The Rev. Lucia Lloyd, then of the Episcopal Church, watched the first Trump presidency with apprehension. Her friends told her there would be limits to what damage he could do, despite his discriminatory and hostile rhetoric toward women and minorities, but she remained concerned. One thing she found particularly horrifying, she says, was how many Christians were showing support for the administration’s most divisive policies.
The administration’s scapegoating of minorities and ramping up of discriminatory policies eventually led Lloyd to move out of the country. And her shock at the amount of support those policies received from Christians led her to bring a resolution to 2025’s General Synod opposing the ideology, which has buoyed the Trump administration’s rise. In late November, the Council of General Synod (CoGS) unanimously approved a version of that motion. And the Anglican Church of Canada became the latest denomination to declare its opposition to Christian nationalism.
Lloyd, who is now the Anglican incumbent at St. John’s, Bowmanville, Ont., says she felt the church needed to speak out against Christian nationalism for two reasons. First, she says, when people see the name of Christianity associated with some of the ideas this movement promotes, it shapes their perception of the faith. “People who are not familiar with Christianity see the hateful stuff and think, ‘Well, if that’s Christianity, I don’t want anything to do with it.’ And really, who can blame them?”
Second, she says, it’s easy for Christians to run into Christian nationalist ideology without knowing what it is—something she’s seen happen several times in her own congregation. “It’s designed to manipulate all of our religious feelings, all of our trust, all of our sense of holiness, all of our sense of patriotism to pull us into these groups,” she says.
Lloyd created the resolution to ensure the Anglican Church of Canada has a stated policy for congregants to look to when evaluating claims they run into about Christianity’s teachings.
The organization Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN) is a grassroots coalition endorsed by former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of The Episcopal Church, among other leaders of mainline American denominations. It begins its explanation of Christian nationalism by stating that Christian nationalism is not the same as Christianity. Rather, it says, it is “a political ideology that seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy.” There is a similar version of this movement aimed at Canadian identity, says Lloyd. And it is present in Canada, she emphasizes, pointing to such examples as the religious rhetoric on display at the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, a movement which itself is tied to far-right politics in the United States and Canada.
CACN’s website adds that the movement’s emphasis on Christianity has more to do with the term as a marker of an identity group than as a religious belief. It is often associated with white supremacist beliefs and the idea that Christian identity and values should dictate government policy, often to the point of marginalizing non-Christians, it says. Lloyd adds that it also often involves an “us versus them” mindset that treats outsiders—non-Christians, immigrants and progressives—as enemies.
Christian nationalism is not a formal organization. There are no membership cards. So definitions like the one laid out by CACN tend to come from outsiders. But media outlets from PBS to The New Yorker to Christianity Today and Baptist News Global have published articles seeking to describe and pin down this observed pattern of politicized faith.
Lloyd told the Journal several times during an interview that seeking privilege or power over others and driving away those who are different bear no resemblance to the things Jesus calls followers to do.
“It’s the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches and what Jesus’ life and death and suffering and resurrection are all about. Jesus, instead of trying to gain power over people who are marginalised and excluded, time after time reaches out to embrace people that have been marginalised and rejected—and to talk about the importance of loving them, and the importance of seeing the goodness in them.”
It’s more than just a political division between different branches of Christianity, she adds. Christian nationalism is not the same thing as conservative Christianity, she says, because it isn’t Christianity at all: “What we’re describing is an ideology that’s not really a religion but it looks like a religion and invokes language and symbols that have religious trappings.” Lloyd says there are many conservative Christians who are not Christian nationalists and never will be.
The Rev. Pamela Cooper-White is an episcopal priest, dean emerita of psychology at Union Theological Seminary in New York and the author of a 2022 book, The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide. Her book, in part, considers how Christians in mainline churches can helpfully interact with people who subscribe in varying degrees to Christian nationalist ideas. She points to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute which found that by its definitions, about 10 per cent of Americans believe in Christian nationalism, another 19 per cent sympathize with it, and about another third each are either skeptical or reject it outright. An international study released this year by the Pew Research Center, another American think tank, found religious nationalists make up just 3 per cent of Canada’s population, by comparison.
When considering how and whether to start a discussion, Cooper-White says, it’s important to be realistic—a firm Christian nationalist is unlikely to be open to a conversation aimed at making them change their mind. But it is possible to have an open and helpful discussion, especially with people closer to the edges of the movement—the sympathizers and skeptics, she says.
