" I DIdn't Move; You Did" (Part 15A) Christian Nationalism And The "Sacrament" of War

In the first part of this series, I spent a good deal of time looking backward. I revisited the statements, declarations, and public witness of the evangelical movement that shaped me. Again and again, I found leaders insisting that Christians must care for the poor, pursue justice, tell the truth, defend the vulnerable, practice humility, and maintain enough distance from political power to speak prophetically to it. (My previous post looked at the kind of global responsibility the evangelical movement once took seriously.)

Then I turned to the present. I have been asking a simple question: What happened?

Why have so many voices that once challenged presidents now defend them? Why have leaders who once insisted that character matters decided it suddenly doesn't? Why has the movement become so comfortable with nationalism, partisan identity, and political power?

I don't think there is only one answer. But I do think one answer explains much of the shift. It is the growing embrace of Christian nationalism, a danger we were constantly warned about for the past 50 years. Here are some excerpts from the declarations I posted.

We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty.

God has ordained the two co-existing institutions of church and state as distinct and independent of each other with each having its own areas of responsibility (Rom. 13:1-7; Mark 12:13-17; Eph. 4:15-16, 5:23-32).

All too often we have abandoned our Lord’s concern for those in the shadows, the twilight, and the deep darkness of the world, and become cheerleaders for those in power and the naïve sycophants of the powerful and the rich…

…The other error, made by both the religious left and the religious right in recent decades, is to politicize faith, using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes “the regime at prayer,” Christians become “useful idiots” for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form. Christian beliefs are used as weapons for political interests...

Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith…Whichever side it comes from, a politicized faith is faithless, foolish, and disastrous for the church – and disastrous first and foremost for Christian reasons rather than constitutional reasons...

Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. In our scales, spiritual, moral, and social power are as important as political power, what is right outweighs what is popular, just as principle outweighs party, truth matters more than team-playing, and conscience more than power and survival...

The politicization of faith is never a sign of strength but of weakness. The saying is wise: “The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.” The Evangelical soul is not for sale. It has already been bought at an infinite price...

We repent of our failures to condemn and restrain violence by remaining silent, by promoting nationalism, or by unjustly supporting conflicts through deficient theological justification.

We lament that some Christians have looked to the state rather than the gospel as the key means for bringing about God’s intentions for the world. This takes an especially regrettable form when wed to nationalism—here defined as the belief that every state should have a single, national culture and no other—or ethnonationalism—which is the belief that every ethnic group should have its own state. This is a great evil in our world.

We lament that many Christians have been sadly complicit in it, as well as in the claims of ethnic and racial supremacy it fosters. Against this, we assert that no modern state is able to claim or will ever be able to claim to be the special agent of God’s saving rule.

I read Francis Schaeffer back in the 80s and 90s. I taught the How Should We Then Live video class to high schoolers. Though Schaeffer had some unfortunate influences (#rushdoony), he had some good insights that were spreading throughout the evangelical world.

“There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. 

Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.

We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag.” ― Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto

The late Billy Graham, Christianity Today’s founder, gave us a loud warning in an article he wrote for Parade Magazine in 1981, when he said: 

“I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”[1]

Historically, evangelicals advocated for a prophetic distance from power, especially wealth and political authority, from which they could freely speak truth and righteousness to those in power. They had a stated suspicion of nationalism and “near-religious loyalty” to the state.[2]

Today, in practice and teaching, it endorses proximity to power[3] and defense of leaders regardless of character, often openly embraces Christian nationalism, and seeks to merge faith with political identity.

Christians are supposed to be the conscience of the culture. We are supposed to function like the prophet Nathan did to David, being free to say, “You are the man.” (2 Samuel 12) I hear Trump compared to David all the time. I think it’s a poor analogy, but let’s run with it. Who are the evangelical Christians in his circle who are challenging President Trump and others in his cabinet on sin and injustice? Surely he is not a perfect human being, and those instances will arise, right? To quote a declaration cited earlier,

“When faith loses its independence, the church becomes 'the regime at prayer,’ Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one political party or another.”

That quote was written when George W. Bush was president, and Obama was about to take office in 2009, so no one was picking on Trump. But can you imagine the response if this kind of statement were released now? I keep thinking of Paula White saying that to say “no” to Trump was to say “no” to God. 

“All too often we have abandoned our Lord’s concern for those in the shadows, the twilight, and the deep darkness of the world, and become cheerleaders for those in power and the naïve sycophants of the powerful and the rich.”

That feels like a prophetic voice 18 years ago had access to our headlines. 

Christian nationalism changes the church in predictable ways. Once political power becomes part of the church's identity, two things almost always happen.

• First, the nation begins to borrow God's authority for its own actions. 
• Second, the church loses the moral independence necessary to confront the nation when it sins.

We will begin by looking at how this administration has borrowed God's Kingdom authority for its most violent Empire actions.

* * * * *

As the nation begins to borrow God's authority for its own actions, Christian nationalism turns the armed forces of the United States into the armed forces of God. When one does that, one will end up promoting a version of Christian jihad, one in which a warrior automatically goes to heaven if he or she dies while ostensibly fighting on behalf of God. Pete Hesgeth said in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, 

“Christ’s mission 'was to divide truth from lies, the things of the world from the things of God, light from darkness, good from evil. And like Christ, in earthly ways our brave warriors are not called to appease the world, they must confront it. We know we fight a physical battle but ultimately grounded, as the president said, in a spiritual battlefield. Not only are we warriors armed with the arsenal of freedom, we ultimately are armed with the arsenal of faith and have been from the beginning. The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.”

