Topics like Christian nationalism, mass immigration, and cultural heritage dominate much of the national conversation and social media ecosystem, and for good reason: We want to know who we are as genealogical creatures embedded in unique cultures and nations, and how our Christian faith can forge influence for the good.
Moreover, irresponsible immigration policies have destabilized Western nations, forcing us back to foundational questions about the necessary conditions for stable social order. It’s appropriate to give serious consideration to the composition of a population and how different people groups shape cultures. But appropriate questions can quickly become dark considerations, such as whether preserving national heritage requires protecting the purity of bloodlines.
Acknowledge Real Tension
We should acknowledge the tension: Scripture presents a high view of nations and diverse people groups, but it offers an even higher view of Christ and the Christian responsibility to the kingdom of God.
Scripture affirms that God made the nations, sets their boundaries, and delights in their distinct glory. These things are not irrelevant to how God fashions history and people. Yet the Bible never commands Christians to preserve an ethnic heritage or national identity as if our faith or God’s mission depended on it. The New Testament consistently decenters bloodlines and nationality (without nullifying them), placing instead a greater emphasis on a higher loyalty to Jesus and his church (Phil. 3:20; Eph. 2:19).
The Bible tells us to maintain the faith, not preserve bloodlines. Scripture doesn’t command us to preserve ethnic heritage or national identity as a Christian obligation. Furthermore, while natural law theory can appreciate and appropriate the presence of distinct people groups as a feature and function of human society’s natural development, it does not demand the preservation of distinct bloodlines—natural law merely insists on the stable development of cultures that allow for the common good to be pursued.
Scripture commands fidelity to Christ and his church, while affirming nations and ethnic differences as providential goods to be stewarded, not idols to be sacralized. A providential good is a biblically warranted fact of existence that we acknowledge and celebrate, even if we aren’t called to give concerted moral effort to perpetuate it. At the same time, we should also resist the tendency to reduce cultural heritage, ethnicity, and nationality to irrelevant throwaways unbecoming of Christian reflection. Christians are called to gratefully embrace our ethnicity, while we’re called to advance God’s kingdom.
By way of definitions, a “nation” may be defined as a people inhabiting a particular geographic territory, sharing common laws, institutions, and a public life that binds them together as a political community under God’s providence. A nation is thus more than mere bloodline; it’s a corporate reality of social order, customs, identity, and governance that enables a people to pursue common goods. By contrast, “ethnicity” refers to the inherited patterns of culture, memory, and identity—language, kinship, tradition, and custom—that organically develop and are transmitted among a people over time.
Ethnicity is a marker of heritage and belonging, while nationality is a marker of political membership and civic solidarity. As distinct ethnic groups form, they naturally develop territorial markers—borders—that enclose and protect their shared cultural life. These borders, in turn, give shape to political communities. In this way, nations and ethnicities mutually reinforce the cultural imagination of a people.
The modern concept of “race,” however, is more ambiguous: It isn’t a biblical category but a social construct that emerged in modernity to classify human beings by physical traits such as skin color, often in ways that obscured the richer realities of nation and ethnicity. Race, in this sense, is a reductive lens, collapsing complex cultural and national identities into superficial biological features.
Both nation and ethnicity are providential goods to be stewarded with gratitude, while race must be handled with caution, lest it distort God’s vision of human diversity. Neither nation, ethnicity, nor race is ultimate; the Christian’s highest allegiance is to Christ and his kingdom, which embraces people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9). While ethnicity can acknowledge the reality of physical characteristics that arise as people groups intermarry and settle, using physical characteristics as the monocausal basis for classification is severely limiting—and, as history reveals, prone to horrific abuse—in understanding the complete plethora, depth, and uniqueness of ethnic diversity.
Israel and the Old Covenant
Israel had a distinct calling from Yahweh to preserve its unique status among the nations. But while Abraham was the progenitor and patriarch of what would become the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, there was nothing special about his lineage or status. Coming from Ur of the Chaldeans, he was an idolator himself (Gen. 11:28, 31; Josh. 24:2) before God called him to leave his homeland, promising to make him a great nation (Gen. 12:1–3).
