On Misappropriated Witness and Christian Nationalism

Last month, our community held two forum discussions reviewing the ELCA’s draft social statement on Civic Life and Faith.

The conversation was deep, and engaged, and invited us into a deeper appreciation of the resources in both our faith tradition and our nation’s Constitution for participation in civic and political life as Lutherans.

One of the topics addressed in this conversation was the incompatibility of Christian faith, as we understand it, with the political movement of Christian Nationalism.

Specifically, Article 37 of the social statement makes this claim:

“The ELCA understanding of civic life and faith is at odds with Christian nationalism because the latter seeks to fuse the exercise of political authority with a selected set of supposed “Christian” ideals. It also asserts that Christianity should be a privileged religion in the United States. Such core beliefs represent a political ideology of religious nationalism, whether explicitly acknowledged or not. In its hardline strains, only white, U.S.-born, Christian believers are considered genuine U.S. citizens. Christian nationalists pledge allegiance to their version of the United States, first making the U.S. into an idol and seeing God’s plan in U.S. society as including only those whose religious beliefs fuse with a certain view of that society.”[1]

Those who gathered for the forums all expressed agreement with this statement, but I still think it is worth addressing today for two reasons:

First, the lectionary readings for Reformation Sunday have a lot of language about God’s dominion, and God’s law, and that kind of language is often twisted to support a Christian nationalist agenda:

The prophet Jeremiah could be misread as promoting theocracy as God’s intended ideal for all human society.

The Psalmist celebrates God’s dominion over all human kingdoms and nations, which could be misused as a justification for explicitly subjecting government power to (what some claim to be) God’s will.

The reading from Romans is really about grace, but there’s a passing reference to “atonement”, and substitutionary atonement as the one and only way to God lies at the center of Christian Nationalist calls for privileging Christianity in our government.

And even the freedom celebrated in the gospel reading can be twisted to argue that the “land of the free” has a special standing as God’s chosen nation.

None of these interpretive leaps can actually stand up to a careful study of the texts, but that’s the pattern of Christian nationalism – to co-opt religious language and use it in inappropriate ways.

The second reason to address Christian Nationalism on Reformation Sunday specifically is because today, of all days, we celebrate our Lutheran heritage, and that heritage is… messy when it comes to the question of nationalism.

It is a distressing truth that some of Martin Luther’s writings were used to justify the antisemitism of the nationalist Nazi regime in 1930’s Germany, and the national church that provided passive support to the regime was Lutheran.

Of course, the Confessing Church that resisted Nazism, most famously including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, also comes from the Lutheran tradition, but now that story is being twisted as well, by none other than American Christian nationalist.

A biopic of Bonhoeffer to be released in November, and the biography on which it is based, tries to paint him as a poster child for religiously-motivated political violence, a characterization that has been broadly rejected by Bonhoeffer scholars and by his surviving family. But it’s out there, and many people believe it.

So, to help us to disentangle what our tradition and theology really teach us about Christian nationalism, I thought it might be helpful to hear today from some special visitors.

In the tradition of historical visitor on Reformation Sunday at Abiding Peace, I would like to welcome Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Let’s begin with Dr. Luther, who directly addressed the question of how Christians are to understand our engagement with political authority in your writings on the Two Kingdoms.

L:         Ah yes, my 1523 pamphlet, Von Weltlicher Obrigkeit.

P:        (I’m glad you can pronounce that.)

Perhaps, it is most important to begin by noting that your time in history, and your conflicts with the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire, highlighted for you the dangers of entangling the church with systems of political power.

L:         That is a fair assessment. In my work as a reformer, I was confronted by rebuke not only from the head of the church, but also prosecution from the Emperor. While I ultimately concluded that “I could do no other,” standing in the integrity of my theological conclusions also put my life at risk through the power of the state. I cannot believe that such use of political power to punish faithful efforts to interpret the scriptures was anything but an abuse of the power of the law that God has granted.

            As I wrote, "He who would be a Christian ruler must put away the thought that he would rule and be mighty. For the mark of judgment is upon all life whose end is self-advancement, and upon all works which are not done in love. And these are done in love when their end is not the desire or advantage or honour or comfort of the doer, but the honour and advantage and good of others."[2]

P:        Yes, I see. So, even though your doctrine of the two Kingdoms allows for the use of force within “the temporal kingdom” (that is, earthly systems of political power), and even though you teach that God has instituted these earthly powers in order to advance God’s good design by enforcing laws to regulate sinful human behavior, I gather that you do not believe the state should be responsible for enforcing right doctrine, as the Holy Roman Emperor sought to do.

