What do we mean when we say “Christian Nationalism”? In this long–read, Nick Spencer defines the term ahead of our report. 23/03/2026

Introduction

“Christian nationalism” is on the up. The phrase has enjoyed a spike in the last ten years which shows little sign of abating. Initially and still most commonly associated with the United States, the phenomenon is also now to be found in UK and continental Europe, in a way that has caught many people off guard

Over 2025–27, Theos is conducting research into Christian nationalism. We are exploring the different forms that it may or may not take in Europe, with particular focus on UK, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. We hope to outline some of the contours of the “movement”, delineating its demographic, ethnic, socio–economic, and educational characteristics; looking at the way different political, social, cultural, historical, and ecclesiastical contexts shapes it; seeing how it maps onto wider understandings of the nation and onto various political and social concerns; and trying to understand how far it is informed by theological ideas.

This research will then form and inform our response, looking at what can be affirmed and what should be critiqued, and what theological and pastoral resources can be draw usefully into the conversation.

Of course, all this work is predicated on having some understanding of what “Christian Nationalism” is; of what exactly are we talking about when we talk about “Christian Nationalism”. The answer to that is not necessarily straightforward.

This is the question ‘answered’ by this introductory essay does. It is divided into six sections:

1.     How do people define “Christian Nationalism”?

2.     What Christian Nationalism is not

3.     What Christian Nationalism is

4.     How theological is Christian Nationalism?

5.     What do Christian nationalists want?

6.     Conclusion: Christian nationalism and a Christian demos

1.   How do people define “Christian Nationalism”?

There are two things you can say with confidence about “Christian nationalism” today: the phrase is used a lot, and it is used vaguely.

Google Ngram viewer shows pretty much no use of it until World War Two, minimal and fluctuating use for the seven decades after that, and then a ten–fold increase in the decade after 2011. There are no data beyond 2022, but it’s pretty obvious that usage has increased further since then.

Using a lot doesn’t mean using clearly, however. Christian nationalism can sometimes feel something of a dustbin term into which people (Christians and non–Christians alike) throw all the things they don’t like.[1] Not many people, particularly in Europe, willingly own the term for themselves.

For those like Polly Toynbee, it basically means racist: “the Christian label offers a veneer of respectability to tribal racists”.[2] For some, it is synonymous with hatred of Muslims: “40% of [Islamophobic] incidents featuring British or English flags and Christian nationalist symbols or slogans.”[3] In other interpretations, it is primarily an anti–migrant sentiment. According to the National Secular Society, it a threat to democracy,[4] or, according to the words of Amanda Tyler, of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in the US, it is “the single biggest threat to religious freedom in the United States today… [an] anti–democratic notion that America is a nation by and for Christians alone”.[5] Or, less dramatically, it is essentially social conservatism in the sense of “overturning same–sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.”[6]

Alternatively, for others, Christian nationalism is “actually a rather benign and useful description for those who believe in both preserving our country’s Judeo–Christian heritage and making public policy decisions that are best for this country.”[7] It is It is about wanting Christian values reflected in government.[8] It is a “prescriptive programme” for ensuring that a nation “is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.”[9] According to the American historian Matthew Sutton, Christian nationalism spans the political spectrum, having “influenced activists across the political and religious spectrum, Black and White, left and right, for centuries… [with] Christian activists from Frederick Douglass to Jerry Falwell used the Bible to try to impose their values and beliefs on the nation.”[10] While by the reckoning of R.R. Reno, editor of First Things magazine, it is “America’s best hope”, an inherently “self–limiting” form of nationalism, that “does not fall prey to the utopian dreams of progressivism, and… curbs the sometimes unrestrained zeal of patriotism.”[11]

And for some it is none of those things, but little more than a smear tactic, a “term… concocted by the coastal left in the United States to frighten its own base and [which] has since become a convenient label for anyone on the centre–right whose Christianity extends beyond private sentiment.”[12]

Sometimes the level of confusion can be bizarre. Defining Christian Nationalism in an interview on Fox News, Politico journalist Heidi Przybyla claimed that it was in fact a matter of a particular attitude to legal rights.[13] “The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists – not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalism is very different – is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority.” Critics were quick to point out that not only was this was a longstanding and well–established position within mainstream Christian thought, but that it is reflected in the wording of the US Declaration of Independence.

