"Christians who are against Christian nationalism - seems (sic) to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws! If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance."
On X (Twitter), one British Christian Nationalist with 50,000 followers (re-tweeted by another, one promoted repeatedly by Christian Concern with 8,000 followers), posts the above.
I realise that X is not the place to look for nuanced presentations of ideas, but, the above sort of reasoning is what we see from many Christian Nationalists in their longer-form pieces too. It is all so beautifully simple, and you wonder how could anyone oppose it? Jesus tells everyone to obey him, whoever and wherever they are, and Christian Nationalists are just applying this to kings and presidents, applying it at the national level. Surely you don't want people to disobey Jesus, do you?
In 2025, a lot of people with thoughts about ideas that seem reasonable to them don't then proceed to buy a few books to find out how historically Christians have thought about those ideas. They go straight to X and promote their ideas to their followers, and start accumulating likes and re-tweets. But let's not make this too much of a grumble-fest about social media.... let's answer the point being made instead. I'm a "Christian who is against Christian Nationalism". Does that mean that I am one who "seems to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws" ? Well, no; and also, no.
Seems? Or actually are?
First thing: what's the word "seems" doing there? It's a typical "muddy the waters" word, obscuring the difference between something that the poster wanted to say, and what he actually could justifiably say. i.e. One of those words used when the person using it intuitively feels or suspects that what they're saying isn't true, or that there's something that doesn't quite hold in their argument, but they haven't yet done the thinking to sort it out and present the argument properly. What does it mean to merely "seem to" want to convert a nation but not disciple, and to actually want that? If they don't actually want it, then why, in your eyes, do they "seem to"? Are you conceding already that what "seems" to be so to you is in fact merely a naive reading off from immediate appearance, something that disappears once you start to make basic distinctions and think carefully? (In which case, there would be no case to answer, and no pointing tweeting it).
And of course, that is the case here. "Convert a nation but not disciple it". The key point is that conversion is the entrance-door into discipleship. You cannot disciple those who are not converted. Converted first: then discipled. That's basic to Bible Christianity: you must be born again (John 3), and the new birth is an event that happens to people as individuals. Until you can actually see the kingdom of heaven, you cannot enter it, much less be discipled in its ways. This must happen to people personally, one-by-one. Under the New Covenant, a household can be divided, two against three, and three against two, because some are converted and some aren't. How much more a clan, village, town, city or nation? Some are "born from above", and some aren't: and that's not something dispensable, something you can bracket out as optional for the purposes of discipling them.
So, any talk of Christian discipleship for people who aren't Christians is wrong-headed: it is a mistake. In historical Biblical theology (not just from the Reformation), three uses of God's law were recognised. (These are not three in a temporal or logical sequence: they have inter-relations, but the ordering is not intended to imply sequence). The first is, as a mirror showing us God's perfect holiness, which has the consequence of showing us our sin so that we might seek salvation. The second is to curb and restrain evil - in individuals and in societies. The third is to teach those who are regenerate and do know God how to walk with him in his covenant. Notice that the third is the one that particularly applies to disciples, and not to non-disciples. The first two apply universally. This is how Christians generally have historically understood God's law to apply in the context of nations: that the first two are operative amongst them, and we preach God's requirements to non-believers with them in view. The law does not exist for the purpose of discipleship of non-believers. It has a much more limited purpose, and that is linked to the fact that the whole of God's law will not be applied exhaustively within national law (which is to say, there are many sins which will not be crimes: contempt in the heart towards one's neighbour is not an offence for the civil authorities to prosecute). Restraint of societal evil is not discipleship, and restraining evil, whilst a God-honouring and legitimate activity, is not the subject of the Great Commission.
Only two options for how to apply Christianity to nations?
The X poster above then presents us with a false dichotomy: if you don't think that the purpose of civil authority is to disciple people in the ways of Christianity, then this must mean that you wish to live under "pagan laws". These, apparently, are the only two options. You can be a Christian Nationalist, or you can wish society to be ordered by paganism. This sort of absolutist, completely-polarising statement, though, reveals nothing about the actual range of options and possibilities that do exist. It merely reveals that the person making it is completely ignorant of the attempts of Christians in the last 2000 years to wrestle with these questions - or at least, he presents himself as one when tweeting. Is it too much to point out that twisting the Great Commission into something that it isn't, and promoting paganism, aren't the only two available options for Christians?
