In the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), we often hold two ideas in tension without acknowledging that they contradict each other in their application.

On the mission field, we praise a certain kind of national loyalty as maturity and effectiveness. We encourage missionaries to love the people they serve, to adopt their customs, to defend their cultural goods, and to work for that nation’s flourishing. We call this wisdom, contextualization, and faithfulness. Even the term used for children on the mission field, “third culture kids,” would suggest there is a distinct host nation with certain culture and norms, while at the same time, a foreign nation, the missionaries come from, with its own distinct culture and norms.  

But when Christians in America seek to apply the same instincts to their own nation, expressing affection for their people, desiring moral order, opposing destructive immigration policies, or hoping their government will choose what is good and Christian, there are many ready to stand up and shout, “idolatry,” “spiritual overreach,” or “Christian nationalism.”

The inconsistency is glaring. And it is harmful. If we continue down the path set before us by the globalists and many evangelical elites, we will undermine the very mission philosophy we cherish, while simultaneously destroying our own nation.

Christians need to provide a better path, and it begins with honesty, clarity, and biblical consistency on the questions of nationalism and the good of distinct nations.

Contradiction #1: We Celebrate National Affection in Missions, but Condemn It in America

Every missionary we send is encouraged to love the people to whom he is sent. We train him to learn their language, understand their history, embrace their rhythms, and honor their cultural instincts. A missionary to Turkey is expected to follow the Süper Lig, eat what Turkish men eat, understand their humor, appreciate their aesthetics, and genuinely love the people. His effectiveness is measured, in part, by how deeply he enters into the national life of that culture.

We call this contextualization. We call it humility. We call it good for gospel witness. A missionary is praised the more he adopts a nation’s cultural priorities and learns to love a people as a people.

But if the missionary returns home to America and begins advocating for the preservation of America, whether that’s our people, our language, our religion, culture, and customs, he is quickly denounced for not being “tolerant” and “open-minded.” If he were to demand that the foreigners living in America should be expected do all the same things he did when living abroad, he very likely would be called a “racist.” Can you spot the contradiction here? It’s as if the “gospel” preserves national affections in every other people and nation on earth except America. Here, we are told the “gospel” demands that we allow our home nation to devolve into a multicultural blob.

But as we clearly see and even teach for other people groups, this type of national pride is not supremacy, not idolatry, but love of place, people, and shared life. As those loves shape the belief that it is good to protect and preserve one’s nation, it becomes a healthy nationalism—both worldwide and even here in America.

Contradiction #2: Every Nation Is Allowed to Have a Healthy National Identity—Except America

I don’t know if it is due to the widespread adoption of Critical Race Theory ideology in the SBC, books like Radical by David Platt, or the effects of a decades long psy-op on the American people, but large subsects of Christians in America like the evangelical elites or the supposed more “missionally minded” ones feel it is their duty to celebrate and advocate a strong “national identity” for every people group except Americans. Let’s examine the inconsistencies here.

No SBC pastor would challenge the following:

• Nigerians being unapologetically Nigerian.
• Koreans loving Korean history and cultural continuity.
• Brazilians celebrating Brazilian customs.
• Emiratis maintaining strong cultural boundaries and norms.
• Hungary acting for its own country’s interest.

None of that is questioned and certainly not called idolatry. In fact, we often admire it.

Yet the moment American Christians express:

• Affection for their land and their children’s future there;
• Desire for cultural continuity;
• Concern for national morality;
• Concern for unvetted & unregulated immigration policies;
• Or hope that the government would prefer what is Christian over what is secular or Islamic.

They are accused of falling victim to the “American Dream,” partiality, or “Christian Nationalism.”

You cannot have it both ways. If a unique national identity is good everywhere else, then it is good for us, too, as American Christians.

These inconsistencies run deep through our denominational posture, and I want to work to expose them. Another example would be when foreign governments show favor toward Christian work, we give thanks. We celebrate it as an open door for the gospel. We ask God for more of it.

For instance, the government of the UAE recently affirmed the presence and work of Christian missionaries as a social good. Those who heard this rejoiced. We prayed. We gave God glory that a government, however imperfect, recognized something true that would be a positive for gospel witness.

The fact that we pray like this exposes our inconsistencies. We regularly encourage believers to pray for governments abroad:

• That they would uphold moral order;
• That they would protect religious liberty;
• That they would create social conditions favorable to Christian proclamation;
• That they would recognize the value of Christian virtue for the public good.

We do this because Scripture commands it (1 Tim. 2:1–4). God cares about the righteousness of nations (Prov. 14:34). Governments are accountable to Him (Ps. 2; Rom. 13). And a just society is good for its people.

But when Christians in America desire their own nation to embody moral order, govern with biblical wisdom, or promote truths that lead to flourishing, suddenly we act as though such hope is a “dangerous flirtation with idolatry” or “state-sanctioned” religion.

It is inconsistent to pray that foreign governments would cherish righteousness and serve the common good and then condemn American believers who pray and work to procure the same at home. If the moral law of God blesses the nations, then it blesses this nation also.

