Cross or Flag?
The Counterfeit Gospel of the New Columbia Movement
What follows is written for two audiences.
First, to Christians who might be tempted by the New Columbia Movement’s rhetoric: beware. The vocabulary is familiar, but the spirit is not.
Second, to secular readers who wonder how something so overtly authoritarian can pass itself off as Christian: this is how the symbols of the Church are being twisted, and why that matters.
By weaponizing Christian imagery, twisting concepts like “pro-life consistency,” and glamorizing authoritarian history, the NCM constructs an ideology that betrays the Gospel and contradicts Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Where the Gospel preaches humility, universality, and service, the NCM offers hierarchy, exclusion, and control.
This is not revival. It is rebranding. And it is a counterfeit gospel.
I. The Seduction of the Secular Banner
The New Columbia Movement (NCM) calls itself Christian, beginning its manifesto with the Nicene Creed. But scroll through their site and you’ll find their real creed: banners, uniforms, a flag — and beneath it all, the same old hunger for dominion.
That flag, sold for $85, looks at first like a tweak on the American Stars and Stripes. But look again: the fifty stars are gone, replaced by thirteen, circling not a cross but a Cross Potent — a symbol long associated with the Crusades and an emblem strikingly similar to the insignia of the 1930s Fatherland Front, a Catholic authoritarian movement in Austria that banned political opposition, dismantled democracy, and ruled by decree.
Placed side by side, the resemblance is unmistakable. At the center of the NCM’s vision is not Christ, but a borrowed symbol of control — draped in the language of tradition, but animated by something much older and more dangerous.
To be clear: the Cross Potent, or Jerusalem Cross, has legitimate historical meanings. It has symbolized the spread of the Gospel to the four corners of the earth. In Catholic tradition, it has adorned vestments and cathedrals. Some see it as evoking the five wounds of Christ. It is not inherently a political symbol — and many use it with reverence.
But symbols are not neutral. They are invitations. And when the Cross Potent is placed inside a reworked American flag — stripped of democratic stars and merged with nationalist aesthetics — it stops being merely heraldic. It becomes ideological.
Worse still, it echoes the design used by Austria’s 1930s Fatherland Front — a Catholic authoritarian regime that triggered civil war. Whether NCM members intend the connection or not, history doesn't require intent to echo. The resemblance should trouble anyone with eyes to see.
Some NCM members may claim it reflects Christian identity, courage, or purity of faith — framing themselves, like Crusaders of old, as embattled defenders of the faith. But symbols carry the weight of their history. The Crusades were not acts of love. They were campaigns of violence, conquest, and forced conversions — not the gospel lived out, but Christ’s name weaponized by empire.
Even if NCM sees itself as marginalized or persecuted, their answer is not Christ crucified, but Christ militarized — wrapped in aesthetic echoes of fascism and hierarchy, armed with nostalgia for a mythic past. Like the Fatherland Front, which plunged Austria into civil war in 1934, NCM’s romanticized vision of “Christian rebirth” demands submission, not repentance; order, not mercy.
But Jesus didn’t march behind a banner. He didn’t call for a nation or a strongman. He didn’t carry the Cross of Jerusalem — he carried the actual cross.
Merchandise as Indoctrination
You can tell a lot about a movement by what it sells.
The NCM’s shop offers its “national” flag and other regalia. This isn’t just fundraising. It’s initiation by wallet. Once you’ve bought the banner, you’re no longer browsing—you belong.
Empires have always understood the power of symbols: they mark who is in and who is out. Early Christians died refusing to burn incense to Caesar because they knew symbolism was allegiance. The NCM inverts that legacy. They invite followers to burn incense to their own manufactured kingdom—and to start by paying $85 for a flag.
Some members argue that buying merch is voluntary and supports their cause. That may be true. But that’s not the point. The point is what the merch does. Symbols recruit. They shape identity. They signal who belongs and who obeys. The more militant the movement, the more important the merchandise.
The irony cuts deep. NCM's manifesto rails against the 'Tyranny of the Profit,' yet their website runs on Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. This isn't about payment processors; it's about allegiance. The merchandise itself is consumerism as catechism.
