Secularism was supposed to act as a safeguard against religious authoritarianism. But the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024 and the consolidation of white Christian nationalism has revealed its fundamental inadequacy as a bulwark against a theocratic regime. Instead of preventing the rise of Christian nationalism, secularism has enabled its resurgence. This paper asks: Why has secularism failed? And how should theological discourse respond?
To answer those questions, I read recent sociological work on Christian nationalism through the lens of recent philosophical work on the secular and propose that it reveals the need for explicit theological discourse about the secular. In The Coloniality of the Secular, An Yountae argues that “the secular” is not neutral or pluralistic, but a colonial theological formation that has shaped racial and religious belonging in ways that sustain white Christian hegemony. He argues that reclaiming theological language in apparently “secular” decolonial work poses a challenge to the colonial secular order. Reading Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead’s Taking America Back for God through the lens of An’s analysis reveals that Christian nationalism is not merely an anti-secular reaction—it is the product of the racialized secular structures that have shaped the United States. In light of An’s reclamation of theological language in resistance to coloniality, I argue for a "theology of the secular"—a theological intervention that reinterprets secularity in explicitly theological terms for the purposes of ethical and political resistance to Christian nationalism.
An’s work exposes how secularism is not a neutral framework, but is deeply rooted in Christian theological concepts. Rather than existing as a separate, opposing force to religion, secularism is an extension of Christian theological frameworks that have been repurposed through colonial governance. The very structure of the secular emerges from Christian thought, shaping how colonial modernity organizes political and racial power. The separation of the religious and the secular is not a universal principle but a historically contingent development tied to the expansion of European Christendom. Secularism did not replace religion in colonial governance—it transformed Christianity’s theological claims into political categories, structuring race, law, and national belonging. This transformation was central to the colonial project, allowing Christian norms to continue shaping political and social life while appearing neutral.
Reading Perry and Whitehead through this lens is instructive for understanding the role of secularism in the rise of white Christian nationalism in the United States. The failure of secularism to contain Christian nationalism is the result of secularism’s Christian theological foundations. An argues that secularism emerged as a means of managing religious difference within Christian imperial formations, rather than as a true break from religious authority. The logic of secularism—which establishes a normative framework for religion while excluding non-Christian and non-Western traditions—is itself a legacy of Christian theological dominance. This is why secularism has consistently privileged white Protestant Christianity while regulating or excluding other religious traditions, particularly those of colonized peoples. White Christian nationalism is not a rejection of secularism—it is an extension of its underlying theological structure. The coloniality of the secular ensured that Christianity remained the normative framework for governance, national identity, and moral authority. Perry and Whitehead demonstrate that Christian nationalism in the U.S. is not simply about theology—it is a racialized project that sustains Protestant Christian dominance as the foundation of American identity. Christian nationalism thrives because the secular state has never been neutral—it has always been structured by Christian theological categories of sovereignty, law, and nationhood. Rather than resisting Christian nationalism, secularism has provided the racial and legal framework that enables it.
An’s work suggests that a response to the coloniality of the secular should include a reclamation of theological language. He proposes that theological language has historically been central to critiques of secular coloniality, demonstrating that seemingly secular decolonial thinkers—such as Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Édouard Glissant—are already engaging the sacred, even when they do not name it explicitly. Glissant, in particular, constructs a "poetics of world-making" that challenges the coloniality of the secular by refusing the sacred/secular binary. His notion of creolization destabilizes colonial-secular frameworks of racial and religious belonging. An’s reading of the sacred in decolonial poetics reveals the inadequacy of purely secular critiques of colonialism. If secularism is itself a Christian-theological construct, then resisting its coloniality requires an explicit theological intervention. A theology of the secular must emerge—not to defend secularism, but to dismantle its racial and theological foundations.
An’s reading of the sacred within decolonial poetics reveals that resisting Christian nationalism requires not just political critique but explicit theological engagement. If secularism is itself a racialized Christian colonial construct, then defending secularism is not an adequate response to Christian nationalism. Instead, we must develop a theology of the secular. This requires translating the secular into explicitly theological terms, as An has done through his reading of decolonial poets. Translating the secular into theological terms enables explicit theological discourse that allows for the epistemological disruption of the colonial secular logics that enable Christian nationalism. Given the Christian theological roots of the secular, Christian theologians should aim to translate the secular into Christian theological language in order to create the conditions for theological debate as well as theological disruption. This translation is not aimed at reinforcing theological hegemony but at disrupting the theological foundations of secular power—a move that enables both theological debate and theological resistance to Christian nationalism.
A theology of the secular, therefore, is not a project of reaffirming the liberal secular state, but rather a theological intervention that challenges the racialized theological underpinnings of both secularism and Christian nationalism. By translating the secular into theological discourse, this project aims to destabilize the colonial foundations of both the secular and the religious—opening up new possibilities for resisting Christian nationalism and rethinking the relationship between theology, race, and political belonging.
Despite being framed as a safeguard against religious authoritarianism, secularism has failed to prevent the resurgence of Christian nationalism in the United States. This paper interrogates why secularism has proven inadequate, by reading Perry and Whitehead’s Taking America Back for God through the lens of An Yountae’s The Coloniality of the Secular. The secular is not a neutral space, but a colonial theological formation that has shaped religion, governance, and race in ways that have enabled—rather than resisted—the rise of Christian nationalism.
In response, I argue for the need for a "theology of the secular"—a translation of the secular into theological terms for the purposes of explicit theological discourse. An’s work uncovers the decolonial potential in making the implicit theology of decolonial poets explicit. I build on his work to argue that explicit theological discourse is essential for constructing a space of ethical and political resistance to Christian nationalism.