Solution #1: Accepting that the Gospel Indigenizes—Not Globalizes

Andrew Walls famously taught that the gospel always “indigenizes,” rooting itself in the soil of a people so that love for that people becomes part of the missionary burden. Lamin Sanneh, a missiologist from a muslim-background, likewise argued that Christian conversion deepens loyalty to the cultural goods of one’s people, even as it purifies them. Missionaries across the world call this normal, healthy, biblical, and necessary.

But Joe Carter recently argued at The Gospel Coalition that the gospel does not indigenize but “globalizes,” supposedly forming Christians into a kind of borderless, culture-transcending humanity. The claim sounds somewhat spiritual (I guess), but it collapses under any serious biblical or missiological scrutiny. It flattens the God-given diversity of nations, which Acts 17:26 affirms as His design. It denies the transability of the gospel and its ability to take root in any culture and any language. And it subtly promotes a hyper-individualistic Christianity detached from culture, history, and community.

If the gospel only “globalizes,” then missions becomes nothing more than extracting individuals from their culture into a placeless, culture-less Christianity. But the entire history of gospel advancement shows the opposite: the gospel dignifies, reforms, and strengthens nations. It does not erase them.

The Bible assumes that nations are real moral communities. It speaks of them as entities God governs, judges, blesses, and directs. It commands rulers to restrain evil and reward good (Rom. 13:1–4). It celebrates righteousness exalting a nation (Prov. 14:34). It describes God as ordaining their boundaries and caring for their stability and justice.

And the missions world echoes this biblical realism. Paul Hiebert wrote that the gospel transforms “the social and cultural systems” of a people. John Stott argued that nations themselves (not just individuals!) must be taught the moral wisdom of God.

None of this erases the missionary mandate. It strengthens it. A missionary with rooted affection has moral credibility. People in a stable, ordered society are more open to Christian witness. A nation under righteous government is a blessing for its citizens and a platform for the gospel to advance.

To love one’s nation well is not to worship it. It is to act as a responsible Christian within the community God has placed you.

The gospel does not turn people into abstract global citizens. It turns them into deeply rooted Christians whose love for God enriches their love for their people and for the distinct peoples of the world. It indigenizes, not globalizes.

Solution #2: Accepting Rightly-Ordered Nationalism as a Christian Responsibility, Not a Compromise

The discomfort many Christians feel with the word nationalism is not born from Scripture but from confusion. It’s a confusion that has been produced by decades of globalist assumptions, elite evangelical gatekeeping, feminist influence, and a failure to think clearly about creation, nature, and ordered loves. When nationalism is stripped of caricature and understood rightly, it is not a threat to Christianity but a fruit of it.

God is not embarrassed by nations. He created them. He ordained their boundaries. He governs them in history. He judges them for righteousness or rebellion. And He commands His people to seek the good of the place where He has put them. The Christian vision is not placeless or abstract. It is incarnational, rooted, and ordered.

God created you to have a special affection for the people in your hometown, who root for your team, and ultimately for your fellow countrymen.

That affection is not learned ideology; it is created instinct. It is part of the natural order God built into human life. Just as it is good and right to love one’s family more than strangers, one’s church more than the world at large, and one’s neighbors more than distant abstractions, so too it is good and right to desire the good of one’s nation in a particular way. This is not a sin. This is sanity.

To deny this is to deny nature itself. This is significant because, as Scripture tells us, nature bears witness to God’s design (Rom. 1:19–20).

When Christians insist that Americans must suppress national affection, refuse to prioritize their own people, or treat borders, laws, and moral cohesion as morally suspect, they are not being more faithful. They are being less human. And in doing so, they undermine the very missionary logic they celebrate overseas.

An America First posture, rightly understood, is not an abandonment of Christian love but rather its application. Love begins locally. Responsibility begins where authority exists. Stewardship assumes limits. A government that refuses to prioritize its own people has already abdicated its God-given task. Scripture does not command rulers to love all nations equally. It commands them to do justice for their people. This is what Christians should desire in their politicians, and we must demand it for our country to be Christian again. 

It is not idolatry to want laws that reflect moral truth.
It is not heresy to oppose policies that fracture social order.
It is not unchristian to expect a Christian people to desire a government that prefers what is good, true, and righteous.

In fact, it gives God glory when we live according to His natural order and creation. When nations pursue justice, restrain evil, protect their people, and honor what is good, they reflect something true about the God who rules over them. We must believe again that righteousness still exalts a nation. Disorder still corrodes it. 

Christians must stop outsourcing moral courage to abstractions and start recovering a biblical backbone. We can affirm the Great Commission and insist on national coherence. We can love the nations and love our own. We can reject racial supremacy and embrace national responsibility and national heritage. These are not contradictions unless we have already surrendered our categories. The categories of the church and our eternal people, as well as the category of nations and civil people.

If the gospel indigenizes everywhere else, it indigenizes here.
If national affection is a grace everywhere else, it is a grace here.
If ordered loves are good everywhere else, they are good here.

Conclusion

The time has come for Christians in America to stop apologizing for what God designed and to start acting like faithful stewards of the nation He has given them. Let’s not squander what many Christians paid a steep price for over political correctness or flighty sentimentalism.

To be “nationalistic” is to desire God’s order. This is why we must seek to be America First. When rightly understood, this is not to place America above God. It is to place America under God’s good order for all tribes, peoples, and nations.

This is not only compatible with Christianity but also demanded by it.