A Brief History of Christian Nationalism

For those raised to believe America was God’s chosen nation—this is an honest reckoning with the story we were told. A brief history from the Cross to Donald Trump.

This post is part of an ongoing series called “A Brief History.”

The goal isn’t to provide an exhaustive academic account, but to trace the story of how we got to the version of American evangelicalism many of us were born into. I didn’t want to write about politics, but I realized deconstruction from evangelicalism couldn’t be properly discussed without it. The relationship between Christianity and political power isn’t a modern glitch—it’s the throughline. So this one looks at how the movement of Jesus became entangled with empire—from crucifixion to colonization to culture war. It’s not about conclusions. It’s about context. And maybe a little clarity. So that we can know how we got where we are, in an attempt to rebuild something better.

The World I Knew

I was 18 the first time I voted.

I was a senior in high school.

As a young evangelical on my way to Bible college, I was proud to play a small role in helping my country be more Christian by voting for the right candidates.

I voted how Jesus would. I looked for the “R” and made a mark with the pencil they gave me. I didn’t know much about local elections, and I definitely didn’t know that some races—like judges—didn’t list party affiliation. So I made a choice that still haunts me:

I voted for a man over a woman.

Why?

Because I had been taught—explicitly and implicitly—that if women couldn’t be pastors or preachers, they probably shouldn’t be judges either.

That’s how deep it ran.

In high school, I went to anti-abortion rallies instead of parties. I ironed American flag patches onto my T-shirts during the Gulf War—not because I loved politics, but because I loved Jesus. I prayed at the flagpole for God to make us a Christian nation.

And I believed, as millions of us did, that to be a Christian was to be a Republican.

I didn’t question it. Because I didn’t know there was anything to question.

This is the world I was born into.

But it’s not the world Jesus was born into. It’s not the world the vast majority of people who ever lived were born into. It’s just the one many of us happened to be born into.

So how did we get from Jesus—crucified by the state as an insurrectionist for leading a movement of the poor and powerless—to Jesus as a pro-war Republican opposed to food stamps?

That answer requires a brief history of Christian Nationalism…

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The Cross and the Empire

Jesus wasn’t just killed. He was executed by the state.

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment for political enemies—a public, torturous warning. The charge nailed above his head wasn’t theological. It was political: "King of the Jews."

To say "Jesus is Lord" was to say "Caesar is not."

Early Christianity wasn’t a cultural institution. It was a subversive movement of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

As the movement grew in the decades after Jesus, Christians were sometimes persecuted—but not everywhere, not all the time. Over time, the movement began to pick up steam in the Roman world. And as it did, the empire took notice.

Eventually, Christianity wasn’t seen as a threat.

It was seen as an opportunity.

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Armenia: The First Christian Nation

In 301 CE, Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion—decades before Rome.

King Tiridates III converted after being healed by a Christian prisoner named Gregory the Illuminator. It may have been sincere. It was also strategic.

Armenia was caught between two empires: Rome and Persia. Christianity offered a third identity—a way to stand apart.

For the first time in history, faith and state merged under the cross.

Since that moment over 1,700 years ago, the earth has always had various nation-states leveraging Christianity for power and influence. Without ceasing.

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Constantine and Rome

In 313 CE, Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. By 380 CE, Emperor Theodosius I made it the official religion of Rome.

The movement of the crucified Jesus was now backed by military institution that killed him.

Contrary to popular belief, Constantine didn’t make Christianity the official state religion—that came later, under Theodosius. Constantine himself wasn’t baptized until his deathbed, and the famous story about him forcing his entire army to convert is likely more legend than fact.

What is true is this: he gave Christianity unprecedented wealth, protection, and power. And once that door opened, it never really closed.

The faith that once challenged empire now had its own.

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Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire

For the next thousand years, Christianity didn’t just support power. It became power.

Popes crowned kings. Kings appointed bishops. The church collected taxes and launched wars.

One symbol of the age? The Holy Roman Empire, founded in 800 CE when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne. It wasn’t holy, Roman, or much of an empire—but it showed how far the fusion had gone.

The symbol of the cross led crusades. Priests blessed murderous colonizers. Heretics were burned. Empires were built.

By all accounts , this wasn’t the kingdom Jesus preached.

This was a kingdom that somehow evolved under his name, but not in his image.

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The Reformation Didn’t Break the Power—It Rebranded It

The Protestant Reformation challenged the Catholic Church's authority. But it didn’t challenge the fusion of church and state.

It just localized it.

England went Anglican. German princes went Lutheran. Calvin tried a theocracy in Geneva.

Now, to be a good citizen of any particular state meant to follow the right version of Christianity.

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A Breather

Let’s pause here for a moment.

It’s been 1,500 years since Jesus was crucified.
And more than 1,200 years since Constantine legalized the church.

And it’s hard to find major expressions of Christianity that weren’t embedded with state power.

Yes, there were prophets and reformers. But they were usually the exception.

For most of Christian history, faith and empire cohabitated and conspired.

It was, and is, the normal state of things.

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The Faith That Sailed with the Ships

When Europeans colonized the Americas, they didn’t just bring armies. They brought Christianity.

• Spain brought crosses and conquistadors.

• England brought Puritans and providence.

• All of them brought Bibles and flags.

They didn’t come to coexist. They came to build a Christian civilization.

One of the clearest examples? Manifest Destiny.

The belief that God had ordained America to expand from coast to coast.
It wasn’t just patriotism. It was theology.

And it came with violence.

Indigenous peoples were slaughtered, displaced, or "converted" by force.

The death toll from European colonization of the Americas—driven in large part by Christian imperial motives—exceeds any single war in human history, including both World Wars.