The Symbolic Overwrite
The NCM flag is not decoration. It is declaration.
The fifty stars of the Republic—symbols of democratic plurality—are reduced to thirteen, evoking a mythic founding moment. At the center sits a glyph that, in modern political memory, recalls the Fatherland Front’s emblem — the symbol of a regime that crushed democracy and drove Austria into civil war. That resonance is unavoidable, whether or not every NCM member is aware of it.
NCM defenders argue that the symbol is devotional, not political — an icon of Christendom’s call, not a blueprint for domination. But the context matters. A cross becomes something different when sewn into a banner. When it flies at protests, marches, or on a shirt paired with slogans about rebirth and kingship, it stops being just a religious reference. It becomes a claim of sovereignty — religious, social, and civil.
And here’s the core problem: the Cross of Christ was never meant to be a banner of conquest. It was a place of crucifixion. Its power is not in what it conquers, but in what it absorbs. To merge that symbol with national dominance is not faithfulness. It’s idolatry.
A flag is never just fabric. It is a claim of sovereignty. And this one claims a kingdom not of Christ, but of coercion.
II. The Counterfeit Kingship
The New Columbia Movement talks a great deal about Christ as King. But their politics reveal something else. For all the regal language, NCM’s real model of kingship looks far more like Moses with a sword than Jesus with a cross.
Their rhetoric of “Christian monarchy” echoes the romance of a golden age that never was — a world where men ruled by divine mandate, women submitted by design, and the Church commanded state power without question. But this is not the kingship Christ spoke of. When Jesus stood before Pilate, He declared, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight…” (John 18:36).
NCM reverses this. Their kingdom is of this world. And their followers do fight.
They long not for the Sermon on the Mount, but for Constantine’s sword. They crown Christ with the crown of Charlemagne, not thorns.
That distinction is not academic — it’s spiritual. The impulse to use state violence in Christ’s name is not new. It fueled the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Christian nationalism of 1930s Europe, and yes, the Confederacy. It replaces the call to suffer with the desire to dominate. The Kingdom becomes a kingdom — just another empire in religious drag.
NCM claims to reject liberalism. But what they offer in its place is not biblical fidelity — it’s a costume drama of power. They dream of enthroning a “strongman” who rules by decree in Christ’s name. But this is Saul, not David. Caesar, not Christ.
The tragedy is that there is a real hunger beneath all this — a longing for order, purpose, reverence. But NCM offers the shadow, not the substance. They speak of loyalty, but forget love. They speak of kingship, but forget Calvary. They speak of Christ, but forget the Cross.
III. When Inequality Becomes Holy
To prop up its counterfeit kingship, the NCM needs a social philosophy. That philosophy is inequality.
Their manifesto states: “Though all Men have an inherent equality in their worth, that does not mean inequality is evil. On the contrary, it is equality that is evil – unnatural equality.”
If equality is evil, then oppression becomes a sacrament. If hierarchy is holy, domination is justified. And once domination is justified, authoritarianism becomes not a temptation but a duty.
The irony is that Christianity was born as a rebellion against this logic. The first disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, and women—the disregarded. Paul declared that in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female” (Gal. 3:28). The church did not sanctify hierarchy; it subverted it.
By calling equality “evil,” the NCM rewrites the Gospel into a blueprint for stratification. Catholic Social Teaching’s principle of universal human dignity—every person bearing the image of God—becomes a tiered system where privilege is sanctified and injustice excused.
Social Justice as a Club
The distortion continues. The NCM redefines Social Justice as loyalty to their brotherhood: “True Social Justice is standing shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Men in solidarity with the downtrodden as a Christian brotherhood.”
Authentic solidarity, according to CST, is universal: “we are all really responsible for all” (Pope John Paul II). The NCM amputates that vision, restricting justice to insiders and excluding everyone else.
The Weaponized “Pro-Life”
Their manifesto lumps abortion, euthanasia, and contraception together, declaring contraception “tantamount to playing God.”
