The phrase Christian nationalism is having one of those weeks where it stops being an abstract grad-seminar category and becomes a live description of power.
CNN is airing a Whole Story episode explicitly titled “The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” and in the same news cycle Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited pastor Doug Wilson—who identifies as a Christian nationalist—to lead a worship service at the Pentagon. Whatever your partisan reflexes, that pairing is the point: this is no longer just a subculture arguing online. It’s a movement seeking institutional standing, and it is doing so by blurring the line between civic authority and spiritual authority.
What’s striking to me is how little of this feels new—and how much of it feels like the institutionalization of something I was already writing about when it still sounded like a fringe hypothesis.
Back in May 2006, I opened a post with the blunt alarm of someone realizing the “Christian nation” line wasn’t just talk radio: “Be very afraid… [people] are not only in favor of making a ‘Christian nation’…” (“Theonomy: Scary Shit,” 2006-05-24). That post wasn’t about partisan aesthetics; it was about theonomy—biblical law as civil law—moving from the margins toward the levers.
By 2009, the problem felt even clearer in constitutional terms. I wrote: “They want our secular country turned into a theocratic state. Please protect us from them.” (“Explain this to me,” 2009-04-03). That’s not a plea for atheism; it’s a plea for restraint—for a government that does not claim divine permission to override pluralism. It’s also a recognition that “freedom of religion” becomes a weapon when it turns into “power over everyone else.”
And then, in 2020, watching violence and sanctimony braid together, I noted the grim continuity: “I wrote about Christian theonomy about 13.5 years ago… jeez the more the change, eh?” (“active Republican Christian terrorist in Washington state,” 2020-01-02). That line is gallows humor, but it’s also diagnosis: the arc isn’t random. The rhetoric keeps pointing toward the same destination—rule by a sanctified minority that treats democratic constraint as moral weakness.
My tweets land the same way, but with less patience. In 2022: “Christian nationalists have decided to destroy the separation of church & state.” (tweet, 2022-08-28). And: “Same themes: Christian nationalism ruled over by a strongman.” (tweet, 2022-10-01). The language changes; the structure doesn’t.
So here’s the through-line: Christian nationalism is not “religion in public.” That’s a strawman argument, as no one is stopping you from practicing your own religion your own way. Instead it’s a theory of legitimacy—a claim that power is most authentic when it is less accountable to voters than to “God’s order,” and therefore less bound by constitutional restraint. Christian nationalists want to force others to practice their religion their way, turning personal freedom into state coercion.
When that claim walks into national institutions wearing the language of worship, we are not arguing about taste, nor your own personal liberty. We are arguing about whether the Constitution is still the referee—or just another obstacle to be overcome.
