The debate is over: We’re all Christian nationalists now

The Christian nationalism debate was always a scam, which is why as someone who by God’s grace has one of the largest audiences of Bible-believing Christians in the country, I never bothered to wade into it. Instead, I waited for those provoking it to reveal their true purpose for doing so.

And it finally happened last week.

The Spirit of the Age offers no forgiveness. It only demands your compliance.

First, Politico published an unintentional self-parody expressing incredulity that Christian nationalists believe in such fantastical things as “natural law” — or what America’s founders called “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence. The Spirit of the Age website also confidently claimed that natural law had recently gained in popularity in just the last few decades. Which is probably news to Thomas Aquinas, who was writing about such things in works like the “Summa Theologiae,” published all the way back in 1265.

I guess time is now like gender and fluid as well.

Anyhow, clearly not one to be bashful about displaying her invincible ignorance, as one so often does these godforsaken days, the co-author of that think-less piece proudly appeared on the televised asylum known as MSNBC. Why? To announce that one sure way to tell if someone bears the "mark" of a Christian nationalist is whether the person believes our rights come from God and not government.

And there it is!

If you have actually read and understood the mission statement of America — that our rights come from God and not government — found in the aforementioned Declaration of Independence, you are a Christian nationalist. Thus, anyone who is a sincere Christian and honest student of American history — who understands our cultural heritage — is a menace to society, according to the Spirit of the Age.

That’s what this entire sham non-debate was about all along.

It was always about slandering the brethren, and sadly too many of the brethren fell for it and divided themselves over it. We do this because we deeply desire acceptance from this world more than we pursue devotion to its Creator. So we really need the people who hate us and would smash our stained-glass windows without blushing to know “we’re not like those kinds of Christians. We don’t like them, either. Please don’t lump us in with those knuckle-draggers.”

And by golly, how was your simping for the Spirit of the Age received by its beneficiary? It went ahead and lumped you in with the rest of us, nevertheless, thank you very much. So please graciously accept your cultural potter’s field, you self-proclaimed more enlightened types, for you have received your reward in full.

As my colleague Auron MacIntyre recently said on my show, this was always a cynical and demonic ploy to rebrand Christianity with white nationalism. Eight-five percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2020. In 2016, white evangelicals were 20% of the overall electorate, and they voted for Trump by a whopping margin of 78% to 16%. This is a vital base for Republicans, one that Democrats have no chance of winning. This means Democrats have nothing to lose and everything to gain by smearing voters Republicans require that they cannot acquire.

Sadly, the soil for planting such weeds was tilled by some of the very Christians being sullied. Well-meaning folks wasted their time trying to sincerely debate and discuss something that was never meant to be sincere in the first place. It was simply a rake that hell itself placed in our yard, and we gladly stepped on it.

If you are guilty of loving the Lord, while also daring to show any respect whatsoever for actual American history — and that is still a lot of people who have various opinions about Donald Trump — then you are pronounced guilty by the very forces trying to destroy the last morsels of a country once called exceptional. And no amount of nuance or “ackshually” can save you. For the Spirit of the Age offers no forgiveness. It only demands your compliance. I assure you that every time you turn onto Tolerance Boulevard, you will find it is a one-way street.

The debate that never was is now over. We are all Christian nationalists now.