Can Institutions Be “Christian”?

One of the questions that has arisen as multiple books have been published on Christian Nationalism is whether or not a nation can be “Christian”. Some have argued that nations lack the capacity to retain such characterizations because they cannot be redeemed in the way than an individual can be redeemed. Only individuals have eternal souls. Which begs the question whether any institutions can be characterized as “Christian”. Institutions like schools, or colleges, or universities. Is there such thing as a “Chrisitan school”? What about a family? Can it be Christian? Or what about a church? It is, after all, an institution. Can it be Christian? My take on this is that institutions can be Christian, but not in the same way that an individual can be Christian.

One of the confusions of our era is to woodenly apply the same criteria, characteristics, virtues, and vices to institutions as to an individual. For example, should civil government be compassionate? I would argue that civil government can be compassionate, but the way that it is compassionate is by enacting and enforcing just laws so that those who do well are protected and those who do evil are punished. As such, “compassion” in the form of lax sentences for criminals is not compassion at all on the general public, as this increases the likelihood of future crimes.

In the same way, applying the same criteria for an institution to be considered Christian as an individual to be considered Christian is the wrong way to go about the thing. The individual must be sanctified in his heart in order to be a Christian. This is a work of the Spirit that cannot be performed on an institution, because an institution is not a Person, but a collective of people bound up in some common cause or purpose. Now if someone wanted to make the point that this is precisely why an institution cannot be Christian, I would only ask that they be consistent and agree that a school cannot be Christian or a family cannot be Christian or a company cannot be Christian.

Fundamentally, such a person would only allow the term “Christian” to describe a person (individual) who made a claim to be regenerate. But even if such a position was taken, I would ask from a purely practical position how we ought to describe an institution that openly defined itself according to Christian standards, pursued explicitly Christian goals, and demonstrated definitively Christian characteristics? The purpose of language is to describe, and therefore an adjective such as “Christian” would appropriately communicate what was intended in such a case. For example, would the same person who objected to the idea of a Christian nation deride the idea of a Christian college, or take offense if someone described his household as a Christian family? My suspicion is that the objection to a “Christian” nation is rooted more in a concern that it is a bad idea than that it is an illogical idea.

So instead of “regenerate”, what should the criteria be for institutions? I would say that 1) the institution must explicitly self-identify as Christian, and 2) there must be some sort of commitment to Christian principles (ethical or propositional or both, depending on the type of institution). To take an example, I would consider a family to be a Christian family if the head of the household identified it as such and that the family self-consciously held itself to Christian ethical practices in some way, shape or form. It could always be argued that a family should meet a certain threshold of ethical conformity to the principles of Christianity before it should be considered Christian, but this kind of purity test is a matter of “where you draw the line”, and could be applied to individuals as well as institutions. We might say that a certain family that claimed to be Christian was “Christian in name only”, but again, that could be true of an individual or even a church. It doesn’t seem to me to alienate the categorical possibility of “Christian family”.

To take another example, I would consider a school to be a Christian school if it explicitly identified as such, refused to contradict established Christian doctrine, and required certain ethical behavior of its staff. Since a school’s purpose is to teach principles, the threshold for ethical behavior of staff and biblically consistent curriculum would matter more than a Christian business, which might not require employees to identify as Christians as long as they held themselves to a particular ethical standard implied in the business’s self-identification as Christian.

What, then, would the criteria for a nation to be considered Christian? There are certainly some additional challenges when moving from an institution like the family to an institution like the nation. One challenge is longevity: the family essentially re-invents itself from generation to generation, and thus the likelihood of a family drifting from its Christian identity is less of an issue. Another challenge is the scope: a Christian college can determine its own boundaries of expansion and limit itself to particular fields. A nation, on the other hand, is designed to endure to many generations, its scope comprehends vast swaths of the legislative, economic, and military, and it is somewhat limited (apart from authoritarian regimes) in its ability to influence the size of its population. Could a nation self-identify as Christian? Yes, it could. Could a nation hold itself to Christian principles in its laws, its economic activity, and its approach to war? Yes, it could. I leave the question open as to whether or not this is advisable, in what circumstances it would most likely be effective, and what the details of such a scenario would be.

If we are going to allow institutions that are not direct recipients of regeneration (such as a family or a school) to be described as Christian, then the possibility of a nation being Christian should also be viable. In order for that to happen, we have to understand the differences between the way we evaluate individuals and the way we evaluate institutions.