Sometimes the confusion is subtler and more obviously due to cultural and, in particular, ecclesiastical differences. When measuring and categorising Christian Nationalism in the US, scholars Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry drew on respondents’ answers to six statements concerning the relationship between religion and state. One of these was “the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state.” In the US, it seems, disagreeing strongly with this statement suggests you might be Christian Nationalist. In the UK, it suggests you might be an Anglican.

This is not to say that Whitehead and Perry’s logic here is wrong. Indeed, as we shall see, their focus on the perceived relationship between government and religion as a means of understanding Christian Nationalism is a far better route than Przybyla’s talk of rights or vague commentariat handwaving about immigration, race or democracy. Rather, it is to underline how even carefully drawn definitions of Christian Nationalism are vulnerable to subtle cultural and historical differences.

Given this jostling of terms and the generally febrile atmosphere in which we are having this conversation, any precise definition will be contestable. Indeed, it is probably better to assume that “Christian Nationalism” is a cluster of things rather than just one. But even if so, we should try to use the term as precisely as we can, even if its edges will always be fuzzy.

2.    What Christian Nationalism is not

Given the complexities when it comes to defining what Christian Nationalism is, it is easier to start by saying what it is not.

First, Christian Nationalism is not merely a political movement. Those Christians who find the phenomenon distasteful are easily tempted to dismiss it as mere politics, with no serious or legitimate Christian content at all. There is good reason, as we shall note below, to question the theological depths of many of those who might be classified as Christian Nationalists. But unpalatable as it may be, the truth is that Christian Nationalism is framed in and justified by Christian arguments, has recourse to Christian symbols, and so needs to be understood, at least in the first place, as a Christian phenomenon.

Second, Christian Nationalism is not simply a matter of wanting Christian values embedded in government and society. One of the ways in which Whitehead and Perry ascertain whether someone might qualify as a Christian Nationalist in the US is the extent to which they agree with the statement, “the federal government should advocate Christian values.” This qualification might make sense in the highly charged and particular American political context, but extracted from that it is apt to mislead. Anyone committed to their faith – indeed anyone committed to any particular ideology – is likely to want it to be reflected in the country in which they live. Liberals want to see liberal values embedded in government and society; conservatives to see conservative values, Muslims  Islamic values, secularists secular values, and so forth. In the light of this, all Christians (presumably) would want to see Christian values across government and society (the adjacent question of how is one to which we will return below). This attitude is not the preserve or marker of Christian Nationalists.

Third, Christian Nationalism is not simply a matter of claiming that ‘my nation’ has been an overwhelmingly Christian country throughout its history or that many of the deep values and institutions we hold today are “genetically” Christian, so to speak. In spite of occasional attempts to claim that all good modern things are derived from the Enlightenment – a period of intellectual history that is much mis–represented and mythologised: see here for a lively discussion on this – the reality is that the UK, the US and most countries in the West, have been overwhelmingly Christian for their recorded history, and owe a great deal to that inheritance. It might be easy to say “if you believe your nation has always been Christian, that makes you a Christian nationalist”, but it’s mistaken.

Fourth, and perhaps ironically, Christian Nationalism does not necessarily demand a focus on the nation. Christian Nationalism takes different forms in different places and in some of those the focus is on the Christian West, or Christian Europe rather than the fate of a particular country. This is more so among continental examples of Christian Nationalism than it is for the UK or the US, and in particular for those countries towards the east and south that have historically been more aware of other, more civilisational, threats, such as the Mongols and the Ottoman empire. In these instances, “Christian Civilisationist” might be a better term, were it not such a mouthful.

3.   What Christian Nationalism is

If Christian Nationalism isn’t mere politics, or simply the desire to see Christian values in government, or just the recognition of a nation’s Christian inheritance, and isn’t even necessarily very nationalist, what is it?

