I believe I am an open-hearted person. I don’t debate, nor do I continue trying to explain things as simply as I can to the closed-minded people I may encounter along my way.
Throughout my ministry, I have enjoyed many friendships with pastors from other denominations and religions. I mean no person harm of any kind, and I try my best to live and let live. I never have been a “salesman for my understanding of Jesus.”
Michael Chancellor
However, I cannot tolerate Christian nationalism. There are some limits beyond which I cannot go, and Christian nationalism is one of them. It is neither Christian nor patriotic; rather, it is the antithesis of both. Put more simply, it was birthed in hell by the father of deception and lies.
As best I can understand, Christian nationalism shifts worship toward three objects.
First, the movement is not Christian in any sense of the word. Like the Golden Calf of old, it replaces the unseen Triune God with a distorted focus on a person, a movement and a party. It wears a costume of decency to cover its idolatry, worshiping at the feet of a person, power and influence. It baptizes deception as a virtue and hatred as a tool. Wearing the clerical robes of respectability, it hides indecency and predatory behavior like a wolf among sheep.
“Christian nationalism was birthed in hell by the father of deception and lies.”
Second, there is no Bible here, but rather a book of drivel from a drooling monster — a historical instrument of deception and misdirection designed to seduce gullible people into turning on each other. A preacher stands before them, sharing nothing but lies and grievance. No prophet courageously rises to expose their idolatry or point out that they are worshiping a skeleton devoid of substance or power.
And so, they gather again and again in once-sacred halls where the true God once met God’s people. Offerings are taken from the gullible to feed greedy leaders and the oligarchs waiting behind the curtains in slobbering expectation.
As corrupt as the “Christian” part is, the “nationalism” pairs nicely with its own corruption.
Third, nationalism is a warped interpretation of the role of government. While not unfamiliar in history, our most recent global exposure to it was Nazi Germany. Born out of the fires of a national grudge over the damage of the First World War and the crippling economic levies placed on Germany, Adolf Hitler arose like a monster from the pits of hell. Oddly, his themes resonate with those today who feel the sting of being deprived of what they believe they are entitled to.
This nationalism is grounded in a false narrative about the origins and history of the United States. For students educated before partisan forces seized seats of power, exposure to real history was grounded in accurate, documented facts — not wishful myths birthed in fantasy and fiction.
Much of this current narrative is pure fiction, trying to paint a different story of the United States. To cover up the pain of Native Americans and suppress the real history of enslavement, a tapestry of lies was woven on the looms of imagination, not history. In order to sustain this mythological history, all conflicting events were covered over with finely woven fabric.
The history of America is not the rise of a “pure” nation without spot or blemish, but rather an ongoing, gripping saga of struggle and course correction, often against great odds. It is a story of historic people who wanted more and refused to settle for less.
We bear guilt as a nation for how we have treated Native Americans, the enslaved and immigrants, but we have not allowed that guilt to be the end of our story. Our past does not have to doom us to settle for what happened; instead, it can inspire us to change, increasing opportunity for everyone on these shores.
That progress is up to us. Will we own the best and the worst of who we are, learning the lessons of justice, liberty and opportunity for all? I hope so. I pray so.
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.