James Wood’s recent essay in Plough sets out to warn against the dangers of Christian nationalism but reads more like a sermon looking for sinners than a work of careful theology. The tone is lofty, the language charged, yet the argument falters under the weight of exaggeration. His central move is to enlist the French Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac as a weapon against Christians today who express loyalty to nation or culture. But in doing so, Wood reveals less about de Lubac and more about his own unease with contemporary Christianity.
He suggests that Christians who raise questions about immigration, demographic shifts, or cultural cohesion are, in effect, crypto-Nazis hiding in plain sight.
From the outset, Wood chooses caricature over clarity. He suggests that Christians who raise questions about immigration, demographic shifts, or cultural cohesion are, in effect, crypto-Nazis hiding in plain sight. This is not analysis but alarmism. To equate ordinary believers concerned about preserving traditions with fascistic forces is reckless. It trivializes genuine historical evil while demonizing those trying to grapple honestly with complicated social realities. Even commentators outside the church would hesitate to draw such wild associations. (RELATED: ‘Fascist’ Is the Dumbest Political Insult in the World Today)
This tendency is on display in his historical comparisons. Wood draws a line between French Catholics under Vichy and American Christians today. The analogy falls apart on first inspection. Vichy collaborators were complicit in genocide; evangelicals advocating border enforcement or celebrating cultural heritage are engaged in politics, not mass murder. One was a moral catastrophe, the other a contest over policy. To fold the two into a single tale of Christian failure is not only absurd, it cheapens the memory of real victims while insulting those who hold legitimate concerns about the present.
His theological case suffers from the same lack of balance. Wood insists that because Christians are destined for a supernatural end beyond this world, any strong sense of national or cultural belonging is necessarily idolatrous. Yet the Bible tells a richer story. Revelation describes a multitude gathered before the throne, drawn “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” Distinctiveness is not erased but embraced in redeemed form. Christianity does not require the rejection of cultural loyalty; it requires its reordering. Earthly ties are not ultimate, but neither are they meaningless.
This is where Wood’s handling of de Lubac goes most astray. The cardinal and prolific author stood firmly against Nazism, rejecting its racial determinism and its pagan cult of blood and soil. Yet he never scorned patriotism. He cherished French culture even as he resisted its canonization. His work shows a man who saw the peril of nationalism cut loose from God, but also the promise of cultural roots kept in their rightful place. To draft him as a blanket critic of national loyalty is to distort his witness beyond recognition.
What is most striking in Wood’s piece is his refusal to draw vital distinctions. Patriotism and pathological nationalism are blurred into one. Prudence in policy becomes indistinguishable from pride in race. Concern for cultural continuity is portrayed as contempt for the outsider. Yet Christian history offers countless examples of believers who lived with both loyalty to their nations and fidelity to Christ. Augustine served Rome while awaiting the heavenly city. Medieval monks could pray for their kings while pledging themselves to Christ alone. Missionaries carried the Gospel abroad without abandoning love for their homelands. Through the centuries, Christians have borne this balance with grace. To abandon it for an either-or suspicion is to shrink the scope of Christian imagination.
Wood’s critique also sidesteps the lived concerns of today’s believers. Many Christians uneasy about rapid demographic change are not driven by hatred but by fear of losing the cultural ground that once gave rise to Christian charity, forgiveness, and fellowship. Their fears are not fascist. If anything, they reflect a desire to preserve what made de Lubac’s vision of Christian unity flourish in the first place
The conclusion of his essay calls readers to “join the spiritual resistance” against Christian nationalism. However, the resistance he invokes is misty and meaningless, closer to shadowboxing than serious struggle. Resistance to whom? The grandmother anxious that her parish may lose its language and hymns? The father who hopes his children will respect their nation’s heritage? By branding such concerns as extremism, Wood widens the rift he claims to repair.
Wood’s essay swaps theology for moralizing and discernment for denunciation. It dismisses rather than engages, scolds rather than shepherds. What remains is no reckoning with Christian nationalism but a masterclass in missing the mark. It’s earnest in tone, but shallow in substance, and blind to the struggles of believers striving to be faithful in a fractured world.
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