Today’s celebrations of Easter are the culmination of “Holy Week” in the life of Christian churches. In recent days, Christians around the world have marked the final events of Jesus’ earthly life by recounting the Last Supper, Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, and his burial. In dramatizing the story of the Passion through these liturgies, Christians are meant to walk with Jesus through his darkest times before they arrive at the joys of Easter Day.
As an Episcopal priest, I have the honor to lead worship through these holy days and use the power of this journey to help us ground our lives as Christians. But this year I am particularly aware that much of what passes as Christian in the current cultural conversation seems to completely ignore this central story of our faith. I’m thinking particularly of the upswell of “Christian nationalism:” Christians who seek to align themselves with political powers to achieve authority over others and force them to live by their idea of who God is and what God wants.
Christian nationalism is not the idea that your faith should influence how you vote; of course it does. It is the idea that Christians should gain dominion and power over the country in the name of restoring it to its “rightful” ways. Christian nationalists seek to live out that belief by any means necessary: by law, by vilification and, increasingly, by force.
Christian nationalism is not patriotism — which is a love of your country and a respect for its foundational ideals. Rather, in attempting to make their view of Christianity rule the land, Christian nationalism violates the First Amendment which protects freedom of religion for all people. Thus, it is anti-American. And importantly for Christians, it is also a theological heresy as it violates the very message of the Cross.
This past week we saw no shortage of evidence that Jesus explicitly refused to force his way into power to gain dominion over others. Instead, he was so committed to the way of love that he was willing to be unjustly condemned and brutally killed rather than align himself with the political powers of the day. In the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection Christians are reminded that we are called to love one another as he loved us — in that same way; to take up our cross — not our crown — and follow him.
Christian nationalism is the antithesis of that kind of witness. And as people increasingly associate the Christian name with those who would subjugate the truth of the Gospel to their own quest for control, people are increasingly turning away from the faith.
Christians who are distressed by how the name of Jesus is being misused and abused need to reclaim his name by embodying a different kind of witness. We need to be louder with our love. We need to be willing to claim the title of Christian as one who is open-armed and open-hearted, there to give of ourselves for the betterment of others, ready to listen and to learn, and willing to stand up for those whom no one will stand with.
That is who Jesus is and that is what Jesus did. It is through the story of the Cross and Resurrection that we see this most clearly; see the depth with which he loves us and the way to which he calls us. And it does not look at all like political power or dominion.
That is the Jesus which Christians need to be showing the world by loving the world and its people as much as he did. It is my hope that this year, as we celebrate Easter, we do not forget that Jesus suffered and died at the hands of those who compromised their religious tenets in order to align themselves with political power, and that we remember in whose footsteps we are meant to be walking. And I pray that we might have the courage to follow in faith where he has led the way, claiming his name and bearing his love to a world that desperately needs it.
The Rev. Noah Van Niel is the rector of Christ and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Norfolk.