This is not a defense of life in its fullness—mothers, children, the poor, the elderly, the refugee. It is a program for controlling sex and reproduction by law. The pro-life cause becomes not a consistent ethic of life but a mechanism of state power.
It is not pro-life. It is pro-enforcement.
IV. Caesar’s Blueprint
The NCM declares democracy itself a failure: “Democracy has been the greatest political experiment of our time, and it is a failed one.”
This is no throwaway line. It is central to their worldview. The people cannot be trusted. Power belongs to those with the “proper worldview and ideology”—themselves.
Where Christ preached the slow conversion of hearts, the NCM preaches the swift coercion of the state. They dream of a reborn America where “Christian morality” is imposed as the nation’s law.
The Roman Fantasy
They even borrow Rome’s model. They praise the empire’s “dual culture system,” where conquered peoples kept their customs but were bound under a single high culture. The NCM proposes the same for America: one “High American Culture” rooted in their vision of Christianity. Dissenters may remain—but only as tolerated inferiors.
The martyrs died refusing Caesar’s cult. The NCM demands Caesar’s cult return.
Economics as Enclosure
Even their economics echo Europe’s darkest past. Claiming to reject both capitalism and socialism, they promise a “third way”: protectionism, exclusion, isolation. In practice, this is corporatism reborn—the same formula used by Austria’s Fatherland Front, Salazar’s Portugal, and Mussolini’s Italy. It meant silencing workers, enclosing the economy, and subordinating all to the regime.
NCM repeats the pattern. The world becomes enemy. The nation becomes fortress. Solidarity vanishes.
V. Conclusion: The Counterfeit Gospel
The danger here is not abstract. Authoritarian movements that baptize their politics in Christian language corrode faith from within and democracy from without. The result is syncretism: the Nicene Creed stitched to the playbook of twentieth-century nationalism. This is why it is not enough to simply reject the NCM. We must also show what genuine moral engagement looks like.
That is why this cannot be dismissed as cosplay. Their flag, their manifesto, their shop—each piece builds toward a political theology of domination. And history is plain: when authoritarianism dresses in religion, it does not stay theoretical. It marches. It enforces.
To Christians: do not mistake symbols for substance. The Cross was never meant as a banner of conquest but as the place where power was unmasked and undone. To trade it for NCM’s counterfeit kingship is not fidelity. It is idolatry.
To secular readers: authoritarian movements that borrow religion are stronger than those that do not. They mobilize belonging and loyalty with power no political program can match. That is why it matters to expose this distortion early. Not because faith and democracy must always clash, but because when faith is twisted into authoritarianism, both church and democracy suffer.
The choice before us is stark: renewal through coercion or renewal through conversion. The Flag or the Cross.
The New Columbia Movement has chosen wrongly. We must not.
A Choice for Builders
I grew up around the language of faith, but what I felt most wasn't the love of God, but the fear of hell. And yet, even from outside the fold, I've come to see the Gospel as one of the world's most radical moral imaginations. It calls for humility, mercy, solidarity, and a love that puts people over power. That’s why the New Columbia Movement disturbs me so deeply. They drape themselves in Christian symbols, but offer fear and force. They declare democracy a failed experiment while operating as a tax-exempt nonprofit. This isn't just cynical; it’s a violation of the very trust on which civil society rests.
We cannot afford to be distracted. The NCM quite literally stands on the sidelines—holding banners on curbs, staging theatrics that end in lawsuits, and mingling with groups that advocate for a white ethnostate. This is attention stolen from real solutions, an act of division that obstructs the solidarity we need. At TCUS, we don’t posture as anti-this or anti-that. We're stepping in—building classrooms in Ethiopia, funding life-changing surgeries, designing tools for data dignity, and helping discern which crises to meet first.
In a finite world where time and energy are precious, every banner waved is an obstacle to solidarity, and every act of division one more hurdle to the work that matters. The NCM is a costly distraction from the real-world crises that demand genuine moral engagement. We don’t need more banners. We need builders. The choice before us is stark: renewal through coercion or renewal through conversion. The NCM has chosen wrongly, trading the Cross for a Flag of coercion. We must choose otherwise