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Profiting on Promoting 250 Years of Christian Nationalism

Profiting on Promoting 250 Years of Christian Nationalism

Last updated on: July 3, 2026 at 2:00 am by Joey Cochran

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Profiting on Promoting 250 Years of Christian Nationalism 2026-07-03T01:31:44-04:00 Joey Cochran

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Celebrations commemorating 250 years of America have been an opportunity for evangelicals to reflect on their historic relationship with the political identity of America. In turn they have served as an opportunity to profit on promoting 250 years of Christian Nationalism.

Douglas Wilson and Friends Show with Guest Albert Mohler Discussing Forthcoming Five Views on Christian Nationalism Book

From public acts of civic religion through invoking God’s blessing upon America to overt instruments that exploit this heritage for profit, such as The Presidential Edition of the Holy Bible, which costs $99.99—Americans have been confronted with the entangled trifecta of Protestant Christianity, nationalism, and capitalism. For the past decade, we’ve too long been numbed to believe that there’s no other way for America to be in the world. The more citizens have become resigned to accept this status quo condition, the more those outside this trifecta have been disenfranchised, primarily through executive orders, from experiencing equal rights under law, as guaranteed by our Constitution. Thankfully recent Supreme Court decisions have overwhelmingly defended the rights of those in jeopardy.

Nonetheless, there are those who are untroubled by these realities. They favor the outcomes of an entangled trifecta and supremacy of Protestant Christianity, nationalism, and capitalism. They are those who already fit nicely within the trifecta and stand to gain even more for its perpetuation. In general, those who profit most are white, middle-class, men.

A key example comes from a recent conversation on the Douglas Wilson and Friends show, which discusses a forthcoming Canon Press publication, Five Views on Christian Nationalism. This 350+ page book at the price of $25 includes perspectives from a Roman Catholic, two Baptists, and two Presbyterians: R. R. Reno, Albert Mohler, Paul Miller, Douglas Wilson, and Joe Rigney.

One might rightly wonder what really is all that distinctive between the views of these figures, who overwhelmingly hold to a strong relationship between the Christian Church and the State? While Paul Miller serves as the outlier, who promotes a more traditional liberal democratic and republican perspective on this issue, the conversation from the show leads one to believe that the others arrive at a rather close relationship between Church and State. According to the contributors, they arrive at kindred conclusions through varied ecclesial means and historic heroes that championed particular pathways.

What was interesting about this conversation, which excluded the Roman Catholic and outlier view, is that there was little actual theological discussion of the evidences and viewpoints they championed, aside from casual mentions of particular heroes they followed. With each mention, the four nodded in knowing agreement about their whiggish heroes of the great Protestant tradition. I was amused by one contributor’s invocation of a historian of Southern Edwardseans, Obbie Tyler Todd, mostly because this person mispronounced Obbie’s name (Obbie like Bobby). To me, this was a bit of a hint to their unfamiliarity with Todd and his body of work.

Frankly, the show did not lend itself to theological analysis because it was found theologically wanting. Rather, cultural analysis seems to be a more substantive tact towards getting to the point of the show. One might say that these pundits banked on the ignorance of their audience to cover for their own shortcomings in research.

For instance, Mr. Mohler referred to the organization, Protestants and Other Americans United (POAU), only to imply that its work paved the way to LGBTQ+ rights, an odd conjecture that would take quite a bit of historical work to validate. It’s likely that Mr. Mohler knows little about the organization’s history. He gave no indication to the particularly Anti-Catholic sentiment of the organization, the oversized role that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) played in its founding, especially Clyde Taylor’s (Mr. NAE himself) contribution to its founding, nor that POAU was largely bankrolled by NAE and the Freemasons in its early years. You’d have to read Alex Callaway’s forthcoming dissertation on the subject to be privy to this research or one of his other forthcoming journal articles on the matter. Overlooking the organization’s Anti-Catholic sentiment and close ties to NAE does smooth the way for this new Christian Nationalist coalition’s attempt to hold hands with R. R. Reno and the First Things faction.

Another peculiar point of the conversation was how casually Mr. Mohler conflated the SBC with evangelicalism. It was as if there was no history of the SBC distancing itself from evangelicalism and denying evangelical solidarity because evangelicals were once the Northern conservative Christians. This is once again one of those instances where evangelical identification is a matter of utility. Some strengthen their connection to the movement in as much as it enhances that group’s standing, until it becomes more convenient and necessary to distance oneself because evangelical identity has once again become a hindrance and an embarrassment.

