(Refections on MLK Day, 2026)

Notice that white Christian nationalists rarely if ever talk about following Jesus. Rather they boast about following Christ, but the Christ concept they have created to support their racist nationalism has nothing to do with the person of Jesus as portrayed by the gospels. In other words, white Christian nationalism, has nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, Jesus would be deported by them, or worse, because they are actually following the way of empire, the way of Caesar and Pilate, not the way of Jesus that calls for love, justice, and care for the most vulnerable among us.

Jesus as portrayed by the gospels represents everything that white Christian nationalists hate – a brown-skinned refugee who lived in resistance to the imperial powers that controlled the land in which he lived. By using imperial power to persecute the most vulnerable among us rather than feeding them, clothing them, sheltering them, caring for them, and welcoming them; white Christian nationalists show with their actions that they not only do not follow Jesus, but they actually hate Jesus.

White Christian nationalism is simply white supremacy expressed through religious language and symbols and supported by the lie of divine justification and funded by the greed of oligarchs. It has existed in what is now the United States ever since the first Europeans arrived. It has been used to justify the genocide of indigenous people, the exploitation of nature and extinction of numerous species of life, the enslavement of black persons, Jim Crow and segregation, and now full-blown fascism and the mass deportation of black and brown immigrants and refugees and their detention in concentration camps. 

What is happening in the United States right now is what happens to a country that never fully confronts or repents from its original sin of white supremacy, and white Christian nationalism is actively perpetuating this original sin of our country to the benefit of nihilistic and fascist oligarchs who are profiting from the continued annihilation of our world. 

The United States has periodically pruned back white supremacy, at times cut some of the weeds of white supremacy, and sometimes even mowed the lawn of white supremacy, but we have never fully pulled up white supremacy by the roots. Thus it keeps growing back each time we think we have cut it back enough, with its roots as strong as ever, and white Christian nationalism serves as a fertilizer for the white backlash that comes after every advance we make in civil rights.

None of what white Christian nationalism represents has anything to do with the way of Jesus. White Christian nationalism is the antithesis of the way of Jesus, who calls us all to bring good news to the poor and liberation for the oppressed. White Christian nationalism perpetuates oppression, sees poverty as the result of sin, and treats people who actually look and act like Jesus as less than human, which to them is the equivalent of less than white. This is hatred for Jesus rather than following the way of love and justice in the world. The United States will never be great or even good if it does not fully repent from the sins of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism.