Biermann v Ramirez: Lutherans Debate Christian Nationalism
Must Christians exist apolitically unless they are sacrificing their interests to non-Christians?
On The Line Podcast, the number one Lutheran YouTube channel/podcast, is hosting a debate on Christian nationalism, sponsored by Luther Classical College, this coming Monday, August 25, 2025, at 7:00 PM EDT. A link to the stream will be posted soon.
The debaters
Rev. Dr. Joel Biermann is the Waldemar A. and June Schuette Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.1 He is the author of several books and a regular guest on many media outlets. He also has an eponymous YouTube channel.
Rev. David Ramirez is the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Union Grove, Wisconsin. He is well known as an organizer of the Bugenhagen Conference and for his contributions to Gottesdienst.
The issue
Christian nationalism, or Christendom, has been a much-discussed, feared, and maligned topic for several years as the Christian West grapples with the eclipse of its heritage ethnic, cultural, faith, and national identities, which have been subverted by unfettered globalization. The hallmarks of this globalization have been nearly constant conventional and unconventional war, mass legal and illegal migration from the third to the first world for indigenous labor substitution, Christian apostatization, decommissioning local economies and exporting their jobs, concentrating capital, and a pitiless asymmetric multiculturalism under the command and control of globe-spanning para-state institutions and their layered managerial classes.
Resistance to these machinations has intensified and spread over the last half-decade (the draconian COVID-19 actions seem to have awakened many), and there has been a revival of interest in and concern for cultural and national rehabilitation, including a recovery of the blessings of Christendom.
In an attempt to halt the insurgency, an astonishingly broad cross-section of elites has cultivated a narrative that race hatred (hence, prefixing “White” to Christian nationalism and capitalizing the “N”) is the motivating interest for any promotion of Christendom. Tied to that is a demand for disassociation of church and politics based on Everson v. Board of Education (1947), which explicitly applied the separation principle to state laws via the Fourteenth Amendment.
The modern church has sacralized Everson so enthusiastically that it applies it to every power relationship. It deliberately leverages confusion in the pews about the Church Triumphant versus the Church Militant, the Left versus the Right Kingdom, and notions that the Three Estates are hermetic silos. The consequence is a demand that the church and Christians may only exist apolitically unless they are sacrificing their interests to non-Christians.
At least your free will is untouched!
The above X post by Hillsdale College President, Larry Arnn, illustrates so well the attempt to spin Christian nationalism into highly abstracted concepts. For Arnn, America is the only authentic Christian nation insofar as it refuses to expect anyone to be Christian and behave like a Christian in a Christian nation. The greatest virtue is that nobody should be made to feel uncomfortable about being a heathen, and that the Establishment Clause should always suppress Christian civic engagement.2
Another close-to-home example lies to our north. Look at the rapidly declining Lutheran Church Canada (LCC), amidst a general vanishing of Christians of any stripe in the True North.3 Like its parent, the United Kingdom, Canada is another lesson that Christians and their temporal institutions must be nurtured in a cultural, civic, and political context. Without diligent and persistent attention, Christians will be displaced, marginalized, and erased by alien religions and cultures that have no qualms about imposing their interests through the power dynamics tilted in favor of ‘newcomers’.
Just a one-hour car ride from LCC’s St. Catherine’s Seminary, Hindus have erected a 51-foot-tall statue of Shri Ram Murti in Mississauga, Ontario. Drive another 20 minutes, and you can bask in the simian thrall of a 55-foot monkey god cursing Brampton. The idols are not tourist attractions. They are declarations of victory over Toronto’s colonized western exurbs. It is foolish defeatism to pretend that our God must rely on these idols and their attached pagan temples to accomplish His will in and for Canada.4
As recently as 1921, Canada formally adopted a coat of arms with the motto, A Mari usque ad Mare, a reference to Psalm 72:8. Canada was a possession of King and Empire, but there was an unapologetic and humble confession that even Dominetur Britannia was subject to the true and final dominion of Christ Jesus.
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. Psalm 72:8
We look forward to a spirited debate and discussion!
