Christian Nationalism: A Christian Guide to Loyalty, Idolatry, and Priority

By John G. Stackhouse Jr. | ThinkBetter Media | $9.99 | 191 pages

Reviewed by David W. Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | May 18, 2026

The core question evangelical scholar John Stackhouse addresses is whether love of country is a virtue or a danger. He offers a clear, balanced guide to what Christian nationalism is, what it isn't, and how Christians can faithfully love both God and nation without confusing the two.

Stackhouse steers between two extremes: those who insist Christians should embrace nationalist rhetoric, and those who condemn any patriotism as idolatry. Through a study of biblical identity, he demonstrates that earthly loyalties are real, meaningful, and good — but always secondary to one's identity in Christ. The key danger he identifies is when political identity begins competing with Christian identity — which he calls idolatry.

The book opens with a personal and theological exploration of flags in churches and the meaning of allegiance. Subsequent chapters provide historical sketches of how religion and empire have interacted — from missionaries to colonial abuses to modern statecraft — and how national "origin myths" (including those of the U.S. and Canada) shape political behavior. A central chapter argues that nationalism is good in principle but becomes dangerous under specific conditions, followed by chapters on what genuinely Christian loyalty must look like in practice. The book closes with a sober warning about the political manipulation of faith.

Stackhouse draws on history, theology, and contemporary culture to explore what nationalism really is and how it differs from patriotism, populism, or racism. His tone is deliberately measured — neither a MAGA apologist nor a progressive scold, but a historian and ethicist trying to give Christians analytical tools for a genuinely difficult question. The book is relatively short, aimed at pastors, church leaders, and thoughtful laypeople rather than academics.

The framework he offers — distinguishing patriotism from idolatry without dismissing national loyalty altogether — is one Anglicans can readily identify with, though the question is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.

There is a legitimate historical connection between Anglicanism and church-state establishment. The Church of England is an established church. Anglicans retain vestiges of historic Christian nationalism in their prayer books — prayers for the sovereign, for civil authorities, and so on. That's real. Some colonial-era Anglican clergy also framed English expansion in explicitly providential terms, which is an uncomfortable part of the tradition's history.

Contemporary Anglican voices — across the theological spectrum — largely reject what American commentators mean by "Christian nationalism" today. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, together with several Anglican bishops, issued a statement condemning the rise of "Christian nationalism" in the UK, denouncing the misuse of Christian symbols to exclude or stigmatize others.

Within American Anglicanism — the ACNA and related bodies — there's genuine internal debate. Some traditionalist Anglican voices argue that while they reject "Christo-Americanism," the syncretism of nationalist symbols with Christianity, they distinguish that from the historic Anglican practice of praying for one's nation and its leaders.

The term "Christian nationalist" as used in current American political discourse describes something quite specific: the fusion of Christian identity with American national identity, often with ethnonationalist overtones. That doesn't describe Anglicanism as a tradition. The Episcopal Church sits well to the left of that; the ACNA is conservative but not, as an institution, aligned with Christian nationalism; and the Global South Anglican provinces are operating in entirely different political contexts.

A recent gathering in Washington, D.C. — Rededicate 250, a mostly conservative Christian prayer event on the National Mall marking the nation's 250th anniversary — drew sharp criticism. Writing in Religion News Service, Steven Waldman, author of Founding Faith and Sacred Liberty, argued bluntly that Christian nationalists have badly misread their own religious DNA. The religious ancestors of today's evangelicals, he notes, were not the architects of Christian America — they were its outcasts. Catholics were barred from voting in five colonies. Dissident Protestants were harassed. And Baptists — the forebears of modern evangelicalism — were routinely jailed for failing to conform to the Anglican establishment. From 1760 to 1778 in Virginia alone, 45 Baptist preachers were imprisoned.

If political power in the founding era had been distributed by Christian census, Episcopalians and Congregationalists would have run the country. They were the dominant forms of Christianity then — and together make up roughly 2 percent of the population today.

The first 150 years of colonial life can indeed be read as a series of experiments in the Christian nationalist approach. In Jamestown, failure to observe the Sabbath three times was punishable by death. In Massachusetts, Puritan leader John Cotton explained the logic plainly: "Theocracy, or to make the Lord God our governor, is the best form of government in a Christian commonwealth." But this theocratic vision was soundly rejected by the Founding Fathers — and the driving force behind that rejection was 18th-century evangelicals, the very ancestors of today's Christian nationalist movement.

Christian nationalists are right about one thing — and many secularists wrong: most of the Founders believed religion was profoundly important. "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people," John Adams wrote. "It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." George Washington agreed: "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can exist apart from religious principle."

But Christian nationalists take this truism and leap to what Waldman calls the greatest non sequitur in American political history — that the founders therefore wanted the state to promote Christianity. On the contrary: the evangelicals and their Enlightenment allies believed the best way to encourage Christianity was to get government out of it entirely. Madison, were he alive today, would likely say the same — and Stackhouse, writing from a very different vantage point two-and-a-half centuries later, arrives at a strikingly similar conclusion.

A NOTE TO NEW VOL READERS

We recently integrated our mailing lists and welcomed 1,000 new readers. We apologize for the delay — we experienced some technical issues with our website and lists, which have now been resolved.

To read recent exclusive stories, please visit: www.virtueonline.org

We have also updated our archives, which now contain more than 21,000 stories available for your exploration. Just click the archives link to get started.