From the beginning, God’s promise to Abraham included a promise to the nations before the establishment of Israel, meaning the calling of Abraham and the establishment of Israel as God’s covenant people was never solely ethnically exclusive—even if ethnic realities eventually resulted. Ultimately, all the nations would be blessed through his line (v. 3).
Israel’s covenantal relationship to God, inaugurated by Abraham’s call, is what made it distinct, not its existence as a reducibly genetic or ethnic people. While Scripture states that God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants (who are a people group), this ethnic reality neither tells the whole story nor encompasses the full scope of redemption.
Non-Jews could assimilate as Jews in the Old Testament sense—though better said, they became Israelites by covenantal adoption, not by bloodline (Ex. 12:38; Josh. 2; 6:25; Ruth 1:16–17; 2 Sam. 11:3, 11). The covenant community was open to all who abandoned idols, embraced Yahweh, and accepted the covenant’s stipulations (Ex. 12:48; Lev. 24:22; Num. 15:15–16; 1 Kings 8:41–43; Isa. 56:6–7).
Laws against intermarriage (Deut. 7:3–6) existed to protect against outside pagan influence, though cross-ethnic marriage itself was sanctioned (see Ruth the Moabite with Boaz the Israelite, Ruth 4; Rahab the Canaanite and Salmon the Israelite, Joshua 2 and Matt. 1:5; Zipporah the Midianite and Moses the Israelite, Ex. 2:21; 18:1–12). Mosaic dietary and ceremonial codes marked Israel off from the nations (Lev. 11; Deut. 14). But stipulations, along with genealogical records and land boundaries (Num. 34), while central to Jewish identity, served a redemptive-historical purpose: preserving the line of promise that would come to fulfillment in the Jewish Messiah and Savior of the world, Jesus Christ (Rom. 2:28–29; Gal. 3:16, 29).
Even here, we see a new hypothetical emerge: As non-Jews would assimilate into Jewish customs and marry among their new tribe, new ethnic realities would likely be forged as different people groups united. This is why it’s inappropriate to speak of ethnicity as a purely static, inflexible category.
When Israel is used as a template for Christians to transpose their expectations on the modern nation-state, we run the risk of flattening out Scripture’s storyline, confusing promise with fulfillment. The laws that formed Israel’s identity were temporary, preparatory, and ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
New Testament’s Reframing
Central to the New Testament experience is the breaking down of the Jew/Gentile division (Eph. 2:14; 3:6). The question of Jewish identity and Jewish legalism formed the basis for many central debates found in the New Testament epistles. Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians are occasioned, in part, by debates on who constitutes God’s covenant people.
While ethnicity doesn’t cease in the New Testament, it’s ultimately relativized as Paul repeatedly decenters ethnic identity (1 Cor. 7:19; Phil. 3:4–8). When Paul declares, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), notice what this text says and doesn’t say.
It doesn’t, as some are tempted to believe, evacuate natural categories of their essential constitution. Men are still men who become Christians. Women are still women who become Christians. Jews don’t cease to be Jewish ethnically, nor do Greeks. Paul claims that in Christ, there’s a soteriological equality not defined by bloodline, nationality, or ethnic status. Grace does not erase nations; it subjects them to a higher love and ultimate citizenship (Phil. 3:20). The only “holy nation” in the New Testament is the church (1 Pet. 2:9), even while nations themselves persist.
Again, there’s no prescriptive command in Scripture to preserve one’s bloodline as an end pursued for its own sake. There is, however, a command to preserve and advance the faith throughout the existing nations of the earth (Matt. 28:18–20). In whatever shape these nations eventually take, the picture of eschatological glory envisions a diverse set of people united in their worship of the triune God (Rev. 5:9; 7:9–10). That diversity seems not to serve diversity for its own sake but as a reflection of God’s design for unity under his lordship.
What Scripture Affirms About Nations
Does the Bible’s focus on redemption render ethnic identity, cultural heritage, and borders as illegitimate concerns? No. We aren’t called to a borderless globalism. We should actively resist it, in fact. In Christ, we can affirm the goodness of ethno-cultural differences and national sovereignty while confidently asserting that globalist impulses run contrary to the providential separation of the people into distinct nations.
