Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:2 (Summer 2024)
Article: Interview With Albert Mohler On Christian Nationalism
Author: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Interview With Albert Mohler On Christian Nationalism1

R. Albert Mohler, Jr

R. Albert Mohler, Jr is the President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College, Louisville, Kentucky since 1993. He earned his MDiv and PhD from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the host of The Briefing and Thinking in Public. He is the author of several books, including The Gathering Storm: Secularism, Culture, and the Church (Thomas Nelson, 2021), We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right and Wrong (Thomas Nelson, 2015). He is also editor of WORLD Opinions. Dr. Mohler is the seminary’s Centennial Professor of Christian Thought and a minister, having served as pastor and staff minister of several Southern Baptist churches. He is currently a member of Third Avenue Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky. He is married to his wife, Mary, and they have two children and three grandchildren.

David Schrock: Thinking about going back in time, as we are talking about this idea of “Christian nationalism” (which really broke on the scene after January 6, and now it is a term of derision), what is new and old in this conversation about “Christian nationalism?” And what are some of the fault lines that you see developing as people talk about it?

Albert Mohler: In part, what has changed is that the left—trying to isolate and dismiss conservatives—has used the label in a negative way to refer to the “Christian right” or the “radical right,” and so on. And frankly, there is an industry on the left of writing books about these things as if they just discovered us, even though they are the same people who wrote the books thirty years ago and with just a different terminology.

In a true sense, this is clever packaging to try to scare people by putting together the words “Christian” and “nationalism” as this is some kind of threat to our constitutional form of government, which is exactly contrary to the truth. In fact, Christianity is the foundational worldview that makes our

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constitutional system of government, indeed our entire civilizational system, possible. So what is new is that a lot of people have a “new” label.

Yet I do want to concede that there is something else new which is not entirely new. On the “right,” there are arguments being made by some who are asking basic questions about the structure of civilizations and societies and nations and the place of Christianity and the church within them. And out of frustration with the secular and progressive acuity in this culture, they are beginning to ...