Boring politics is not the answer to extreme nationalism
It might be tempting to temper Trumpist Christian nationalism with moderation, but the moment calls for prophecy, not prosaicism.
David Brooks, responding to the religious extremism on display at the Charlie Kirk funeral—one that haphazardly mingled politics and religion, as he put it, “higgledy-piggledy”—doesn’t think it’s reasonable to entirely separate the ideas, but he does think there is a way they might and should influence one another. The question he wants to answer is “not how to separate spirituality and politics but how to put them in proper relation to each other.”
Citing the Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper, who Walter Wink seems to take a nod from, Brooks argues that society is organized into certain “spheres” and that God has authority over all of them. Each one of those spheres has a different set of rules out of which it operates. To Brooks, politics is one sphere and religion another. He goes on and says, “When I say I believe in God, I mean something very different from when I say I believe in conservatism or liberalism.”
In his mind, Christian nationalists, like the ones who spoke at the aforementioned funeral, created a toxic cocktail of politics that didn’t respect either “sphere.” For Kirk, because he wanted “to talk about spiritual things,” he had “to enter the political arena.”
Brooks goes on to list the flaws of the unholy marriage of politics and religion officiated by Christian nationalists. The first mistake is seeing electoral politics as spiritual warfare. The second is that Christian nationalism disciples people against the Christian principles of “faith, hope, and charity” (misquoting Paul in 1 Cor. 13). Third, it has an obsession with the rapture (religion’s job “to drive your arms heavenward or to knock you to your knees”). Fourth, it creates a destructive syncretism, which is just another way to say an intermixing of religions or philosophies. Finally, it downplays how powerful sin is.
I think those are all reasonable critiques of Christian nationalism, but they aren’t the most pressing or salient critiques of Christian nationalism. Its ultimate flaw is not how it weds religion and politics, but rather, frankly, how it upholds patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, and racism. Its flaw is not that it confuses the spheres of politics and religion, but rather that its politics are actually wicked.
Brooks critiques this framework not because of the morally reprehensible politics that Christian nationalists spew, but because their formula abuses both politics and religion. To Brooks, the biblical is apolitical (or “prepolitical”). Religion is universal; politics is contextual. In the dominant theory of politics and religion, “The Bible doesn’t have a political program; it just tells you that the people on all sides of a political dispute are sinners in need of grace.”
But it’s categorically incorrect to say the Bible is not political or that it separates the spheres of politics and religion. In fact, in the Bible, there is so much of a merger of the two that they are indistinguishable. When Brooks says we are all sinners in need of grace, he is merely representing a single view of a single writer of the Bible: the Lutheran view of Paul. To his credit, it is a very popular theory among Protestants and Evangelicals, but it is just one theory. There are many other theories that suggest deep political commitments in the Bible, including liberationist theology and the latest wave of Mennonite theology (see Janne Hunter-Bowman).
He will go on to say that an additional problem with the politics of Christian nationalism is not just that it misunderstands the Bible, but that it also misunderstands politics. I’ll offer his full paragraph because I think it is revealing:
“The problem is that politics is prosaic. Deliberation and negotiation work best in a mood of moderation and equipoise. If you want to practice politics in the mood best suited for the altar call, you’re going to practice politics in a way that sends prudence out the window.”
Yes, Brooks wants to make politics boring again. And while I understand the impulse, returning politics to some idyllic past is not only impossible right now, it’s fantastical to assume that politics in America was ever purely prosaic. We’d love to live in a world where we could deliberate and negotiate our political differences soberly. But we don’t, and that has been a project that has been ongoing in the U.S.A. for a long time. Sure, we have had moments of sober negotiation (the Romney/Obama debates were as dull as could be), but in general, I think this drift toward authoritarianism has been a project of the far right for some time—probably, realistically, since desegregation at least. And now Trump is propelling that project forward very quickly.
Brooks is wrong both about Christianity and politics. Christianity is not apolitical, and boring politics is not the answer to Christian nationalism. The fundamental problem with Brooks’s theory—and I am writing about it because it is a prevailing theory among both liberals and moderate Republicans—is that we are up against serious forces of oppression. It is not a moment to wax philosophically about politics with Christian nationalism. ICE is kidnapping people. Trump is starting a war in Venezuela. A genocide continues in Gaza. People’s rights are being stripped from them. SNAP benefits are going away. Health insurance costs are skyrocketing. Political opponents are being prosecuted. It’s time to sound the alarm, not to long for a forgotten (and possibly mythical) era of sober-minded politics.
Historically, Anabaptists would readily critique Brooks’s Niebuhrian worldview. For many of us, the answer would be to intensify the distance between politics and religion. But despite Brooks’s flaw, the apoliticality of some Anabaptists and Mennonites is decidedly not the answer. We actually need to engage politically and religiously. Christian nationalism may have mixed politics and religion in a toxic way, but that shouldn’t keep us from allowing our faith to fuel our political action against authoritarianism.
Christian nationalists are trying to hide their bigotry in Christianity—trying to wrap the cross of Christ with an American flag—and that is, sadly, proving to be an effective strategy. But those of us of conscience see a different vision for our faith, not unlike the one that Jesus inaugurated when he began his ministry in Luke 4. Quoting Isaiah, Luke tells us to “preach good news to the poor,” “release the prisoners,” and “liberate the oppressed.” That is a deeply political commitment that the Bible is making. We need to counter Christian nationalism with Christian liberation.
Our response to the growing authoritarianism around us must be passionate and span across organizations and traditions. We need to build coalitions across our differences because authoritarianism oppresses all of us. Christians have a role—not in calling for a tepid politics and apolitical Gospel, but one that meets the political demands and convictions of the Gospel. Jesus stood against oppression around him. Christians absolutely must do the same today.