The Comfort We Called Holy: How White Christian Nationalism Formed Us

White Christian nationalism shaped more than politics. It shaped discipleship.

In this episode, Kristen traces the formation story beneath today’s headlines. Long before it became a political slogan, white Christian nationalism formed reflexes on what felt holy, what felt threatening, and what felt worth defending.

This conversation explores:

• How “chosen nation” theology reshaped American Christian identity
• Why security, order, and national blessing began to feel spiritual
• The rise of “law and order” rhetoric within white evangelical institutions
• The Moral Majority era and the consolidation of faith and political power
• The contrast between white Christian formation and the formation of the Black church
• How Jesus consistently refused the fusion of faith and empire

Through Scripture (John 6; Luke 19; Mark 10, 11, 12; John 2), we trace a pattern: Jesus steps away from coercive crowns, mourns violent nationalism, redefines power, limits Caesar, and disrupts sacred systems.

This is not an episode about condemnation. It is about formation.

Because if we want to be formed by Jesus and shaped by justice, we have to be honest about what shaped us first.

White Christian nationalism is not just political. It distorts discipleship.

And discipleship can be re-formed.

Further Reading: Books on White Christian Nationalism and Christian Formation

If you want to go deeper, here is a list of books that trace patterns historically and theologically. 

Core Recommendations

The Color of Compromise | Jemar Tisby
How the American church has been complicit in racism from slavery to today.

Jesus and John Wayne | Kristin Kobes Du Mez
How evangelical masculinity and militarism intertwined with Christian nationalism from the Cold War through Trump.

The Flag and the Cross | Philip Gorski & Samuel Perry
A sociological study of Christian nationalism as a cultural framework.

Taking America Back for God | Andrew Whitehead & Samuel Perry
Data-driven analysis of who embraces Christian nationalism and why.

White Too Long | Robert P. Jones
How white Christianity shaped racism and continues to perpetuate it, especially in the American South.

Historical Depth

The Cross and the Lynching Tree | James Cone
How white Christianity spiritualized violence & how Black theology confronted it.

Baptizing America | Melani McAlister
How evangelicals came to see the U.S. as central to God’s global plan.

One Nation Under God | Kevin Kruse
How “Christian America” r

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

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• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

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"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Transcript

The Comfort We Called Holy: How White Christian Nationalism Formed Us

 Welcome back to Jesus, Justice + Mercy. Thank you again for allowing me a moment last week. I’m not sure I am fully through the lament, and I don’t think at this point in time we can believe we have finished lamenting. But I think I am moving through the paralyzing phase. So yes, last week almost broke me. And this episode is a bit of WHY it keeps happening and how we stay in the work without losing ourselves.
With that, I want to spend time discussing the architecture that created the damage that many of us feel. Lament exposes the fracture. History tells us how it formed. Formation determines whether we keep rebuilding with the same cracks or start something new.

If we take time to really look at the water we’ve been swimming in, we’ll see that it’s not just our faith, but the discipleship we inherited that has shaped us. And much of that shaping happened quietly through repetition, culture, and reinforcement long before we knew to question it. So noticing it now isn’t about guilt. It’s about openness and honesty.

In past episodes, I’ve talked about how the church participated in injustice. Today, I want to talk about how that participation shaped us spiritually.
White Christian nationalism is not just a political movement. It’s a formation story. And it didn’t suddenly appear in the last decade. It has been discipling us for centuries.

So before we move any further, we need to slow down and name a few things.
We need to name the reflex, or that automatic tightening in our chest when someone questions “Christian America.”
We need to name the comfort and the sense of safety we feel when faith and nation seem aligned.
And we need to name the confusion or disorientation we experience when Jesus doesn’t quite fit that alignment.

Because in that formation, we heard language about faith, righteousness, and biblical values. And much of it sounded good. But alongside that message was something else, a quieter, shadow message shaping us too. A message about security, control, and national blessing.

Over time, that shadow message trained our instincts. It shaped what we learned to fear.

Before we talk about what we were taught to fear, we need to talk about what we were formed to love.

Many of us, especially here in the United States, were shaped by a story in which America and the Kingdom of God quietly merged.

And while this episode is grounded in that geographical context, this dynamic isn’t uniquely American. Whenever Christianity lives close to political power, something subtle begins to happen. Faith slowly absorbs national identity. Security begins to feel spiritual. Influence starts to feel necessary.