One helpful way of looking at the phenomenon is to see it as more than the sum of its parts. Christian nationalism is not just about being a Christian and a nationalist. Kate Forbes, for example, is a committed Christian and a very prominent member of a nationalist party, but she is not a Christian nationalist.

Rather, Christian Nationalism is best understood as seeing those two terms – “Christianity” and “the nation” – as somehow coterminous or co–dependent. According to this reasoning, ‘Christianity’ and ‘the nation’have more or less the same social/ cultural/ moral/ demographic boundaries.[14] Being a Christian nationalist means believing that my country (or sometimes my civilisation) is Christian, not just in any contingent, partial or historical sense, but in an essential, perhaps even theological, way. And it means that to belong properly to my nation you need at least to assent to, and ideally to embrace that cultural, social or political Christianity – or, at least, to be willing to accept that those who can so assent and embrace this are the true custodians of the nation.

Approaching Christian nationalism through this lens of the co–dependence or ‘coterminosity’ of ‘Christianity’ and ‘the nation’ is helpful but it necessarily invites at least two follow–up questions: what do we mean by Christianity and what do we mean by nation?

3.1 What does Christianity mean in this context?

In reality, everyone recognises that it is unrealistic to say that Christianity in this context means only ‘believing and practising Christians’. No nation (other than Vatican City maybe) has universal Christian practice and few, and in particular few Western ones, have a clear majority of (believing and practising) Christians. If the Christian element of Christian nationalism means this, it is liable to exclude and alienate a significant proportion of the voting public. Many countries do have a majority (or sometimes a plurality) of people who identify as Christian but do not practise (in the sense of belonging to and regularly attending a worshipping community).

For that reason, this side of the equation (‘being a Christian’) is commonly enlarged and made vague in public discourse. Christianity here means adhering to a “Christian culture” or “Christian morality” or “Christian values” or, sometimes, the “Judaeo–Christian” version of each of these.[15] The nation is coterminous with and dependent on these “Judaeo–Christian values”, a term that is notably imprecise and elastic, and so defending the nation means defeating those who do not hold such values.

Those campaigners that try to excite an audience through “Christian nationalist” language usually prefer the generalised language of morality and culture to the specific language of belief (let alone theology) precisely because it allows for the (usually implicit) exclusion of those groups and cultures they do not like.

3.2 What does “the nation” mean in this context?

A similar nuancing is needed of the term “nation”. We have already noted how the “nation” of Christian nationalism can, in effect, mean civilisation. PEGIDA, for example, the far–right German group that has often embraced the language of “Judaeo–Christianity”, stands for Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes  – Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West. For them, and for others, Christianity is weaponised to defend not only their particular nation but their idea of Western civilisation, albeit their nation is placed firmly within that civilisation.

But even when Christian Nationalism is indeed focusing on a “nation”, rather than a civilisation, there are different ways of understanding the term. This is primarily because today when people talk about the “nation” they are nearly always using it as a shorthand for the nation–state, which has been the norm across the Western world (indeed most of the world) for over a century. This being so, the nation of Christian Nationalism can refer to the people or to the political infrastructure: to either the nation or the state.

In the first of these cases, Christian nationalism is, in effect, focused on the make–up of the population. In this way, it inclines towards making it harder for those not from Christian cultures to migrate to the country or, more extremely, towards the “remigration” of such people. In the second, Christian Nationalism is focused on the functioning of the state – its structures, processes, power centres, people, and policy, and seeks to influence or “capture” them for Christianity, in order to protect and preserve the Christian character of the nation.

3.3 Christian nationalism as more than one thing

The various nuances around the constituent elements of “Christian nationalism” – what do you mean by Christian and what do you mean by nation – strongly imply that it is not one thing.

