Recently, I was given the opportunity to be part of the team of folks helping to launch Amanda Tyler’s book How to End Christian Nationalism. After pre-ordering the book, the launch team sent me an uncorrected proof PDF of the text to read ahead of the book’s launch. I finished it just in time to get this reflection out ahead of the official release date, tomorrow, October 22nd. I was so glad to read this book, written by the lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, because of Amanda Tyler’s long personal history with the issue, as well as her connections with so many others who she interviewed for the book.

On the Sunday after January 6, 2021, I wrote a sermon about how the baptismal life counters the scourge of Christian Nationalism. (You can read it here.) For me, that sermon was an isolated message spoken to about a hundred people and read by a few hundred more online, and that was it. I did not have a larger community with whom to converse how best to combat Christian Nationalism at the time, but with the release of Amanda Tyler’s book, that conversation can happen with a well-researched and heartfelt guide.

How to End Christian Nationalism breaks its sections into “steps” to combat Christian nationalism in our own lives, churches, communities, and the wider public square. Here are the steps Tyler identifies:

1. Name and understand the threat of Christian nationalism
2. Ground yourself in God’s love
3. Denounce violence
4. Commit to separation of church and state
5. Take on Christian nationalism close to home
6. Organize for change
7. Protect religious freedom in public schools
8. Take you place in the public square

In each step, Tyler gives the reader examples and stories about how to live a nonviolent, nonpartisan life of faith that works for the public good of all. This book manages to be both deeply faithful and patriotic. It does a good job distinguishes between patriotism and nationalism, and it invites Christians into the work of defending religious liberty as a good for all Americans, Christians included.

Tyler says, “Because Christian nationalism is a debasement of the most foundational teachings of Christ and Christianity – chiefly, that we are all God’s children and that we should love each other as Jesus loved us, which was radically, sacrificially, and unconditionally – it’s crucial for Christians to confront and dismantle it.” Quoting another scholar, Tyler says that Christian nationalism bows to three idols in particular: “power, fear, and violence.”

Calling out the racial underpinnings of Christian nationalism, Tyler also says, “If you are a white Christian, you must be willing to examine your complicity in institutional racism. No matter which denomination or tradition we belong to, we must work to reconstruct a theology that is on the side of the enslaved, disenfranchised, and powerless – one that is closer to what Jesus actually taught than to the distorted, funhouse-mirror version of “Christian” theology espoused by Christian nationalism.

With clarion calls such as these, Tyler encourages and empowers Christians to confront the heresy of Christian nationalism. As she does so, she also describes practices that will help us do so, including a succinct description of faith-based community organizing. She counsels the reader on how to approach conversations with people who deny Christian nationalism exists and how to find common cause with nonreligious people.

How to End Christian Nationalism is essential reading for anyone trying to put forth a Jesus-centered expression of the faith and to live that faith positively in the public square.