For many of us, that shift wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was gradual. Ordinary. It showed up in small ways, in how standing for the flag felt intertwined with worship, in how “law and order” language sounded like righteousness, in how social justice concerns felt suspicious or politically driven, and were the result of liberal drift. Over time, America quietly slid toward the center of God’s redemptive story in our imagination, and cultural change began to feel more threatening than injustice itself.

No one needed to spell it out. It was simply the air we breathed.

Security felt reassuring. Order felt faithful. National blessing felt like confirmation that God was pleased. And when those instincts are reinforced week after week, generation after generation, they stop feeling cultural and start feeling spiritual, like this is simply what discipleship looks like.

There are historical reasons this took root, and I’m not going to walk us through a full timeline here. But historians and theologians have carefully traced these threads, and I’ve included quite a few great books in the show notes if you want to go deeper.

For now, let’s look at one of the earliest theological shifts.

First, we need to talk about the idea of being a “chosen nation.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses the image of a city on a hill not to describe a country, but a people whose lives reflect the light of God. It’s a picture of a community shaped by mercy, humility, and justice.

But over time, that image, along with other covenant language from Scripture, began to get woven into our national story. The language of being set apart. Blessed. Called to a unique purpose.

And that shift wasn’t accidental.

Language like that carries weight. It shapes identity. It builds loyalty. It stabilizes power.

The message was about divine calling. But what many of us absorbed alongside it was something subtler: if the nation is chosen, then its success becomes spiritual proof. If the nation is strong, God must be pleased.

But if we are uniquely chosen, what does that imply about everyone else?

Chosen language, when attached to a nation, quietly creates an inside and an outside. It doesn’t just build confidence. It builds boundaries. It suggests that God’s purposes are centered here, and that everywhere and everyone else is peripheral.

And once that claim takes root, a warped logic follows.

If the nation is chosen, then its success becomes spiritual proof.
If the nation is strong, God must be pleased.
If the nation struggles, God must be withdrawing.

You don’t have to say that out loud for it to shape you.

But it shapes how you interpret everything.

If decline feels like divine abandonment, then protecting the nation can start to feel like protecting God.

And once chosen language fuses with national identity, belonging itself begins to feel spiritual. The borders of the nation can start to feel like the borders of God’s favor.

And when that happens, conversations about immigration, demographic change, or cultural pluralism don’t just feel political. They feel theological. They feel like a threat to something sacred.

Not because people consciously decide to exclude.

But because formation has quietly taught us who feels “inside” and who feels “outside.”

That kind of theology, even when it sounds faithful, quietly trains in fear.

And when fear takes root, it always looks for something to protect.

Once being “chosen” felt like destiny, the next formation move was inevitable, because protecting that chosenness required another anchor: order

In the decades following desegregation, many white Christians weren’t just reacting politically. They were reorganizing institutionally.

There was a documented rise in private Christian schools across the South, many of them founded in direct response to the integration of public schools.

They were often called “Christian academies.”

The language surrounding them was about religious freedom.
About protecting biblical values.
About preserving moral standards.

But the historical context was desegregation.

And underneath that language, a quieter message was forming: preserving social order was part of preserving faith.

When white Christian institutions formed in response to desegregation, most leaders did not describe themselves as resisting racial equality. They spoke about protecting biblical values. Safeguarding religious freedom. Preserving moral standards.

But formation doesn’t only happen through what we say. It happens through what we react to.

When institutions reorganize in response to integration, even if the language is spiritual, that leaves a mark.

It subtly teaches a generation that disrupting racial hierarchy feels like instability. Those challenging, long-standing structures feel threatening. That preserving familiar arrangements can look like obedience to God.

And over time, that reflex becomes instinct.

Once stability becomes sacred, disruption will always feel dangerous.

That’s how “law and order” language gets baptized as spiritual conviction. That’s how justice movements start to sound threatening instead of prophetic.

No one stood up and said, “We must defend inequality.” The message was subtler: “We are protecting biblical values.”

But underneath that language was a deeper equation forming, that preserving existing structures was part of preserving faith.

And once that instinct settles in, something shifts.

By the 1980s, we entered the Moral Majority era, in which consolidation became explicit. Faith and political power didn’t just overlap; they organized together.

