"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 15B): The Shift Toward Christian Nationalism And The Abandonment Of Character

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. And we would do all of this not just personally but corporately. We were called to build a society that valued these things as well as reflected in leaders and laws.

Then I turned to the present. I have been asking a simple question: What happened? Why have so many voices that once challenged immoral presidents and unjust policies now defend and even applaud them? To look at this, I have been chronicling various areas in which a profound shift has taken place and explaining how it reveals the conservative evangelicalism I was raised in moving from solid Kingdom foundations of orthopraxy to shaky Empire foundations of power, violence, callousness and idolatry.

In the previous post, I argued that Christian nationalism changes the church in predictable ways. First, it encourages the nation to borrow God's authority for the empire's actions. We saw that in the way war can become wrapped in the language of divine mission, turning national victories into God's victories and military power into an instrument of God's kingdom.

But there is a second consequence, one that may be even more damaging to the church itself.

Once the church becomes closely intertwined with a political movement, it gradually abandons the call to speak prophetically to those in power. Instead of holding leaders accountable, it begins protecting them. Instead of confronting sin wherever it appears, it starts making exceptions for "our side." The result is not simply political compromise. It is moral compromise that deals a devastating blow to the public witness of the church.

I think nowhere is that shift more visible than in the evangelical movement's dramatic reversal on the question of character.