Christian Nationalism Equals ‘Spiritual Idolatry’: Q&A With Author Caleb Campbell
Throughout the United States, Christian nationalism has left in its wake broken communities and churches. Both those who subscribe to it and those who disagree are often left hurt, confused and embarrassed.
As the movement grew within his own church, Pastor Caleb Campbell set out to understand Christian nationalism’s appeal and how to help Christians minister to their close friends and family committed to it.
In Campbell’s new book, “Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor,” he adopts a missiological approach to Christian nationalism, which he explains is deeply rooted in a desire for safety and belonging. Like a missionary in a foreign country, he suggests hospitable and empathetic methods and offers practical advice to those hoping to repair and rebuild their relationships with Christian nationalists.
READ: How Religion Influenced Some Of The World’s Greatest Writers
Campbell is the lead pastor of Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix and founder of the website, Disarming Leviathan, which offers additional resources for those hoping to engage with Christian nationalists. He recently spoke with Religion Unplugged’s Isabella Meibauer about his book.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Isabella Meibauer: The year 2020 brought many challenges for pastors navigating new political divides amongst congregations. As a self-proclaimed missionary to Christian nationalists, how did your experience in particular lead you to write “Disarming Leviathan?”
Caleb Campbell: So I really don’t remember hearing about Christian nationalism before 2020, but looking back on it I can see how many of the different aspects of the movement were present in the congregation I’d served. I became a lead pastor in 2015. By the end 2020, 80% of people that were there in 2016 were gone, and most of them left around issues that were related to the American Christian nationalist movement. Usually the hot topics were racial reconciliation, immigration, politics. And so I was completely struck by that, shocked by it, distraught.
In 2021, I had people who I was pastoring walk up to me in the lobby and hand me a flyer and say, Pastor Caleb, there's a revival in town, you've got to come check it out. But when I looked at the flyer, it didn't look like a revival, which is kind of church language. It looked like a rally, like a political rally. And I discovered that there was a group called Turning Point USA that was hosting monthly gatherings down the street from me at a local megachurch. Myself and some of the leaders went to it. And we were very, very disturbed by what we saw. It really was a spiritual experience, and it was the conflation of evangelical Christianity with aspects of American politics in America, to the point to where there were worship songs, they were praying, they were taking offerings. … Watching this room full of 3,000 people raising their hands singing, “Amen, hallelujah.” That was exceptionally disturbing.
At the same time that year, the most frequent question I got as a pastor was, what do I do with my Aunt Betty or my cousin Steve or my son Jimmy? They say that they're Christian, but they're using hate speech and violent language. They're talking about doing violence to the political other. They're watching and reposting clips on social media that may be racist or xenophobic or dehumanizing to people. How do I talk to them?
And so that got me started on writing the book, which initially was just going to be a handful of, like, small pamphlets I could hand out at the church. They were just some tips on talking to people. But it ended up becoming a little more robust and then became a book.
Meibauer: How do you define Christian nationalism? What is its appeal, and what’s the danger?
Campbell: Yes, so I view American Christian nationalism from a missiological lens as a missionary. So I see it as one movement in three parts: political ideology, tribal identity and spiritual idolatry. Political ideology — it's arguing that Christians should run the state to protect and propagate their way of being in the world. At its root essence, that's the political argument. Christians should be in charge of the government.
The tribal identity is a way of recognizing that American Christian nationalists are a people group. They have their own origin story, their own taboos, their own insider language, culture — and as a missionary, you want to study the culture of the people you're trying to reach. There's a lot of people who are saying that they are Christian nationalists in America, and they mean, “I am a Christian nationalist,” in contradistinction to other Americans who I don't associate with. So instead of just saying I'm an American, they need a more acute way to define what kind of American are they. And so they're using the phrase Christian nationalist to determine, "This is my tribe, this is my people." In that sense, the political ideology only services the tribal identity.
A lot of people view this as a political movement. It is not. It's a tribal and spiritual movement with politics only to empower the tribe. And the way that you can tell is, you go to any grouping of Christian nationalists and sit down and have a policy conversation — you're not going to get there, because it's not really about policy preferences or thoughtful approaches to whatever the issue is, let's say border security. There’s 10 hours of content around rhetoric around border security, but there's five minutes of thoughtful actual policy, which tells you it's actually not really about the politics. It’s about the tribe.
