Al Mohler signs on to Christian nationalism

(RNS) — To the consternation of some pretty conservative Southern Baptists, Al Mohler, the longtime president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has turned away from the traditional Baptist support for church-state separation to embrace Christian nationalism. For a major figure in the country’s largest Protestant denomination and a stalwart of the denomination’s “conservative resurgence,” that’s no small thing.

Mohler’s embrace has drawn attention because of a talk he gave at a roundtable on Christian nationalism held at the University of Idaho last month. The participants in the roundtable were four of the contributors to “ Five Views on Christian Nationalism ,” a book recently published by Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson’s Canon Press. The book’s editor asked each contributor to propose a place for Christianity in an imagined 2099 constitutional convention for a new United States.

In his talk, Mohler harks back to the longstanding criticism of the U.S. Constitution for failing to recognize God’s role in the American experiment, the way the Declaration of Independence does by stating that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”…