Needless to say, Wilson and friends left listeners mystified about their viewpoints and arguments concerning Christian Nationalism, with the intended aim to get them to click over to Canon Press’s site, purchase their product, and then have access to their secret knowledge about America’s Christian Nationalist past. It all smacks of a sort of gnostic public theology.

On the flip side, they left listener’s equally mystified by their opposition, who repeatedly were known only as the liberal left. These fellas didn’t want their audience to become acquainted with the arguments of the counterpoint, where they might be found, and who might be offering them. Nonetheless, Mr. Mohler indicated that this liberal left included the outsiders to the SBC that lobbied for women in ministry, and who consequently proudly display Pride flags outside their churches. A comment designed to reinforce his SBC audience’s suspicion of mainline Protestants and the ever increasing exvangelical contingent that have largely made up the hemorrhaging exodus from the SBC.

While three of the members of the conversation hosted together in studio at an unbranded and non-descript location, their guest, Mr. Mohler, remained completely on brand for himself, in his office at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He wore a signature suit with an institutional lapel. His background prominently displayed a drone shot of his seminary’s beautiful campus and the icons for both the seminary and college were superimposed with a simplistic and clean monochromatic white design. A seminary coffee mug was positioned as a brand prop to Mr. Mohler’s right hand.

The ensemble of Wilson and friends curated themselves with a gilded composure of privilege and respectability, and they conducted their conversation with a pleasant and dispassionate demeanor, which ticked off all the boxes of the manicured manners of white, male patriarchy. Wilson and his two friends even sported beards, which reinforced their masculine identity.

In my more recent research on the cultural history of evangelicals, I have found that these trappings of respectability carry a lot of freight for building rapport and trust with audiences that would have otherwise been put off by the thin veneer of obscurantism, anti-intellectualism, and anxiety and fear producing rhetoric, which is the substance of the conversations for these folks. These are signature parts to the cultural DNA of the fundamentalist stream of the evangelical brand.

Yet, what I’d like to emphasize is the substance of the conversation about this forthcoming book, Five Views of Christian Nationalism. It wasn’t much of a conversation, and what was there left much for the wanting. The point was to foster enough curiosity for listeners to feel compelled to make a purchase and participate in the act of fundamentalist consumption.

Furthermore, the product fit perfectly within the expectations of obscurantism. Here we have a cohort of authors that essentially share the same values and conclusions but come at them through different pathways. It’s a cross-section of Christian Nationalists and a coalition of folks with shared values that lead to the collapse of the dividing wall between Church and State. There’s very little risk for the audience to be lulled away into the liberal drift by making this impulse purchase. Everybody in the cohort wins as their viewpoint of Christian Nationalism advances. This mood and approach for the fundamentalist silo within the evangelical brand fits well with the heritage of this tradition.

While Our God Is an Awesome Brand barely scratches the surface on this particular segment of the evangelical brand, present-day fundamentalists and Christian Nationalists, this post about Wilson and Friends represents the kind of engagement and analysis that the book does with other segments of the evangelical brand. My approach focused on producing groundbreaking archival revisionist history by revisiting the historical origins of the evangelical brand and studying it from the standpoint of its marketplace orientation.

I’m not saying that Our God Is an Awesome Brand does not discuss the entangled trifecta of Protestant Christianity, nationalism, and capitalism. On the contrary, it very much so does that, and it explains how that entanglement is a fixture in the system that goes all the way back to its Second World War origins. This is the normative impulse of the evangelical brand.

Unfortunately, the book does not quite get to the more recent resurgence in Christian Nationalism, so Albert Mohler, Douglas Wilson, and friends do not get discussed. Frankly, I did this intentionally with the hope of producing a second installment that continues this story and conversation, which happens to be the whole point of Our God Is an Awesome Brand. This book was written to continue the conversation of our cultural understanding of evangelicals, by introducing fresh insights on the marketplace orientation of evangelicals and adding them into the mix of our recent political, gender, and theological analyses of the history of evangelicals.

Our God Is an Awesome Brand releases in April 2027. Yesterday, I revealed the cover art for the book and directed potential readers to preorder it at Baker Books or Amazon. For a limited time, those who use the Baker Books link will get a special preorder price that is discounted 40% ($12) and will also receive free shipping. If this article aroused your curiosity about the book, I invite you to share this post and preorder the book today. Please do comment and keep the conversation going about this book. It’s the conversation that matters most. That’s the whole point of the years of research and writing that went into this particular project. If you wish to learn more about this forthcoming publication, you may wish to read this post about the book title and this one concerning the book’s epilogue.

Our God Is an Awesome Brand (Brazos Press, April 2027).

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