The concern moved beyond order. It became about influence.

Not just preserving values but regaining control.

Not just stability, but dominance.

The message was no longer implied. It was declared: Christians must take back the country.

But beneath that declaration was a deeper assumption, that God’s kingdom advances through leverage. That securing influence is part of securing faithfulness. That losing political ground means losing spiritual ground.

Once that belief settles in, something shifts.

Losing cultural influence begins to feel like persecution.
Regaining dominance begins to feel like obedience.

So we have to ask the uncomfortable question: When did we start assuming the kingdom of God moves forward by consolidating power?

Because once faith fuses with political consolidation, the logic changes. Power feels like protection. Control feels like responsibility. Influence feels like righteousness.

When that logic takes hold, it doesn’t stay theoretical. It produces strategy. If the nation must be saved, then power must be secured.

That’s how political control can begin to feel like a spiritual obligation.

And none of this happened overnight.

It was discipleship.

 But this was not the only story shaping Christian faith in this country.

While many white Christians were being discipled into comfort, order, and national security as holiness, formed in proximity to power and cultural reinforcement, another stream of Christianity was being shaped in a very different fire.

It was forged in survival, lament, resistance, and embodied hope.

Many white Christians were formed to see America as their refuge.

Black Christians were formed to see God as their refuge. 

The Black church did not have the luxury of fusing faith with empire. It had to wrestle with a faith that could survive empire.

It had to cultivate a faith that could survive slavery, endure Jim Crow, and preach hope without political protection.

And even this week, as we reflect on the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson, we’re reminded that this stream of faith did not stay hidden inside church walls. It stepped into public life. It confronted power. It insisted that the gospel had something to say about voting rights, poverty, and dignity. And the timing, during Black History Month, feels like a quiet reminder that this story is not behind us.

nd for many white Christians whose faith developed alongside cultural power, that kind of public, confrontational faith often felt unsettling — not because it was unfaithful, but because it was shaped by different pressures.

I explored all of that more deeply in episode 4 of this season, but it matters here because it reminds us of something crucial:

The problem is not Christianity itself.

The question is formation.

What has our particular stream of faith trained us to love?

What has it trained us to fear?

What has it trained us to defend?

And this is where it can get personal.

Because it’s easy to trace history.
It’s harder to examine ourselves.

So let me ask you a few questions, not to accuse, but to notice.

Why does “Christian nation” language still feel comforting to so many of us?

Why does demographic change feel like loss?

Why do we sometimes equate safety with holiness?

Why does critique of America feel like a critique of God?

Just notice what happens in your body when you hear those questions.

If your nervous system tightens… if something in you wants to defend, dismiss, or explain, that’s not necessarily guilt.

That’s your formation speaking.

That’s the reflex of what we’ve been trained to love and protect

If we were formed to see national strength as evidence of God’s favor…then we were also formed to fear anything that threatens that strength.

Chaos.
Social change.
Racial equality that disrupts long-standing hierarchies.
The loss of cultural dominance and influence.

Not because we were told to hate.
But because we were discipled to equate stability with faithfulness.

If order feels holy, then disruption feels dangerous.

If influence feels like protection, then losing it feels like an attack. This is what the shadow formation produced over time.

It produces a fusion of faith and nation where the two become difficult to untangle.

It produces a belief that protecting power is a form of righteousness.

It produces silence that feels virtuous.
Moderation that feels mature.
Caution that feels faithful.

And none of that happens because people wake up and decide to distort the gospel.

It happens because we are shaped by what we repeatedly hear and repeatedly fear.

So let’s ask again gently, honestly:

Where do I see that reflex in myself?

When do I equate comfort with God’s favor?

Where do I assume America sits at the center of God’s story?

When do I confuse order with righteousness?

This isn’t about shame. It’s about awareness.

Once we can see the reflex, we can choose whether to keep obeying it or refuse it.

And that brings us to the real question:

What do we do when we recognize these patterns in ourselves?

I suggest we can start with truth-telling.

We name what we were formed to love and what we were trained to fear.

This might mean actually saying out loud: “I was formed to equate American strength with God’s favor. I was taught to experience cultural and demographic change as loss.”

Not to shame ourselves, but to break the silence that keeps the reflex alive.

We practice sitting with discomfort when our reflexes get triggered, rather than rushing to defend.

