The second night of the Republican National Convention focused on the party’s No. 1 issue — immigration.
Donald Trump scuttled a bipartisan Senate bill on immigration and border security just so he could campaign on the immigration crisis at America’s southern border. And now, immigration permeates every plank of the Republican platform.
Although anti-immigrant policies have become standard conservative talking points, like many things MAGA they are rooted in the racism and twisted theology of Christian nationalism.
“Because Christian nationalism is largely premised on the hierarchical nature of race, as a social construct, it is directly aligned with white supremacy. Christian nationalism is about the preservation of power that has historically belonged to white Protestants,” said Jay Augustine, senior pastor at St. Joseph AME Church, in Durham, N.C, and a member of the consulting faculty at Duke Divinity School.
A Public Religion Research Institute survey revealed that unlike most Americans, adherents of Christian nationalism have a negative view of immigrants. For example, 81% of white Christian nationalists believe in the Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy promoted by far-right extremists who claim immigrants of color are invading primarily white countries and replacing their “cultural background” with an “ethnic one.”
As America has grown more diverse, tolerance for that diversity has waned among those who believe white Christians should be in charge.
“Christian nationalism seeks to preserve rather than share power. Its policies manifest in book bans, falsified talking points about Critical Race Theory, and voter suppression laws,” Augustine said. Trump’s second term agenda is yet another attempt to forcibly reverse these demographic changes.
Russ Vought is founder of the Center for Renewing America, an architect of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and Trump’s potential White House chief of staff. As a confidant who speaks regularly with the former president, he is the primary pipeline between Christian nationalism and Republican leadership. Vought also served as policy director for the GOP platform, a document which has historically guided the winning party’s future legislation and committee hearings. A leaked document from CRA listed Christian nationalism as a policy goal for the next Trump administration.
Vought’s beliefs are heavily influenced by Christian nationalist William Wolfe with whom he worked at Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy organization linked to the Heritage Foundation. William Wolfe was a senior official during the first Trump term and is the director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, a group concerned that the Southern Baptist Convention is too liberal.
Another associate of William Wolfe and Vought is author Stephen Wolfe, who wrote the bestselling book The Case for Christian Nationalism. With much less creativity than Plato’s Republic or Thomas Moore’s Utopia, Stephen Wolfe muses in his book on the ideal Christian nationalist state. In that America, citizens are organized by place and ethnicity, which he refers to as “volkgeist,” a sentiment similar to the foundational Nazi ideology of a racially pure “volk.”
With lofty language, Stephen Wolfe justifies what amounts to basic racism this way: If Adam and Eve had not sinned, humanity eventually would have organized itself into distinct homogenous nations. Therefore, the preference for being with those who are ethnically similar is a return to a pre-fall state and the “embodiment of the kingdom of God.”
To follow God, white Christian Americans are right to prioritize those most like themselves, he says.
For William Wolfe, multiculturalism as portrayed in Revelation 7:9 is not something to strive for on earth. It is a vision of God’s work in heaven among the elect. White churches and communities, therefore, should not be “guilted” into diversity, he says.
Read more about the theology behind the Christian nationalist view of immigration at Baptist News Global.
