The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism. By Paul D. Miller

Abstract

Paul D. Miller, Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, has written a book of immense importance and critical relevance. The Religion of American Greatness addresses the dangers of nationalism broadly and Christian nationalism particularly. As a first step, Miller examines the “identity myth” of nationalism itself, the belief that “humanity is divisible into mutually distinct, internally coherent cultural groups defined by shared traits like ethnicity, language, religion, or culture” (p. 31). Such a “nation,” Miller warns, privileges some aspect of culture, however delineated, rather than being predicated on timeless, fundamental, and universal ideals. Nationalism thus becomes a “raw tribalism” which can lead to an “internal imperialism, the rule by a cultural majority over a cultural minority under the ruling group’s predominant language, culture, or religion” (p. 75). In this context, Miller addresses Christian nationalism, which emphasizes the founding as a religious enterprise within the intellectual and cultural stream of “Anglo-Protestantism.” Moreover, Christian nationalists hold that the government has a responsibility to uphold this heritage as the cultural template for the entire country. In doing so, this subverts a fundamental principle of small-r republicanism: that of limited government. Miller describes nationalism as a form of identity politics, based as it is on a specific cultural locus. By extension, Christian nationalism becomes a form of identity politics for “tribal evangelicals.”