WWJD about Christian Nationalism?

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I remember back in the 1990s when there was a fad among young Christians. Frequently, you’d see people with bracelets and shirts that read “WWJD.” The letters stood for “what would Jesus do” and it was supposed to make you think before you acted rashly. Ideally, considering what Jesus would do was supposed to make people act in a more Christlike manner. I don’t know how well it worked, but the fad lasted a few years and faded away.

Maybe we should bring it back.

The WWJD fad has occurred to me several times lately. Most recently it was when I was talking to a Christian Nationalist online. The guy was abusive and profane and one of the other people on the thread looked at his profile bio and noted that “Christian” was the first descriptor.

Sadly, this person is just one of many similar personalities that you might encounter in online political discussions. Although he is a self-described Christian, both his behavior and his theology lead to questions about both his understanding and his practice of Christianity.

One of the man’s comments harkened back to an old meme that opined, “If anyone ever asks you what would Jesus do, remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities.”

My internet acquaintance was a bit more to the point, saying, “Today Jesus would be flogging election officials and turning over voting machines.”

The meme is true. I’m not so sure about the man’s interpretation.

The meme refers to a passage in the Gospels that describes how Jesus angrily attacked money changers and merchants who had set up shop in the Temple courts. This passage is also the basis of a biblical dad joke that praises Jesus’s prowess as a high-jumper (Punchline: “He cleared the Temple”).

You can read the passage in John 2, but the point that a lot of people miss is that even though Jesus experienced the very human emotion of righteous anger, he reserved his displays of anger for the people who profaned the Temple and lorded their religiosity over others. Even though Jesus lived under a brutal and repressive government, his harshest words were for the religious hypocrites that he called a “brood of vipers” in Matthew 23. If Jesus was walking the streets of America today, we might find that he would be denouncing the hypocrites of the Christian political establishment rather than teaming up with them to take on the government.

One of the dominant religious groups in Jesus’s day was called the Pharisees. If you spent much time in Sunday School, you’ve probably heard of them. The Pharisees were a sect known for their legalistic approach to religion and seem similar to many Christians today who take a do-and-do-not approach.

In contrast to the Pharisees, Jesus dined with sinners and the ancient Roman version of IRS agents. While he did judge these people and confront them with their problematic behaviors, he did so from a position of love and concern rather than screaming over the interwebs (or in person) that “YOU ARE GOING TO HELL.”

In fact, the one thing that seems to be most missing from political Christianity is what Christ told us was the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself.

That’s natural. It’s human nature to get defensive and heated when we get into a debate. But that’s another reason to slow down and consider WWJD.

WWJD offers an answer to conspiracy theories as well. The Gnostics of Jesus’s day were a lot like today’s conspiracy peddlers who tout secret knowledge that isn’t understood by the masses of “sheeple.” (Click here for a good piece in “Christianity Today” on conspiracy theories.)

Jesus’s advice in Matthew 24 was to “Watch out that no one deceives you,” adding that “many will come in my name….”

There are a lot of people today using Jesus’s name to advance some very unchristian ideas. Some even make prophetic claims that fail the biblical test of truth found in Deuteronomy 18.

And that sums up the whole problem with Christian Nationalism. The movement marries conspiracy theories and hate with a call to violence. My online acquaintance talked about insurrection and he joins many other Christian Nationalists who either took part in the January 6 insurrection or have defended and rationalized the violence since then. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently bragged that the insurrection would have succeeded and the participants would have been armed if she and Steve Bannon had led it.

Much ink has been spilled in the 2,000 since Christ walked the earth about the uncomfortable relationship between Christianity and war. Together with Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine is considered to have pioneered Christian doctrinal thinking about what constitutes a just war. Today there are six commonly accepted principles of a just war:

• There must be a just cause
• War must be the last resort
• Public authority must make the decision to go to war
• All evil intentions must be excluded in declaring and prosecuting the war; noncombatants must not be targeted
• War must be a proportional response
• The war must be conducted in good faith without declaring falsehoods or breaking promises

In the case of an insurrection against the duly-elected federal government, none of these conditions would be met. The cause is not just since it is based on conspiracy theories, it is not the last resort, and public authorities would not be involved in the decision of one political faction to go to war. War is not a proportional response to losing elections and culture war complaints and the insurrectionist position is largely based on falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Finally, in a conflict in which a minority seeks to overturn the will of a majority of voters, noncombatants would inevitably become victimized.

We all fall short, but the bottom line is that Christian Nationalism is not very Christlike. Even setting aside constitutional and legal arguments, Christian Nationalism fails the tests of Christian doctrine. It’s impossible to show God’s love when you’re talking about needlessly killing your countrymen, a great many of whom are also Christians.

Christian Nationalism in modern America isn’t the first time that Christianity has been hijacked for nefarious political ends. It also won’t be the last.

My prayer is that common sense and love break out in the American church before someone does something stupid and lights off a civil war. My prayer is that God’s love breaks out within the church.