IAF Interviews St. John’s Lutheran Lead Pastor Ryan Arnold
Ryan Arnold
Lead Pastor - St. John’s Lutheran Church, Des Moines, Iowa
Interview conducted June 2025
At the end of 2024, Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers President Jason Benell attended a few events held at churches and started a series of interviews called Iowa Christians on Christian Nationalism.
About the Series
Questions are asked of religious leaders via email.
Topics include their views on:
Their faith
Their congregations
Christian Nationalism
Answers are unedited, except for corrections to misspellings or grammar.
Responses come directly from the interviewees.
Purpose
The purpose of this interview series is to help us better understand how the religious and non-religious view the ongoing social, political, and cultural movement known as Christian Nationalism.
Get Involved
You are encouraged to:
Read the interviews
Come up with your own questions
Submit them to IAF
If you would like follow-ups, further discussion, or want to provide comments, email IAF at president@iowaatheists.org. We can possibly share your input with both members of IAF and the individuals being interviewed!
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Christian Nationalism is the fusing of a Christian and national identity into one. This runs counter to a traditional understanding of Christianity, where national origin has no bearing on our faith. It is bad for democracy in that it limits religious freedom for non-Christians. Christian Nationalism also runs counter to the traditional motto of the US, first adopted in 1782, the Latin phase E pluribus unum, or “Out of many, one.”
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Conflating Christianity with a national identity can be harmful and needlessly creates divisions in both church and culture. For Christians it is inconsistent with the unity we claim in Galatians 3:38, “for there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” It is also inconsistent with the greatest commandment in Christianity, that we love ourneighbors as ourselves.
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Without question.
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Not at all.
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We offer educational in-services on what Christian Nationalism is, how to spot it, and the dangers it represents. There are many books on the topic that can be used for group study. We are careful not to mix our worship services with national holidays like Memorial Day, July 4 or Thanksgiving.
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Yes. It was birthed at the intersection of conservative Christianity and the Republican party. As far as I can tell there it remains.
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The Bible can be used for both. In my experience Christian Nationalists often subscribe to the belief that God is for some people and not others. This notion can be found in the Hebrew scripture, and, at first, was indeed a blessing for the Hebrew people. Ezekiel 36:28 says “Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
Taken out of context this could be used to support Christian Nationalism. When you learn the text was written at a time when the intended audience, who was Jewish, were in exile and enslaved, the interpretation changes. God always stands on the side of the oppressed.
The addition of Jesus into our religious narrative expands this notion of who God is for even more. If God so loved the world (John 3:16) then there isn’t much space for the exclusivity that Christian nationalism espouses to faithfully exist.
