Michael Scott’s Christian nationalism

There’s a scene in the classic American sitcom, The Office, where the lead character, Michael Scott, needs to declare bankruptcy after a series of financial mistakes.

In keeping with his absurd persona, Scott believes he just needs to declare bankruptcy out loud—not aware that it requires a lot of paperwork. So, he steps out of his office and yells to everyone, “I declare bankruptcy!” Everyone looks around in stunned awkwardness. His colleague, Oscar, replies, “I just wanted you to know that you can’t just say the word ‘bankruptcy’ and expect anything to happen.” Scott replies, “I didn’t say it. I declared it.”

Ridiculous as the scene is, it brings to mind where we are with much of the Christian nationalism conversation in evangelicalism. Perhaps if you read about it enough, post on social media enough, or attend a conference around it, you can declare it into existence as Michael Scott did, without due consideration of the complexities of statecraft or the ugly histories associated with church-state establishments. The volume of one’s voice does not make for a successful political theology.

Definitions matter. To the New York Times, I’m a Christian nationalist. By my friend Paul Miller’s definition, I might be. By author Stephen Wolfe’s definition, I am most certainly not. So, before I criticize “Christian nationalism,” let me focus on the form presented in Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. That book, though I disagree with it, has at least helped set a foil for the conversation—both in terms of its substance and in the radicalism of its proposals.

Since roughly 2021, American evangelicalism—at least the Very Online subset—has been engulfed in this conversation. From it being merely the latest iteration of leftist accusations wielded against religious conservatives, all the way to right-wing manifestos and personalities embracing the term with gusto, the conversation persists. At first, I found it somewhat alluring and even helpful in sharpening my own categories on church and state. But the conversation has not progressed beyond the level of speculation. If anything, the conversation has accelerated the balkanization of evangelicalism, unearthed tawdry undercurrents fixated on bloodlines, embraced utilitarian tactics at the expense of the fruit of the Spirit, and myopically reduced a soul-saving faith to political captivity.

As I observe the conversation, many proponents of Christian nationalism have done little else than shout their demands—Michael Scott style—with no practical effect. If you read the social media posts, one would believe that we’re on the cusp of an imminent Christian nationalist overthrow—and we’re not, by any sane acquaintance with reality.

Laudable as it may be to articulate first principles for government, or genuinely enlightening as it is to retrieve Reformed political theory, we should call this for what it is: ineffectual. Not a single mainstream institution—whether political or ecclesial—has been captured by an explicit commitment to Christian nationalism. Barring genuine revolution, there is a greater chance of an AI apocalypse than there is of Christian nationalism taking effect over a nation of 340 million people in the form of presidents calling synods, arresting blasphemers, or executing heretics. There is absolutely no political will to enact a Christian nationalist agenda.

But if we are absolutely no closer in 2026 to enacting anything resembling a Christian nationalist agenda, it is hard to see the conversation as little more than an unnecessary distraction at this point. Not that Christians engaging in politics is a distraction, but that theorizing about a would-be government that requires a return to 1789 conditions is futile. Right now, it only divides Christians on secondary and tertiary matters by ratcheting up the discourse. What’s worse, what follows in the rafters of Christian nationalism is, in some cases, a cesspool of resentment, nativism, and pugilism. Sure, everyday Christians want to end abortion, which fits within the remit of Christian nationalism. But are those same Christians really wanting to go back to a time when we punished blasphemy? Even benign proposals, like Sabbath laws, stand no chance of passage. No one, and I mean no one, is seriously questioning the First Amendment or the 19th Amendment, for that matter.

Which sends the signal to me that when Christian nationalists criticize views like mine for supposedly offering theological justifications for liberal democracy, then Christian nationalism fares no better, for it is quietly beholden to the state and political conditions for its own legitimacy. In that form, Christian nationalism is often a form of Christian Hegelianism, wherein the operations of the state drive history—and the Kingdom of God—forward. Making the legitimacy of one’s political theology dependent on the state’s privileging it evinces a structural weakness in the program itself. The idea that the Kingdom of Christ requires formal dependence on, and enactment through, the state insults the efficacy of the blood of Christ.

And this all brings me back to objections I’ve never had adequately answered about Christian nationalism. It rests on an over-realized eschatology—it rests on immediate triumph only to deliver frustration and disappointment. It is political idealism at the expense of political realism. It denies the pervasive reality of the antithesis. It downplays the doctrine of sin, believing that those vested with articulating (and imposing) Christian nationalism have finally figured out the proper formula to enact it without repeating the parade of horribles that accompanied Christian establishment through history. It dilutes the doctrine of regeneration by subjecting Christianity to the lowest common denominator, thinning out doctrinal robustness for nominalist pottage.

It is popular to say that liberalism trades on neutrality while smuggling in substantive truth claims. That’s true. But a better reading of the times would have us abandon the false pretenses of neutrality and help us understand that every age is defined by intractable moral disputes. We live in an age of contestability, not neutrality. The current era of redemptive history is no more progressive than it is Christian. To say as much is not to theologically justify the neutral commitments that liberalism demands; it is to understand that short of the Second Coming of Jesus, strife, tension, and debate are normative features of this age. Nor is it to baptize liberal democracy as the only possible output that results from Christian theology, but I will at least grant this: It’s the one framework that provides procedures even for self-professed Christian nationalists to appeal to in protecting their own religious liberty.

Like Christian nationalists, I want secularism’s dominance to wane, along with progressivism. But unlike Christian nationalism, which awaits full enactment through statist adoption for its legitimacy, there is nothing stopping me from organizing and strategizing to defeat secular progressivism now. I do not need the First Amendment revised, Sabbath laws adopted, or progressives jailed to mount arguments, mobilize, and vote to defeat the enemies of Christianity.

Questioning Christian nationalism, or thinking it is a largely ineffectual and speculative endeavor, is not a surrender to the ambient demands of liberal democracy—it is a call to arms fit to the manner of argumentation of the era in which we live, move, and have our being.

Instead of a top-down approach to Christian nationalism that requires revising or overturning our current constitutional order, take a Tocquevillian and Burkean approach. Understand that Christian influence in society is not, chiefly, a political program even while we insist that Christian faith has political implications. Christianity is not a theory as in Marxism or Critical Theory. A Christian nationalism built upon tweets, syllogisms, articles, and books in hopes that it can manufacture its success despite massively improbable headwinds is a form of theorizing that flies in the face of the myriad ways that everyday Christians are going about the task of Christian political engagement. Or, as I heard an influential Presbyterian from a Southern state say of evangelicalism’s organic influence in their state, “We are the establishment.”