(RNS) — To the consternation of some pretty conservative Southern Baptists, Al Mohler, the longtime president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has turned away from the traditional Baptist support for church-state separation to embrace Christian nationalism. For a major figure in the country’s largest Protestant denomination and a stalwart of the denomination’s “conservative resurgence,” that’s no small thing. 

Mohler’s embrace has drawn attention because of a talk he gave at a roundtable on Christian nationalism held at the University of Idaho last month. The participants in the roundtable were four of the contributors to “Five Views on Christian Nationalism,” a book recently published by Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson’s Canon Press. The book’s editor asked each contributor to propose a place for Christianity in an imagined 2099 constitutional convention for a new United States.

In his talk, Mohler harks back to the longstanding criticism of the U.S. Constitution for failing to recognize God’s role in the American experiment, the way the Declaration of Independence does by stating that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” That was, said Mohler, “a constitutional error.”

Let us note that this supposed error was remedied in the Confederate Constitution by “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God.” Mohler, a Florida native, asks for a full-fledged acknowledgement:

I’m talking about the historical, legal, consequential affirmation of the fact that the Christian truth claim is the necessary precondition for the American experiment. The necessary precondition for the exercise of religious liberty or for American liberty as a whole. The necessary precondition for our understanding of what it means even to be a nation.

To be sure, the new constitution “would allow non-Christians, specifically Jewish citizens, to enjoy full citizenship and comprehensive participation in the political order, retaining the full measure of religious liberty and requiring only their formal acknowledgement of the Christian foundations of the republic, its constitution and its laws,” Mohler writes in his contribution to the book. “But its acknowledgement must be substantial.” Beyond such acknowledgement, “the basic moral principles and precepts of biblical Christianity would be fundamental to the state and to its laws.”

There’s more.

In line with Article VI of the (current) Constitution, Mohler claims there would be no religious test for public office but does not indicate how that could be squared with “officeholders’ public and authentic acknowledgement of the nation’s formal commitment to the God of the Bible, specifically the Holy Trinity,” and “an acknowledgement of the binding moral authority of the Bible, including both the Old and New Testaments.”

Or how robust protections for religious liberty for all citizens could exist “within the context of the acknowledgement of Christianity as foundational to the state.” Or alongside the government’s “full right to restrict and punish blasphemy.” Or alongside restrictions on the activity of atheists in the public square. 

Among the distressed responses from other Southern Baptists, the most notable has come from Richard Land, the former president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and for many years one of Mohler’s closest comrades-in-arms. 

Land quotes from Article XVII of the denomination’s 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, which says, among other things, “Church and state should be separate” and “The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work.” How, he asks, is Mohler’s acknowledgement requirement not a religious test? Mohler’s prescription would severely diminish the “bedrock” Baptist principles of religious freedom and “soul freedom.” And finally: “I fervently pray he will reconsider his position.”

Are we then to conclude that Mohler has turned himself into a Southern Baptist pariah? Let’s not jump to conclusions.

In my edited volume “Understanding Christian Nationalism,” sociologist Nancy Ammerman analyzes the evolution of resolutions passed by delegates to its annual meetings to show how the SBC has itself moved in the direction of Christian nationalism. For example, a 2016 resolution titled, “On Biblical Sexuality and the Freedom of Conscience,” holds that “(a)ny law that directly contradicts natural law and biblical truth is an unjust law.”

Similarly, in 2021, an Abolishing Abortion resolution declaring the Supreme Court’s Roe decision both evil and unconstitutional asserts that “governing authorities at every level have a duty before God to uphold justice, asserting their God-ordained and constitutional authority to establish equal protection under the law … by intervening, ignoring, or nullifying iniquitous decisions when other authorities, such as the Supreme Court, condone such injustices.” Notes Ammerman, “The implication seems to be that true Christian citizenship only recognizes governmental authority as legitimate when it conforms to their understanding of biblical mandates, and resistance may sometimes be in order.”

To be sure, none of the SBC’s recent resolutions go as far as Mohler has in abandoning long-held Baptist principles. But it’s not hard to believe that a significant number of his co-religionists will follow in his footsteps.