Christian Nationalism vs. the Social Gospel
John Blake wrote an article published by CNN on Monday, November 13, 2023, regarding the Social Gospel as a rising movement in the US. This is a theology most biblical fundamentalists learn about in seminary as part of the history of the modernist movement in the early part of the 20th Century. They do not usually think of it as a present influential political movement and it is rarely discussed today. What we do talk about is Christian Nationalism and its evils. Any theological movement can have extreme dangers, but the social gospel movement and the extremes of the Christian Nationalism movement have the same dangers even though their adherents have different political ideologies.
The dangers of Christian Nationalism discussion.
One of the great dangers in discussing Christian Nationalism is having conversations where everyone is using the same terms but different dictionaries. When a political or theological liberal speaks of Christian Nationalism, they don’t mean exactly what most conservatives think.
The United States has historically been a Christian nation. I am talking about being founded on a culture that was saturated with biblical thinking. Our founding fathers understood human nature from a biblical perspective. The freedoms we enjoy are based upon Christian principles. Passages from scripture are chiseled into all kinds of buildings and monuments in Washington DC. The legislative bodies all around our nation have always had chaplains.
What we have not been is a compulsory or sectarian Christian nation. We have acknowledged Christianity in our culture while understanding that a person’s faith is personal and cannot be compulsory. It is only in the understanding that true faith has to be sincere faith that we can grant freedom of religion to those of diverse faiths. This concept is rooted not broadly in Christianity but specifically in the separatist groups that fled to this country from religious persecution in Europe. Medieval Catholicism strayed from the concept of essential personal faith to outward conformity resulting in the horrors of the Inquistions.
This concept is evidenced by the testimony of AYAAN HIRSI ALI a Muslim who made the trek from Islam to atheism to Christianity over time. She is now a Christian in philosophy at least—maybe not a personal walk. But her point is that it is only Christianity—not Islam or Atheism—that can afford true freedom of conscience.
And so I have come to realise that Russell and my atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees. The wood is the civilisation built on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it is the story of the West, warts and all. Russell’s critique of those contradictions in Christian doctrine is serious, but it is also too narrow in scope.
For instance, he gave his lecture in a room full of (former or at least doubting) Christians in a Christian country. Think about how unique that was nearly a century ago, and how rare it still is in non-Western civilisations. Could a Muslim philosopher stand before any audience in a Muslim country — then or now — and deliver a lecture with the title “Why I am not a Muslim”? A book with that title exists, written by an ex-Muslim. However the author published it in America under the pseudonym Ibn Warraq. It would have been too dangerous to do otherwise.
To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities. It was these debates that advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty, suppressed superstitions, and built institutions to order and protect life, while guaranteeing freedom to as many people as possible. Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage. It became increasingly clear that Christ’s teaching implied not only a circumscribed role for religion as something separate from politics. It also implied compassion for the sinner and humility for the believer.
Christian Nationalism becomes a problem if it is a type of Christianity that espouses a return to an enforced faith in the model of medieval Catholicism. And some in the post-millennial and theonomy movements today espouse that ideal. True Christianity believes that true social change starts in the transformation of the human heart by conversion and regeneration of the Holy Spirit. It is also a problem when Christianity is used as an endorser for one political group or another. Our Christian ideals will have political consequences, but God is not a Republican . . . or a Democrat.
The Social Gospel movement shares some of the problems of extreme Christian Nationalism.
The big problem with the social gospel is that it is not the gospel at all. It is not an attendant gospel to the spiritual gospel either. It is primarily espoused by those who deny the veracity of the Bible, deny the miracles of scripture, deny the vicarious death of Christ on the cross, and instead substitute a system of good works in its place.
The social gospel of the early 20th century was a substitute concocted by theological liberals to give modernist churches and organizations a reason to exist. They had abandoned the real gospel—the life-transforming work of regeneration and its evangelical mission. If you don’t believe the Bible, why go to church? The social gospel was their answer.
The social gospel is used by religious and political progressives to deceive true Christians into supporting causes that are contrary to scriptural principles. They are usually used to support various forms of socialism (see article here).
They are often used also to tear down moral values which would be essential to the very foundations of New Testament Christianity including the sanctity of life, the nature of Christian marriage, the exclusivity of sexual relationship to marriage, the identity of men and women based upon creation, and more.
There is an obvious lesson we learn from both movements. When you bypass the Bible, and the true life-changing gospel that the New Testament espouses, and seek to enforce change upon the culture without the supernatural work of God, you end up in one form of totalitarianism or another.
The longing of true Christians is to compete for the hearts and souls of people in the free market of religious ideas. We want this because we know that we have the truth and the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.
What we want is to be free to proclaim and defend the truth.
You can listen to the audio version of this article at our podcast, here.