Is the United States a Christian nation?

The U.S. Constitution does not name Christianity or establish any church. The First Amendment forbids Congress to make any law “respecting an establishment of religion,” and Article VI forbids any religious test for federal office. Christianity shaped American culture deeply, and most of the founders were raised in Christian churches, but the nation’s founding law treats citizens of every faith and of none as equals.

Is it wrong for a Christian to love their country?

Love of country is a good thing, and the church prays for the nation. The mainline churches’ books of worship include prayers for the nation, and the prophet Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to pray for the city where they lived. Christian teaching asks only that love of country stay beneath love of God and love of neighbor, where it can flourish.

Are Christians who vote according to their faith Christian nationalists?

Voting and arguing for laws from Christian convictions is ordinary citizenship, and Christians of every political view do it. Scholars who study Christian nationalism mean something narrower: the wish for the state to privilege Christianity and the belief that real members of the nation are Christians. Using the label for every religious voter blurs that difference.

What is the “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” statement?

It is a public statement launched in July 2019 by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and signed by thousands of Christians, including leaders of several mainline churches. It says that Christian nationalism distorts both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy, and it affirms equal religious freedom for people of all faiths.

Why do some churches say “white Christian nationalism”?

Some scholars and church bodies add the word white because, in the United States, the fusion of Christian and national identity has often been tied to white racial identity. The 2019 statement against Christian nationalism warns that it often overlaps with white supremacy. In 2026 the PC(USA)’s General Assembly titled its resolution “Standing Against White Christian Nationalism.”

What Is Christian Nationalism? | Mainline Christian

Christian nationalism is the belief that Christianity and national identity should be fused, so that the government favors Christianity and being a true citizen means being a Christian. Sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry describe it as a cultural framework of stories, symbols, and values, distinct from any church’s doctrine. Leaders and church bodies in the ELCA, the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church have spoken against it, while affirming that Christians may love their country and take part in public life.

Christian nationalism is the belief that Christianity and national identity should be fused, so that the state favors Christianity and the true members of the nation are Christians. If you love your country and love Christ, you may be wondering where faithful patriotism ends and something else begins, and the question deserves a careful answer. Leaders and church bodies in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church have spoken against Christian nationalism. The same churches teach that Christians may love their country, pray for it, and take a full part in its public life.

What is Christian nationalism?

The term is used in several ways, so a definition helps. Most studies in the United States follow the sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, whose 2020 book Taking America Back for God (Oxford University Press) calls Christian nationalism “a cultural framework”: “a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems” that idealizes a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. Their surveys ask, for example, whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation.

Whitehead and Perry found that the “Christianity” in Christian nationalism is more a matter of identity and belonging than of doctrine or devotion. They report that on many questions it pushes opinions in the opposite direction from traditional religious commitment, and that many people who score high on their scale are not especially devout.

The term also has thoughtful critics. Some scholars and many conservative Christians argue that it is applied too loosely, so that any Christian who brings faith into politics is labeled a Christian nationalist, and their concern deserves a hearing. A few writers have taken the name for themselves and argue that a nation should formally favor Christianity. Many people drawn to these ideas love God sincerely and fear for their country’s future, and they should be met with patience and good faith.

Is Christian nationalism the same as patriotism?

Patriotism is love of one’s country, and the church has always made room for it. When the people of Judah were taken into exile in Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah told them to work and pray for the city where they now lived:

Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace.

Jeremiah 29:7

When Jesus was asked whether Jews should pay the Roman tax, he answered, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Christians owe real duties to the state, and they owe God a loyalty that no state may claim.

Love of country becomes Christian nationalism when it is fused with faith in God: when the nation itself is treated as holy, when flag and cross are made into one symbol, or when citizens of other faiths, or of none, are treated as lesser members of the nation. Patriotism loves a country as one good gift among many, and keeps God first.

Can Christians take part in politics?

