Early fundamentalists rejected Christian-nation patriotism during World War One

Evidence

During the First World War, these competing visions of muscular Christianity were caught up in a frenzied militarism. Liberal Protestants embraced the conflict as a war to end all wars, a means of extending democracy and Christianity across the globe. Among fundamentalists, the response was more complicated than Sunday’s flag waving might suggest. For some, an unwillingness to characterize America as a “Christian nation” restrained their enthusiasm for the war. A Christian nation, according to editors at The King’s Business, a monthly publication of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, would be one that “has accepted Christ as its Saviour and as its Lord” in all aspects of governance—in politics, commerce, and international relations. But “such a nation does not exist on earth, and never has existed, and never will exist until our Lord comes again.” For this reason, patriotism was no virtue; a Christian’s loyalty belonged to God’s kingdom, not to the nation. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 45

Modernists and fundamentalists did, however, agree on the need to masculinize the faith. … In a move that seems almost incomprehensible today, liberal Protestants pounced on this ambivalence, denouncing conservatives’ “un-American” faith and labeling their lack of patriotism a threat to national security. Fundamentalists responded by pointing to the origins of liberals’ higher-critical theology in German intellectual circles, and by shoring up their own patriotism. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 45

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the modern ‘Christian nation’ Trump-era framing — an important historical counterpoint to the book’s later chapters, and to the reader’s project of mapping continuity vs. rupture.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the Christian nation that never was’ — early fundamentalists explicitly denied America was a Christian nation, a fact modern nationalists would find inconvenient.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 45