Involvement in and understanding of the movement vary widely from the core to the edges. The leaders of the movement, she says, include a small number of influential, extremely right-wing people who are deeply embedded in the Trump administration. Many of these are unaffiliated Pentecostal Christians, she says, and subscribe to the belief that their duty is to bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ by steering the United States and the world more in line with their idea of godliness.
“[The goal is] to make America an officially Christian nation where if you’re Christian according to their definition of Christian, then you’re on the right side of God and nation and otherwise you’re a lesser human being and you deserve whatever happens to you, whether it’s deportation or just being disenfranchised,” she says. These ideas are not widely publicized, and many people who associate with Christian nationalism may not be directly aware of them, she says.
What more people experience, she says, is walking into a local church and hearing a preacher deliver a mixture of Christian spirituality and right-wing politics. It’s an environment where the music and tone of worship are louder and higher-energy than in a typical Anglican church, which can help to make the movement seem vibrant and exciting to those used to more restrained forms of worship. Politicized churches like this are the first point of contact many have with an ideology that seeks to exploit their faith for political gain, she says.
“They’re looking for Jesus. They’re looking for fellowship, they’re not looking for the political message, but then they’re indoctrinated into the political message as part and parcel of what it means to be a ‘good Christian American,'” says Cooper-White.
Some Christian nationalist leaders appear to see their faith primarily as something to promote their political agenda, she says. “On some level, I don’t believe that Christian nationalism is truly Christian. I believe that it is white supremacy cloaked in a sort of a distorted Christian language … If you can frame what you want as policy, [as] a cosmic battle of good and evil, then people really feel, ‘Wow, by participating in this, I am doing something really important and meaningful.’ “
In talking to someone on the periphery of Christian nationalism, she says, the key is in aiming to build a relationship—if it is indeed the right time and place and if you are the right person to have a calm, constructive conversation. If not, she says, it may be better to direct one’s energy toward activism elsewhere. She feels a rising urgency to spread the word about the misrepresentation of Christianity and the harms it can cause and to advocate for people vulnerable to the policies Christian nationalism supports.
The same principles apply for a Christian talking to someone whose view of Christianity is conflated with Christian nationalism, she says. Is the setting appropriate? Are they someone who is likely to be open to having a discussion? Assuming yes, she says, she would tell them not all Christians can be painted with the same brush and try to share something of what her own church believes.
“What Jesus was about was healing mercy, reconciliation, peace and justice,” she says. “The overarching message, really of the whole Bible, is God’s love and mercy … Christianity could be a good thing. If you actually read what Jesus said.”
Part of the solution, she says, is for Christians of other kinds to overcome the reticence that often keeps them quiet and promote their own ideas of what Christianity means more firmly.
The Rev. David Alenskis is an Anglican priest, a missionary to South America and a PhD student in historical theology at Wycliffe College. Alenskis splits his time between Canada, the United States and South America, an arrangement he says gives him a unique perspective on these countries’ cultures and politics. As a perpetual visitor, he finds himself communing with local Christians while remaining apart from local politics. He echoes some of Lloyd and Cooper-White’s concerns.
“I’m a missionary. My calling is to tell people about a Jesus Christ who laid down his life for them, who gave his life for the life of the world, and then calls us as Christians to do the same,” he says. “I think that is compromised when we make our first priority creating a space where we can put the political privileges of Christians ahead of everyone else.”
Still, Alenskis argues, Christian unity reaches across political divides.
As religion has receded from its former dominance in North American culture, he says, political causes have become a substitute for it—satisfying the impulses to seek belonging, meaning and participation in a shared way of life. Christian nationalism is part of a strain of conservative politics that has capitalized on that desire to hold on to some features of religious identity, he says. However, he notes, others may argue progressive-leaning Christians and church leaders have made a similar alliance with left-wing politics.
“I think that in both cases, the question is: What does the church have to offer that either secular vision of politics cannot?” he says.
One lesson Alenskis says he has learned as a missionary is that even when he disagrees very strongly with another Christian’s politics—even to the point of thinking their conclusions are contrary to the faith—there are values and beliefs they have in common. And there are sincere, believing Christians to be found among the Christian nationalist movement, he says.
“I think we have to own the fact that if we are one in Christ, we are one in Christ with some people that are saying and displaying some things that we may just profoundly disagree with,” he says. Anglicans may feel an impulse to distance themselves as much as possible from other Christians they disagree with, he adds. And it is appropriate to call out actions and policies that do not reflect the message of the gospels, he says—as many churches did with South African apartheid, for example. But Christians are called to recognize one another as siblings despite their differences. Acknowledging that unity even across wide political divides can be a powerful witness in its own right, he says.
