White Theology and White Power X

The theology of the oppressor does not ordinarily announce itself as a theology of domination. As we have seen, power can shape interpretation by making its own location appear normal, universal, or invisible. White Christian nationalism presents a particularly important contemporary example because the theological problem extends beyond using Christianity to support a political agenda. The deeper problem begins when the nation itself acquires theological meaning.

Christian nationalism is often discussed as if the term were self-explanatory. It is not. Christians can love their country, serve in government, vote according to moral convictions, honor military sacrifice, believe that religious ideas contributed significantly to American history, and bring explicitly Christian arguments into public life without embracing Christian nationalism. The term is most useful when it describes an ideology that treats Christianity as constitutive of national identity and seeks a privileged relationship between a particular Christian cultural order and the state.[1]

Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry define Christian nationalism as a cultural framework of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and values that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life. Their research matters because it distinguishes Christian nationalism from ordinary religious devotion. A person can be theologically conservative and reject Christian nationalism; another can embrace Christian-nationalist assumptions without being especially observant.[2]

That distinction directs attention toward sacralization. A nation is sacralized when categories ordinarily used to interpret God’s purposes begin to organize the meaning of the nation itself. Its history becomes providential history. Its success becomes evidence of divine favor. Its national mission acquires redemptive significance. Its enemies can become enemies of righteousness, and its political setbacks can appear as spiritual defeats. At that point, the nation has become more than a political community. It has begun to function as a theological category.

Reinhold Niebuhr understood the danger of national moral self-deception. In The Irony of American History, he challenged the tendency of Americans to confuse national virtue with innocence and national power with moral entitlement. Nations have interests, fears, ambitions, and capacities for self-justification. Theological language becomes especially dangerous when it removes those realities from moral scrutiny rather than exposing them to it.[3]

The biblical language of chosenness is particularly vulnerable to appropriation. In the Hebrew Bible, Israel’s election is inseparable from covenantal responsibility. Israel is not chosen because it earned divine favoritism, nor does election grant immunity from judgment. The prophets repeatedly make the opposite point. Amos states it clearly: “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins” (Amos 3:2, NIV). Chosenness intensifies accountability.

Election is not a divine permission slip. Covenant does not transform national interest into God’s interest. The prophets condemn rulers, economic exploitation, corrupt worship, mistreatment of the poor, and national arrogance precisely within the covenantal relationship. When Americans borrow the language of chosenness while leaving behind this structure of accountability, election can become congratulatory rather than demanding. The nation becomes evidence of divine favor instead of an object of theological judgment.

There is also a problem within Christian theology that deserves attention. Christians have historically been capable of appropriating Israel’s covenantal identity while simultaneously displacing the Jewish people from it. Supersessionism, in its classical form, holds that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God’s covenant. American national narratives can extend the problem still further when biblical language associated........

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