Submission Is the Word Christian Nationalists Can’t Say Out Loud
Jesus taught the surrender of the false self. Christian Nationalism turned that into a demand that everyone else surrender to them.
The Word That Makes the Empire Twitch
The word submission has become one of those words Christian Nationalists only understand when they are accusing someone else of it. Say the word near them and suddenly the room fills with panic about Islam, Sharia, foreign control, and the end of Western civilization as foretold by a man recording from his truck. But the reaction is revealing, because what they fear in Islam is often the very thing their own tradition has been quietly begging them to recover.
Submission is not kneeling. That is the cheap cartoon version. Submission is not groveling before a tyrant, obeying some cleric without conscience, or becoming less human so another man can become more powerful. Real spiritual submission is the surrender of the false self. It is the ego stepping down from a throne it never had the right to occupy. It is the soul admitting that God is not a brand, not a party mascot, not a national symbol, and not a projection screen for our fears.
The Ego Does Not Want to Be Saved. It Wants a Flag.
That is the theological wound underneath all of this. Christian Nationalism cannot talk about submission because it has replaced surrender with dominance. It does not want the self to yield to God. It wants culture, law, schools, libraries, women, immigrants, Muslims, queer people, teachers, and apparently zoning boards to yield to its version of God. Very convenient, of course. The god of Christian Nationalism never asks the ego to die. He mostly asks everyone else to behave.
Islam becomes a useful contrast here, not because Muslims are magically free from hypocrisy or because Islamic societies have always lived up to their highest ideals. Humans can ruin anything. Give us revelation and within twenty minutes we will have formed a committee, invented a purity test, and started arguing about parking. The point is not perfection. The point is that Islam kept surrender right in the center of its religious imagination. The word itself carries the meaning of submission, surrender, and peace through yielding to God.
That does not make Islam an “ad.” It makes it an uncomfortable mirror.
The Discipline Christian Nationalism Forgot
The daily rhythm of Islamic prayer says something without needing a press conference. The day is interrupted. The body is washed. The appetite is disciplined. The ego is reminded that it is not the sun around which all things orbit. The point is not the physical act by itself. The point is the training of the whole person toward remembrance. The body, the schedule, the mind, and the heart are all told, again and again, “You are not ultimate.”
That is precisely the spiritual muscle Christian Nationalism has lost.
Christian Nationalism talks endlessly about God, but very little about surrendering to God. It talks about defending Christianity, protecting Christianity, restoring Christianity, saving Christianity, legislating Christianity, and making sure Christianity gets the good microphone at public meetings. But the actual inner work of Christianity, the part where the ego is crucified rather than politically empowered, tends to disappear like a Bible verse at a donor luncheon.
Jesus Did Not Teach Domination
Jesus did not teach domination. He did not tell his followers to seize the machinery of the state so they could make the out-group nervous. He did not build a movement around grievance, suspicion, cultural ownership, and the sacred right to be offended by everyone else’s existence. The Jesus of the Gospels teaches surrender so radically that modern Christian Nationalism has to practically look away from him to keep the brand alive.
In Gethsemane, Jesus does not say, “Not their will, but my movement be done.” He says, “Not my will, but yours.” That is not weakness. That is the spiritual center of the Christian path. The human will opens itself to the divine will. The false self stops clutching. The soul consents to God even when the ego is terrified. That is surrender. That is submission in the deepest sense.
Christian theology even has the language for this. Kenosis means self-emptying. Christ empties himself. He does not inflate himself into a mascot for empire. He does not confuse spiritual authority with social control. He does not teach his disciples that victory means making the world afraid of them. He reveals power through self-offering, through mercy, through love that does not need to dominate in order to be real.
The Mirror They Keep Calling a Threat
And this is where the contrast becomes almost painfully obvious. Islam kept the language of surrender. Jesus lived the posture of surrender. Christian Nationalism replaced surrender with control and then called the result faith.
That is why the panic over Islam often feels so performative. They are not simply reacting to another religion. They are reacting to a visible reminder of something their own tradition once knew. A Muslim stopping to pray is not just “religion in public.” It is a reminder that devotion can structure a life. It is a reminder that prayer can be embodied, disciplined, daily, and inconvenient. It is a reminder that God is not something you invoke only when you want political power. God is the One before whom the self is reordered.
Christian Nationalism cannot bear that kind of reminder because its own prayer life has often been reduced to territorial performance. Prayer becomes less about being changed and more about making a claim. Flags enter sanctuaries. Guns become icons. Public prayer becomes a dominance ritual. The cross, once a symbol of self-emptying love, gets turned into a campaign prop for people who seem personally offended by the Beatitudes.
When the Cross Becomes a Campaign Prop
The whole thing becomes absurd. A movement built around the crucified Christ now acts like the highest form of faith is never being asked to surrender anything. Not comfort. Not prejudice. Not privilege. Not the fantasy that America is the new Israel and suburban grievance is the voice of prophecy. The ego remains untouched, well-fed, well-armed, and absolutely convinced it is being persecuted because someone else got permission to exist nearby.
The saints did not live like this. The martyrs did not die for this. Mary did not say, “Let it be unto me, as long as my religious tribe controls the school board.” Jesus did not say, “Take up your cross, unless you can turn it into a voting bloc.” The early Christian path was not built around cultural domination. It was built around transformation. It asked people to surrender vengeance, surrender status, surrender the need to be first, surrender the illusion that holiness looks like power over others.
The Forbidden Word
That is the part Christian Nationalism cannot say out loud. If surrender is central to Jesus, then domination is not faithfulness. If self-emptying is central to Christ, then the politics of control are not Christian courage. If the ego must die, then maybe the whole project of Christian Nationalism is not defending Christianity at all. Maybe it is protecting the ego from the gospel.
And that is why submission is the forbidden word.
Not because it belongs only to Islam.
Not because Christians do not have their own language for it.
But because the moment you say it honestly, the whole performance begins to crack.
Jesus taught surrender. Islam preserved a visible discipline of surrender. Christian Nationalism replaced surrender with flags, firearms, suspicion, and control.
Then it looked at the world and called everyone else dangerous.
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Recommended Reading
(As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. These recommendations support the scrolls at no extra cost to you.)
Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self A clear articulation of presence as lived remembrance, not abstraction. Essential for understanding how practice forms consciousness before belief catches up.
The Knowing Heart Explores how the heart, not the ego, is trained through disciplined spiritual practice. Resonates deeply with embodied traditions.
Purification of the Heart A classical Islamic manual on disciplining the ego, translated into accessible language without modern spectacle.
The Vision of Islam A non-polemical presentation of Islam’s intellectual, ethical, and spiritual architecture. Especially useful for understanding why Islam resists fragmentation.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup - A Magdalene-centered vision of spiritual authority rooted in presence, fidelity, and interior transformation rather than hierarchy.
The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault - Frames Mary Magdalene as a witness of embodied wisdom rather than doctrinal control, aligning naturally with the WWMS lens.
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