"If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance." Here's the rub. A nation whose general character is not Christian, cannot have a "Christian national identity", in any meaningful sense that could be recognised from the New Testament. Christian identity begins with recognising that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, repenting of our sins and trusting in him for our salvation. It is an identity wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Under the Old Covenant there was a nation of people who did not, in general, have God's laws written on their hearts - and despite having a perfect law written on tablets of stone, they continually descended into the worst of idolatry. God, through many centuries, patiently taught us that it doesn't matter what is written externally: you need the Holy Spirit to make it a living reality. That reality is now present in Jesus Christ, and in the gatherings of those who know him and manifest that that knowledge is not a legal fiction, but a living, present and glorious reality. The label "Christian" should not be attached to a nation whose national character is profoundly non-Christian. The United Kingdom is not a nation of people who have seen true God, and delight to worship him, trusting in his risen Son. It is not a "Christian nation", and changing all of its laws would not make it one. Trying to re-create something akin to Israel living under the law, via making external changes, in order to have a "Christian nation" shows a profound confusion and lack of understanding of Scripture.
The previous paragraph is basic to understanding the Biblical covenants and their intended fulfilment in the New Testament church, which is a gathered body of people who have experienced the realities that the gospel describes, as demonstrated by their actual lives. There is no concept of a "Christian Nation" of people who are largely unregenerate, but who have been discipled by a great set of laws in order to largely conform to the outward requirements of Christian morality. As we say today "that is not a thing". It does not exist. There is no such concept. The apostles did not teach it, and what they did teach about understanding what had happened in Jesus Christ directly contradicts it. That's not because they were secret pagans; it's because they had grasped the fundamentals of the Christian faith and its relationship to history.
We can do better than this...
As I say, the above was re-tweeted by someone else who is promoted by Christian Concern, a former Bible college lecturer in the UK - i.e. someone who should know better. He added his own comment: "If Christians are not actively trying to Christianise their nation, what on earth are they doing? Did Jesus not call you to disciple the nations, teaching them to obey Christ?"
It ought to be uncontroversial with us that the proper manner for implementing the Great Commission is sufficiently described for us in the Holy Scriptures, where they record what the apostles who first received the Commission actually went out and did. They preached the gospel, called for response to it, gathered the converts into churches, taught them how to follow Jesus in every part of life, and to look with expectancy for his return. Concerning relating to the civil authorities, they told them that their general posture was to be one of honour and obedience (whilst allowing that there may be occasions when they must be disobeyed in order to maintain obedience to God). Concerning campaigning for creating entities "Christian nations" through reform of national laws, they have nothing to say - because, as per the above, their actual understanding radically contradicted such a mistaken idea. Jesus Christ's teachings to his disciples do not, in fact, contain a section in which he lists what laws a nation should have on its statute books - and the Great Commission is not a mandate which required the apostles or the church to campaign for specific laws as part of the New Covenant, i.e. as part of Christianity.
We are asked, what on earth are we doing? Quite often I have the feeling that I don't know what quite a few people on Twitter are actually doing (as opposed to just talking around in circles to themselves about), but for myself, I'm seeking to preach Jesus Christ, and perform good works which testify to the love which God has made known in him, so that his people might be added to and built up. That, after all, is what the apostles did and told Christian servants to do, as recorded in the Scriptures (with the pastoral epistles giving especial guidance to those in formal ministry). A Bible college lecturer ought to be able to avoid trivial semantic fallacies such as finding "disciple" and "nations" in the same sentence, and then building a non-biblical doctrine that bears no resemblance to the rest of the New Testament out of that. But in 2025, this cannot be taken for granted at all. The "hot takes" put out by people with PhD-level education are as routinely full of error here as anyone else's, sadly. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us get out of our social media bubbles of people who agree with us on everything, and who stir us up more and more to say more and more absurd and extreme things in order to maintain the previous buzz or keep gaining our followers or whatever. Let us try to love God with our minds sufficiently to say things that edify and help people to do what the Bible actually told us to do, in ways that a reasonable person reading the Bible can recognise as implementing the activities of the apostles and early church in contemporary society. Let us tremble and run ten miles before we take Jesus' Great Commission to his church, and pervert it into something else that his apostles would not have recognised as the mission they were told to implement, and did implement, and which the Holy Spirit carefully recorded for us in Scripture.
(Follow the "Christian Nationalism" tag link below to see more posts on this subject).
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