Ariel Cook

Introduction

The past two centuries have witnessed numerous attempts to establish explicitly Christian governance or to reconstitute nations along overtly Christian lines. A troubling pattern emerges when examining these movements: rather than manifesting the radical peace, justice, and liberation central to Jesus’s teachings about the “Kingdom of God,” many of these societies have instead replicated the coercive power structures, violence, and systems of subjugation characteristic of the Roman Empire—the very empire that executed Christianity’s founder. This essay examines this paradox, exploring the relationship between Christian nationalism, imperialism, and fundamentalism, while also considering whether any counter-examples exist.

Theoretical Framework: Kingdom vs. Empire

To understand this pattern, we must first distinguish between two competing visions. The “Kingdom of God” as articulated in the Gospels emphasizes themes fundamentally at odds with imperial power: radical equality (“the last shall be first”), nonviolence (“turn the other cheek”), economic redistribution (the early church’s communal sharing in Acts), and care for society’s margins. The Roman Empire, conversely, maintained order through military might, hierarchical social stratification including slavery, territorial expansion, and the subjugation of conquered peoples.

The irony is profound: Christianity began as a movement of the colonized, not the colonizers; of slaves, not masters; of the executed, not the executioners.

Case Studies in Christian Imperialism

The Belgian Congo (1885-1908)

Perhaps no example more starkly illustrates this paradox than King Leopold II’s Congo Free State. Leopold, who presented himself as a Christian monarch bringing civilization and Christianity to Africa, established one of history’s most brutal colonial regimes. Under the guise of missionary work and humanitarian concern, his administration extracted rubber through a system of forced labor that killed an estimated 10 million Congolese people.

Belgian colonial officials severed hands, enslaved populations, and destroyed communities—all while framing their mission in Christian terms. Missionaries accompanied the conquest, yet the resulting society resembled Roman colonial brutality far more than anything Jesus advocated. The violence wasn’t incidental to the Christian mission; it was enacted in the name of Christian civilization.

Apartheid South Africa (1948-1994)

The Dutch Reformed Church provided theological justification for apartheid, developing a comprehensive biblical rationale for racial segregation and white supremacy. Afrikaner nationalism explicitly fused Christian identity with political power, claiming divine sanction for policies that created a comprehensive system of racial oppression.

The apartheid state enforced pass laws, created bantustans that displaced millions, used violence to suppress resistance, and maintained white economic privilege through systematic exploitation of Black labor—a system functionally similar to slavery. Church leaders blessed these policies as God’s will, arguing that racial separation reflected divine order. The result was not the beloved community of early Christianity but a militarized police state maintaining rigid hierarchies through force.

The American Confederacy and Jim Crow South (1861-1965)

The Confederate States of America explicitly defended slavery on Christian grounds, with denominational leaders producing elaborate theological defenses of human bondage. After Reconstruction, the “Christian” South constructed a century-long system of racial terrorism, economic exploitation, and legal subjugation under Jim Crow.

White churches blessed lynch mobs, defended segregation as biblical, and provided moral cover for a society built on violence and racial hierarchy. The parallels to Rome are unmistakable: a rigid social stratification enforced through spectacular violence (public lynchings served purposes similar to Roman crucifixions), economic systems dependent on exploited labor, and religious institutions legitimating the social order.

The Philippines under Spanish Colonial Rule (1565-1898)

While predating our two-century window by beginning earlier, Spanish rule continued well into the 19th century and exemplifies the pattern. The Spanish conquest of the Philippines proceeded under the explicit banner of Catholic Christianization. The colonial system established encomiendas (forced labor systems), violently suppressed indigenous religions, and maintained control through military force.

The Spanish friars wielded enormous political and economic power, functioning as colonial administrators while ostensibly spreading the Gospel. Indigenous Filipinos faced forced labor, land seizure, and violent repression of resistance—a system more reminiscent of Roman provincial governance than the Sermon on the Mount.

Nazi Germany’s Positive Christianity (1933-1945)

The Nazi regime promoted “Positive Christianity,” attempting to fuse Christian imagery with German nationalism and Aryan racial ideology. While many historians debate whether Nazism was genuinely Christian or merely cynically exploited Christian symbols, significant portions of German churches—particularly the Deutsche Christen (German Christians) movement—actively supported Nazi ideology.

These “Christian” organizations endorsed racial laws, supported the Führer principle, and participated in or remained silent about the Holocaust. The result was an empire of unprecedented systematic violence, genocide, and conquest—the absolute antithesis of Jesus’s teachings, yet claiming Christian identity. The imperial ambitions, racial hierarchies, violent expansion, and treatment of conquered peoples paralleled Rome’s worst excesses.

Rhodesia (1965-1979)

Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government, which unilaterally declared independence to maintain white minority rule, positioned itself as defending “Christian civilization” against “godless communism” and African nationalism. The regime enjoyed substantial support from white churches and international Christian anti-communist networks.

