26 Oct 2026 Whose Kingdom? WACC Europe discusses Christian nationalism and the politics of belonging
“Christian nationalism” has become one of the defining phrases of contemporary political commentary, used to describe the fusion of religious identity and political power seen most visibly in the United States. But what does it actually mean, where does it come from, and how should churches committed to democracy and pluralism respond?
These questions were at the center of the October WACC Europe Discussion, “Competing Visions of Christian Public Life: Christian Nationalism, Churches, and the Politics of Belonging.”
The speaker was Dr. André Gagné, Professor and Chair of the Department of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal and author of American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times and, most recently, Chrétiens en quête de puissance (Christians in search of power). He offered a rapid but deeply grounded tour of a movement whose echoes are increasingly heard far beyond North America.
A concept that is not new
Gagné began with a caution. Although the term has been widely popularized in recent years, the phenomenon itself is old. Citing historian Matthew Avery Sutton’s new book Chosen Land, he noted that Christian nationalism has shaped activists across the political and religious spectrum for centuries, and that Christians from Frederick Douglass to Jerry Falwell have used the Bible to try to impose their values on the nation.
This may surprise people who hear the term only as a pejorative, Gagné acknowledged, and its negative connotations are deserved when it describes efforts to impose one view on the rest of society. But progressive Christians, too, carry visions of what Christian life in society should look like.
Sutton identifies four streams in American Christianity:
- a conservative stream rooted in tradition and historic creeds;
- a revivalist stream focused on personal conversion and individual morality, from George Whitefield to Billy Graham;
- a liberal stream adapting theology to modern reason and science; and
- a liberationist stream that sees Jesus as liberator of the oppressed, championed by Black, Latino, Indigenous and immigrant faith leaders.
What is called Christian nationalism today, Gagné argued, is essentially a fusion of the conservative and revivalist streams.
From fundamentalism to the Christian Right
The modern roots of Christian nationalism lie in Christian fundamentalism, a reaction to modernity and especially to the theory of evolution. The Fundamentals, published between 1910 and 1915, set out to combat higher criticism, liberal theology, atheism and “evolutionism.”
Fundamentalists won the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial but lost in the court of public opinion. They nonetheless remained politically active: defending Prohibition, fighting communism as a form of atheism, taking ambiguous positions on segregation, and mobilizing against abortion after 1973.
That mobilization produced Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority (1979–1989), the core of what became the Christian Right: a coalition of evangelicals, Catholics and ultra-conservative Protestants that the Republican Party came to recognize as a decisive voting bloc.
Its goal, Gagné said, has remained constant: to align the laws of the land with its “Judeo-Christian” values. Its sense of persecution is striking in a country where roughly 250 million of 350 million people identify as Christian. What is new today is intensification, amplified by social media influencers with enormous followings.
A political theology of power
Gagné himself prefers to speak less of “Christian nationalism,” which he finds ambiguous, and more of the specific political theology that drives it.
One source is Christian Reconstructionism, founded in the 1960s and 70s by Rousas J. Rushdoony, which radicalized Abraham Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty into a demand that every area of life be governed by biblical law. From this grew Dominionism: the conviction that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.
Its key text is the creation mandate of Genesis 1:26–28. Where most Christians read the call to “rule” and “subdue” as stewardship of creation, Dominionists read it as a mandate for the redeemed to reclaim the authority Adam lost.
Gagné traced how this idea has been “Pentecostalized” into what he calls charismatic Dominionism, which helps explain developments both in the US and around the world.
The late C. Peter Wagner described his movement’s divine mandate as taking back “what Adam handed over to Satan in the Garden of Eden,” so that whole cities and nations would be transformed when Christians became “the head and not the tail.”
The strategy is the “Seven Mountains of Culture”: arts and entertainment, business, education, family, government, media, and religion. As Lance Wallnau argues in Invading Babylon, this does not require a majority of conversions, only committed disciples placed in the “high places” of each sphere.
Grievance and troubling echoes
Why does such a theology gain traction?
Gagné pointed to grievance. Religious radicalization, he explained, occurs when social conflict is interpreted in religious terms. Quoting Peter Neumann of King’s College London: “Ideology without grievances does not resonate, and grievances without ideology are not acted upon.”
Christian nationalism combines both: a theology of power with a strategy to penetrate society, fueled by a sense of exclusion and persecution that deepened during the Obama years.
He closed with a sobering comparison. Historian Roger Griffin defines fascism’s core as a “palingenetic” ultranationalism: a myth of national rebirth from perceived decadence. Christian nationalism likewise tells of a nation founded as Christian, lost to secularization and moral decay, and needing a return to a golden age.
Both reject liberal democracy and pluralism, and Christian nationalism aims at a theocratic-nationalist order that diminishes the place of those who do not share its faith.
Issues raised in the discussion
Participants first asked why Gagné had not used the term “white Christian nationalism.” He agreed that the underlying narrative is one of white Protestant conquest and hegemony, even though supporters include Latino, Black, and Indigenous believers who adopt that narrative.
How, another asked, can such believers follow a leader as profane as Donald Trump? The answer, Gagné said, lies in a myth built since 2016, notably in Wallnau’s God’s Chaos Candidate, which casts Trump as a new Cyrus, the pagan Persian king whom Isaiah calls God’s anointed. Wallnau even sees “many Cyruses” in far-right leaders across the globe.
Participants noted the rise of overt Christian nationalism in European countries, as well as a secular backlash against those organizations with “Christian” in their name. How can churches and organizations avoid being tarred with the same brush in a transformed media landscape?
Gagné stressed clear statements affirming pluralism and open democracy, while investing in information and education, specialist briefings for journalists, local grassroots organizing in schools and town halls, voting, and above all addressing the grievance that gives right-wing ideology its force.
What do we mean by the Kingdom of God?
The most personal moment came from preachers in the group, who recognized how easily their own language could be heard differently. “Thy kingdom come” is prayed in every congregation as part of the Lord’s prayer, yet people in the pews, carrying grievances of their own, may be susceptible to hearing it as a call to conquest.
Gagné’s response drew on the Desert Fathers, who went into the wilderness to fight demons, but their own demons, not other people’s. For them the Kingdom of God was within. Today, he warned, the Kingdom has become something exterior, and the enemy has become the other.
“Yes, we should preach about the Kingdom of God, but we should preach what it means,” he said. “It means that it’s me. It’s my transformation to make this world a better place. It’s not about trying to impose a particular view or interpretation of my own Christian ideas on the rest of society and stifle pluralism and democracy. We do talk about the Kingdom of God, but what does that actually mean? We need to explain that very carefully.”
WACC Europe’s monthly discussions aim to bring a justice angle to communication and technology’s challenges, and build networks of informed engagement. The next one – “Can Film Build Bridges in a Divided World?” – will be held at 3:00 pm CET (Paris/Berlin/Warsaw) on November 17 and will focus on the Belief on Screen festival held in September in Copenhagen. Register today.
This article was initially drafted with AI assistance from a transcript and subsequently reviewed by staff and those leading the session.