True Christianity Fosters Nationalism

 

True Christianity Fosters Nationalism. This statement should not be controversial in the slightest. Firstly, because Christianity is a religion of truth, and it is true that nations exist, that they were created by God’s intention, and that they are good. Therefore, nationalism is a righteous cause for truth. The nations will be there at the end of the world and beyond (c.f. Rev. 22), they are going nowhere. And secondly, because this is demonstratable from history that true Christianity fosters nationalism. There are numerous examples of Christian missionaries going into heathen lands and in the process of evangelism stoking the seeds of nationalism amongst the peoples there.

What I did not know was how integral the Church was in doing just this in the Arab world, including with the Palestinians,

“Both those Americans who came to convert the Jews and restore them to Palestine, and those who supported the local Palestinian aspirations, were educated in the same locations. One such place was the Andover Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts. Newton was once a city itself; today it is part of greater Boston. Newton is a circular suburb and at its centre, in a typical New England wood, lies the theological seminary of Andover. In its early days, it hosted a Presbyterian brotherhood who wished to bring 'the word of God to the heathen'. Two hundred and fifty enthusiastic boys were enlisted for the purpose; a decade later, they were in Palestine and the surrounding area, trying to convert to their kind of Christianity a society that had already encountered the Jesuits and the Greek Orthodox missionaries who had arrived years before. The Andoverians built institutes that, in time, would become the American universities of Cairo and Beirut, the alma maters of the Arab nationalist movement's first generation of leaders. The gospel they brought was thus not only that of Jesus, but also that of the youngest state in the world, just liberated from the British colonialist yoke. The historian George Antonius, author of the famous work The Arab Awakening and a senior clerk in the British Mandate government in Palestine, asserted that these missionaries were the principal agents of modernisation and nationalisation in the formative period of the modern Middle East. With the advent of a more complex theoretical view of how nations are born, the role of the Presbyterian missionaries was diminished, but they are still regarded as meaningful facilitators in the upsurge of nationalism in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.”[1]

There you have it. While immature and seriously uninformed Christians today argue online that Christianity has no connection to nationalism, missionaries of the past were leaps and bounds ahead of them in fostering nationalism as a direct result of their gospel preaching. Christ redeems us from sin and from worldly oppressors, in the case of the Arabs it was the Ottoman Empire. There is no greater slayer of tyrants than Jesus Christ. 

Also to proclaim that Jesus is the saviour of the world is not to simply proclaim him as the saviour of individuals, but of nations,

“1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:1-5).

The idea that God just wants to save individuals and strip them of their national identity is simply not true. That is in fact what Babylonianism, or imperialism does. Empires want all peoples under their sway to have their nationalities suppressed and subsumed into the imperial whole. Hence Gauls, Britons, Romans, Iberians, Greeks, Etruscans and more were simply “subjects of Rome” and later Romans by decree or paper citizenship. The practice of empires is to deny national identity and with it national sovereignty, because both things are threats to its power and legitimacy.

Christianity on the other hand proclaims the truth and someone’s national identity, or ethnicity, is real and therefore true and good, and should not be supressed. And as we know from the Bible God wants all peoples to be ruled by their own,

“14 When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother” (Deut. 17:14-15).

Israel as the model nation was to set an example for other nations. Hence, ancient and even very recent missionaries, would proclaim that peoples should be free to be ruled by their own kin, with their own laws and customs and their own unique expressions of worship for the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why when Byzantine missionaries went to the Slavic peoples and rather than just teach them Greek or Latin they helped them create their own alphabets in their own languages, so they could have their own national expression of worship for God. Like Cyril, who created the Cyrillic alphabet for the Slavic peoples on the border of Byzantium. 

This is why in times past Christian missionaries were often the principle catalyst in helping people understand their national identity. As they were in Palestine. Because they would make every effort to proclaim Christ as Lord, and they would help people understand their identity in Christ. And to understand one’s identity in Christ, one must understand who they are in the natural as well. We are not simply one big glob of humanity. This world is made up of many nations, families, with different genetics, cultures, languages and customs, and all of these things are expressions of the true diversity that God wants to exist within humanity. Imperialism, globalism, or national-denislism all seek to suppress national identity, except in the case of restaurants, of course, and  they all seek to destroy natural diversity and replace it with a pseudo-diversity of the DEI kind. 

The core problem with the Christians saying that nationalism is in conflict with Christianity, is that they have confused the Church and the Nation. The Church is a multiethnic gathering of people, whose faith is centred in Jesus Christ and his salvific work for us. The nation is an extended family, descended from a common ancestor. The two are not the same. Nations need not be Christian to be nations, though all should submit to Christ. The Church and the Nation both serve different functions for humanity. 

It is also important to note that sometimes the lines between nations is blurred. For instance, Esau and Jacob were separate peoples, yet they had the same father. They were ethnically originally brothers, but over time became very different peoples, the same can be seen with the various Germanic peoples in Europe. But this does not change the fact that one can tell the difference between an Israeli and a Jordanian, or the difference between a Frenchman and an Englishmen.

The Nation is not the Church and the Church is not the Nation. They both exist as separate entities. However, someone can be a member of both, and in the Church ethnicity is no barrier to full membership in Christ. One should not confuse the two. Christians should stop telling the falsehood that Christianity opposes nationalism, this is just historically and biblically ignorant. 

List of References

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[1] Ilan Pappe, 2024, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, Oneworld Press, pp. 104-105.