Exporting Christian Nationalism: Transnational Power, Religious Polarisation, and the Instrumentalisation of the Church

Abstract

American Christian nationalism is frequently treated as a domestic U.S. culture-war pathology or a merely theological deviation within conservative Christianity. This article argues instead that it functions as an exportable political technology whose discursive templates, funding pathways, media ecosystems, and legal-activist infrastructures travel transnationally, reshaping church identity and public witness far beyond the United States, including in Australia. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in sociology of religion, political theology, and transnational activism, the analysis traces (i) how Christian nationalist imaginaries re-code discipleship into a national moral project within U.S. congregational life, (ii) how these frames are received and normalized in allied democracies through religious-freedom discourse and digitally mediated culture-war formation, and (iii) how such dynamics can serve transnational power formations by intensifying polarization, redirecting ecclesial energy toward governance-by-grievance, and weakening the church’s capacity to offer principled resistance to technocratic consolidation. While the article does not posit a monolithic covert cabal, it offers a convergence-based account of elite networking in which corporate, political, and religious actors repeatedly find Christian nationalist mobilization instrumentally useful. A biblical evaluation then demonstrates that core tenets of Christian nationalism conflict with New Testament ecclesiology and the kingdom ethic of Christ, particularly where national identity displaces the church’s pilgrim identity, coercive power eclipses cruciform witness, and market ideology is sacralized. The article concludes by proposing a pastoral-theological strategy of intentional counter-formation, including transnational ecclesial solidarity, media discipleship, and renewed economic moral witness, aimed at restoring gospel fidelity amid globalizing political religion.