No Kings Day: What Has Nicaea to Do with Washington?
Critiquing Christian nationalism by means of the Nicene Creed
We welcome to our pages Dr. George Mason as a contributing writer for the Fellowship of Confessing Christians. The retired senior pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, Dr. Mason is the founder and president of Faith Commons and the author of The Word Made Fresh: Preaching God’s Love for Every Body (2023).
Faith, not force, is the church’s secret power—which terrifies every king who possesses only the sword that can kill the body but not the soul.
The early church theologian Tertullian famously asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” He was saying that philosophy should not dictate to theology. In fact, it should go the other way. That is, our understanding of God that comes from God’s self-revelation through the Word should lead us to a more general wisdom about how to live well in the world.
In that same spirit, we might ask, “What has Nicaea to do with Washington?”
On Pentecost weekend I participated in a panel of theologians at the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in Dallas. The church’s rector, Fr. Christopher Thomas, was looking for a way to celebrate the church’s 75th anniversary. He and the good people of that congregation, who go by the clever moniker Doubters of Great Faith, have become increasingly alarmed at the emergence and insurgence of Christian nationalism on the political and cultural stage. They decided to tie their program, titled Faith vs. Force, to the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed. A fascinating linkage that our theologians took on with relish.
Using the Nicene Creed as a heuristic device to analyze and critique Christian nationalism proved more successful than first imagined. After all, the Council of Nicaea was called by Emperor Constantine in AD 325 to unify the church doctrinally, and thereby the empire politically. After the Edict of Milan in AD 313, which made Christianity the religion of the empire, the question was still “What Christianity?”
Orthodoxy was yet being worked out among celebrated preachers and even common folk, especially when it came to questions about the relationship between the Father and the Son in nascent trinitarian doctrine. The usual account of things would suggest that the emperor didn’t really care who won the debate—Arius or Athanasius (the latter did), so long as it was settled and orthodoxy fixed. The truth is probably not so neat. Constantine may have dabbled more in the debate than we know, and we don’t even know the full account of the losing side, as the winners tend to silence the losers.
So, in a way, the creed itself was originally an instrument of Christian nationalism. This would seem to reinforce the notion of today’s Christian nationalists that we need a common culture rooted in a common religion if we are to have a common country.
Of course, that runs counter to the vision of our founders, who struck out in an unprecedented attempt to ground the new nation in universal ideals like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By leaving out any mention of God at all in the US Constitution (save the dating of it “In the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred eighty-seven”), the framers were saying something about the secular underpinning of the new nation, something constantly disputed (against historical evidence) by Christian nationalists. The only mention of religion in the Constitution is the prohibition in Article VI of any religious test for public office. And the First Amendment to the Constitution expressly prohibits the establishment of religion.
So, it is possible to say that renewed attention to the Nicene Creed would both support Christian nationalism and undermine Constitutional America. But the text of the creed itself points in another direction.
In the first article of the creed the affirmation of God the Father includes the Creator’s making of all things seen and unseen. Belief in the invisible realm challenges any ultimacy being accorded to the visible, material world. What’s more, the Almighty God the Father we confess puts all human authorities in a subjugated place to this higher power.
The second article of the creed recounts the journey of the Son of God from all eternity. He comes into a particular time in history with the only mention of an imperial ruler being a negative stereotype—Pontius Pilate, whose unwitting, witless judgment nonetheless serves the purposes of God. He is the anti-hero to the heroine figure of faith—the Virgin Mary, whose social location and simple yes prove that faith indeed defeats force in the sovereign story of God.
Article two ends with the eternal kingdom of the Son, and article three on the Holy Spirit concludes with life everlasting. The kingdoms of this world are temporal and relative. “We look for the resurrection of the dead” is an affirmation that gives courage to anyone who is threatened by the power of the state to wield death.
Christian nationalism is a hard habit to break. The American experiment in full religious liberty, which is protected by a secular state whose authority is derived from the people and settled in law, is a political innovation only 15 minutes old in human history. Christian nationalism lies resident in the bottom brain, sending signals of promised safety up to those who would venture daringly into the fearful unknown we have embarked upon.
The church doesn’t need the state to stabilize its faith or provide security to it. The church is an alternative community in the world that bears witness by its way of life to the life to come. It is thereby also a judgment against any earthly government that oppresses rather than liberates its people.
Faith, not force, is the church’s secret power—which terrifies every king who possesses only the sword that can kill the body but not the soul.
Creeds teach. They remind the church of who it is and where their ultimate loyalties lie. Reciting them regularly, even without great reflection, may serve to inoculate Christians from succumbing to the siren song of political tempters.
While there are plenty of Catholic and Orthodox Christians who say the creed and still long for the return of Christendom, some of the shrillest and surest spiritual leaders of the Christian nationalist movement today come from the Free Churches, which include Baptists, Pentecostals, and nondenominational congregations, which are constitutionally opposed to saying creeds. The irony is thick.
Turns out Nicaea has a lot to teach Washington after all. If we would only listen to its ancient wisdom.