In light of this, some writers have ventured segmentations and categorisations of the term, breaking it down into different types of Christian nationalism. Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times in 2024, drew out four kinds of (American) Christian nationalism:

1.     The belief that America should unite religion and politics in the same manner as the tribes of Israel in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, or Puritan New England;

2.     The belief that America is a chosen nation commissioned by God to bring about some form of radical transformation in the world;

3.     The belief that American ideals make the most sense in the light of Christianity, and that Christians should desire America to be more Christian rather than less;

4.     Any kind of Christian politics that liberals find disagreeable or distasteful.[16]

More systematically, Peter Lynas, writing for the Evangelical Alliance, also distinguished four kinds of Christian nationalism, depending on whether someone was a big or small C Christian, and a big or small N nationalist. According to this reasoning:

1.     Big C, small n Christian nationalists have an active faith that fuels a strong commitment to the nation. “They may love their country deeply, but they interpret that love through the lens of discipleship, service and neighbour–love.”

2.     small c, small n christian nationalists are essentially nominal Christians who are also quite patriotic. “They might tick ‘Christian’ on the census, wave the Union Jack on royal occasions, or defend ‘British values’ as vaguely Christian, but the content is fuzzy.”

3.     Big C, Big N Christian Nationalists are closest to what Lynas calls “classic” Christian nationalism, with the country “imagined as a Christian nation with a divine calling.” Prevalent (or at least present) in the US, it is much rarer in the UK, although Reform MP Danny Kruger and Reform Head of Policy James Orr might fall into this category.

4.     small C, big N christian Nationalists are those whose nominal Christianity underpins a strong commitment to the nation. “Church language or symbols are used to bolster British identity or resist perceived outside threats (immigration, secularism, “Brussels”), but personal faith is optional.”[17] Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, might be an example of this.

Such categorisations (Lynas’ in particular) are helpful at pointing out that the phenomenon is liable to be found in various different formats within particular countries (not to mention between them). As yet, to the best of my knowledge, there is no empirical work to supplement these theoretical approaches (this will be one of the elements within the current Theos project into Christian nationalism).

4. How theological is Christian Nationalism?

Because Christian nationalism is such a well–recognised and comparatively well–studied (if poorly defined) phenomenon in the US, there is a danger not only of turning to the US to understand the theological justification for it, but assuming that whatever we find there, naturally applies to examples of Christian nationalism elsewhere.

This is almost certainly not the case. In the first instance, America is sui generis, its Christian nationalism informed by the details of its particular political, demographic and ecclesiastical landscape. Secondly, there is good reason to believe that most forms of Christian nationalism, even in the US, are driven primarily by ‘external’ social and cultural rather than theological concerns. In the words of the historian Thomas Kidd, “actual Christian nationalism is more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.”[18] Or to adapt Jonathan Haidt’s well–known metaphor, social and cultural anxiety is the elephant here; theology merely the rider.

That said, just as it is misleading to dismiss Christian nationalism as merely political, so it is wrong to dismiss it as in no way theological (indeed, the two objections are different sides of the same coin). And however sui generis American forms of Christian nationalism may be, close links and funding across the north Atlantic mean that some aspects of American Christian nationalism will be relevant and perhaps present in UK and continental Europe.[19]

I would like to mention four, thoughthere are other ways this cake can be cut.[20] “Charismatic dominionism” is a movement that “seeks cultural and political control over society”, through what is known as the “seven mountains mandate”, the belief that Christians should have power over the seven key ‘institutions’ of society: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Although this can sound like a (very muscular) version of the kind of licit Christian political activity mentioned earlier – the desire to see your values reflected in your country – it often shades into something more exclusivist and authoritarian. In his “ReAwaken America Tour,” General Michael Flynn, an advocate of this view, proclaimed that “If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God, right? All of us, working together”. Here we see the tight coterminosity of religion and nation characteristic of Christian nationalism.

A second approach is called “Calvinist nationalism” and is found within some Reformed churches. The most intense version of this is known as “reconstructionism” or “theonomy”, though it is commonly called “theocracy”, another rather elastic and carelessly used term. According to this approach, the nation–state must be reconstructed along the lines set out in Old Testament law or, in some (slightly) more moderate versions, in places like Calvin’s Geneva or parts of 17th century New England, where Reformed theology was dominant (hence Ross Douthat’s first categorisation above). Either way, this form of Christian nationalism believes that the nation should be like the church, rejecting forms of secular governance and insisting that it is the state’s duty to promote right religion and ban false.

