Is Your Faith Becoming a Weapon?: What Two 20th Century Prophets Would Tell Us About Christian Nationalism

Is Your Faith Becoming a Weapon?: What Two 20th Century Prophets Would Tell Us About Christian Nationalism

If you cut through the noise of cable news and social media arguments, you might hear two voices from the last century that have something urgent to say to us right now.

One belongs to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed for resisting Hitler. The other is Thomas Merton, the American monk who spent decades in a Kentucky monastery wrestling with what it means to be human in a world gone mad.

These two men never met. But if we could pull them into our living room today, what would they make of the way Christianity and nationalism have become tangled together in America? Let’s use a simple framework—See, Judge, Act—to imagine their conversation with us.

SEE: Recognizing What’s Actually Happening

Bonhoeffer would recognize the warning signs immediately. In 1930s Germany, he watched as the “German Christian” movement merged the Gospel with national pride, turning Jesus into a mascot of political power. He’d see the same thing happening when the Cross and the Flag become interchangeable symbols—when “God and Country” stops being two distinct ideas and becomes a single brand. This distortion threatens the integrity of Gospel teachings and risks leading believers away from authentic Faith.

Once that happens, Bonhoeffer warns us, the Gospel loses its power to challenge injustice, making us feel disconnected from our faithful Faith and integrity. Instead of speaking the truth, it starts cheerleading for whoever wraps themselves in religious language.

Merton would dig into the psychology beneath the surface. He’d see people driven by fear, desperately seeking security in political tribes instead of in God. To Merton, Christian nationalism isn’t really about theology—it’s about frightened people constructing a “False Self,” an identity that feels righteous by having enemies.

“When we lose our inner anchor,” Merton might tell us, “we look for a political strongman to give us the certainty our souls can’t find.”

JUDGE: What Does This Cost Us?

Both men would offer a harsh diagnosis:

Bonhoeffer on Cheap Grace: Bonhoeffer spent years warning against what he called “cheap grace”—the kind that demands nothing from us, requires no change, asks for no sacrifice. He’d argue that much of Christian nationalism offers exactly this: a religion that baptizes our political preferences without ever asking us to repent, to change, or to seek justice for people who don’t look like us.

Merton believed the Church betrays its calling the moment it becomes obsessed with winning political battles. If our version of Christianity requires us to demonize our neighbors to “save” our country, we’ve stopped worshiping the living God and started bowing to a tribal idol of our own making. This shift undermines efforts toward social justice by fostering division rather than compassion, making it harder to embody Christ’s love in tangible ways.

ACT: What Do We Actually Do?

So what would these two prophets tell us to do about it?

Bonhoeffer would say: Stand with the excluded. He famously wrote, “We are not to simply bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.” Genuine Faith means standing in solidarity with the people that nationalism pushes aside—immigrants, refugees, the marginalized—even when it costs us friendships, social standing, or comfort.

Merton would say: Turn off the noise and find your center. Feeling overwhelmed by chaos can be draining; grounding ourselves through contemplative prayer and silence helps restore inner peace and clarity, reminding us that everyone is made in God’s image.

Both would say: Make your Faith visible in how you live. Seeing genuine actions, like community involvement and ethical advocacy, can inspire a Sense of purpose and pride in living out your values beyond social media posts.

The Heart of the Matter

Both Bonhoeffer and Merton understood something we often forget: Christianity was never meant to be a tool for national dominance. (Let that sink in for the moment) It’s a call to radical, self-sacrificial love that makes us deeply uncomfortable.

As Bonhoeffer wrote, when Christ calls someone, he calls them to “come and die”—to die to their ego, their tribalism, their addiction to being right, and their hunger for worldly power.

Here’s the challenging question for today: If following Jesus cost you your political tribe, your social media followers, and the approval of your family, would you still do it?