"When critique of America feels like betrayal, when pluralism feels like collapse - that's the reflex. Can you notice it without immediately defending? Can you let it be uncomfortable without making it go away?"

And finally, we can choose curiosity over certainty. "What if, instead of needing to be right about America's role in God's story, we became students of how empire has always tried to co-opt the gospel? What if we asked, 'What am I missing?' instead of 'How do I defend this?'"

Learners instead of guardians.

When questions stir something in you, when critique of America feels like betrayal, when pluralism feels like collapse, when demographic change feels like loss, that stirring isn’t necessarily guilt.

It’s formation surfacing.

And if we want to be shaped by Jesus, we have to be honest about what first shaped us.

When I was planning this season, I kept coming back to two sentences: Formed by Jesus. Shaped by justice.

If we’re going to talk about discipleship, we have to look at the one who defines it. Not just a single verse, but the pattern of his life. And when we trace that pattern, something becomes clear: Jesus consistently refused to fuse his mission with empire. He simply left empire out of the equation.

Let’s look at a few moments where that pattern becomes unmistakable, because if we want to know what truly forms us, we have to watch what formed him.

First, they tried to make Him King, and He withdrew
John 6:14–15  When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world. When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. nrsv

This is the moment when the crowd’s political hopes reach their peak.

In Jesus, they see: Provision. Power. Popularity.

And they have decided: This is our king. And their plan was to take him by force. But, what does Jesus do?He withdraws. Not because he was reticent. Not because he doubted his authority. But because he refused to become the kind of king they wanted. This was an explicit rejection of a nationalist messiah role.

And this is where what forms us starts to matter
Nationalism rushes to secure power when the moment is right.
Jesus steps away from the power that depends on force.

That’s disruptive.

Second, Jesus wept, when peace was rejected
Luke 19:41–44  As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

He’s not weeping because Jerusalem is oppressed.
He’s weeping because Jerusalem is choosing a path that will destroy it.

“If you had known the things that make for peace…”

They wanted deliverance.
They expected force.
And they missed the way of peace standing right in front of them.

This is where the tension deepens.

Nationalism gathers people by convincing them they are in danger. It tells them force will save them.

But when Jesus looks at Jerusalem, he doesn’t organize a response. He weeps.

He grieves what happens when faith becomes entangled with violence. He mourns the way fear can slowly harden into conviction.

And the tragedy is that the people believed they were defending what was holy.

Do we recognize the things that make for peace?
Or have we been trained to recognize threats more quickly than to recognize reconciliation?

Third, He redefined power
Mark 10:42–45 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

This may be the clearest anti-dominance teaching in the Gospels.
“The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… But it shall not be so among you.”

That line is explosive.
It draws a line between empire logic and kingdom logic.

And this is where the difference becomes clear.

Empire instinctively protects itself. It preserves its strength and guards its position.

But the kind of power Jesus describes looks very different. It gives itself away. It measures greatness by service and authority by self-giving love.

Nationalism often frames dominance as protection, as necessary strength.

Jesus reframes strength itself. In his kingdom, greatness is not secured by control but expressed through service.

Fourth, and I love this one, He built a people, not a regime
Matthew 16:18-19 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 

“I will build my church.”

Not “I will restore Israel’s throne.”
Not “I will secure the state.”

He builds a people. A community shaped by allegiance to him, not by control of territory.

And then, standing before Pilate in John 18, he says, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting…”

That line matters.

If his kingdom operated by the logic of empire, his followers would defend it the way empires defend themselves, with force.

But they don’t.

“My kingdom is not from here.”

Not irrelevant to this world.
Not spiritual escapism.
But not sourced in imperial systems.

Again, the divergence is clear.

Nationalism tries to advance faith through government power.

Jesus forms an alternative community whose power is not secured by the state.

Fifth, He refused to make Caesar sacred.

Mark 12:13–17 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.” And they brought one. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose title?” They answered, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were utterly amazed at him.

 They try to trap him. Pay taxes or revolt? Align with Rome or reject it?

Jesus refuses that binary.

“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

He neither sanctifies the empire nor declares violent revolt. He limits Caesar.

And once Caesar is limited, he is no longer sacred.

Nationalism blurs the line between God and country.
Jesus draws it clearly.

And if you follow that pattern, refusing the crown, weeping over violence, redefining power, limiting Caesar, it was always going to lead somewhere.