A third example is known as Catholic Integralism. This rejects the Church’s embrace of political liberalism at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, and envisions a hierarchy in which political authorities should recognise and respect the final authority of the Church, in social and political affairs as much as personal, moral or spiritual ones. It seeks, in effect, a kind of neo–Christendom in which, in extremis “only baptized members of the Catholic Church would enjoy the full benefits of citizenship.”[21]

A fourth ‘flavour’ of Christian nationalism is sometimes found in countries with a strong Orthodox tradition. Phyletism (or sometimes Ethnophyletism) is the belief that national or ethnic identity should be the organising principle of the Church, instead of geographical and ecclesiological criteria.[22] A close tie between ethnicity, nationality and church membership exists in a number of majority–Orthodox countries, in particular Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia. Nowhere is formal legal citizenship tied to membership of a national church, but in many of these countries, the informal but deep cultural ties between church and state give ammunition to those who favour a de facto coterminosity between nation and Christian tradition.

It is notable that nowhere in this breakdown of different flavours of Christian nationalism does one credibly find reference to the remaining state/ national/ established churches of north–west Europe. England, Scotland, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland – and until relatively recently Norway and Sweden – all have churches in some way established by law which, historically, played an important role in defining and protecting national identity. However, today, in spite of occasional attempts to depict such institutions as exclusive or nationalistic, such churches not only do not function as bodies for Christian nationalism but are often at the forefront of challenging the movement. That state/ established churches, in theory the perfect vehicle for Christian nationalist sentiments, should play this role, is an indicator of how complex this situation can be.

However theologically complex Christian nationalism is, and whichever different ‘flavours’ it adopts, certain ideas repeatedly emerge. In the first instance, it tends sacralise the idea of the nation (or sometimes civilisation). It sometimes confuses or models a (particular, contemporary) nation with Israel in the Old Testament, thereby giving that (particular, contemporary) nation some special role within God’s wider story of salvation history. When this happens, the nation is tied permanently to its Christian identity, which must be protected at all costs.

To these (mis)conceptions of the nation as sacred and spiritually inviolable may be added other theological ideas pertaining to power, such as a willingness to use the state’s coercive power not simply to restrain evil but to secure the good of the nation (the line between those two being very blurred, of course); or placing a repeated emphasis on the power and strength of God in a way that circumvents the Cross and the Pauline idea of God’s power being made perfect in weakness.

Out of these ideas may come a justification of not only prioritising one’s own nation over others (hardly a controversial political commitment) but of doing so in a way that risks permanently demoting any concerns other than those of your nation. Last year, a public spat between J.D. Vance and Rory Stewart hit the headlines, over the Christian approach to the proper ordering of love and loyalty, sometimes known as the Ordo Amoris. The US Vice President had said that he held to “an old school — and … very Christian concept… that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world” – an ordering, he went on to say, that had been inverted by the contemporary far left.[23]

This drew criticisms from a number of theologians[24] and Christian leaders, most prominently Pope Francis who wrote, with some directness:

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings!… The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25–37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”[25]

The topic of the Ordo Amoris and the proper ordering of a nation–state’s responsibilities is highly complex and contentious, and beyond the remit of this essay. However, its relevance to the topic of Christian Nationalism lies in this. If understood in the concentric and sequential way in which J.D. Vance expressed it – first family, then neighbour, then community, then fellow citizens, then country, and only then after that the rest of the world – this ordering of love demotes care for those beyond your nation to the lowest possible priority. And given that no nation is ever truly free from problems or possessed of a surfeit of resources on which there is no domestic call, such an ordering risks legitimising wholly self–interested national policies while entirely ignoring those beyond its borders. In effect, it justifies nationalistic policies that not only elevate domestic concerns above all others, but entirely disregards any other nations.

To return to theme of this section, it is important not to over–rationalise Christian nationalism. There is good reason to believe that much of what we find in these movement(s), and certainly at the street level, is not theologically driven. Most of the time, the political tail is wagging the theological dog. By this logic, Christianity is simply the vehicle used for expressing pre–existing anxieties and angers.

