One Reign, Not One Flag: Why Catholics Are Called to Reject Christian Nationalism

This reflection draws on the See-Judge-Act method developed by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn and incorporated into Catholic Social Teaching by Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra (1961).

Savonarola’s Florence (1490s)
A theocratic reform movement that used the era’s new technology — cheap print — to mass-distribute apocalyptic sermons, culminating in the Bonfire of the Vanities: a purity campaign against art, books, and “vain” objects, run with real civic power for about four years before it collapsed and Savonarola was executed. It’s a compact case study in the essay’s closing image — a tower built fast on borrowed technology and burned by its own certainty.

The throughline across all of these: it’s never the technology itself — census machines, radios, printing presses — that does the theological damage. It’s a movement’s willingness to let a technology stand in for discernment. Merton’s actual proposed remedy (silence, the local, the “poverty of spirit”) wasn’t invented against AI. It’s the same remedy the Confessing Church, the desert fathers, and Merton himself reached for against radio, bureaucracy, and Cold War calculation. That continuity is probably the most useful thing these examples add to the essay: it reframes AI not as a new problem but as the newest costume for a very old one.

There’s a difference between loving your country and asking your country to stand in for your faith. Christian nationalism blurs that line — and for Catholics, that blurring comes at a real cost. The point of this reflection is simple: under the See-Judge-Act method, the fusion of Christian identity with national power fails the test, and Catholics are called to a wider allegiance.

SEE: What’s Actually Happening

Christian nationalism isn’t a fringe idea anymore. It shows up in policy debates over immigration, education, and the environment, and in political movements that claim divine backing for a specific partisan agenda — presenting disagreement not just as wrong, but as un-Christian. The issue is not only its reach, but its claim to define Christian faith through political power. A 2024 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that roughly two-thirds of Americans are either skeptical of Christian nationalism or reject it outright, while close to a third qualify as adherents or sympathizers. A separate Pew study found that most Americans who’ve even heard the term view it unfavorably.

Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, who chairs the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, has warned that the term itself creates confusion by conflating two distinct realities: devotion to one’s nation and devotion to the Church. His point is simple and worth sitting with: a Christian loves his country, but always within a larger love for God and neighbor — never as a substitute for it.

Here’s what that confusion looks like on the ground:

• Christian language and symbols are used to justify excluding migrants or minorities.

• Political causes get framed as having divine sanction, not just policy merit.

• National identity gets fused with religious identity, so that loyalty to one becomes a test of the other.

• The cross, meant as a universal sign of salvation, begins to function instead as a tribal marker.

JUDGE: What Catholic Teaching Actually Says

Catholic Social Teaching gives us several clear principles that Christian nationalism runs straight into. The conflict is basic: Christian nationalism asks political loyalty to do what Catholic teaching reserves for God and neighbor:

The universal destination of goods — Creation belongs to the whole human family, not to one nation’s exclusive claim.

Solidarity — We are one human family before we are any nationality; a politics that divides along national or ethnic lines runs counter to our baptismal unity.

Subsidiarity — Political power exists to serve human dignity, not to enforce religious conformity on citizens who don’t share the majority faith.

The common good — Real human flourishing depends on cooperation that crosses religious and national lines, not competition that hardens them.

Several thinkers sharpen the point further.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and contemplative, wrote plainly in New Seeds of Contemplation: “Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.” That’s the failure mode of Christian nationalism — it doesn’t submit to God’s reign, it shapes God into a national mascot. Merton’s spiritual project was about transcending tribal identity through contemplative openness to God; nationalism does the opposite, reducing faith to a tool of political power.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor executed by the Nazis for his resistance, is the sharpest warning of all. He wrote against the “German Christians,” who fused their faith with Nazi ideology and demanded loyalty to the Führer as an article of belief. His concept of “cheap grace” — forgiveness without conversion, blessing without discipleship — describes what Christian nationalism offers: a gospel that flatters national pride without requiring the costly obedience of following Christ. As Bonhoeffer put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” That is about as far as you can get from a movement promising earthly triumph and political power.

Mortimer Adler, the philosopher and Catholic convert, argued that Christianity transcends every political system even as it informs them through reason and natural law. For Adler, a healthy democracy needs citizens capable of recognizing truth beyond majority opinion — a recognition rooted in faith but accessible to anyone through reason. Reducing Christianity to one nation’s political program betrays both faith and reason at once.

And there’s a reason Pope Pius XI established the Feast of Christ the King back in 1925: he saw this danger coming. When nations refuse to recognize Christ’s authority over public life, the encyclical Quas Primas warns, discord between peoples inevitably follows. Christ’s reign was never meant to be national. It’s universal, or it isn’t Christ’s reign at all.

Five Reasons to Reject It — In Plain Terms

1. It gets the order backward. Country second, God first — never the reverse. Christian nationalism asks God to serve the nation instead of asking the nation to serve God’s people.

2. It shrinks the Gospel to fit a border. Christ died for every nation, not one. A faith that only really works for “us” isn’t the faith the apostles preached.

3. It turns the cross into a weapon. A sign of sacrificial love gets repurposed as a marker of who’s in and who’s out.

4. It’s cheap grace with a flag. It offers the comfort of national belonging without the cost of actual discipleship — no conversion required.

5. It divides the one family it should unite. Solidarity across nations, races, and creeds is not optional for Catholics; it’s baptismal.

ACT: What This Looks Like in Daily Life

Following the same method Cardinal Joseph Cardijn used to train young workers, and Pope John XXIII later built into Catholic Social Teaching through Mater et Magistra (1961), conversion has to start personally before it becomes communal.

Start with yourself.

• Notice where national pride has quietly taken the place of Gospel values in your own thinking

• Spend time in contemplative prayer — Merton’s path — to loosen the grip of tribal loyalty.

• Reread the Church’s actual teaching on solidarity, subsidiarity, and the universal destination of goods, rather than relying on secondhand summaries.

Then take it into your community. Bring this reflection to a parish adult education group or a small faith-sharing circle. Support policies and organizations, like Catholic Charities, that protect the dignity of migrants and refugees regardless of nationality. Speak up, clearly and charitably, when Christian symbols get used to justify excluding someone. Reach out across religious and political lines instead of retreating into like-minded enclaves. Pray for every nation, not just your own — a small daily habit that keeps Christ’s universal reign in view. Cardijn liked to remind his young workers, “We are always at the beginning.” Rejecting nationalism isn’t a one-time decision; it’s a daily choice to love past tribe, to see with the eyes of faith, and to live as a citizen of something larger than any flag — the City of God.

• Bring this reflection to a parish adult education group or a small faith-sharing circle.

• Support policies and organizations, like Catholic Charities, that protect the dignity of migrants and refugees regardless of nationality

• Speak up, clearly and charitably, when Christian symbols get used to justify excluding someone.

• Reach out across religious and political lines instead of retreating into like-minded enclaves.

• Pray for every nation, not just your own — a small daily habit that keeps Christ’s universal reign in view.

Cardijn liked to remind his young workers, “We are always at the beginning.” Rejecting nationalism isn’t a one-time decision; it’s a daily choice to love past tribe, to see with the eyes of faith, and to live as a citizen of something larger than any flag — the City of God.

This reflection draws on the See-Judge-Act method developed by Cardinal Joseph Cardijn and incorporated into Catholic Social Teaching by Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra (1961).