Christianity Is Not Nationalism

A reflection on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the danger of empire, and the faiths — and humanism — that resist it.

This essay was written in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It is a moment of grief and volatility. I do not write from triumph or glee. I write from dread, and from a conviction that clarity is demanded alongside empathy. What follows is not a hot take, but a reflection on how faith, history, and identity shape our response to violence.

---

Charlie Kirk is dead, killed in a targeted shooting on a university stage. That sentence alone reveals the dangerous volatility of our moment. A man has been assassinated, and before grief can even settle in, the air is thick with the threat of retaliation.

Violence begets violence. This moment is not only about one death, but about the stories we tell to interpret violence — and those stories are shaped by the long histories of faith and empire.

Empathy is demanded, but clarity is too: in our own time, political violence has not been evenly shared. Study after study confirms that over the past three decades, far-right extremists have committed the vast majority of ideologically motivated killings in the U.S. More than four out of five such deaths between 1990 and 2023, by one count, trace back to the far right (ADL; Duran et al.) That does not erase the humanity of those who die or the grief of their families. But it does reveal where the danger lies — not in some vague “both sides,” but in a movement that has turned grievance into bloodshed.

And the pattern continues. Within hours of Kirk’s death, Donald Trump cast Democrats as ‘enemies of the people’ in campaign remarks. This weekend, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade mused on-air that killing mentally ill homeless people might be preferable to supporting them, and was later forced to apologize. These are not just gaffes or stray provocations. They are symptomatic of a political culture where violent rhetoric circulates widely, and where cruelty is rehearsed until backlash forces retreat — a pattern that researchers of political violence have also tracked.

I know something about civility in the face of empire. For years, I’ve met with Republicans in Washington with patience, calm, and respect. I’ve been polite. I’ve stayed on message. I’ve refrained from name-calling. And what I’ve seen in return is not reciprocity but threat: deportation for immigrant friends, threats of dissolution of marriage for gay friends, lost healthcare and disability support for my community. My experience is only one thread, but I know many who could say the same.

Respect did not protect us. Civility was not a shield. I’ve said before that I’m not against Republicans; I’m against Trumpism. In the same way, I am not against Christians; I am against the nationalism that has taken Christianity hostage.

The truth is that Christianity itself was never meant to be nationalism. Early Christian communities were plural, diverse, contested — intertwined with Judaism in ways we have forgotten. For the first centuries, there were Christianities and Judaisms, plural. Paula Fredriksen describes the first five centuries of the Common Era as a time of overlapping and divergent “Christianities,” while Daniel Boyarin argues that Judaism itself was just as internally diverse. Multiplicity, not uniformity, was the rule — until empire imposed a single story.

That imposition did not happen in the abstract. It happened under Rome’s shadow — the same Rome that razed the Temple in 70 CE, that crucified rebels along public roads, that patrolled Judea with legions as a warning against dissent. Christianity was not born in freedom but in occupied territory. Only later, when Constantine adopted it as the empire’s religion, did many historians argue that the diversity of those early communities was retroactively recast as ‘heresy.’ The winners rewrote the story. Orthodoxy was not discovered; it was enforced. Power has always wanted one story, one truth, one authority. Empire is allergic to pluralism.

Jewish tradition remembers differently. Interpretation is sacred work — debate, disagreement, multiplicity. No one is “wrong” so long as they are in the conversation. A thousand flowers bloom, and Torah becomes richer through the wrestle. Jacob himself was renamed Israel because he wrestled with G-d, with mystery, with himself. In Jewish practice, we carry that legacy forward in ḥavruta study: two partners arguing, pushing, testing one another. Tension is not a failure of faith; it is the method of truth. Christian nationalism rejects this. It insists on singular meaning, capital-T Truth, imposed by the powerful and enforced by law. It is interpretive authoritarianism masquerading as faith. And like all authoritarianisms, it rehearses its own persecution while wielding real power against others.

Here is what I need to say, plainly: Christianity is not nationalism. Christianity’s origins are in solidarity with the vulnerable, in eschatological hope for collective deliverance, in a movement against empire. To confuse faith with power is not merely a category error — it is a betrayal of the faith itself.

I know this not only from the books on my shelf but from the people in my life. My dad, his dad before him, an uncle, and several colleagues and friends in the United Church of Christ tradition have modeled for me a different way of being Christian. They have worked to recover the historical Jesus as one to follow — a Jewish teacher who stood against empire, who made room at the table, who welcomed those without status. My dad especially has reminded me that the pluralism of our family is not a problem to be solved but a room to grow into. That is what faith at its best does: it opens space, it makes room, it cultivates growth.

Authoritarianism has no such imagination. Where is the growth mindset in a system that cannot tolerate difference, that fears interpretation, that demands uniformity? Nationalism narrows faith to conformity, while real Christianity — like real Judaism — knows that wrestling, questioning, and expanding the circle are the soil of growth.

And my own diasporic Jewish identity, my academic study of scripture, my belonging at the margins, testify to the same truth: real faith aligns with the oppressed, not with empire.

