Liberalism and Christianity in the Age of Social Media

In his speech to the U.S. Congress, King Charles III wonderfully reviewed the spirit of liberty that shaped Anglo-America, informed by Christianity: 

Magna Carta has appeared in at least 160 U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1789, the King noted, “not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” 

The King recalled the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as precursor to America’s own Revolution:

And the King specifically mentioned Christianity’s role:

Famously, Alexis de Tocqueville said Americans “combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.” But the king’s affirmation of Anglo-American liberty and constitutionalism, in the context of Christianity, was timely. Much of today’s American Christianity has become despondent if not cynical about liberty and democracy. Religious practice has changed since Tocqueville’s time, and indeed, it’s changed a great deal within our lifetimes. New modes of religiosity have led to a new style of religious politics, and liberals of all faiths should give careful thought about how to respond to it.

Christianity, specifically Protestant revivalism and denominationalism, shaped early America. The diversity that those movements produced meant that Christianity would be widely popular, as it could fit the spiritual needs of many different communities. But it also meant that doctrinal unity was nowhere to be found. Civic toleration became the only answer. Voltaire famously said, “If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace.” Early America had dozens of denominations and many more independent churches and sects, not to mention Roman Catholicism and Judaism. Its pan-Christian diversity—and then some—helped ensure that Christians of all stripes, none of whom were strong enough to dominate on their own, were invested in the republic, especially its guarantees of freedom of speech and religion. 

Denominationalism and religious institutions in America are now declining. Two or three generations ago, Americans would probably have been Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or else they’d belong to another specific denomination. Today, one-third of Americans are religiously unaffiliated (though not necessarily unreligious). And the 60–65 percent of Americans who still self-identify as Christian are increasingly unmoored to traditional denominations. 

The only major component of American Christianity that’s growing is non-denominationalism. If it were itself a denomination, it would be America’s largest religious body besides Roman Catholicism. Today’s American Christian relies less on the institutional church and more on self-collation of religious resources: YouTube, podcasts, TikTok, Substack, Facebook, X/Twitter and other social media. Many if not most of these media don’t offer the community building and mediation of traditional faith communities in America. They rely on excitement, provocation, controversy, demonization, and buzz, often premised on outrage and impatience, stoking polarization and tribalism. 

None of these components are conducive to the social harmony, compromise, forbearance, and social temperance required for healthy democracy with liberty for all. David Hempton, describing the findings of Heidi Campbell about online religious communities, notes:

Amid this “tribalism” and “narrowness,” it’s no coincidence that American Christianity, or at least its loudest and most influential voices, is increasingly postliberal. It remains to be seen whether a “liberal” Christianity that affirms religious freedom and pluralism for all can meet this challenge.

We should hope that it does. Young men are increasingly identifying with Christianity. They’re going to church more often than they have at any time in the last 25 years—and, in a significant reversal, they’re attending more frequently than young women. They often describe religion as a counter to wokeness, and as an expression of their masculinity. Many of them resonate with post-liberalism, with its disdain for democracy, tolerance, and mutual respect, which are deemed weak and effeminate. They want high-octane religion, politics, and culture, pointing towards authoritarianism, and often laced with antisemitism, among other unsavory aspects. The various subgroups in postliberal Christianity are now competing for their attention, offering different mixes of emphasis on these sometimes divergent values.

Recently, a very intelligent young man who had hosted me to speak at his conservative group at an Ivy League campus several years ago (where I defended classical liberalism!) complained about my critique of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. He shared that he was a fan of Stephen Wolfe’s “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” for advocating a “government that promotes the good.” I responded that Wolfe specifically admits that this state in its promotion of the good may execute apostates and blasphemers. This young man is married, professionally successful, with an elite education, and from a mainline Protestant background, not fitting stereotypes about lost young incels living in their mother’s basement. 

Postliberal young Christian men are, like my correspondent, often highly educated and literate. This is especially true for Catholic integralism, which is one of the strong flavors of postliberal Christianity. It assumes that liberal democracy, including America at its founding, was a fruit of the Protestant Reformation—and thus it was poison from the start. It imagines a society where, as in Medieval Europe, the Catholic Church’s values are paramount in society, including in civil law. The state would punish blasphemy and heresy by the baptized members of any church—including Protestants. Non-Christians would be tolerated but not equal citizens. 

