Among evangelical and Presbyterian-leaning Protestants, the first iteration of Christian nationalism came with Francis Schaeffer’s transformation from the philosophical guru at a small Christian study center in Switzerland into the public intellectual behind the New Christian Right. His documentary series and book, “How Shall We Then Live?”, alerted evangelicals to the dangers of secularization and moral relativism that drove many social ills, chief among them abortion. Embedded in Schaeffer’s outlook was the idea that America had a Christian founding that depended on ideas and institutions from the Protestant Reformation. Schaeffer inspired Jerry Falwell’s political activism in the short-lived Moral Majority (1979-1987). Schaeffer also inspired a group of young evangelical historians, George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Nathan Hatch to write a book, The Search for Christian America, that pushed back at least on Schaeffer’s historical claims about America’s Christian character. Ironically, those historians, while dubious about the United States’ Christian origins, left room for those who desired a Christian nation. In the book’s conclusion, the authors wrote that “Christians still must labor without ceasing for truth and morality in the midst of our own age.” That message may not have necessarily included approval of the Moral Majority’s politics, but it still added legitimacy to Christians who wanted American society to reflect Christian ideals.
At roughly the same time that Schaeffer was tapping Christian nationalist sentiments, Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus were teaming up to rally Protestants and Roman Catholics in an informal alliance against secularism. Neuhaus’s book, The Naked Public Square (1984) was a thoughtful version of Schaeffer’s critique that resonated with Colson’s Kingdoms in Conflict (1987), a book that popularized worldview thinking, or the idea that a person’s basic beliefs influence his or her perspective on all aspects of life. That particular understanding of belief as a controlling principle in human experience added momentum to the idea that secular government was a myth. Neutrality was impossible. Government would inevitably be religious in some way, either positively or negatively. This understanding of society and the role of religion received even greater plausibility when James Davison Hunter, then a young sociologist at the University of Virginia, wrote Culture Wars (1991), a widely read book about the religious divide in the United States between theologically orthodox and progressive Americans. What was notable about the 1980s and 1990s version of a religious, if not per se Christian nationalism, was its inter-faith character. Hunter envisioned a set of policy matters that united conservative Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and Mormons while Neuhaus and Colson initiated the pan-Christian conferences, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”
The culmination of such cooperative efforts was one factor in the election of George W. Bush, arguably the most evangelical of any Republican president since World War II. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism” was the title of a book by the conservative evangelical and current editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Marvin Olasky, who taught journalism at the University of Texas and was an advisor to Bush while governor of Texas. The hope among many Christian conservatives, especially in the Neuhaus and Colson orbit, was that Bush as president would add vigor to a faith-based set of policies and reduce the secular outlook that had dominated American politics since the 1960s. The 9/11 terror attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Great Recession of 2007-2008 knocked Compassionate Conservatism off the Bush administration’s list of priorities. The challenges of the war in Iraq, in turn, were too much for some evangelical leaders (academic and ministry) who experienced Bush-fatigue and left the world of conservative politics. Read more»
D. G. Hart | “Why Christian Nationalism, and Why Now?” | Providence | February 3, 2026
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