There is a question beneath much of the pushback I get when I write about Christian nationalism.
Why are you so intense about it?
Why do you hit back so hard?
Why not give people the benefit of the doubt? Why not make room for “different values”? Why not stop treating faith like a threat?
The short answer is that I do not hit back at Christian nationalism because I hate Christianity. I hit back because I understand what happens when faith stops being an invitation to love, serve, repent, and practice humility, and becomes a demand that everyone else submit.
Christian nationalism is not simply Christianity practiced in public. It is not a Christian person voting according to their conscience. It is not a church feeding people, holding a prayer vigil, running a food pantry, or organizing around a sincerely held moral concern.
It is a political project: the belief that the United States is, or must become, a distinctly Christian nation, and that the government, its laws, and its public institutions should protect and enforce a particular Christian social order. Scholars and advocates distinguish this from ordinary religious faith precisely because it fuses Christian identity with national belonging and political power.
That distinction matters.
Because once “Christian” becomes the standard for who is a real American, whose family is legitimate, whose body can be regulated, whose history may be taught, whose books may be read, and whose rights can be negotiated away, we are no longer talking about private faith.
We are talking about power.
The view from the edge
The margin is not a place most people choose. It is where people are put when the center decides their existence is inconvenient, disruptive, sinful, suspicious, or expendable.
It is where you end up when your life is treated as a debate topic instead of a life. When your family is treated as a threat. When your autonomy is framed as rebellion. When your dignity is made conditional on how quiet, grateful, respectable, heterosexual, gender-conforming, obedient, or politically useful you are willing to be.
From the center, power can look like tradition. It can look like “common sense.” It can look like morality, order, family values, patriotism, or concern for children.
From the margin, you learn to ask different questions.
Who gets to define those values?
Who pays the cost when those values become law?
Who is protected by the system, and who is told that their suffering is simply the price of someone else’s religious freedom?
Those questions are not anti-Christian. They are the questions anyone should ask when a movement wants to merge religious authority with state authority.
This is not about one faith-filled neighbor
I know Christians who are kind, thoughtful, justice-minded, and deeply committed to the well-being of people unlike themselves. I know Christians who understand that religious freedom means freedom from government-imposed religion as much as freedom to live out one’s own faith.
And that is exactly why I refuse the manipulative claim that criticism of Christian nationalism equals hatred of Christians.
It does not.
You can be Christian without believing the government should declare America a Christian nation. You can believe in Jesus without believing your theology gives you the right to govern your neighbor’s body, family, school, library, marriage, medical decisions, or civic belonging.
You can cherish your faith without requiring everyone else to live under it.
Christian nationalism asks for something else. It asks for special status. It asks the state to bless one version of Christianity as the moral and cultural authority over everyone. Research on the ideology commonly centers on beliefs that America should be formally recognized as Christian, that laws should be rooted in “Christian values,” and that Christian identity is tied to authentic American identity.
And whenever someone claims the power to define who counts as a “real” American, there is always someone else being pushed outside the definition.
When belief becomes control
The problem is not that people have convictions. Everyone does.
The problem is the move from I believe this to you must live under this.
That move is often dressed up in gentle language. It is called protecting values. Defending religious liberty. Returning to biblical principles. Restoring the family. Saving the country. Protecting children.
But people on the receiving end recognize the pattern.
A demand for obedience does not become less coercive because it is wrapped in scripture.
A law does not become less harmful because its authors call it moral.
Exclusion does not become compassion because it is delivered with a Bible verse and a smile.
Christian nationalism borrows the emotional authority of faith while operating through the machinery of domination: law, policy, schools, courts, public funding, surveillance, censorship, and social stigma. It treats pluralism not as a constitutional reality or a moral responsibility, but as an enemy to defeat.
That is why it is so dangerous. It does not merely want room for Christianity to exist. It wants a particular kind of Christianity to sit at the head of the table, determine the rules, and decide which people deserve a chair.
Why I refuse to be quiet
People who benefit from power often prefer marginalized people to speak softly about the systems harming them.
They call it civility when the vulnerable make themselves smaller. They call it nuance when the truth is diluted until no one has to feel uncomfortable. They call it divisive when someone names a structure that many others would prefer to leave unnamed.
But anger is not always cruelty. Sometimes anger is clarity.
Sometimes it is the nervous system recognizing a familiar threat.
Sometimes it is the accumulated knowledge that polite requests for dignity have been ignored, mocked, legislated against, preached against, and turned into another argument about whether marginalized people deserve equal protection.
So yes, I hit back hard.
Not because I want to control anyone’s faith. Not because I believe Christians should be silenced, excluded, or stripped of their right to worship freely. And not because I think every religious person is a Christian nationalist.
I hit back because I believe no one should have to adopt the theology of the dominant group in order to be safe, free, respected, or fully American.
I hit back because democracy cannot survive when citizenship is treated as a religious test.
I hit back because the people most affected by these political projects are too often expected to carry their pain quietly so the people causing it can continue to call themselves loving.
A different kind of witness
I still believe faith can call people toward compassion rather than control. I still believe communities can choose humility over certainty, service over dominance, and repair over punishment.
But that kind of faith does not need the state to enforce it.
It does not need to erase queer people, restrict women’s autonomy, diminish religious minorities, or treat nonreligious people as morally suspect in order to survive. It does not need a captive school board, a censored library, a compliant legislature, or a court system willing to turn some people’s theology into everyone else’s legal obligation.
A faith worth defending does not fear the freedom of its neighbors.
It does not confuse power with righteousness.
And it does not call domination holy.
I write from the margin not because I belong there, but because too many people have mistaken the margin for the place where they are allowed to put everyone they do not want to face.