And unlike conventional wars, this wasn’t a short-term explosion of violence—it was a centuries-long slow-motion collapse of civilizations, with sustained suffering, cultural erasure, and loss of land and autonomy.

And it didn’t stop there.

Millions of Africans were enslaved by Christian nations, trafficked across oceans, and forced to labor under the whip—while their captors quoted scripture.

The church didn’t stop it.

It largely blessed it.

There is no way around this dark truth.

Over four centuries of colonizing the Americas, the religion founded in the name of Jesus Christ aligned itself with empire in ways that led to the deaths of over 100 million Indigenous people—and the kidnapping, trafficking, and dehumanization of at least 12.5 million Africans through the transatlantic slave trade.

This is what the marriage of empire and church produces.

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The Myth of a Christian Nation

The “Founding Fathers” were complex men with a wide range of beliefs. Some were devout Christians. Others were more culturally religious than personally faithful. And several were outspoken skeptics or deists—believing in a creator, but rejecting organized religion and miracles.

Thomas Jefferson famously cut the supernatural parts out of the Bible. Benjamin Franklin valued religion mostly for its social utility. George Washington attended church but rarely took communion. And John Adams, though a churchgoer, was deeply critical of traditional Christian doctrines.

They weren’t all on the same page.

But they had seen what happens when church and state merge—when religious institutions gain political power and dissent becomes dangerous. So they explicitly separated the two.

The Constitution never mentions God.
The First Amendment prohibits religious establishment.

Still, the myth grew:

That America was chosen. Blessed. Christian.

It grew because it was useful.
It gave moral weight to conquest. It sanctified power.
It allowed political agendas to wear the robes of divine authority.

So a new kind of religion emerged: civil religion.

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Slavery, War, and the Christian Split

The “Christian nation” myth ran straight into a brutal contradiction: slavery.

White Christians justified it with scripture. Black Christians survived it with faith.

The Civil War wasn’t just political. It was theological. Both sides believed God was on their side.

After the war, Black churches became centers of hope. Meanwhile, white Southern Christians built the Lost Cause myth:

• The South was righteous.

• The war was noble.

• God was still on their side.

This wasn’t fringe. It became mainstream in many parts of the country.

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God in the Pledge, Jesus in the Flag

In the 20th century, patriotism became a liturgy:

• "In God We Trust" added to money (1956).

• "Under God" added to the pledge (1954).

• Presidents sounded like preachers.

The cross and the flag weren’t neighbors anymore.
They were stitched together.

America became the new Promised Land.
The Constitution, the new scripture.
The Founding Fathers, the new saints.

But Jesus wasn’t leading the nation. The nation was leading Jesus.

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Rise of the Religious Right

In the 1970s, white evangelicals got organized.

Contrary to the myth, it wasn’t just about abortion. It started with opposition to desegregation in Christian schools.

Then came leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who created a movement:

• Pro-God

• Pro-family

• Pro-America

• Anti-liberal

In 1980, they found their hero: Ronald Reagan.

He spoke their language. Quoted scripture. Promised to make America shine again.

Evangelicals turned out in force.

And this is the world that raised me.

I went to anti-abortion rallies instead of parties.
I ironed American flags on my T-shirts.
And when I stepped into that voting booth at 18, I didn’t have to ask who to vote for.
I already knew. Vote Republican. And vote against women. Because I was a Christian.

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From Bush to Trump: The Gospel of Grievance

After 9/11, many American churches turned militant in tone.

Flags in sanctuaries. Sermons about evil. Jesus as wartime chaplain.

George W. Bush leaned into Christian rhetoric, and evangelicals embraced him.

But then some things shifted in a big way.

Obama’s election. Same-sex marriage. Cultural change.

To many white Christians, it felt like they weren’t just losing power.
They were losing America.

Then came Trump.

He didn’t go to church. Didn’t quote scripture well. Didn’t pretend to be righteous.

But he knew how to speak directly to the fears of evangelicals.

"They’re taking your country."

"They hate your God."

“They’re coming for your children.”

And many Christians said: finally, someone will fight for us.

Not because he reflected their values. He clearly did not.
But because he promised to protect their power.

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What Christian Nationalism Really Is

Christian nationalism isn’t new.
It’s an ancient temptation:

To trade the cross for the sword.
To swap love thy neighbor with hate the foreigner.
To baptize brutality and call it faithfulness.

It’s good for empire.
It’s good for control.
It’s good for a few at the top.

But it’s never been good for the original message of Jesus.

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So Where Does That Leave Us?

If you grew up like I did, where faith and country were indistinguishable, this can feel disorienting.

But it’s not a betrayal to ask questions.

For some, the work is reclaiming some version of Christianity deeper than empire faith. For others, it’s letting go of the whole thing and finding new ground entirely.

Both paths are valid. Both require courage. And neither owe anything to the system that turned a radical movement of love into a tool for power.

Christian nationalism may be common.
But it is not inevitable.
And it is not sacred.

Whatever you believe now—whatever you’re rebuilding or walking away from—just know:

It’s okay to desire truth over power, understanding over distrust, and love over fear.

That’s not betrayal.

That’s enlightenment.

PS – A message to my Republican friends:

If you made it all the way through this article without throwing your phone or closing your laptop, thank you.

I can hear some of you saying, “But the Democrats use the church too.” You're right—they do. Faith is often invoked across the political spectrum, especially in mainline and more liberal churches.

But this piece focused on the Republican side because it’s specifically about how modern evangelicalism emerged and became entwined with conservative politics.

I’ve said throughout that I don’t care where anyone lands when it comes to belief—and the same goes for politics. There are plenty of good Republicans in the world. You may be one of the very best ones.

Thanks for listening to what I had to say.