Is Christian Nationalism a Big, Huge, Scary Monster?

And has it only been around since 2006?

A transcript of a podcast came across my desk involving some historians talking about Christian nationalism. Well, that happens almost everyday in 2025 so what was different about this one?

You might say these three Mark David Hall, Miles Smith IV, and Daniel K. Williams seemed skeptical about the existence or importance of Christian nationalism. Law and Liberty podcast host James Patterson described the purpose of the episode this way:

Today we have a panel of guests to talk about whether Christian nationalism is in the past or if the subject matter still remains relevant, as well as to discuss what exactly the ideas of Christian nationalism are and how dangerous they are, if at all.

So to get to the point: in the podcast, Regent University historian Mark David Hall said Christian nationalism is “problematic” but not a “big, huge, scary monster.”

Mark David Hall:

I would say Christian nationalism, as I define it, that is someone who believes that America was founded as a Christian nation and who wants governments to favor Christianity above other religions. I would say that it is a problem and I’m very critical of even that version of Christian nationalism in my book. But if that gained the ascendancy, I think in effect it would return America to where we were in the 1950s minus the racism and minus the sexism. You might have prayer in public school, you might have Congress declaring America to be a Christian nation, in God we trust gets put on our money and under God gets put in the pledge. Again, these are things I can make good prudential biblical and other arguments, constitutional arguments against, but it’s hardly an existential threat to our country. And that’s what people like Sam Perry and Andrew Whitehead go around saying that Christian nationalism is an existential threat to our constitutional order and to the Christian Church. And that’s where it just becomes ridiculous. It’s claiming that something is a big, huge, scary monster when in fact it’s just problematic, in my humble opinion.

Let me say first that I don’t hate his definition of Christian nationalism. I think it is pretty close but from there, I am scratching my head. He’s critical of Christian nationalism in a Sen. Susan Collins kind of way. He’s concerned with a furrowed brow. As for me, I am more than concerned. If Christian nationalism such as Hall described were to become the law of the land, it would be an existential threat to some people more than others.

Hall says he’s a Christian and it shows. If Congress declared America to be a Christian nation, favored his religion, and everybody had to pray to his god, it might not be a big hardship for him. But what about people who aren’t Christian? If the government favored Christianity over other religions, wouldn’t that be an existential crisis for people who aren’t Christian? And if the First Amendment were eliminated or ignored, wouldn’t that be an existential threat to our Constitutional order? Maybe all the Christians make it through, but how about the rest of the population?

I don’t agree with Hall that racism and sexism would not be a part of his hypothetical new age of Christian nationalism, but even if that prediction came true, religious bigotry is still a “big, huge, scary monster” in my book.

Did Christian nationalism begin with reporters in 2006?

This claim was quite stunning actually. I had to look into it because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t remembering my life incorrectly. Hall said this about the usage of the term “Christian nationalism.”

I think it’s important to recognize that literally no one in America is using the phrase Christian nationalism until about 2006 when a steady stream of books started coming out by Michelle Goldberg, Katherine Stewart and Andrew Seidel and others. And they were describing a complete toxic mix, a mess. It’s Christians who want to take over America for Christ and favor white Christians above all others, so we want to bring back Jim Crow, we want to have religious illiberalism, we want women to be in the house and barefoot. And it’s literally that’s what book after book says, and these are mostly, I call them the polemical critics, often journalists or activists, but when we get academics involved, someone like a Whitehead and Perry define Christian nationalism as an ideology that idolizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian culture that includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism and on and on they go.

First, we must remember Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith who headed up the Christian Nationalist party and America First movement. Smith, a Disciples of Christ minister, used the term frequently in America from the mid-1930s until he died in 1976. He saw his antisemitic, anti-Catholic, racist, white supremacist movement as being a Christian nationalist movement, rooted in his orthodox Christian beliefs. Smith was up for every bit of what Hall described as Christian nationalism and he was espousing it right up to his death.

More recently, there was the organization of the religious right; Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and all those fellows promoted God and country beginning in the 1970s. I remembered hearing and reading the term Christian nationalism surrounding the formation of organizations like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. A check of Newspapers.com revealed dozens of uses of Christian nationalism in America literally going back into the 1980s. In 1982, Reagan administration official Ed Meese attended a conference on Bible inerrancy and said “the Bible was the foundation on which our country was built.”[1] Note the phrase Christian nationalism underlined in red specifically referring to the mixing of Christianity and political aims.

In 1986, Dr. Thomas Boomershine used the term in much the same way it is used today. He referred to a version of Christianity “that sees the United States as the chosen people and worships the flag and God as if they were the same thing.”[2] He said that view of the U.S. and that worship “becomes a form of Christian nationalism.”

The term became more common in the 1990s. Here is just one example from 1996. [3] I don’t think I need to underline anything.

According to Gallup’s poll, the Christian nationalists of the mid-1990s were not intolerant of minority groups other than gays and did not support a “Euro-Christian society.” I think it is an open question if this is true today. Despite Hall’s skepticism, research points to an association between Christian nationalism and various kinds of intolerance. In contrast to the 1996 cohort, Christian nationalists of today are worried about being replaced by immigrants and minorities.[4]

Back to Christian nationalism as a threat. I think there are varieties of Christian nationalism. Some are worse than others. Stephen Wolfe’s version (which the podcast crew discusses as not really being Christian nationalism, even though Wolfe says it is) is worse than say Mark David Hall’s definition (which he says he doesn’t like). In any case, any type erodes separation of church and state and degrades equality. Let’s just say no to all of it.

In summary, I still think Christian nationalism is an existential threat and reporters didn’t make it up in 2006 to scare us and sell books. Sam Perry and Andrew Whitehead are competent sociologists using accepted research methods to explore a relevant and important topic.

[1] Roberta Green, After 2000 Years, They’re Still Debating. San Bernadino Sun, 3/6/1982, B-5.

[2] Carrie LaBriola, Triumphant Conservatives Bask in TVs Glow. Dayton Daily News, 5/25/1986, A-9.

[3] Religion News Service, Gallup Poll Examines “Christian Nationalism.” Los Angeles Times, 8/10/1996, 372.

[4] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/white-nationalism-remains-major-concern-for-voters-of-color-and-appears-to-be-connected-ideologically-to-the-growing-christian-nationalism-movement/