And then thirdly, it's a spiritual idolatry. It is a form of syncretism, which merges or conflates certain aspects of Christianity or certain aspects of Americana or the American civil religion. So you would see this with like, patriotic hymns in the back of a hymn book, merging two things together, or “this is God's country” kind of speech. “God has a special plan for America.” I've even heard statements like, “The Declaration of Independence is divinely inspired by God.” So that's a conflation.
There’s also a thing that often gets overlooked and it’s spiritual idolatry, empire worship. The earliest Christians in the New Testament were tempted to worship the power of the empire of Caesar and Rome and whatnot, and you have that here in veneration of military power and prowess. I've heard pastors on some of these stages say things like, “The American military is God's most powerful tool of justice in the world. His mighty right arm is the American military.” It's conflating something America is doing and something God's doing, but it’s also worshipping the strength of the American military as if it's a divinely used tool of God. So the danger of it is it confuses everybody else to what Christianity actually is.
The reason why so many people are attracted to it is because they feel fear of ethnic erasure, that their way of being in the world is under imminent threat. They’re being told constantly that there’s enemies at the gates, and so they’re going to rally together to protect themselves. Recognizing that that’s what’s going on in the hearts of people also gives us the ability, or at least a strategy, for engaging because it’s not about their political ideology; it's about their heart, what's going on inside the heart.
Meibauer: If Christian nationalists are Christians, why is missional engagement with them still necessary?
Campbell: So whether a person’s a Christian or not, that's not my call to make. I could tell the fruit of a person's life: Are they exhibiting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, or are they exhibiting toxic anxiety, outrage, depressiveness, combativeness, etcetera?
And regardless of if a person is a Christian or not, the approach is still the same. It's to humbly engage with someone, recognizing that they're caught up in something that’s dominating them, right? It’s begetting this toxic fruit in their life, that they're ensnared. And so I want to seek to restore that person gently, and I want to watch out for my own self, because I need to.
I mean, 98% of this work is in my own heart, that I don't become anxious or ragey or difficult as well. And just like a good missionary, I want to study their culture and learn what's going on in their life. I want to set the table of hospitality. If this truly is an issue of the heart, it's not going to get changed through facts and opinions. It's not going to be changed by sending them a video clip or telling them to read a book or arguing with them at the 12-year-old’s birthday party.
It’s going to change through a lot of hospitality, enriched environments like the coffee shop or my kitchen table, where I'm communicating to the person that they’re welcome with me. I can communicate, you’re safe with me. … By being curious about their culture and practicing hospitality, I can create environment where I can ask a humbly subversive question, like: I share the same values you do about providing safety for our family, and I think the government should do all it can to protect our people and create a safe environment for our kids. But I've been reading the teachings of Jesus lately, who says that we should care for the immigrant and the stranger, and I feel a tension in my heart. How do we hold these two things together? And all I'm trying to do is trying to either for the first time or to renew their practice of thinking about how the teachings of Jesus reshape our hearts' desires. Because the heart’s desire for safety, belonging, purpose that’s in all of us — they’re clinging to Christian nationalism to give them what they want. I'm just trying to show that I have the same temptation to reach for other things. But in the end, the answer for both of us is not the sword but the cross, and I'm inviting them to rethink that, not telling them that they’re wrong or that they’re an idiot or that I disagree with them. … At the end of the day, I want them to recognize that Jesus disagrees with them, not me.
Meibauer: Why do you advocate for an empathetic and hospitable approach to those swept up by Christian nationalism? And, in the moment, in conversations that you have with people who are swept up by Christian nationalism, how do you help yourself to keep that humble approach and to not get swept up along with them?
Cambpell: Before I walk into the encounter with Aunt Betty or Cousin Jimmy … I want to pray and recognize, “Lord, I feel all sorts of feelings,” and just go through an inventory of what I'm feeling when I’m thinking about going to talk to cousin Jimmy. I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling shame that this is in my own family. I’m feeling anxiety that he’s going to yell again about the lizard people running the government. I feel embarrassed. I feel sad that our relationship is so frayed. I’m grieving the loss of my relationship with other family members. I’m anxious that this one’s going to end too. And then take those before the Lord and say, “Lord, I want to ask that you would carry those and bring me comfort while I try to navigate this conversation with Jimmy.”