Rhodesia maintained racial segregation, denied rights to the Black majority, conducted brutal counterinsurgency campaigns, and preserved economic systems ensuring white prosperity through Black exploitation. Once again, a society claiming Christian identity replicated imperial patterns of domination rather than Gospel liberation.

Modern American Christian Nationalism

Contemporary American Christian nationalist movements, while not constituting formal theocracy, demonstrate concerning parallels. These movements frequently advocate for:

• Militaristic foreign policy and celebration of military power
• Economic systems producing extreme inequality
• Punitive approaches to criminal justice (highest incarceration rates globally)
• Harsh immigration restrictions and border militarization
• Hierarchical gender relations and opposition to equality movements

The rhetoric often emphasizes American dominance, power projection, and cultural conquest rather than peacemaking, welcoming strangers, or prioritizing the poor—suggesting greater affinity with imperial Rome than with Jesus’s radical alternative vision.

Counter-Examples and Qualifications

Intellectual honesty requires examining whether Christian governance ever produced more peaceful, just outcomes. This analysis faces immediate challenges: few societies have been explicitly “Christian governments” in the modern era, and defining success criteria involves subjective value judgments.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica presents an interesting partial counter-example. The nation abolished its military in 1949 and has maintained relative peace, democratic stability, and social investment. While constitutionally declaring Roman Catholicism its official religion (until recently reformed), Costa Rica’s success seems attributable more to demilitarization and social democratic policies than to religious governance per se. The Christian identity was more cultural backdrop than determinative political principle.

Early Post-Colonial Botswana

Botswana, while not a theocracy, has a deeply Christian population and leadership that has cited Christian principles in governance. It has maintained democratic traditions and relative peace, though this seems more related to prudent economic management and democratic institutions than specifically Christian governance structures.

The Ambiguous Case of Liberation Theology

In various Latin American contexts, Christian leaders and communities inspired by liberation theology opposed imperial violence rather than perpetuating it. Base Christian communities in El Salvador, Brazil, and elsewhere worked for justice, opposed military dictatorships, and stood with the poor—often suffering martyrdom (like Archbishop Óscar Romero).

However, these movements typically opposed Christianized states and military regimes, not examples of them. They demonstrate that Christianity can inspire resistance to imperial violence, but they weren’t cases of “Christian government” producing peace—quite the opposite; they faced violence from governments claiming Christian identity.

The Problem of Counterfactuals

A significant analytical challenge: societies with Christian governance often already possessed imperial structures, colonial ambitions, or authoritarian tendencies. We cannot definitively know whether these outcomes resulted from Christian governance specifically or from other factors (economic systems, colonial histories, ethnic tensions, external pressures).

That said, the pattern’s consistency across diverse contexts—African colonies, American segregation, European fascism, Latin American dictatorships—suggests the problem isn’t merely coincidental.

Understanding the Pattern: Why Empire, Not Kingdom?

Several interconnected factors help explain this recurring paradox:

1. The Constantinan Shift

When Christianity transformed from persecuted minority to imperial religion under Constantine (4th century), it underwent fundamental changes. The faith of crucified peasants became the ideology of emperors. This “Constantinan Christianity” baptized state power, military might, and hierarchical authority as divinely ordained—a radical departure from early Christian practice.

Christian nationalism in the past two centuries essentially recapitulates this transformation, fusing Christian identity with state power, military strength, and coercive authority.

2. Fundamentalism and Psychological Authoritarianism

Fundamentalist Christianity, which emerged in late 19th and early 20th centuries partly as reaction to modernity, often exhibits authoritarian psychological features: rigid thinking, emphasis on submission to authority, clear in-group/out-group boundaries, and binary moral categories.

Research in political psychology demonstrates correlations between religious fundamentalism and authoritarian political preferences. Fundamentalist movements tend toward:

• Hierarchical social organization
• Enforcement of moral conformity
• Suspicion of outsiders
• Support for punitive social control

These features align naturally with imperial governance structures, not with egalitarian, liberatory movements.

3. Nationalism as Idolatry

When Christianity becomes fused with national identity, the nation effectively becomes an idol demanding ultimate loyalty. Christian nationalism subordinates the universal, boundary-crossing claims of the Gospel to particular national interests. The empire’s logic—my nation’s power, security, and prosperity above all—displaces the kingdom’s logic—the last shall be first, love your enemies, give to all who ask.

4. The Scapegoat Mechanism

René Girard’s anthropological theory helps illuminate this pattern. Imperial systems maintain cohesion through scapegoating—unifying the in-group against demonized out-groups. Roman imperial religion sacralized this mechanism.

Jesus’s execution and teaching fundamentally challenged this structure, offering himself as the final scapegoat and calling followers to side with victims, not victimizers. Yet when Christianity becomes imperial, it reverts to the scapegoating mechanism: crusades against heretics, indigenous peoples, racial others, political dissidents. Christian empires have consistently created new scapegoats—the very pattern Jesus died exposing and subverting.

