Christian Nationalism and Ethnic Unity

By Neil Shenvi

Four years ago, the label "Christian nationalism" was largely used as a pejorative rather than as a term of self-identification. However, after the 2022 publication of Stephen Wolfe's Case for Christian Nationalism, many evangelical Christians began openly identifying as "Christian nationalists." Even so, the term itself is still slippery. Its adherents fall on a spectrum, from people who merely want our nation's laws to reflect biblical values to people who want to establish a state church. A full evaluation of the positives and negatives of "Christian nationalism" is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, I'll only address the issue of how Wolfe’s influential version of Christian nationalism is relevant to the church's pursuit of ethnic unity.

Ethnicity and the global church

At first glance, one might think there would be no tension whatsoever between Christian nationalism and ethnic unity since the global church is extremely multiethnic. The early church was originally almost entirely Jewish, but it rapidly spread to the Gentiles of the first-century Mediterranean world. By 400 AD, Christianity was the official religion of the entire Roman Empire. Today, Christianity is surging in Latin America, Africa, and China. And one day, Jesus will be worshiped by "every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" (Rev. 7:9). So one might imagine that a multiethnic Christian nation would be no more challenging or problematic than a multiethnic Christian church.

However, anyone who has spent time on X (formerly known as Twitter) will recognize that ethnicity seems to play an outsized role in the thinking of many professing Christian nationalists. To understand why, it's helpful to examine Wolfe's book, which spends a great deal of time on the nature and importance of ethnicity.

What is a nation?

In colloquial English, we tend to use the word "nation" to refer to a political entity like the United States or Italy or China. However, the word "nation" traditionally referred to a particular people group with a shared language, culture, and history while the word "state" referred to a political entity. Hence, a modern country tends to be a nation-state: a political entity (a state) ruling over a group of citizens (a nation).

Wolfe adopts this nomenclature with one very odd twist: He “[uses] the terms ethnicity and nation almost synonymously” (p. 135) to refer to groups of people bound together by “common language, manners, customs, stories, taboos, rituals, calendars, social expectations, duties, loves, and religion” (p. 136). This usage can become exceptionally confusing, as when Wolfe makes statements like "no nation (properly speaking) is composed of two or more ethnicities” (p. 135). But, given his understanding of the words involved, claims like these are merely tautologies. If nation = ethnicity, then a single nation is a single ethnicity, by definition.

So how do we identify a single nation/ethnicity? Wolfe here admits that “identifying true nations is … challenging" (p. 134). He affirms that shared blood relations, sense of place, history, memory, familiarity, similarity, and language are all part of what makes a nation/ethnicity, but he also explicitly denies calling for "ethno-states in the modern sense” (p. 164). He insists that he is not making "a ‘white nationalist’ argument" (p. 119) and believes that “people of different ancestral origins can be a part of the same ethnicity” (private communication). Yet he also emphatically insists that ancestry is one component of ethnicity and makes statements like these:

"Try to imagine how you would view the world if you had no comprehension of the concept ‘human,’ no universalizing concept of man. One ethnicity to another would be as dogs are to cats. Think about how that would frame one's sense of duty and his good" (p. 457; to be clear, Wolfe does affirm that there is only one human species on the very next page).

“People of different ethnic groups can exercise respect for difference, conduct some routine business with each other, join in inter-ethnic alliances for mutual good, and exercise common humanity (e.g., the good Samaritan), but they cannot have a life together that goes beyond mutual alliance” (p. 148).

At a minimum, such statements will be confusing for the average reader and can be misinterpreted as approbations of ethnonationalism, which Wolfe explicitly rejects.

Nations and Christian nationalism

Given Wolfe's understanding of ethnicity, we now see why his version of Christian nationalism has implications for ethnic unity: it entails that a shared Christian confession is not sufficient for participation in a Christian nation-state. In other words, a Christian nation cannot be based merely on shared Christian convictions or even on explicitly Christian laws. It must also be based on shared blood relations, sense of place, history, memory, etc.

Wolfe has affirmed this conclusion repeatedly on social media: "The Gospel does not introduce a universal and sufficient culture for civil society" (Dec. 31, 2024). "Sharing the ‘imputed righteousness of Christ’ provides no means of cooperation, covenant, consent, deliberation, etc. to achieve the most basic goods of civil society" (Nov. 14, 2024). "Sharing with others in the highest good--eternal life in Christ--is not, by itself, a sufficient condition for living well together in a civil community" (Aug. 18, 2023), etc.

Wolfe often draws an analogy to a shared language. He argues, for example, that a group of Christians who all spoke different languages would not be able to have a functional civil society. By itself, a shared faith in Jesus does not enable us to transact business, or to create laws, or even to form friendships.

But here, Wolfe ignores the extent to which language is qualitatively different from the other categories he mentions. It is reasonable to argue that a society without any shared language will fall into chaos. But does he really think that 10,000 Spanish-speaking Christians from different cultural backgrounds wouldn't be able to form a functional society?

Moreover, even if we were to grant that a multicultural Christian society will experience at least some intercultural friction, why think it would be objectively worse than a monocultural non-Christian society? One of the major selling points of Christian nationalism, broadly speaking, has been that a truly Christian nation would immediately outlaw abortion and stop “transing kids.” So does Wolfe think that an abortion-free multicultural Christian society would be worse than a monocultural non-Christian society that shares a common ancestry, but aborts one million babies per year? Presumably not!

Relevance for the church

While Wolfe does not state that churches should be monoethnic, it’s easy to see how his understanding of ethnicity and civil life leads naturally to questions about ethnicity’s role in the church.

If ethnic groups should orient their civil lives toward their own group's benefit, why should they not orient their spiritual lives in the same way? If shared doctrine can't bridge ethnic divides in civil life, why think it can bridge such divides in church life? If I can't have even a civil "life together" with my Christian neighbor of a different ethnicity, in what sense can we have a spiritual "life together," which is supposed to entail far deeper fellowship?

Think about the tremendous cultural divide between Jewish and Gentile believers in the early church. They experienced immense differences in language, customs, and ancestry, yet Paul did not advise them to create separate congregations. Instead, he instructed the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Ephesus and Colossae and Corinth and Rome on the importance of maintaining their unity in Christ within the local church, despite their differences.

In summary, regardless of our views on Christian nationalism and political theology, we should affirm what the Bible affirms: Our shared salvation unites us across lines of ethnicity, and the expression of this ethnic unity in the local church displays God’s redemption in a powerful way.

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