Recent integralist thinkers include Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School; Thomas Pink of King’s College London; Alan Fimister of Holy Apostles College and Seminary; Cistercian monk Edmund Waldstein; Gladden Pappin, previously of the University of Dallas and more recently with the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary; and Chad Pecknold of Catholic University of America. Although not identifying directly with integralism, Patrick Deneen, author of Why Liberalism Failed, is a favorite of integralists. Sohrab Ahmari, as a postliberal Catholic, is at times aligned with them. Integralists also sometimes see an ally in Vice President J.D. Vance, a convert to Catholicism who spoke to a 2022 integralist conference.

Protestant analogues to Catholic integralism fly under many different banners. People of this persuasion have in the past called themselves Reconstructionists, though most often of late they identify as Christian nationalists. They too want a confessional state that enforces their religion and punishes all others. Unlike Catholic integralists, of course, they do not oppose the Protestant Reformation. They claim they are the only rightful political interpreters of it.

Magisterial Protestantism, which was practiced during and after the Reformation, had confessional states, typically with state churches, as today’s Christian nationalists emphasize. The magisterial model, as championed by Jean Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli, remains binding for them. Often they cite the Westminster Confession of 1646, from the English Puritan Revolution, which demands that civil magistrates protect true religion. Like Catholic integralists, they think liberal democracy with religious freedom and free speech enables vice and error. The state should point to the common good.

The most prominent Christian nationalist, and perhaps the modern father of the movement, is Doug Wilson, the Moscow, Idaho–based religious entrepreneur who is a favorite of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth has hosted him at the Pentagon, and he belongs to Wilson’s denomination, which recently planted a church on Capitol Hill.

In media interviews, such as with Ross Douthat of The New York Times, Wilson is typically avuncular and avoids hot buttons. But Wilson does not disguise that he wants a Protestant confessional state, while granting it might be centuries away. He opposes voting rights for women, as do most other Christian nationalists. Wilson ignited controversy with Douthat by admitting he would not legally permit Catholic Marian processions, which are, after all, idolatrous in his eyes. His comment ignited Catholic pushback. It evinced that Catholic integralists and Christian nationalists are ultimately at odds with each other, even if both are postliberal, and even if both demonize some of the same enemies, including liberal democracy. 

Wilson’s publishing house has produced the most serious Christian nationalists’ manual, mentioned above, The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe, who writes that the state in some circumstances might execute unrepentant blasphemers and heretics. His policy prescriptions may claim the mantle of Christianity, but it shouldn’t have to be said that his notion of Christianity is remarkably extreme. 

A more recent, sophisticated argument for Christian nationalism is King of Kings: A Reformed Guide to Christian Government by James Baird, a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. The most important online publication for Christian nationalists is American Reformer, edited by Timon Cline, who formerly worked for the New Jersey Attorney General and for Doug Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College.

Several prominent adherents of these tendencies also espouse antisemitism. One incendiary leading Christian nationalist is Joel Webbon, a popular podcaster and pastor of Covenant Bible Church outside Austin, Texas. Webbon rejoices in provocation and controversy, which includes attacking Jews. Operating in a similar vein is another popular podcaster, Dale Partridge of King’s Way Reformed Church in Prescott, Arizona. Aligned with Webbon and Partridge, Calvin Robinson is an English cleric and former British television host recently moved to America to enhance his public profile as a postliberal anti-woke online Christian influencer who also dabbles in anti-Jewish commentary. Their popular refrain is “Christ is King!” All Christians can affirm that sentiment, but for integralists and Christian nationalists, it means Christian political supremacy and often anti-Jewish views. Candace Owens, the Catholic online influencer, frequently deploys the phrase amid her explicitly anti-Jewish sentiments.

These personalities ten years ago would have been deemed extremist and inconsequential. But in our current postliberal era, they have oxygen and momentum, politically aligned with MAGA, and fellow travelers in a wider coalition of grievances against “elites.” They are proud nationalists who oppose wokeness and globalism.

Christian nationalists, unlike Catholic integralists, embrace the American republic, though they define it as Christian and Protestant. Minimizing the Constitution’s First Amendment promise of religious freedom, they stress that the Constitution initially allowed states to establish churches and restrict non-Christians. They abhor, or explain away, the revision to the Westminster Confession that American Presbyterians made in 1789, following the Revolution, to say that civil magistrates should protect religious freedom instead of enforcing a state religion. They deny the established judicial precedents holding that the Fourteenth Amendment made the Bill of Rights binding on state governments in these and other matters. Adjacent to Christian nationalists are Heritage Americans, who claim biological descent from America’s original Anglo Protestant settlers and insist they and their culture should have permanent ascendancy.

