I am a Christian nationalist because the Founders were.
The Founders established a nation grounded and rooted in Christianity, Christian principles, and a Christian worldview. They enshrined their view of what a Christian nation looks like in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
While Christian nationalism is condemned and dismissed by some as a thinly disguised form of white supremacy, it is impossible that that could be the case. The ringing declaration of the Founders was that “all men,” every last one of them, regardless of race or ethnicity, have received certain non-negotiable human rights from their Creator.
The Founders called these rights “inalienable,” which means they are so profound and so basic that no man and no government has the moral authority to take them away. Human beings are “created equal,” and because they have been created by God and have received these rights from God, every government has a sacred duty to protect them.
These rights do not come to men from government but from God. This means no government on the face of the earth has the moral authority to deprive any of its citizens of any one of these rights. Rather, government, every government, has the solemn obligation to use its God-ordained power to safeguard and guarantee and “secure” these rights to their populace.
I use the term “constitutionalist” synonymously with “Christian nationalist,” because our constitution is the constitution of a Christian nation, and could only be the constitution of a Christian nation. Our Constitution is shot through, warp and woof, with the thinking of Christian statesmen who shared a deep-dyed view of the world, soaked deeply in the Bible.
There is a God, the Founders affirm, who is the Creator with a capital “C,” the God who is revealed in the very first verse of the Christian Bible. This God is the Creator of “the heavens and the earth,” everything that exists in the universe. One practical outworking of this foundational truth is that an American constitutionalist must oppose the theory of Darwinian evolution with every fiber of his being. A man cannot affirm the Constitution itself without at the same time standing athwart evolution shouting “Stop!”
The highest expression of His creative power is man. “God created man in his own image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Man, and not any member of the animal kingdom, is the pinnacle of God’s artistry. He is not an intruder in the environment but rather God’s vice-regent with benevolent authority over everything God has made: “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth” (Genesis 1:26).
And there is a profound reason civil rights are not granted to animals in the Constitution: they are not, as man is, created in the image of God. All these truths about man are revealed in the first chapter of the Bible and inform and shape our Constitution.
So, my friend, whether you know it or not, if you believe in a God who is the Creator of all men who are made in the image and likeness of God, you are a Christian nationalist. If you believe that our rights come from Him and not from our government, you are a constitutionalist. And you may stand proudly in the lineage of the men who founded our nation and our Constitution upon the Rock. Welcome to the club.
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