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Last edited Tue Oct 8, 2024, 03:50 AM - Edit history (1)

the Christian sects.

The ABC branch of Baptists has a group endorsed by the church leadership that actively opposes Christian Nationalism.
Their opposition to it is based on the core Baptist belief that faith cannot be forced or imposed from the outside. It must be freely chosen, which is why they baptize adults into membership and not infants. They strongly defend religious freedom AND the right to have no religion.

Calvinist-based denominations (Presbyterian, Amish, Mennonites, Reformed Churches), even the ones that practiced state religion in the past, oppose government enforced religion in the US today. The Amish and some branches of Mennonites are apolitical. They do not get involved in politics and do not proselytize.

The largest branch of Presbyterians (PCUSA) are theologically and socially liberal. They respect the right of people to follow their own beliefs or to have no belief. The same is true of the largest branch of Lutherans, the ELCA.

Those churches and others operate immigration programs that provide sponsorship, free legal assistance, language interpretation, and adjustment programs for immigrants. They also operate missions at the southern border to provide food, clothing, and legal help for asylum seekers who are let into the US. They aid people of all backgrounds and religions and do not require joining the churches that help them. Bringing immigrants and asylum seekers into the US is counter to nationalism and especially to Christian Nationalism.

During the Nazi era in Germany, when Nazis infiltrated church councils in order to influence the churches to embrace German nationalism under the name of the German Christian Church, large numbers of Reformed and Lutheran pastors broke away and formed the Confessing Church (meaning faith-based, not politically based) in opposition to the German nationalist church. Some of their members were involved in resistance groups. They helped people escape Nazism. They called Hitler and the German Christian Church blasphemous for their worshiplike veneration of Hitler.

Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in a concentration camp for his resistance activities. Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller survived several camps and lived to 1984. He is the author of "First they came for the Socialists.... "

Swiss Reformed Pastor Karl Barth was responsible for writing a declaration that rejected the Nazi influence on German Churches, which became the founding document for the Confessing Church (opponents of the German nationalist church). He mailed the document to Hitler and was forced to resign from his teaching position in Germany and return to Switzerland.