This is not an essay written to put Christians down. It is a plea for Christians to be better Christians — to reclaim their own inheritance of humility, plurality, and justice. I know Christians who are kind, decent, responsible. I’ve seen in colleagues, in students, in friends the shape of a faith that is lived gently, generously, without the need for empire.

I think here of my dad. I love him very much, and I have learned so much from him. He has created a community of radical welcome and affirming values. While it is not his tradition with which I identify, our traditions have each been enhanced by learning from each other. His faith has shown me what it looks like when Christianity is spacious, not constricted; when it opens doors rather than builds walls.

This is not about him, nor about the many Christians who live this way. It is about the movement that has stolen their faith for political gain, turning humility into arrogance and interpretation into certainty. Christian nationalism does not merely deform politics; it deforms Christianity itself. And so this is a call to Christians of conscience — especially those who already sense the distortion — to say so aloud. To claim their faith as capacious rather than constricted, as rooted in love rather than weaponized for power.

Because silence, in this moment, is not neutrality. It is complicity with empire. And complicity has never been the Christian vocation.

Charlie Kirk is dead. That is the way to begin — not with politics, not with analysis, but with the acknowledgement of a life ended and the empathy that is demanded. Even when the person stood for a movement I oppose, humanity must be the starting point.

But empathy does not erase clarity. My study of the sacred literature — the scriptures that Jews and Christians both claim — has not made me less critical of empire, but more. These texts were born under oppression, in the Jewish Second Temple writings and the texts of the Christian New Testament were written in the shadow of militarized Rome.

The Second Temple period gave us Judaisms and Christianities that were plural, contested, and alive — but always in relation to empire’s weight. Some strands dreamed of uprising, others counseled patience or prohibition on violence. All of them, in their different ways, testified that faith under empire must choose: align with domination, or hold fast to justice.

That is still the choice before us. Retaliation will tempt us toward violence. Nationalism will tempt us toward conformity. But faith at its best — Jewish or Christian — resists those temptations. It insists on humility, on interpretation, on a belonging that is wider than empire will allow. And faith is not the only path. Secular humanism also offers a vision of dignity without domination, a commitment to nonviolence and to the worth of every life that does not require divine sanction to be binding. Whether through faith or through humanism, the measure is the same: do we expand the circle of belonging, or do we narrow it in service to power?

And perhaps the deepest truth is not only about faith but about being human. To live as though every life carries dignity, to resist domination not because scripture demands it but because humanity does — this too is our inheritance.

So I will say it one last time: Christianity is not nationalism. It was born against empire, not to become empire. At its best, Christianity is a witness of welcome, humility, and justice — never a weapon of power. And beyond Christianity or Judaism, what remains is humanism: the insistence that our shared life is worth more than empire’s grasp. That is the faith — or simply the humanity — worth defending.

Christian nationalism cannot tolerate this. It insists on singular meaning, capital-T Truth, imposed by the powerful and enforced by law. But democracy — and dignity — depend on something else: the refusal of certainty, the humility of interpretation, the courage to keep wrestling together.

As I wrote recently about estrangement, recovery begins not with conquest but with memory and relation. Here too, the act of interpretation is how we resist erasure. Every argument held in good faith, every memory reclaimed, every neighbor welcomed is a refusal of empire’s certainty.

That is how estrangement is healed. That is how empire is undone.

And perhaps the deepest truth is not only about faith but about being human. To live as though every life carries dignity, to resist domination not because scripture demands it but because humanity does — this too is our inheritance.

So I will say it one last time: Christianity is not nationalism. It was born against empire, not to become empire. At its best, Christianity is a witness of welcome, humility, and justice — never a weapon of power. And beyond Christianity or Judaism, what remains is humanism: the insistence that our shared life is worth more than empire’s grasp. That is the faith — or simply the humanity — worth promoting.

One table opened. One scripture re-read. One neighbor welcomed. That is how empire is resisted — not through conquest, but through presence and relation. As I wrote recently about estrangement — the way empire erases memory and belonging — recovery begins not with conquest but with memory and relation. The same is true here: resistance begins with presence. And presence, lived one act at a time, is how we make a future not claimed by empire.

---

Sources & Further Reading

In Jewish tradition, study is never solitary. Texts become partners; disagreement becomes the method of truth. Think of these sources as a kind of ḥavruta — study-partners for the claims I’ve made here. They do not all agree, nor should they. But together, they remind us that interpretation is sacred work.

• Duran, Caleb, et al. Far-Left versus Far-Right Fatal Violence: An Empirical Assessment of the Prevalence of Ideologically-Motivated Homicides in the United States (1990–2020). (2021). Link

• Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2023. (2024). Link

• Jasko, Katarzyna, et al. Political Violence by Left-wing, Right-wing, and Islamist Extremists in the United States. (2022). Link

• Haberman, Maggie, et al. Trump Uses Kirk Assassination to Target Political Opponents. The New York Times (Sept. 13, 2025). Link

• Whipp, Glenn. Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade Apologizes for Remarks About Killing Mentally Ill Homeless People. Los Angeles Times (Sept. 14, 2025). Link

May we keep wrestling with these texts as ḥavruta — not to win, but to remember, to resist, and to widen the circle of belonging.