Much has been written over the past few years about White Christian nationalism (WCN), arguably the most potent political force impacting contemporary Christian traditions in the United States, particularly the Catholic and Protestant Evangelical variants. Ironically, WCN has managed to build bridges and unity in a way that has escaped the numerous missiological and ecumenical movements attempting this in the context of the United States. While most of those movements have focused on the centrality of Christ, the one theological standard that should bring many Christians together, that is not what has forged WCN’s unity. What appears to have brought together these disparate groups has been the quest for political power and the pervasive evil of racism.

In Sheep’s Clothing is a valuable addition to the growing corpus of works on WCN. Gathering scholars from various religious and theological disciplines, the editors of the text, George Yancy and Bill Bywater, seek to understand and explain WCN as an idolatrous movement that does not in any way represent the fundamental values of the Christian gospel. In fact, WCN is fundamentally a movement that is the polar opposite of what Jesus espoused and practiced. “Heresy” would be a better term to define the crux of WCN than the term “idolatry,” which the editors use in the subtitle of the book.

The heretical nature of WCN lies in the practice that Yancy believes is an updated form of Constantinian Christianity “where hesed (i.e., loving kindness) has been supplanted by, or inextricably entangled with, ‘the instruments of death, war and conquest.”Footnote ¹ If, as I believe, WCN is a heretical “Christian” movement, then its heretical nature is primarily evident not just with a particular theological or biblical hermeneutic, but with the practice of an evil ideology that is diametrically opposed to the ethic of love and justice that Jesus espoused. Yancy captures this beautifully:

Quoting Cornel West, Yancy notes, “To be a Christian—a follower of Jesus Christ—is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.”Footnote ³

Yancy’s terms “war” and “conquest” in the previous extract suggest that beyond the theological, the implications of WCN are political through and through. Inextricably bound to the theological agenda is a political agenda, one that understands the United States as a “Christian nation, or, at least, a nation ruled by Christians,” as sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry note in their own excellent text on WCN.Footnote ⁴ WCN views the work of God as intertwined with the beginnings of this nation and thus espouses an “America first” ideology that pushes for a particular political agenda seeking to embody this ideology, and its theological assumptions, within the structures of government. This can invariably lead into a mission of electing people who will take legislative and policy actions supporting the ideology they espouse. It should then come as no surprise to hear the claims that “Donald Trump is somehow religiously ‘anointed’ and something of a ‘savior’ figure.”Footnote ⁵ With WCN, the theological becomes political and the political theological. The intertwining of the theological and political is nothing new, but it is important to note again that, in this case, WCN deploys an ideology that is the antithesis of Jesus’s ethic of love.

One of the strengths of this anthology (composed of the contributions of twenty-three scholars, including an excellent foreword by J. Kameron Carter) is its analysis of the significance of the “white” in White Christian nationalism. A number of the contributors make clear that notions of power (and thus of the political) within WCN are riddled with particular notions of race in which whiteness is not only superior but salvific. In his chapter, Mark Taylor notes that ideologies of white superiority “are inscribed and forcefully holding good over our nation and the world’s peoples as a transnational corporate-warrior state that keeps in special travail the ‘darker nations.’”Footnote ⁶ Taylor’s use of the phrase “corporate-warrior state” seeks to make clear the particular political agenda at the core of WCN’s agenda, one that is dependent on the evil notion of white supremacy. Taylor also makes clear that the phrase “white Christian” in WCN has a deep history in the United States and, even before that, in Europe. This history is replete with instances in which both “white” and “Christian” have come to describe a sense of both racial and religious superiority, demeaning and devaluing along the way any person, group, or organization who is not white or Christian.

In his chapter, Josiah Ulysses Young also considers the long history of WCN in the United States, noting that some of its theological antecedents can be found in the Evangelical movement that emerged from the work of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Young believes that the WCN notion that the United States is a divinely chosen nation can be traced back to Edwards, who believed that “a born-again America would become a righteous nation before the Parousia, Christ’s eschatological arrival.”Footnote ⁷ While Edwards and Whitfield preached emphatically on the necessity of repentance, Young skillfully points out the hypocrisy of their position on slavery and by consequence their view of race and Black people in particular. For instance, Young writes that “Edwards opposed the transatlantic trade but didn’t free ‘his’ Blacks.”Footnote ⁸ The same hypocrisy regarding slavery was also evident among many Evangelicals of the time, who not only held onto their own slaves but wholeheartedly defended slavery in the United States. The likes of Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones, Young notes, are the offspring of the Edwardses and Whitefields of the eighteenth century. Their defense of segregation and their opposition to Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights struggle were their version of WCN.

Young also skillfully identifies within WCN the ideology elevating the need for political messianic figures. These figures, WCN believes, have the potential to “save” the country from crises that are often blamed on Black people and other people of color. Enter Donald Trump. Young states that “They [White Christian nationalists] supported Trump because he extended their power” and that despite his legal troubles, White Christian nationalists believe that “Trump’s improprieties work to the glory of God, as he delivered the two justices critical to the rescinding of Roe v. Wade.”Footnote ⁹

Like Young, a number of the other authors allude to these political connections and agenda items within the WCN movement. Others, like Traci West in her excellent chapter “Misogyny and the Stench of White Supremacist Christianity,”Footnote ¹⁰ add the all-important reminder that these political agendas are also inherently misogynistic. The entire anthology beautifully moves us through chapters delving into the interrelated historical, philosophical, theological, and political origins and implications of the WCN movement, while also challenging its readers to confront the potent force that WCN has become in our nation.

The one limitation I can point to in this otherwise excellent and important text is the absence of any examination of the impact of WCN on the voting preferences of many Evangelical voters. Many observers, including myself, have pointed to the consistent electoral participation and candidate preference of voters sympathetic to the WCN cause, including, interestingly enough, many Latino Evangelicals have been influenced by WCN theology. For instance, Trump’s favorability numbers among Latino Evangelicals hover in the 70 percent range, and a majority of Latino Evangelicals, predisposed to a WCN mindset, voted for Trump over Kamala Harris. It would have been helpful for the anthology to examine why and how Latino Evangelicals acquired this WCN mindset.

These limitations notwithstanding, In Sheep’s Clothing provides a fascinating look at the most potent force facing Christianity in the United States, making this text a worthwhile resource for academics and practitioners alike.