However, this is less relevant to the analysis of Christian nationalism than one might think. This is because, whether it is Christian theological concerns that are feeding and determining public concerns about, for example, immigration, Islam and elites, or whether it is simply Christian symbols, texts and language that are being used to colour and deepen the rhetoric of those concerns whose roots lie elsewhere, the effect for the wider public is essentially the same. It links Christian nationalism tightly with these political issues, which, as we saw at the outset, is how many people encounter and view the phenomenon. And so it is to those issues that we now turn.

5.    What do Christian nationalists want?

Although this is, in theory, a question that is amenable to straightforward empirical evidence – just ask them! – there is a risk of circularity here.

Who are the Christian nationalists? It is not a label that many people own, still less parade and, as we have seen, it is not always clear what it means anyway. In the light of that, if we want to measure what the views of Christian Nationalists are, it is necessary for researchers to define who Christian Nationalists are in the first place. But in doing that, we are at risk of prejudging those views. If you define a Christian nationalist as someone who holds x, y, and z views, it should be no surprise that when you measure what Christian nationalists want, you discover that they want x, y, and z.

To take one example of this: when Whitehead and Perry wrote Taking America Back for God, they used six statements as a measure of whether and how far someone could be classified as a Christian nationalist. Thus, if someone agreed that “The federal government should allow the display of religious symbols in public spaces”, they earned a certain number of points that would push them into a Christian nationalist category. But then, of course, when we measure the political and social views of Christian nationalists, we have already determined that they will be concerned about issues like this.

The only way round this would be to define Christian nationalism by some totally orthogonal criteria, such as religious practice or theology. But given the point above – that much Christian nationalism often has little relationship to theology (at least, in practice) – this is simply not possible. Like it or not, Christian nationalism is recognised in part by its political and cultural stance, and so therefore there is a potential circularity in play whenever we try to measure that stance.

With this in mind, Theos’ research seeks to measure this phenomenon not by defining “Christian nationalism” in advance, but by using advanced statistical methods such as structural equation modelling to identify the underlying patterns from our survey data. This is particularly valuable for studying a phenomenon like Christian nationalism, which is not directly observable but must be inferred from responses to a range of related indicators.

In the meantime, and also bearing in mind that different incarnations of Christian Nationalism in different countries will adopt different stances and be animated by subtly different concerns, the rest of this section is essentially tentative and theoretical, based on existing literature and informal assessment of examples of Christian nationalism over the last 12 months.

One (US–focused) paper on this topic notes that “scholars have linked Christian nationalism to a wide array of social and political beliefs [including] racism, misogyny, pro–authoritarianism, homophobia, opposition to vaccinations, skepticism towards science, and sympathy to violence.”[26] This is quite a capacious list, albeit well–evidenced with links to (US–focused) academic papers. In the UK and Europe, examples of what we might credibly label Christian nationalism tend to fixate on a smaller number of topics.

Most common is Islam. The presence of large numbers of Muslims within Western countries is a particular concern to Christian Nationalists (and, it should be noted, many who would not fall into this category).[27] The reasons given for this concern vary enormously, and include anxieties about (1) security and potential terrorism; (2) ghettoisation and a lack of integration; (3) the incursion of an alien way of life, with particular attention being paid to the treatment of women and sexual minorities; (4) the spread of Islamic/ sharia law; (5) inequities of treatment with Christian minorities in majority–Muslim countries; (6) demographic trends, with concerns about differential birth rates leading to the “great replacement” of native–born citizens; (7) threats to freedom of speech and expression; and more inchoate fears around (8) the dilution of Christian values and culture and (9) the general incompatibility of Islam with Western values, be those specific ones such laïcité in France, or more general ones like democracy or tolerance.[28]

In close parallel with Islam are fears around mass immigration. The precise anxieties here overlap considerably with those above, albeit with the specific objections against Islam diluted into more general fears. Thus, Christian Nationalists reject (the widespread) presence of non–indigenous citizens on the grounds that they do not hold to Christian or “Judeo–Christian” values, or are indifferent to, and sometimes hostile towards, the history and traditions of the host country. In the US, there is good evidence that this rejection shades over into (and is sometimes a cover for) racism and white supremacy, and there is some reason to suppose that this theme is also present in the UK. However, the widespread presence of non–white Christians in the UK, who are socially and theologically conservative (and in some instances hostile to Islam) and who have proved central to the life and renewal of Christianity here, makes this straightforwardly racist form of Christian nationalism hard to sustain and, in theory at least, easier to discern in the data.