Consider Genesis 1:28—the creation mandate. Adam and Eve, and their descendants, were meant to fill the earth, subdue it, and develop culture, geography, and society—all under God’s rule. This would naturally lead to diverse expressions of the one human nature and mission (culture, land, family, labor).
God’s original design involved multiplication, spreading, and likely diversity—but not through linguistic confusion, fragmentation, and estrangement. Humanity was originally called to be united under God as it diversified across the earth. But at Babel, it rebelled through a false, self-exalting unity. God’s scattering of the nations was therefore both a judgment for their pride and also a providential reassertion of his original design.
Pre-fall, humanity was united in its potential for diversity.
Regarding unity: Humanity begins with one man and one woman, created in God’s image, with a shared purpose—fill the earth, subdue it, rule over creation under God’s authority (vv. 26–28). They share one language, one worship, one moral order.
Regarding diversity: While not yet expressed in nations or languages, diversity was latent—baked into the creation mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and spread across the earth. This would naturally lead to differentiated cultural forms, roles, geographies, and even perhaps dialects over time, but all under a shared obedience to God.
Post-fall, humanity was fragmented in its diversity and united in its rebellion.
The fall fractures unity: Sin introduces alienation—between man and God, man and woman, and eventually, person against person (Gen. 3–4). This culminates in Genesis 11 with Babel, where diversity becomes division. Instead of ordered plurality, we get confused tongues, scattered peoples, and political estrangement. Nations emerge in antagonism rather than cooperation. Cain builds a city; Lamech sings of vengeance; Babel tries to consolidate power. This is diversity without unity, and it’s unstable and violent.
The current brokenness of nations doesn’t negate the fact that nations are part of the creation order (Gen. 10; Acts 17:26). As noted above, these ontological distinctions—in whatever shape they take—persist into eternity. Richard John Neuhaus says, “When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American.” Nations are thus good, but they’re a penultimate concern. Christians can honor, love, and steward their ethnic and cultural heritage as a gift, not as an ultimate command or standard to organize their Christian lives by, nor as an ultimate commitment that supersedes redemptive promises.
This means I can relish my American identity. I can embrace the land, customs, and language of my ancestors. I can also actively hand down the inherited traditions I’ve received to my descendants, with gratitude—and even see those inherited traditions as tied to the transmission of my Christian faith. Loving one’s culture, teaching it to one’s children, and delighting in its customs aren’t just “permitted” but fitting responses of gratitude—natural loves are not rivals to divine love when ordered rightly but tributaries flowing into it. The Bible doesn’t call us to forsake enculturation and embrace multiculturalism.
The persistence of ethnicity and nationality is an organic reality and providential good. But ethnicity, culture, and borders are subject to the vicissitudes of change—cultures develop, ethnic migration yields assimilation, languages evolve, borders get redrawn. Consider the fact that many people groups in Scripture are no longer walking the earth. The Amalekites, Hittites, the Philistines, and many more peoples are no longer identifiable as people groups. The natural flow of history—migration, conquest, decline, exile, and intermarriage—means there are always currents of gradual flux beneath culture and people. Nations are thus both static and dynamic. They exist but are always subject to the forces of time. Here, there is a Burkean and conservative argument to consider: Peoples, cultures, and borders naturally develop. To be clear, the mere fact of “change” does not signify something inherently “good.” I can point to many ways the natural progression of American culture is regressive in terms of its assault on creation order norms.
Where cultures change, they should change gradually and naturally—at a pace that ebbs and flows without being overwhelmed, and without cultural revolutions or technocratic mismanagement accelerating them.
While natural affinity may predominate simply because people inhabiting a geographic area develop shared customs, values, and languages, ethnic and cultural heritage are nevertheless subject to gradual shifts over time. What does this mean, practically?