This is not what Jesus or the biblical writings teach. If anything, Jesus models and teaches the opposite: put down your sword; don’t call down fire on Samaria; walk the extra mile with the Roman soldier. This was said at the NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST, and the response from those in attendance was silence.

During a D-Day commemoration, Hesgeth closed his comments with this: 

“And we place them [the D-Day soldiers], all of them, in the hands of Almighty God. In fact, from my devotions just this very morning, Psalm 20 verse seven, some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. May the Lord our God bless our warriors.”

Besides entirely missing the point of Psalm 20, I would note that the military is the horses and chariots. It’s just tanks and planes now. Meanwhile – once again - someone is not automatically placed into the hands of God because they fought at D-Day.

After bombing Iran for a dozen straight days in July of 2026, Hesgeth said,

"Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection. God is good."

This is blasphemous, this baptizing of an unjust war in which civilian infrastructure is targeted (a war crime) and civilians are dying, including a school full of children. God is good? What about this signals the goodness of God? I read a good response article from Monsignor Arthur Holquin, S.T.L. that is worth posting in its entirety

“God Deserves All the Glory” — No, Mr. Hegseth. He Does Not.

At a Pentagon press briefing yesterday morning, Secretary Pete Hegseth declared a “decisive military victory” in Iran and proclaimed, “Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence — a massive effort with miraculous protection.”

I am a Catholic priest. I have spent nearly 52 years at the altar. And I am telling you plainly: what Mr. Hegseth said yesterday morning is not faith. It is blasphemy dressed in the language of devotion.

To say that God deserves the glory for a bombing campaign that struck more than 13,000 targets in less than 40 days is to conscript the Almighty into the service of the Pentagon’s press office. It is to make God the chaplain of a war machine. It is precisely the kind of theological arrogance that has soaked every unjust war in history with the blood of the innocent — and the rhetoric of the righteous.

This is not new. This is not surprising from a man who has publicly prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and for God to “break the teeth of the ungodly.” A man with crusader tattoos and a theology of holy war is not a man equipped to speak for the God revealed in the Sermon on the Mount.

God does not root for armies. God does not award victory points to the nation with the most combat sorties. The God I have spent my priesthood worshipping weeps over war — all war — because war is not a triumph. War is the catastrophic, irrevocable failure of everything best in the human person. Every ceasefire is not a victory. It is a confession of how badly we have failed one another.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio said in a Sunday interview that he did not agree with Hegseth’s efforts to paint the Iran war as something Jesus would justify. The Archbishop is right. And his restraint is more episcopal than I am capable of this morning.

Mr. Hegseth is an Evangelical shaped by a theology of conquest that has no home in Catholic tradition, in just war doctrine, or in any serious reading of the New Testament. But this is not a sectarian complaint. This is a human one. When the machinery of war is wrapped in the language of divine blessing, the people who question that war — its proportionality, its civilian cost, its long-term consequences — are implicitly cast as enemies of God. That silencing is precisely what religious war rhetoric is designed to accomplish.

Do not let it work on you.

God is not an American. God was not cheering in the situation room. And the glory — if there is any glory to be claimed in a ceasefire struck after 13,000 targets and incalculable human suffering — belongs to the diplomats, the peacemakers, and the negotiators. You know, the ones Jesus called blessed.

Monsignor Arthur Holquin, S.T.L. 

In July of 2026, during a worship service at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Pete Hegseth’s pastor praised the U.S. military as “an instrument” of “God’s grace.” 

“I want to simply thank you for being a means of God’s grace to us as a country. You, in real time, are an instrument, are one of the many ways God’s grace is manifested to us as a nation to continue securing the liberty that has endured through the centuries. … I want to strengthen you in God’s grace towards you personally as a Christian today. Or to say it another way, I want you this Wednesday to stand firm in the grace of God towards you as you continue the good work that he’s placed in your hands the rest of the day.”

A sacrament is a "means of grace" in common church lingo. Like communion, or baptism. War is not a sacrament. This, once again, is a blasphemous presentation of how God's grace works in the world.

* * * * * 

This is the problem with Christian nationalism. It doesn’t just confuse the church with the state; it baptizes the state as the church. 

If America’s wars are automatically God’s wars because we are supposedly a “Christian” nation, then America’s means will have to be applauded as God’s means, even when Jesus insisted otherwise, and even when it includes war crimes. The compromise is inevitable. We have seen it happen over and over again throughout history. It’s happening in front our eyes in Russia. The Russian Orthodox church wrote that, 

“From the spiritual and moral point of view, the Special Military Operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people are defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia.” Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said that "sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins." 

That sounds a lot like, “The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.”

 

UP NEXT: Part 15B: Christian Nationalism and the Abandonment of Character
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[1] Graham learned the hard way. He got burned in his support of Nixon.
[2] To be sure, the fundamentalist branch, with the Moral Majority et al, did not have a problem with this idea.
[3] Look up the Seven Mountains Mandate and Doug Wilson’s vision of Christian Nationalism.