When the Cross Becomes a Flag: Thomas Merton, Christian Nationalism, and the Media Machine Fueling It
See-Judge-Act. let the method guide you in this post.
"You can now find the most ardent Christians lined up in the most ridiculous, regressive, irrational parades. If they were concerned only with flying saucers and conversations with the departed, it would not be so bad, but they are also deeply involved in racism, in quasi-Fascist nationalism, in every shade of fanatical hate cult, and in every semi-lunatic pressure group." ~Thomas Merton, The Nonviolent Alternative
Thomas Merton wrote those words decades ago. He was a Trappist monk, a mystic, philosopher, and one of the most penetrating Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. He was not writing about cable news or social media algorithms. And yet, if you read that passage today, you might assume he had a television on in the background of his hermitage, and a browser tab open on his “typewriter.”
Christian Nationalism — the ideology that fuses American national identity with a particular narrow brand of Christianity, demanding that the nation’s laws, culture, and government conform to it — has metastasized from fringe theology into mainstream political currency. Media, as its primary amplifier, has been its most faithful deacon, widely spreading and reinforcing these ideas.
What Merton saw — and what we keep refusing to see
Merton’s warning was not a general criticism of religious fervor. It was a precise diagnosis of a specific pathology: sincere religious devotion being hijacked, twisted, and weaponized into something that Jesus of Nazareth would have found unrecognizable — or worse, horrifying.
The ‘ardent Christians’ he describes are sincere believers, which should inspire empathy and a desire to address genuine devotion fueling the danger.
Christian Nationalism today carries all the markers Merton identified: the racial anxiety dressed in the language of heritage; the ‘quasi-Fascist’ admiration for strongman leadership draped in providential imagery; the pressure groups and political action committees that weaponize scripture to oppose the equality of women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and religious minorities. The theological window dressing has grown more sophisticated, but at its core remains a ‘fanatical hate cult’marching under a cross, threatening the integrity of faith and social cohesion.
Media as the movement’s megaphone
Merton understood that fear and outrage spread faster than reason, making the audience feel alarmed about the media’s power to manipulate faith and identity.
Christian Nationalist media is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. It includes television networks, radio empires, podcast networks, YouTube channels with millions of subscribers, and a social media apparatus that is extraordinarily adept at viral content. The messaging is consistent and relentless: Christianity is under attack. Western civilization is under attack. White Christian America is under attack. The enemies are named — Democrats, liberals, immigrants, academics, LGBTQ people, “globalists” — and the faithful are called to political warfare.
This is not incidental to the movement. It is the movement’s engine. The media creates the sense of siege; the siege justifies political aggression; and the political aggression — wins, losses, and outrages alike — feeds the media cycle. It is a closed-loop, profitable, and self-perpetuating system.
Meanwhile, mainstream media — chasing balance, afraid of accusations of anti-Christian bias — often covers Christian Nationalist politicians and movements with a gentle curiosity that it would never extend to comparable movements rooted in other religions. The asymmetry is itself a form of amplification.
The theological problem at the center
Merton’s critique was ultimately theological. His entire life’s work was a sustained argument that authentic Christianity demanded contemplation, poverty of spirit, radical love of neighbor, and — above all — a ruthless suspicion of one’s own certainty. The mystic tradition he inhabited understood that the soul most convinced of its own righteousness was the soul most in danger.
Christian Nationalism, by contrast, is theologically allergic to doubt. It trades in absolute certainty — about who belongs, who threatens, who deserves power, and who does not. It has no room for the Sermon on the Mount’s peculiar insistence that the blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers, and those who hunger for justice rather than those who seize it by political force.
Many Christians — across Catholic, mainline Protestant, Black Protestant, and evangelical traditions — recognize this. They have watched a political movement appropriate their faith, drape it in nationalist imagery, and use it as a cudgel. Their voices are real, they are growing, and they deserve far more attention than they receive.
What faithful resistance looks like
Merton himself pointed toward the answer in the very book from which this quote is drawn: nonviolent resistance. Not passive acceptance, but active, principled, costly refusal to cooperate with what one believes to be evil. He believed — drawing on Gandhi, King, and the deepest currents of Christian tradition — that the willingness to absorb suffering rather than inflict it was not weakness but the most radical form of power available to a person of faith.
This means Christians who reject nationalism must be willing to say so — loudly, repeatedly, and at real cost to their social and professional comfort. It is essential to support journalism that covers religious extremism with the same rigor as other threats and to oppose media that profits from outrage actively. Show up at school boards, state legislatures, and ballot boxes not as a Christian army but as citizens committed to the constitutional principle that no religion should govern those who do not share it.
Merton saw clearly that the “irrational parades” he described were not a sign of Christian strength, but of Christian failure. The cross, in early Christian tradition, was not a banner of conquest. It was a symbol of what happens to those who refuse to conquer.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
If Thomas Merton were alive today and scrolling through your social media feed — the content you share, the voices you amplify, the outrage you engage — would he recognize what you practice as the faith you profess?