A third topic is that of elites. This is a very widely used trope and is by no means exclusive to Chistian nationalists. Elites can be blamed by most people for most things these days. Accordingly, Christian nationalists blame elites for failing over the things that most matter to them, such as failing to secure borders against those who would erode the nation’s Christian values; failing to honour the nation’s Christian status appropriately (e.g., in constitutional documents); refusing to recognise or protect the nation’s Christian history and heritage; and refusing to enshrine key Christian social and cultural commitments, pertaining to family, marriage, sexual activity and abortion in legislation. In extremis this can become a rejection of elites for failing to subordinate the state to the teaching of the Church or biblical law, although this does not seem to be a significant factor in UK or continental European Christian nationalism.

To these three factors, a number of other side–themes might be added, such as antagonism towards refugees and asylum seekers (a subset of the objection to immigration); a defence of family values (a subset of the objection to elites); and a defence of Western liberal and secular values (a subset of the objection to Islam). What is noteworthy is that certain themes that are more familiar from other adjacent forms of religion (e.g. the Christian fundamentalist rejection of evolution) or adjacent forms of politics (e.g. the traditional Conservative concern with personal responsibility, or economic freedom) do not appear to be particularly present in Christian nationalist rhetoric.

What, in effect, Christian nationalists want is to maintain and protect a Christian demos, or people, in a Christian polity, by excluding those who risk corrupting or diluting either, whether those “others” come from a different religion, a different country, or are psychologically attached to something other than the nation.

6.   Conclusion: Christian nationalism and a Christian demos

To return to a theme that has recurred throughout this essay, Christian nationalism may well be a case of the political tail wagging the theological dog, with Christian ideas, symbols, and scriptures being used to clothe pre–existing political views and prejudices. Even if this is the case, however, it is salient that it is Christian ideas, symbols, and scriptures that are being deployed here. Christian nationalism may be dismissed as theologically thin, superficial and retrofitted, but that is to ignore the language it has chosen to express itself in.

That being so, it is important to return to the fact that just because someone may want the people of a nation to be Christian, that does not make them a Christian nationalist. Were that to be the case, any evangelistic or apologetic organisation or individual in the county would be Christian nationalist. Similarly, simply because someone wants a government or state to reflect “Christian values” – however that phrase is understood – does not necessarily make him or her a Christian nationalist. Again, if that were so, every form of Christian political engagement would be suspect. It is important to make these distinctions to avoid tarnishing any form of Christian politics with the Christian nationalist label.

Rather, the critical difference lies in a perceived coterminosity or co–dependence: the idea that properly belonging to this particular nation or civilisation means being Christian (or, more usually, sharing its underlying (Judeo–)Christian values), and that therefore those that do not do so, do not fully belong here, and perhaps do not belong here at all.

The extent to which this is theologically–driven or simply theologically convenient is highly debatable – but it is worth noting that this is a convenient ideology for a time of low fertility rates, high immigration, significant refugee levels, and an increasingly visible presence of Islam in historically non–Islamic countries. More work needs to be done on this issue, such as mapping out more precisely the nature of that coterminosity in the wider context of different kinds of national attachment; attempting to discern directions of correlation; assessing how the phenomenon differs from one country to another; identifying which issues and to what extent they matter; and discerning what is the appropriate response to all this from those many Christians who are uneasy (and sometimes angry) at seeing the gospel used in this way.

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos

More information about Theos’ work in this area can be found here.

I am grateful to Revd Dr Helen Paynter, Dr Jonathan Chaplin and my Theos colleagues for insightful comments on this article.

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