It leads to the temple.

Because clarity doesn’t stay theoretical.

It walks into the temple. Into the place where worship, nation, and power have become intertwined.

And once he is there, the issue can’t be avoided.

He disrupts what had become sacred.

A familiar passage to many of us, and still one of the most unsettling.

Mark 11:15–18 “Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
    But you have made it a den of robbers.”

And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.

The temple was more than a place of prayer. It stood at the center of religious life, national identity, and economic power. It was where God, land, people, and authority converged, where identity and control were woven tightly together.

So when Jesus walks in, he doesn’t just see commerce. He sees worship entangled with economic control. He sees a system in which access to God is mediated through money and national belonging. He sees holiness being used to shield exploitation.

This time, he does not withdraw. He does not simply weep.

He overturns.

Not because he is impulsive. Not because he has lost control. But because when worship fuses with national identity and economic control, it no longer reflects the heart of God.

Some sacred structures are not neutral. Some sacred language can conceal harm. And sometimes, sacred systems have to be disrupted.

And then Jesus says something unthinkable: “Not one stone will be left.”

He refuses to let any piece of the temple stand if it no longer reflects the heart of God.

Later, in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

This passage tells us he was speaking about his body not the actual temple.

In other words, holiness is no longer located in a building or a nation. It is located in him.

And once holiness is located in him, no nation can claim it. No structure can contain it. No empire can control it.

Which means the empire has only two options: surrender to that kind of kingdom, or try to silence it.

So when the empire finally attempts to crown him, the only crown it can offer is made of thorns.

And that tells you everything you need to know about the relationship between Jesus and power.

This isn’t just a political problem.

It’s a formation problem.

Because the Jesus of the Gospels consistently refuses the fusion of faith and power we have come to normalize.

And if that’s true, then the question is no longer just historical. It becomes personal.

What formed us?

And if some of this feels new or uncomfortable, that’s okay.

Most of us did not choose our formation consciously.

It was passed down to us.

Many white Christians were formed in proximity to power, where faith felt secure, culturally reinforced, and protected by influence.

Stability felt normal.
Influence felt deserved.
Strength felt like God was on our side.

Again, that was not the only stream of Christian formation in this country.

The Black church was not formed in proximity to power.

It was formed in proximity to suffering.

It learned to worship without political protection.
To hope without national reassurance.
To cling to God when the state was not its refuge.

Its faith was not culturally reinforced.
It was tested.

And that difference matters.

Because different pressures don’t just create different environments, they shape different instincts.

One stream of Christianity learned to equate stability with holiness.

Another learned that holiness can survive instability.

One learned to defend access to influence.

Another learned to depend on God when influence was denied.

And that contrast isn’t about condemnation.

It’s about decentering.

For many white Christians, cultural reinforcement felt normal, even biblical.

But it was not universal.

And if we want to be formed by Jesus, we have to be willing to learn from streams of faith that were forged without the privileges we inherited.

Not to romanticize suffering.
Not to shame comfort.
But to recognize that our experience is not the whole story.

So this isn’t about condemning a tradition.
It’s about examining our foundation.

If we were formed in comfort, what did that comfort teach us to defend?
If we were formed near power, what did that proximity teach us to protect?

And if we were taught — even subtly — that our nation holds a unique place in God’s plan, what did that teach us about everyone else?

Because when one nation is centered in the story of redemption, others are quietly pushed to the margins.

And that doesn’t just shape politics.

It shapes compassion.
It shapes who we see, whose suffering feels urgent, whose dignity we instinctively defend.

Because we cannot follow Jesus faithfully if we refuse to examine what shaped us.

White Christian nationalism is not simply a political distortion.
It is a distortion of discipleship.

Because the Jesus of the Gospels refuses to anchor his mission in political power. Our allegiance is not threatened by history. It is clarified by truth.

Formed by Jesus.
Shaped by justice.

If we are going to be formed by him, then we have to refuse what he refused.

Yes, last week almost broke me. And honestly? Some weeks still will. Because this work costs something.

But I would rather break under the weight of truth than stay comfortable in what Jesus refused.

So keep practicing, truth-telling, sitting with discomfort, choosing curiosity over certainty. Not because we’ve arrived, but because formation is slow work.

And this is how we stay in it. Jesus, justice, no apologies