Christians have always taken part in public life, and the mainline churches encourage it. The prophets of Israel denounced kings and judges who cheated the poor, and the prophet Micah summed up God’s demand as doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God (see what Micah 6:8 means). The ELCA, the PC(USA), the United Methodist Church, and the Episcopal Church each keep an office in Washington that speaks to lawmakers on issues such as poverty, refugees, and religious freedom.

The line between Christian citizenship and Christian nationalism concerns power and belonging. A Christian who votes, argues for laws to protect the poor, or serves in office brings faith into public life, as citizens of every faith do. Christian nationalism asks the state to privilege Christianity itself. The 2019 statement says that Christian nationalism “demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.”

What does the Bible say about nation and kingdom?

Paul wrote to the Christians of Philippi, a Roman colony whose citizens prized their Roman citizenship (Acts 16:12). He reminded them where their first citizenship lay:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

Philippians 3:20

On trial before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, Jesus refused to let his followers defend him by force:

My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight … But now my Kingdom is not from here.

John 18:36

The New Testament describes the church as a people drawn from every nation. Baptism joins people across the lines of ethnicity, status, and sex that divided the ancient world:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28

The First Letter of Peter gives the title “a holy nation” to scattered Christian congregations, a people with no state of their own (1 Peter 2:9). The Book of Revelation pictures the redeemed as “a great multitude which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages” (Revelation 7:9). Israel’s law also commanded love for the foreigner who lived in the land:

The stranger who lives as a foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 19:34

How did Christendom shape the question?

For its first three centuries the church was a minority in the Roman Empire and was at times persecuted. The emperor Constantine turned to the Christian faith in 312 and soon granted Christians freedom of worship, and in 380 the emperor Theodosius I made the faith of the Nicene Creed the official religion of the empire. The centuries in which church and state were bound together in Europe are called Christendom. The age of Christendom produced cathedrals, hospitals, and universities, and also wars of religion and the persecution of Jews and of dissenting Christians.

Augustine of Hippo wrote The City of God after the sack of Rome in 410, when pagans blamed the Christian faith for the city’s fall. He answered that “two cities have been formed by two loves,” the earthly city by love of self and the heavenly city by love of God (Book XIV, chapter 28), and that no earthly empire is the City of God.

The Eastern Orthodox churches faced their own version of the question in the nineteenth century, as new national churches formed in the Balkans. A council of Orthodox bishops in Constantinople in 1872 condemned “phyletism,” the organizing of the church by nation or ethnic group, as a heresy, because the church belongs to Christ, who gathers every people into it.

In the United States, the First Amendment (1791) barred Congress from establishing a religion, and Massachusetts ended the last state-supported church in 1833. Baptists, who had been jailed and taxed for dissent in colonial America, were among the strongest voices for that separation. In 1934 the Confessing Church in Germany adopted the Theological Declaration of Barmen, which confessed Jesus Christ as “the one Word of God” against a church movement that had tied the gospel to national identity. The PC(USA) includes the Barmen Declaration in its Book of Confessions.

What do the mainline churches teach about Christian nationalism?

The 2019 statement “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” was organized by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Its signers included Elizabeth Eaton, then Presiding Bishop of the ELCA; Jimmie Hawkins, director of the PC(USA)’s Office of Public Witness; and Michael Curry, then Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. The statement says that “Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy,” and it affirms equal religious freedom for people of every faith.

The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society describes Christian nationalism as “a political ideology that seeks to merge Christianity and a particular type of American identity.” On June 30, 2026, the PC(USA)’s 227th General Assembly approved “Standing Against White Christian Nationalism” by a vote of 459 to 25. Church leaders who have spoken against Christian nationalism ground their opposition in the unity of the baptized and in love of neighbor, including neighbors of other races and religions (see what the Bible says about racism and what mainline Protestantism is).

A Christian’s first home is a kingdom that gathers people from every nation, tribe, and language around one table. From that home you can love your own country freely, pray for its leaders, and work for its good, as Jeremiah urged the exiles to seek the peace of Babylon. And you can welcome every neighbor, whatever their faith, as someone God made and loves.