Politicized Christianity is harmful.

I had coffee this morning with a long-time friend and colleague, and our discussion came around to the Russo-Ukrainian war of the past three years. My friend, who spend five years in Ukraine as a missionary in the 1990s and helped establish a Christian college in the Donetsk region where heavy fighting continues (Russia has tried to annex the region), told me that over one million people on both sides have died during this war and unless a cease-fire occurs soon, the killing could wipe out another million troops and civilians and exacerbate the population crisis both countries face now and in the coming decades.

The options for Ukraine are all bleak. The best outcome is probably one where Ukraine cedes territory to Russia and gives up on NATO membership in exchange for security guarantees that allow the country to maintain its independence and freedom for its citizens. For those like me who want complete Russian withdrawal from territories they attacked over the last ten years, this would be a bitter pill to swallow as it would be for most Ukrainians.

Where does the blame lie for all of this? That is not easy to answer although the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin certainly gets the lion’s share. But my friend pointed out something we in Europe and North America don’t see. Blame certainly rests with the Russian Orthodox Church and its former leader, Patriarch Kirill. It was Kirill who solidified Russian Orthodox support for the war. He provided the necessary moral foundation so that the majority of people would see Putin’s war as just. In other words, Kirill united the Russian Orthodox church with Russian nationalist aims.

This has happened throughout Christian history back to the Roman emperor Constantine in 313AD, and who can blame the Christians who lived in that empire for wanting relief from the widespread persecution they faced before the Edict of Milan (when Christianity was given legal status in Rome). In one sense, who can blame the Russian Orthodox leadership for wanting to be in the good graces of Mr. Putin and his government given how much they suffered during the Communist oppression of the 20th century.

A great, holy war.

Yet nationalisms of this kind align churches with deeply flawed governments that oppress their citizens and attack other countries. These alliances often have disastrous long-term effects on Christianity as the Christian gospel is compromised in favor of government interests and aims. Look no further than the disaster of World War I to illustrate.

Just over ten years ago, the historian Philip Jenkins published The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Holy Crusade. In my view, it’s his best book and in it he argues that as the state churches of Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the quasi-state Catholic Church in France aligned themselves in nationalistic ways with their governments, they provided theological justifications for the conflict on both sides. Armed with a quasi-Christian nationalism both sides sent millions of troops into battles like the Verdun and Marne where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and many more wounded. (One of those was C.S. Lewis and it made him bitter against the Church and the British government.)

Jenkins argues (and I agree) that these Christian nationalisms deeply harmed Christian faith throughout Europe. How could people trust religious leaders who helped make possible “the war to end all wars,” a brutal conflict that affected millions of people and their families, that led to economic collapse in Germany and Russia and deprivation throughout Europe and set the stage for more violence and war. It was the aftermath of World War I that bankrupted European Christianity as churches emptied out and aristocratic religious leaders became some of the most reviled people on the Continent. Many Europeans lost trust in the churches and institutions of Christendom. Over a century later, scholars of religion refer to Europe as post-Christian and it has been that way for several generations.

The United States (and Canada, to a lesser degree) were immune from this for several reasons. First, neither country possessed a state church and religious freedom led to a variety of Christian denominations and movements, none of which was large enough to dominate American Christianity. Second, the War was not fought on American or Canadian soil which meant that Americans and Canadians did not face the massive destruction of life and property faced by people in Europe. The U.S. did lose over 50,000 soldiers but its late entry into the war meant that it did not suffer the massive numbers of killed and wounded experienced by Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany, and Austria.

Politicized Christianity.

What we saw in European Christianity in the 1920s only started in the United States about 30-40 years ago. Ironically, it began as American evangelical Christianity became more politicized with the advent of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the vanguards of the new religious right in the United States. The religious left in the United States became heavily politicized in the 1960s-70s with new-left ideology and the result was an emptying out of mainline Protestant congregations throughout the country.

American evangelicals did not learn from that, and the result is that as evangelicalism in the United States became more infected with right-wing politics, they have generated more hostility toward the Christian faith. Now we have a version of Christian nationalism in the United States that mirrors the Christian nationalisms in Europe during the first world war. I fear the results will be the same–a hollowing out of true Christian faith. The signs are clear. A Christian nationalism that embraces unethical and immoral politicians. The abandonment of truth and reality for a postmodern ethos that values power and conspiracy. American Christians supporting annexation of countries like Panama, Greenland, and even Canada.

In terms of its institutions, American Christianity (in both its mainline and evangelical forms) is dying. Right-wing Trumpist politics will not save it. If anything, they will make the demise quicker (just like the left-wing politics of an earlier generation did for the mainline churches). Why? Because the nationalisms and fever dreams of Christendom do not satisfy the yearnings of our souls like the authentic Christianity found in Jesus Christ.

Philip Jenkins’s book The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Holy Crusade was published in 2014 and draws on much of the new assessment of the first world war from historians since 2000. George Orwell’s provocative little book Animal Farm reads like a tract for our times, a book that I find eerily prophetic. The famous line, “all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others” haunts me as I observe America 2025.