You might be a Christian nationalist if… by Kenneth Tanner

Screen Shot 2022-08-03 at 9.20.13 AMYou might be a Christian nationalist if you believe that one nation on earth has a special vocation to be a Christian nation as an example or sign for all other nations.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you believe that God founded your nation as a superior nation among the nations to uniquely enact his will in the earth.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you believe the founding documents of your nation reflect the teachings of Scripture accurately, that God was involved in their creation as in the creation of Scripture, that the writers of those documents were primarily interested in expressing Christian principles, and that, like Scripture, they are timeless. [With my regards to Jim Eisenbraun]

You might be a Christian nationalist if your church removes the national flag of the nation in which it is located, and that removal makes you anxious or angry, or if its services fail to offer a venue for displays of national patriotism, and that absence disturbs or alarms you.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you have a low tolerance for an honest assessment of your country’s national sins, or when pastors do the difficult, necessary work of identifying those sins (for sin is personal, familial, and tribal) you refuse their humble discernments.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you’ve never questioned your nation’s offensive or defensive military operations or if you are tempted to trust in your nation’s temporal powers rather than God for salvation from enemies.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you believe that God cares about the survival of your nation’s particular political order or “way of life” or economic status rather than the persons and living things within its borders, its language and culture, its natural treasures.

You might be a Christian nationalist if the prospect of your nation’s end unmoors your trust in providence.

You might be a Christian nationalist if the orienting realities of your life or your family’s life are not the apostles’ teaching, a table of bread and wine, fellowship with the poor, and the prayers but your partisan loyalties, and the so-called thought leaders of that loyalty.

You might be a Christian nationalist if you do not recognize that the gospel is pan-national, encompassing all peoples everywhere, all cultures, all languages, where all armaments become gardening tools, where the peace won by the weakness of the human God on the cross reigns.

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