L:         I think that is a fair summary.

P:        So then, how are we, as Christians to understand the role of secular government in our lives? Do we only belong to God’s kingdom? Should we disengage from politics entirely?

L:         Ah, no. Our engagement in the kingdom of the world is essential. This is where it is essential to understand our nature is simul justus et pecator: “A Christian is at one and the same time justified and a sinner - justified because they belong to Christ, in themselves a sinner. This dualism arises from their allegiance to 'two kingdoms, God's and the world's. They not only owe allegiance to this world, their whole being is firmly knit with it and into it. A Christian must not allow themselves to think that because they belong to Christ their position in this world is in any way a special one. The freedom which they have in Christ is not a selfish detachment from the obligations which go with the stations and functions of earthly life.”[3]

P:        Oh, I see. So, we cannot just disassociate from the political world in which we have responsibilities. But we also cannot claim any special privilege or priority in the political realm based on our Christian identity.

L:         Exactly.

P:        In that case, what is the appropriate role for faith and faith communities to take in political engagement?

L:         It is clear that the church must remain institutionally separate from systems of political power, precisely so that it may perform its necessary prophetic role.

            To this point I wrote, "To rebuke the authorities is certainly not a revolutionary act when it is done at the Divine command and in accordance with the Law of God, openly, fearlessly and honestly. It would, in fact, be much more dangerous to the public weal if a preacher were not to rebuke authority for its injustices."

P:        Very persuasive. That point brings up the question of what happens when people of faith directly speak out against immoral actions of the government, not in an effort to co-opt secular power, but to challenge its abuse, which is a matter on which I expect Professor Bonhoeffer might have something to say.

B:        You would be right.

P:        Pastor Bonhoeffer, the element of your story that American Christian nationalists have latched onto is the fact that you participated in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler, which they argue makes you a proponent of using violence, when necessary, to overthrow an immoral government. How would you respond to such a characterization.

B:        Thank you for asking, because such an argument is a drastic misrepresentation of my beliefs and life. As recently stated by a group of international scholars who have studied my work, while I supported the coup, I refused to offer a Christian or theological justification for it. I understood the dangers of such a rationale.[4] 

In fact, when was involved in the coup attempt, I discussed with those who knew about the plot that I considered it very likely that by knowingly committing murder, I might very well be condemning my own soul. The fact that I was taking this step because I saw no other way to stop the genocide of the Jews and many others did not make my actions morally right.

P:        Wow! That’s quite a risk take, not only the risk of execution by the Nazi government, but risk to your soul as well. Why were you so committed to opposing the Nazi regime?

B:        My motivation was never about controlling the government of my country. It was always about following the path of Christ. In my writings, I talked about the importance of adopting “the view from below,” which means “to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.”[5] I could never support an ideology that craves power, especially not power to impose its own vision of society onto others by force. That is the ideology of the oppressor, not the path of those who seek to follow Christ.

P:        So, what would you say to those who are using your story to challenge others with the question “how far will you go?”

B:        I would challenge them to ask the question that defined my life: “Who is Christ for us today?”[6] This question always lead me to discover Christ in the presence of my neighbor, and to recognize the work of Christ in society as the work of solidarity with the suffering.

P:        And, at the risk of sounding like a biblical lawyer wanting to justify myself, “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

B:        I was clear on that answer well before the crisis of nationalism was obvious in my country. In a 1930 sermon I preached that Christians must recognize our kinship with every people. If we could actually practice this unity that God wills for us, “no nationalism, no hate of races or classes could execute its designs, and then the world would have peace forever and ever.”[7]

P:        Well thank you both for your testimony today, and more importantly for your lives and teachings that offer such depth of reflection and insight about how to do the complicated, and challenging, but ultimately life-giving work of seeking to follow Christ in this imperfect world.

            Although our congregation is carrying on that work in a very different context than either of your faced in your lives, there are clearly some common evils, and we are blessed to have your partnership in the gospel to help us in these times.

Thanks be to God.

L &B:  Amen

[1] https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Civic_Life_and_Faith_Draft.pdf

[2] Quoted in Luther’s Doctrine of The Two Kingdoms in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics, 8/1/2002. https://elca.org/JLE/Articles/931

[3] Ibid. pronouns adjusted to be gender-neutral.

[4] Petition to “Stop Misusing Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Support Political Violence and Christian Nationalism”

[5] Quoted in petition written by the co-presidents of the International Bonhoeffer Society and colleagues: https://www.change.org/p/stop-misusing-dietrich-bonhoeffer-to-support-political-violence-and-christian-nationalism?signed=true

[6] Ibid.

[7] ibid