In my experience, most missionaries have prayer teams that they'll send emails to or text messages to, and I, in my book, recommend doing that. And just knowing that I'm going to have a conversation, a debrief conversation, with people who know what I'm doing, and maybe they know Jimmy, or at least know about Jimmy — that re-answers my need for belonging and safety. And in the book, I have a whole chapter dedicated to working on my own heart because, again, that's where most of the work is.
And the other thing too, that I think is so frustrating and freeing at the same time is saying to myself over and over again, “I can’t change Jimmy.” My job is not to change this person. I can’t do that. That's only God who can do that. What I can do is be faithful in the moment to what I think God’s called me to do. My objective here is not to move the meter with Jim. You know, Jimmy’s 98% Christian nationalist. My objective is not, we’ll make him 92% Christian nationalist, right? Like that's not the game.
The objective is, I want to walk in and be as much like Jesus as I can be to Jimmy in this moment. Jesus, for me, would be with Jimmy. What I can do, though, is I can remain hospitable, so that when that — if that day comes where he feels something in his heart, something that says, my currently held commitments to Jesus and to this movement are not in alignment, who can I talk to about this? If I've been practicing hospitality, he might say, oh, my cousin, Caleb — he was kind. He asked questions. I'll give him a call.
Meibauer: What practical advice do you give to those who have close relationships that have become strained by Christian nationalism?
Campbell: There is hope. At the core of my faith is this belief that people can change, that even the “worst” people can change. In the Scriptures that I am committed to, there are countless stories of people changing. They have some kind of God encounter, and their life is radically transformed. The Apostle Paul comes to mind. … If I’m not anchored in hope, if I'm anchored in anxiety or rage, then any tool or tactic that I have is just going to be to win the argument or, you know, dominate over the other person. … American Christian nationalism has been cultivated by our communities for over 70 years, if not 200 depending on how you want to do it, which means there’s not like a quick fix. You're not going to have an argument that’s going to win a person. There’s not going to be some magic leader that swoops in and changes everybody's mind. This will be changed through 10,000 kitchen table conversations.
I have a missionary friend of mine who serves in Afghanistan say to me, half the work’s already done because you’re already in relationship with people. And so that is a gift, right? As uncomfortable as it is that this person is at my kitchen table, there’s also a gift there, because I’m in a position to reach them.
I want to give this caveat: If it is safe to do so, lean into hospitality. I do know that there are people who are targeted by American Christian nationalist movement for acts of violence and combativeness. So if it's not safe, don’t do it. I’m not asking people to step into spaces where their life and livelihood will be under threat. I do some work in the book helping us distinguish the difference between hurt and harm.
And so recognizing the difference between hurt and harm, practicing hospitality … and then always remembering this is not a problem in the head. It’s in the heart, which means that facts and opinions don’t change people. … But if we start with questioning the facts and opinions, we’re going to get nowhere.
Meibauer: Is there any commonly held belief about Christian nationalists that you would like to dispel?
Campbell: They’re not monsters. They are people who are earnest. I think the leaders by and large are grifters, but the people at these rallies, the people who are putting the flags in the front yard and the bumper stickers, they are desperately trying to protect something that they hold very dear, and all of us are tempted to do the exact same thing. We just do it in different ways.
Meibauer: This book is targeted, I believe, to other Christians. However, is there any application for this book for those who are not Christians?
Campbell: You’re right. I am a theologically evangelical pastor writing primarily to theological evangelicals. However, if you can suffer through my evangelical pastor talk — my God talk, there’s some real, practical explanations of what American Christian nationalism is, how to discern it. And then the back end of the book really is more tactical in the sense of, I take statements that get made by American Christians (and) I just give some helpful tips on how you might respond. And even if you’re not a Christian, you can still use these tools to talk to people who are Christian nationalists because at the end of the day, it's not about you projecting your beliefs onto them. It’s about them discerning their own convictions and how those different convictions, you know, their political commitments, their religious commitments, don’t jive.
I’m really not adding anything new. All I’m saying is, when you differ with someone, be hospitable and be curious, which is how we should be with everybody. I think a bunch of us forgot that that applies to this particular group of people as well.
Isabella Meibaurer is a seasoned writer and adaptable communications strategist with a passion for nuanced, contextualized storytelling.