Debate prep
Ad Crucem News has published several articles dealing with Christian nationalism questions, including:
A Defense of Christian Culture in the Post-Pandemic Era
Recently, The Canadian Lutheran published an article by Rev. Dr. Thomas Korcok, which claimed that Christian Nationalism, as expressed in American and Canadian Christianity, is not compatible with Lutheran doctrine. Rev. Dr. Harold Ristau, president of Luther Classical College
Aphorisms on Christendom in the shadow of “Christian Nationalism”
Rev. Dr John Raymond Stephenson is an adjunct professor at Luther Classical College. He is a native of Hartlepool, England, holds a BA and MA from Oxford University (1974, 1982), a Diploma in Theology from Cambridge University (1975), and a PhD from Durham University (1983). He was ordained in 1985 and served Escarpment Lutheran Church, Lewiston, NY, be…
Church, Family, and State In Contemporary Canada
Editor’s note: Rev. Williams's paper is a response to the publication of A Lutheran Response to Contemporary Issues by the Lutheran Church Canada’s (LCC) Commission on Theology and Church Relations.
Theses on Christian Interaction with Civil Government and Society
This is the second set of theses prepared by Rev. Dr. Christian Preus and Rev. Jonathan Lange at the request of Wyoming District (LCMS) President, Rev. Dr. John Hill. The two documents were developed in response to “ongoing discussion among our pastors has been the matter of how our congregations, members, pastors, and the district as a whole relate to …
Desecrating Our Sacred Spaces
A two-week business trip to Australia with stops in Sydney and Perth allowed some time to survey church art and architecture in the Lucky Country. The takeaway is that Australia is suffering the same cultural barbarism that demoralizes Christians everywhere.
Is the Illegal Alien My Nearer Neighbor?
Our suburban Denver home needs exterior painting, and we’ve been calling contractors to source quotes. We could do it ourselves, but it’s probably not the wisest decision for half-centurions to be on ladders 40 feet off the ground at the highest points. So, we researched area companies and asked them to bid. All the painting outfits are just brokers—the…
Why is Our Country at War?
The title of this article alludes to Charles A. Lindbergh’s 1917 monograph, Why is Your Country at War? In it, Lindbergh, father of the namesake American aviation genius, argued that the US entered WWI due to the manipulations and greed of the “Money Trust,”
Finally, a Compassionate Trade and Industrial Policy Emerges
For too long, America's working class has been crushed under the weight of a ruthless trade and industrial regime orchestrated by a power elite—Wall Street Journal editorialists, think-tank technocrats, and globalist cheerleaders—who sold out the nation's heartland for the enrichment of a tiny financial caste
Importing Foreign Labor is Immoral
Incoming President Trump’s coalition has fractured, probably irreparably, after his billionaire tech bro alliance (the “PayPal Mafia”) went to war with the base over unlimited legal immigration. Up to and through the elections, there was complete alignment on ending illegal immigration and commencing mass deportations as soon as possible. Still, even th…
The Betrayal of American Manufacturing and Youth
There is a lot of despair and anxiety among youngsters entering the workforce, and they are justified in their apprehension. Their grandparents, who started work in the 1950s and 1960s, have no conception of their difficulties because they genuinely lived in a different world. Hopefully, we can help those grandparents understand the problem because they…
The Mirage of Victory: How Fukuyama's 'End of History' Led to Never Ending Conflict
In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, a book-length treatment of his 1989 essay in the neocon foreign and security policy rag National Interest. Fukuyama triumphally declared that ‘Liberal Democracy’ was the terminal evolution of human social and political ideology;
Disclosure: Tim is a CSL regent. He had no involvement with the debate beyond this promotion of the stream.
Note Arnn’s smugness, “so-called Christian Europe”, and the presumed illiteracy about compulsion, as if the religious tests of the American colonies were neither Christian nor American.
Canada provides a perfect recent illustration of asymmetric multiculturalism. The country was thrown into chaotic self-flagellation and collective cultural confession and penance over a hoax about mass graves of children at church run schools. When churches were fire bombed in the name of social and ancestral justice, the national response at all levels was insouciance. Canadian PM at the time, the execrable Justin Trudeau, said church burnings were “understandable”.
It would be fascinating to compare the economic and political power of Hindus and Sikhs in Canada from 1990 to 2025, compared with that of the nation’s Lutherans and Anglicans.
This article at American Reformer would be a good supplemental discussion point for the debate: https://americanreformer.org/2025/08/spiritual-formation-and-the-trouble-with-christian-nationalism/
Hillsdale College President, Dr. Larry Arnn's, comments cited in this article certainly reflect Hillsdale's strong libertarian and government independence principles. To me, the position that no one should be compelled to a belief by any government aligns quite well with Martin Luther's warning against violating one's conscience ("captive to the Word of God") at the Diet of Worms.
Luther's full quote was recently posted as the "sub-title" at TruthAndLightMedia.org, prior to the publication of this Ad Crucem opinion piece.