5. Economic Materialism

Many Christian imperial projects served economic interests—resource extraction, labor exploitation, market access. The “Christian” framing provided moral legitimation for material conquest. Belgian rubber, Southern cotton, South African gold, Philippine trade—material interests drove expansion, with Christianity retrofitted as justification.

True kingdom priorities—sharing resources, challenging wealth accumulation, solidarity with the poor—would threaten these economic systems. Imperial Christianity thus emphasized individual morality, heavenly reward, and obedience to authority while ignoring or blessing systems of economic exploitation.

6. Theological Selectivity

Christian imperialism employs highly selective biblical interpretation. Passages emphasizing authority, order, obedience, and divine judgment receive emphasis. Meanwhile, Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence, economic redistribution, solidarity with outcasts, and critique of religious hypocrisy are minimized, spiritualized, or explained away.

This selective reading makes Christianity compatible with empire by ignoring or reinterpreting precisely those elements that challenged imperial logic.

The Sociological Correlation: Imperialism, Empire, and Fundamentalism

The correlation between Christian fundamentalism and imperial violence isn’t accidental but structural:

Power Centralization: Both fundamentalism and empire require centralized interpretive authority. Fundamentalism claims certain leaders or texts as unquestionable; empire concentrates political-military power. Both resist pluralism, negotiation, and decentralization.

Binary Thinking: Fundamentalism divides the world into saved/damned, righteous/wicked, us/them. Empire similarly constructs civilized/barbaric, loyal/treasonous, ally/enemy. Both frameworks justify violence against the demonized other.

Masculinist Hierarchies: Both empire and fundamentalism typically emphasize patriarchal authority, masculine strength, and hierarchical gender relations. The kingdom vision of mutual submission and equality threatens both systems.

Resistance to Change: Fundamentalism and empire both claim timeless, unchangeable foundations—whether textual inerrancy or eternal national destiny. Both resist historical consciousness, contextual interpretation, and adaptive evolution.

Apocalyptic Justification: Christian imperialism often employs apocalyptic theology—viewing earthly struggles as cosmic battles between absolute good and evil. This framework justifies otherwise unjustifiable violence as necessary for ultimate victory.

Voices of Resistance

It’s crucial to note that every Christian imperial project faced resistance from Christians who recognized the contradiction. In South Africa, theologians like Beyers Naudé and Archbishop Desmond Tutu opposed apartheid on Christian grounds. In Germany, the Confessing Church resisted Nazi Christianity. In the American South, some white Christians (however few) supported civil rights. In Latin America, liberation theologians opposed dictatorships.

These resisters argued that the imperial projects betrayed Christianity’s core. Their existence proves that Christian faith need not produce empire—but their marginalization within their contexts suggests that when Christianity wields state power, imperial logic typically prevails over kingdom vision.

Conclusion: The Persistent Temptation

The historical record reveals a troubling pattern: attempts to establish explicitly Christian governance in the past two centuries have consistently produced societies more reminiscent of Roman imperial violence, hierarchy, and exploitation than of Jesus’s kingdom vision emphasizing peace, equality, and liberation. From Belgian Congo to apartheid South Africa, from the Jim Crow South to Rhodesia, from Nazi “Positive Christianity” to various Latin American dictatorships, Christian imperial projects have replicated Rome’s worst features.

This pattern suggests a fundamental incompatibility between coercive state power and genuine Christianity. Jesus refused political power, died at empire’s hands, and taught a way of radical vulnerability, enemy love, and voluntary status reversal. These teachings cannot be imposed through state violence without fundamental betrayal.

The correlation between fundamentalism, nationalism, and imperial violence appears structural rather than incidental. When Christianity becomes fused with national identity, interpreted fundamentalistically, and wedded to state power, it consistently produces systems of domination rather than liberation.

The few potential counter-examples—societies with Christian identity that maintained relative peace—typically involved either: (1) Christianity as cultural background rather than governing principle, (2) Christian resistance movements opposing imperial power rather than exercising it, or (3) contexts where other factors (demilitarization, democratic institutions, economic policies) better explain positive outcomes.

The lesson seems clear: the kingdom of God cannot be imposed through imperial means. Any attempt to seize state power to enforce Christian society produces not the kingdom but another empire—perhaps wrapped in religious language, but structurally reproducing Rome’s violence and hierarchy.

True Christian faithfulness in the political realm might require something altogether different: rejecting imperial power, standing with the marginalized, prophetically challenging all empires (including those claiming Christian identity), and embodying an alternative community marked by reconciliation, economic sharing, and peacemaking. This was, after all, what got Jesus crucified—not by rejecting religion for secularism, but by rejecting empire for the kingdom.

The persistent replication of Roman imperial violence by Christian nationalist projects isn’t failure of execution but inevitable outcome. You cannot build the kingdom with the empire’s tools.