A white person will likely, as a simple statistical reality, marry another white person, since white people may dominate a given area. But natural, organic occurrences as a providential reality don’t mean it’s morally obligatory for a white person to marry another white person. This explains why it’s entirely biblical, moral, and suitable for a white man to marry an ethnically Chinese woman or for an African American woman to marry a man of Bangladeshi background. While there may be a natural merging of ethnic identities where each partner brings his or her unique ethnic customs, it poses no biblical difficulty.
The slow, tectonic shifts in the movement of people groups are a fact of human existence. We can and should hold out for the possibility of new nations, new languages, new peoples, and new cultures to take shape over long spans of time.
Errors to Avoid
Understanding the differing array of nations and cultures doesn’t mean the cultural practices of those nations and people are all morally equal. Adopting a posture of acceptance about the reality of cultural and national differences doesn’t require us to slip into a silly and haphazard cultural relativism. There’s no biblical mandate to view all cultures as moral equals, especially where cultural and ethnic systems engage in barbaric and crude practices that violate biblical ethics.
Furthermore, none of the considerations I’ve argued above suggests we should collapse national distinctions or condemn strong borders as sinful or lacking in compassion. Strong borders are, in fact, biblical. Christians must balance their compassionate concern for protecting the dignity of all persons with the need for law and order. Individuals who enter our country illegally broke the law and, facing just consequences, must seek to rectify their illegal status. Excusing or acting indifferent toward illegal immigration insults our fellow citizens by depriving them of the public services they are entitled to as citizens. Additionally, nothing above dictates what an ideal immigration policy ought to be—that is a determination made by legislators using the virtue of prudence. The Bible does not prescribe how many immigrants or refugees a nation should accept. It does not tell us what the proper ratio is between citizens and immigrants. Compassion is not the only response to a broken immigration system. We must advocate for wise border policies and cultural assimilation that serve the nation’s interests first, balanced with the church’s focus on uniting diverse peoples under the gospel. From the natural law arises a principle of justice by which every nation possesses the right of self-determination, ordered and constrained by the demands of justice.
There are two errors to avoid in this conversation. The first is confusing providential goods with salvific goods, treating ethnic and cultural preservation as a Christian duty. The second error is a rootless cosmopolitanism that rejects nations and diverse cultural expression altogether, treating the world with an undifferentiated sameness that denies cultural particularities that are part of God’s good creation.
The biblical response is to see nations as real, good, and enduring but not absolute or endlessly fixed. Christians are called to honor these distinctions without idolizing them.
Practical Considerations
Unless their culture is engaging in barbaric activity, Christians should never be embarrassed or reluctant to celebrate the good aspects of the cultural heritage in which God has placed them. Neither should we absolutize it.
Furthermore, the gospel calls believers to a unity across ethnic and national lines—to remember that the church’s mission is to disciple people from all nations, not to seek ethnic or cultural preservation as its own end. We can and should be taught in the local church to love our country, our ancestry, and our culture while never confusing it with God’s kingdom.
The best of human culture is, after all, a common-grace fulfillment of the dominion mandate. In this way, though nations and cultures can develop sinful patterns of existence, diverse human cultures in themselves should be received as gifts, not cast aside as morally trivial. Culture and peoplehood are the tapestry of memory, language, custom, and art through which God has providentially placed us. Delighting in it is part of what it means to give thanks in all things.
Singing the songs of our forebears, honoring the civic formation that Christianity plays, celebrating historic holidays, preparing traditional meals, or teaching our children the stories of their people are not acts of idolatry but of stewardship and gratitude. These practices remind us that God rules not over a faceless humanity but over particular peoples and places. To love one’s culture in this way isn’t to rival our allegiance to Christ but to rejoice in how the goodness of creation adorns our lives with beauty, memory, and belonging.
Christians are called to preserve their faith, love their neighbor, love their nation, seek the welfare of their society, honor civil authority, and bear witness to Christ’s lordship amid them. We can unapologetically thank God for our heritage, teach our children about it, and steward it with gratitude. Nations will persist into eternity not for their own glory but as God-glorifying tributaries flowing into a common destination: the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24–26).
The church’s task isn’t to secure a bloodline or cultural homogeneity but to proclaim a Savior.
This article originally appeared at The Gospel Coalition on October 16, 2025.