Of course, not all postliberal Christians are integralists, and not all have specific aspirations for a confessional state. But postliberal Christians are discomfited by freedom of speech, religious freedom, pluralism, and the political tumult of democracy. Largely they have embraced MAGA, although they’re sometimes disappointed that MAGA hasn’t gone far enough. Evangelical Christians are the staunchest voting demographic for MAGA, and there are even some evangelical watchdogs who profess to determine orthodoxy based on attitudes towards MAGA, regardless of theology. 

But it’s not that simple. Some evangelicals have also sympathized with the now defeated Orbán government in Hungary. Although Orbán is Protestant, his most prominent American religious supporters have tended to be postliberal Catholics, along with Rod Dreher, who is Eastern Orthodox. Orbán’s own propaganda makes frequent use of Catholic imagery, like the Crown of St. Stephen. 

What unites these disparate strands of postliberal Christianity isn’t a specific theology or a coherent set of policy prescriptions. It’s a style of doing politics. MAGA’s strongman rhetoric has shifted many evangelicals and others, if unconsciously, away from classical liberalism, with its commitment to limited government, rule of law, civil propriety, free markets, and societal pluralism. Skepticism of these values is what unites postliberal Christianity, meaning that the movement, considered as a whole, is political first, and religious only second. 

That’s unfortunate. The main American religious institutions upholding classical liberalism were once the mainline Protestant denominations, which are now mere shadows of their former selves. Twentieth century evangelicalism, led chiefly by Baptists, inherited a deep respect for American democracy, which they understood to be Christian and especially Protestant in origin. Baptists especially esteemed religious freedom.

Post-denominational America is mainly Baptist in its congregationalism and much of its theology. The distinguishing mark of Baptist social witness was its commitment to religious freedom. But Baptists never had a strong, wider political theology. And the Southern Baptist Convention is declining in membership and influence, among even its own members. So today postliberal Reformed voices, drawing upon a stronger intellectual tradition, dominate much of evangelical public conversation. 

Nondenominational churches are often more prone to strong pastors, who expect loyalty. And much of post-denominationalism is charismatic or Pentecostal—movements which especially esteem strong leaders. Many of MAGA’s strongest loyalists are charismatics, such as Paula White-Cain, who is commonly described as President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor. 

Ultimately, though, most postliberal Christians are not relying primarily on their pastors for societal guidance. They’re collating their own individualized online resources from many political and theological sources, which might include Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, and others. These online influencers provide a dazzle, and a political dimension, that in-person pastors typically don’t.

A revealing and fascinating 2025 First Things article by Mary Harrington captured this zeitgeist by declaring that the age of democracy arose from the age of literacy following the Reformation. That age is now said to be closing, replaced by a postliterate, visual, online age, which allows humanity to return to its allegedly more natural state—monarchy. As an example of a “monarch” who can provide the digital “pageantry” required by the people, Harrington cited Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele. Also in First Things, American Reformer executive editor Josh Abbotoy suggested a “Protestant Franco” might be “inevitable.” 

Most American Christians likely aren’t ready for a Protestant Franco or a Nayib Bukele. But a whiff of strongman authoritarianism animates public online conversation about American Christians’ participation in politics. The irony is that American Christianity, especially Anglo Protestantism, was historically central to developing our classically liberal democracy and ethos. 

The current postliberal authoritarian trend has some precedents. During the Civil War and afterwards many Christians advocated a constitutional amendment making Christianity America’s established religion. The 1850s Know Nothing movement strove to ostracize Catholics from public life. The 1920s Ku Klux Klan revival purported to restore America to its Protestant roots. Prohibition, largely the project of Methodists and Baptists, more indirectly sought to encode low church Protestant morality in reaction against non-Protestant immigrants. These movements gained great influence and then collapsed. Pluralism and tolerance ultimately prevailed, even if across rocky roads. 

The Anglo-American political tradition of ordered liberty is 400 years old. Its trajectory is not easily reversed. Protestantism, with its stress on individual conscience, is ultimately inimical to authoritarianism. A “Protestant Franco” is a contradiction. American Catholicism for over 250 years has happily acclimated to American principles of freedom of religion and speech, with legal equality for all, which Catholic teaching of the last sixty years has ultimately vindicated. 

As King Charles III recalled, our liberties, with religious and speech freedom, and protections against overweening executives, descend from the American Revolution and the Glorious Revolution, both revolts against ambitious kings, and they date back to Magna Carta, which first restrained the powers of the English crown. 

American Christians, especially American Protestants, should be the most enthusiastic stewards of our liberal institutions and traditions that guard against the caprice and whimsy of strongmen and statists. Hopefully this enthusiasm will revive for the good of all.