Is the Christian a Christian Nationalist?
A Crack at the Debate.
Short Answer:
The mature Christian has neither a plain sole longing for heaven nor a nationalistic scheming to make Jesus king by exerting force on unwilling citizens. Instead, Christians should be ready to speak truth to power, be concerned with the righteous exercise of Government, see justice fulfilled and fulfill the service God expects of all Governing authorities.
Long Answer:
Firstly is the brief summation of the recent volatile world history describing how the military community came together to defeat Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime after it invaded Kuwait. Despite ethnic bloodshed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, international intervention prevented further violence. The European Union was growing, the internet had connected people in new ways, and most Western economies prospered in the 1980s and 1990s. It was hoped that Western democracy would spread to Russia, China, and the Middle East.
What happened next in the first decades of the twenty-first century were forces of evil that we thought had been defeated forever. The drug cartels were storming South and Central America. There was the rise of radical Islam, the 9/11 Tragedy and the global war on terror. The Iraq War followed these, the rise of Islamic State, civil war in Syria and a 20-year occupation of Afghanistan ending with a humiliating and disastrous retreat. The global financial crisis strongly suggested that the international economic system was a fake and a ruse to make banks wealthier, to make the super-rich richer. North Korea acquired nuclear weapons with Iran pushing ever closer.
China’s economic rise did not lead to its democratisation; instead, it became a wealthy, expansionist superpower that ran a neo-techno surveillance state. Despite similar hopes that Russia might become westernised, it remains a military dictatorship.
The Arab Spring died in less than two years. In its aftermath, the Arab states were not any freer than they had been before. In fact, they grew more radical Islamist. Then the disaffected populations grew tired of their ruling theocracy. Thus, there were mass migrations of people fleeing conflict and poverty, and every nation remained ravaged by the global effects of COVID-19.
Russia continues to devastate breadbasket Ukraine, intent on annexing it like Crimea. China gazes longingly at Taiwan, hoping to gain its technological supremacy, persecutes religious minorities such as the Uyghurs and the Christian underground churches and punishes pro-democratic dissent in Hong Kong.
In addition, many Western nations find it impossible to reach any workable agreement on environmentalism, racial justice, healthcare, immigration, gun control, abortion, religious freedom, free speech and LGBTQ+ rights, leaving people with nowhere to go.
In a world of rising and falling empires, endless calamities, pandemics, terrorism, democratic disarray, economic and political tensions and culture wars, what is a Christian to think of all this, or to do about it?
The immediate thing that comes to mind is for us to consider God’s providence. We know that whatever history is – cause and effect or clash of civilisations – God is ultimately sovereign over history. God is the God who deposes kings and sets up kings because dominion belongs to Him.
Ruling over the nations, even amid the upheaval of nations, God dispenses in history and through history His common grace to all. God’s goodness finds its way into our lives and homes despite the terror and trauma that ravages different regions of our world.
What is more, we do well to reflect on God’s purposes. It is important to note that God does not program history like a computer programmer running an algorithm, but neither is God surprised by history. History is the theatre of divine glory, and all history will culminate in a dramatic moment when God puts the world to rights through Jesus. History has an end date, and it’s not when human beings upload their consciousness to artificial intelligence, when they set up a colony on Mars, or when our sun finally burns out. History itself is the canvas upon which God, in Jesus, answers and addresses the most pressing facets of human existence. The end of history is neither a whimper nor a bang, but creation itself transfigured into a new creation.
In addition, the turmoil of our times means we must constantly be people of prayer. We have permission – and, indeed, a command! – to pray, ‘Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you!’ We should pray for our kings, prime ministers and presidents so that ‘we may lead a tranquil and peaceful life, in all godliness and holiness’. We can pray for peace, prosperity, justice and freedom as something to be enjoyed by peoples of every city, country and continent..[1]
Michael F. Bird and N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies
Amen !
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