By Joshua Majeski
As an Evangelical Christian, I never thought hearing the phrase “Christ is King” would make me cringe. But in the last couple of years, I've seen this basic articulation of Christian faith used in a way that makes me feel a combination of anger, shame, and confusion. At this moment, Christian Nationalism is strongly gripping the minds of many in America, holding the attention of many who do and do not belong to the Christian faith, including myself. So when I listened to Isaac’s recent interview with Haviv Gur, I was struck by some similarities between the Salafist narrative of Hamas, as told by Gur, and the mindset of Christian Nationalists.
I am a white midwestern Evangelical. I am not a historian. I am not an expert on history, politics, or the Islamic faith tradition. I am a fairly well read individual who tries to see outside of his immediate environment, geographic and ideological, while still holding true to the claims of Christianity. I am best positioned to speak about the beliefs and attitudes of people from my background and within my faith system, but I believe there is a pattern in all human behavior that is revealed in the parallels between the animating beliefs of Hamas, as Gur expressed it, and thought process behind Christian Nationalism that is telling of human nature. As I’ve seen this element of human nature embedded in Christian Nationalism, I’ve also seen its counterpoint in the central focus of the Christian faith.
If you haven’t listened to the interview, I highly recommend it. While I may not agree with everything Gur expresses, he seems to be well informed and have a grasp of the reality people in Israel and Palestine are living in. One of the things Gur articulates is the narrative that motivates Hamas: a revivalist Salafi movement meant to answer the question some Muslims post-Ottoman Empire asked concerning the diminishment and conquering of the Muslim world.
The narrative — as Gur explains it — aimed to explain the decline and fall of the Muslim world, as represented by the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In its 1,400-year history, the Muslim world has gone from conquering far-reaching regions to being greatly diminished in power, grandeur, and culture. The Salafi scholars, according to Gur, sought to discern the cause of their decline and find a path back to power and agency.
Their answer was built on the assumption of justice, and that the arc of history, through divine sovereignty, linked success and the evidence of the truth of their revelation (belief and practice). This revivalism saw a cause-and-effect relationship between 1) faithful adherence and devotion and 2) divine favor, manifested as success in worldly endeavors. In this worldview, the existence of Israel is a threat to the divine favorability of the Muslim world. That a people as small and devoid of power as the Jewish people could displace the Palestinian Muslims is a stain on those displaced Muslims, and the only proper way to restore divine favor is the eradication of the Jewish people and state.
I have likely oversimplified Gur’s explanation, and I’m sure Gur or other scholars informed on Hamas’s history would take issue with some aspects of my retelling of the narrative, but the point I wish to stress is not concerning Hamas and their worldview, but rather its parallels with Christian Nationalism in America.
Growing up, I was told that America is a Christian Nation. I was told that prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the teaching of Christian beliefs belong in schools. And I was also taught that America had lost its greatness and needs a religious and moral revival so that it can regain prominence on the world stage. Not only was I told these things, I believed them. I was convinced that America was founded by Christian leaders to be a Christian nation ordered along Christian ideals. I believed that America was the best country on Earth and a virtually unmitigated good in the world, whose only flaws were tied to liberals, atheists, and those that didn’t agree about America’s greatness. I believed that America needed to reaffirm its Christian vision in order to reestablish itself as the shining city on a hill that it was always meant to be. This narrative formed my political and religious awareness for most of my childhood and early years of adulthood.
I believe these ideas included similar assumptions to those that underlie the revivalist beliefs of Hamas: the assumption that dominion will be given to the faithful, and the belief in their right to take it; a correlation between piety and power — one that works both ways. These ideas shaped our view of America and its history: America is failing or in decline, because it is straying farther and farther from its Christian ideals. We see this view manifest when people claim school shootings are caused by the prohibition of prayer in schools, or that America’s military is less powerful because of abandoning “Biblical masculinity.”
The aforementioned claims assume that political power corresponds to fidelity to “Christian” belief or practice. America is strong when it adheres to Christian principles, not just as a matter of natural consequences, but as a matter of divine favor. Christian Nationalism sees a similar arc to history as that of the Salafist revivalists. It sees the faithful as victorious, while those who oppose the faith are defeated. It takes that outcome as given and within reach, so long as that the Christian church remains faithful. It promises power and success to its adherents in exchange for piety of its own design.
This is the definition of Chrstian Nationalism that feels most accurate to me: the combination, or correlation, of Christian faith and political power. Prescriptively, Christian Nationalism believes that political power belongs with the Christian faith and Christian faithful. Descriptively, Christian Nationalism assumes political power in the hands of faithful Christians as that toward which history is moving. It’s an easy, predictable, and permissive transaction with an assured outcome. Add in a post-death paradise and you’ve got a very marketable product.
