’s chosen people, or when belonging to it is tied to belonging to Christ.

How Christians differ

Catholic. The Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae (1965), teaches that every person has a right to religious freedom that civil law must respect, while the Church still teaches that societies have a duty toward the true religion. Catholics therefore argue about how much Christian influence on law is right, but the Church rejects forcing faith on anyone. Catholic “integralists” are a small minority who argue for a confessional state.

Baptist and free-church Protestant. Baptists were persecuted by state churches in Europe and colonial America and became leading champions of the separation of church and state; BJC, which leads the campaign against Christian nationalism, comes from that tradition. Many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals also want America to honour God more openly in public life, and they resent being called nationalists for it.

Reformed. The Reformed world holds both sides of the argument. Wolfe and Wilson write from it, appealing to the established Protestant churches of the Reformation era; many of their sharpest critics are Reformed scholars too, who point out that American Presbyterians, forming their national church in 1788–89, revised the Westminster Confession so that the civil magistrate no longer had a duty to suppress heresy or favour one denomination.

Mainline and Black Protestant. Mainline denominations and many Black churches have issued statements against Christian nationalism, and Talarico and Hamilton come from this world. Yet PRRI’s numbers show that a sizeable minority of Black Protestants agree with some Christian-nation statements, often meaning something different by them.

Orthodox. Orthodox churches have a long tradition of national churches (Greek, Russian, Serbian and others), and in 1872 a council in Constantinople condemned “phyletism,” organizing the church by ethnicity, as a heresy. Orthodox Christians thus have both a strong sense of Christian nations and a formal warning against confusing the church with a people. These are general summaries; within every tradition, members disagree.

Our take

This is our opinion, not a report. Love your country; do not baptize it.

Christian nationalism in the strong sense, the claim that America is a Christian nation whose people are God’s people and whose laws should make that official, gets the Bible wrong at its centre. The New Testament takes the title “holy nation” away from any earthly state and gives it to the church of every tongue. When a Christian draws the line of God’s people around one country’s flag, they are not reading 2 Chronicles 7:14 too literally; they are reading 1 Peter 2:9 not at all. And the history that defenders appeal to, from Constantine’s empire to Europe’s state churches, is not a happy one for the church: established faith tends to produce nominal Christians and persecuted dissenters, and the first people it pressures are usually other Christians.

We would also say, plainly, that the critics have stretched the word. A grandmother who prays 2 Chronicles 7:14 over her town and a voter whose faith shapes their view of abortion are not Christian nationalists, and calling them that makes the real argument harder to hear. One election does not settle any of this either: the polls show the views PRRI measures have held steady since 2022. The answer to Christian nationalism is not a secular public square or a Christian left with its own flag. It is a church that seeks its city’s good as Jeremiah’s exiles did, tells every ruler the truth, and remembers whose citizenship it carries.

Over to you

Where do you draw the line between a Christian who loves their country and a Christian nationalist, and has anything you have seen in your own church moved that line for you? Tell us below.

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