First of is necessary to define the term.
A Christian nationalist is:
A person who believes that the Christian faith should inform and shape the moral, cultural, and public life of their nation, and who holds that the nation (as a historic people with shared heritage) has a right and duty to preserve its Christian-influenced identity, laws, and institutions while maintaining sovereignty.
It fuses confessional Christianity (personal and communal adherence to Christ and scripture) with national particularity: the idea that a specific people can have a corporate relationship with Christian principles—e.g., ordering society around biblical notions of justice, natural law, family, subsidiarity, and the common good—without dissolving into a borderless universalism or subordinating the nation to supranational powers.
Historical precedents in classical terms include aspects of Christendom (medieval and early modern European nations where the church and polity were intertwined but nations retained distinct identities), the English and American founding eras (with Protestant Christianity informing public morality and law while affirming national self-government), or similar patterns in other Christian peoples.
This definition deliberately avoids modern polemical overlays (e.g., accusations of theocracy, racism, or authoritarianism that are often attached in contemporary discourse). It is a straightforward synthesis: Christian in belief and ethics + nationalist in prioritizing the nation's cultural and political integrity. Different individuals will vary on the exact balance between the two elements (some more confessional, some more cultural).
I think this is desirable and should be promoted. This is a good example of my beliefs.
On a more in depth level, there is a reason I believe this.
Neutrality of Law is a Myth
There is a concept that our country was founded on that is inherently flawed. The idea is that structures of government and the laws that support them can be constructed in such a way as to provide equality to the governed through ideological neutrality and lack of bias.
This is not inherently wrong, however, it is an inherently unstable condition that can only be maintained by ideologically neutral administrators, lawmakers, and authority figures. This does not describe any society that has ever existed. While people may act this way in the short term, their underlying nature eventually surfaces and contaminates the neutrality. The Founding Fathers may have been able to suppress their ideological bias for a short time while crafting the documents and initial laws defining our government, but that condition did not last long. Ever since then ideology has crept into the bones of our government.
The problem is that the people who want neutrality are the least likely to seek positions of power and influence. The ideologically driven individual is much more likely to succeed at grasping the reigns of government and consequently leading it in one direction or another. When there is no ideology woven into the structures of law, it creates a power vacuum.
Jerry Pournelle coined a concept called the "iron law of bureaucracy," This concept suggests that in any bureaucracy, those dedicated to the bureaucracy's self-preservation and interests will gain power, while those focused on the bureaucracy's intended goals will lose influence or be eliminated. In essence, the bureaucracy itself becomes the primary goal, rather than the tasks it was designed to accomplish.
I think there is a definite parallel here. The people who set up a neutral government intend for everyone to free to do what they want and just be left alone. They don't try to steer the government in one way or another because that is contrary to their preference. So inevitably the government is led by someone else.
This begs the question:
Should government be explicitly ideologically designed and maintained?
If so, then upon what ideology should the government be built?
And why choose that ideology?
What about separation of church and state? I think this was a misguided statement based on a false assumption of continuity of neutrality of government and moral values in society. It was an assumption based on a naivety I would not expect to find in one of such stature. Thomas Jefferson was attempting to say that the state should not interfere with or require religious practice. This stemmed from the desire to protect personal religious freedom from a tyrannical state. The church of England was a prime example of this marriage of church and state. England collected taxes and part of those taxes went directly to the church. It was fully endorsed and led by the monarch. The statement was not intended to say that the values held by the citizens of the nation should be kept separate from the laws, but rather that the state and the church should be separate entities.
I think that the Founders did not intend for this nation to become what it now is. Most of them believed in the existence of a God even if they did not believe in the Christian God. Most were Protestants, raised in the three largest Christian traditions of colonial America—Anglicanism (John Jay, George Washington, and Edward Rutledge), Presbyterianism (Richard Stockton and the Rev. John Witherspoon), and Congregationalism (John Adams and Samuel Adams). Other Protestant groups included the Society of Friends (Quakers), Lutherans, and the Dutch Reformed. Three Founders—Charles Carroll and Daniel Carroll of Maryland and Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania—were of Roman Catholic heritage. Deism was present in the colonies as well but it is hard to be sure who believed this way due to lack of explicit documentation. Any way you look at it, as a general rule, they acknowledge a higher power.
In my opinion, the bedrock that this country was built on is Christian values. I think the founders knew this and everyone understood it. They saw no need to articulate this truth in the documents of our founding, but it is true just the same. This nation that I love has left it's first love and pursued things that are ultimately destructive and wrong. We need to get back to our roots. This was once a Christian nation and needs to be once again.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." All empires fall. If we don't change our ways, then judgement is coming. It may already be too late.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other," -John Adams
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious,
they have more need of masters." -Benjamin Franklin