However, this isn’t a critique on Christianity — not at all. This dynamic is much less rooted in a specific belief structure, but instead in human nature.
As humans, certainty is something we crave, especially when we are experiencing confusion or loss. A religious paradigm with a transactional “I do this and you give me that” structure gives adherents comfort, and we’ll perform whatever mental gymnastics we must to avoid addressing the resulting cognitive dissonance. This has been the model of much religious belief in human history. “I perform the necessary sacrifice or worship to [deity] and they will do [outcome].” Any belief system can be distorted to fit this transactional model, even a nonreligious belief system.
If a belief system has an overarching narrative with victory at the end of the story, it’s an even greater temptation. It allows individuals to demonize others and gives license to pursue personal gain or others’ harm. It drives individuals into silos and makes moderation the enemy. Such beliefs compel followers to subject one another to purity tests to ensure they are amongst the faithful. It can also cause us to see any particular figure or group’s victory as a sign of divine favor and anointing.
I was raised with these beliefs and held them into adulthood. I also recognized their falsehood and worked to disentangle them from my Christian religious convictions.
So what caused me to change my mind? To begin, I realized that America isn’t on the slippery slope to a secular (or demonic) dystopia. Outrage and fear mongering require a pretty narrow field of view, and when I look outside of that I see that, while we do have significant issues, the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket. Broadening my field of view showed me the faults in my view of faith, America, and political power.
Relatedly, I saw that some of the areas that were defined as areas of decline were not the way they were described. For example, I had believed that immigration was a threat to the American identity, including its Christian identity. I inherited an implicit association between whiteness, Americanness, and Christianity. The more that I reached beyond the homogeneously white bubble I had grown up in, the more I realized how false this idea was, especially in the realm of faith. For this I am grateful for the faith community I had in my early adult years that exposed me to a world of Christian faith outside of white American or European traditions. Listening to, reading, and learning about Christians of color within America as well as outside of the American context exposed the flaws in my understanding of America’s religious identity.
Many of the Christian Nationalist beliefs that gained popularity over the last few years were easier for me to avoid because my college campus ministry put me in spaces where I was taught by pastors and speakers of color — or teachers from outside the United States — who forced me to wrestle with, acknowledge, and confront the beliefs that I had about who or what is Christian, and how faith relates to political power.
This brings me to the strongest factor that led me away from, rather than into, Christian Nationalism: the realization that Christian Nationalism isn’t Christian. Many can see the irony of looking to someone known for cheating in business and infidelity to his wives as a figurehead of bringing America back to God, but there’s an even deeper issue at play. Looking back at my simple definition of Christian Nationalism, the flaw isn’t the impiety of its adherents, but rather the sandy, weak foundation at the base of it all.
The center of the Christian faith is the crucifixion of Jesus. The point around which the whole Christian faith revolves is God incarnate being willingly subjected to rejection, ridicule, abuse, and murder for the sake of a rebellious creation. The more that I read the Bible, the closer I looked at that Jesus — the real Jesus — the more I saw the fictitiousness of the caricature of Jesus that is muscular, physically beating Satan (or an antisemitic Jewish caricature, or Hillary Clinton), and closely associated with crusaders. The closer I looked at Christian Nationalists, the more I saw fear and desperation.
It became apparent that “Christ is King” was something that they could only believe when it was evident that “our side” was winning.
When Christians vote for immoral, corrupt leaders — or when they advocate for coercive and violent measures to win the culture war — they demonstrate that Christ and his teachings are secondary to their ultimate allegiance. The words “the meek shall inherit the earth” mean nothing to them, because they don’t worship Christ, they worship power. Jesus is just the highest bidder.
The Bible calls the crucified Jesus “a stumbling block” and “foolishness” — not because the cross is such a bizarre path to heaven, but because it is incomprehensible that God incarnate would willingly submit to rejection, mockery and suffering, much less call it victory. When individuals look to strong arm their way into power, they show that they also regard the cross as a stumbling block and foolishness.
I believe the arc of history ends in justice. I believe that “Christ is King,” though I am afraid to say it out loud for fear of being grouped with people I think are misrepresenting its significance. But fleeting political power in the here and now means very little to me; it isn’t a sign of divine favor and doesn’t define me in any meaningful way. I believe the world would be a better place if more people recognized how they mask their worship for power and rejected the human instinct to see religious practice or belief as a means of harnessing power. Rather, we should take Jesus seriously at his word when he says blessed are the meek, the peacemakers, and the merciful.
Josh Majeski lives in Fargo, ND, and spent 5 years on staff with an Evangelical college ministry before working in refugee resettlement. He spends his free time woodworking, reading, and actively involved in his church.