This coming Thursday (April 4th) I will be a guest on the Determinetruth podcast. My friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple, will interview me on the subject of Christian Nationalism. We will be discussing such questions as:
What is Christian Nationalism?
Is it an issue on the US political scene?
If it’s a problem, what’s wrong with it?
If Christian Nationalism is wrong, how ought Christians to think, and behave, in the realm of politics?
You can listen to the podcast this coming Thursday (at 1 pm Eastern, 11 am Mountain, 10 am Pacific). Just click on the link below when the time comes. You can watch the Livestream, or you can return later to watch the recording at a more convenient time, if need be:
This summer Charlie Kirk hosted another Turning Point USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, targeting Christian leaders, especially
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk introduces Brazil’s right wing ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, at a TPUSA event at Trump National Doral Miami, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
MAGA pastors. Although, one would be hard pressed to find anything explicitly Christian about this gathering.
Below is the conference mission statement taken from the conference website:
“Turning Point USA empowers citizens of all ages to Rise Up against the radical Left in defense of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Join millions of patriotic supporters to Save America.”
Aside from the fact that Mr. Kirk would undoubtedly categorize me among “the radical left” he is fighting against, even my wildest imaginations cannot conceive of one Biblical argument requiring me to include free markets, limited government and saving America (from what? from myself?) as goals for Christian discipleship in the kingdom of God.
What does any of this have to do with Christian leadership? I’ll give you a hint: Nothing.
One of Kirk’s favorite speakers is Eric Metaxas.
Since writing his biography about the German pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas has doubled down on styling himself as an American prophet following in Bonhoeffer’s footsteps, warning us about the imminent destruction of our nation.
Supposedly, just as Bonhoeffer resisted the Nazis on behalf of Christ, Metaxas (and his followers) are called to combat their political opponents for the sake of God’s kingdom.
In his most recent book, Letter to the American Church (which I reviewed here), Metaxas implicitly encourages Christians to resort to violence, if need be, as they fight to restore a godly America.
Godly, that is, insofar as Eric Metaxas understands godliness.
Furthermore, never in a million years would Bonhoeffer have said that he was resisting Hitler in order to restore a godly Germany. He was far too good a theologian to have deceived himself in that way.
Metaxas tells us that American Christians are now called to engage in spiritual warfare more than ever. Today’s American scene somehow making godliness and truth “many times more important than it was ten years ago.”
Really? Are you telling me that the contemporary relevance of God’s kingdom is determined by the ephemeral phases of human politics?
Are you kidding me?
Below is a clip of Metaxas’ Turning Point address where he exhorts Christians to pick up their weapons for holy war as did Bonhoeffer.
What Metaxas continually fails to tell his listeners, however, is that Bonhoeffer did not die because of his Christian witness.
No. That’s not what caused the Nazis to seal his fate.
Bonhoeffer was arrested and finally executed because he participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer did not die for Christ, though he certainly did live for him — faithfully and unfaithfully, as we all do.
Bonhoeffer died for attempted murder. Something that no Christian should boast about.
Ironically, in valorizing Bonhoeffer as he does; in stirring Christians to “fight” in “spiritual warfare” as he does, Metaxas is encouraging the American church and its MAGA pastors to repeat Bonhoeffer’s final failure.
And I suspect that this is exactly what Metaxas intends to say.
This is leading unthoughtful people to repeat the error of Esau, who gave up his rightful inheritance in exchange for a bowl of soup.
In much the same way, Eric Metaxas is asking us to betray God’s peaceable, eternal kingdom for the inconsequential rumblings of political skulldugery.
Don’t be deceived. Metaxas is a false prophet, a false teacher, who now points people away from the crucified Jesus.
[I must thank John Fea’s blog The Current for drawing this Jacobin article to my attention.]
One can rarely find a conservative discussion of America’s so-called
Karl Marx
“culture wars” without discovering that most, if not all, “liberal” activism in favor of social justice or cultural transformation, alongside CRT, BLM, feminism and gay rights, can all be solidly dismissed as scurilous examples of “cultural Marxism.”
Cultural Marxism is one of the Right’s new magic words. Somehow, by simply linking the two words together nothing else needs to be said; incisive critique and definitive dismissal are miraculously accomplished, simultaneously. Voila!
My own attempts at uncovering the intended meaning of the label “cultural Marxism” has led me to conclude that — whether or not the person using the term has thought this through — it is used to criticize any attempt at instigating social or cultural change. That’s it.
Apparently, since Karl Marx is considered a revolutionary who wanted to change western society, anyone else who tries to change something that they perceive to be a social problem must also be a (cultural) Marxist.
Black Lives Matter activists want to change policing practices in America, so they must be cultural Marxists.
Union activists who want better working conditions for America’s working class must also be cultural Marxists.
At the end of the day, cultural Marxism descibes anything that scares conservatives. (For me, personally, that means all vampires are cultural Marxists.)
Unfortunately, evangelical Christians who consider themselves to be cultural critics have become especially enamored with this label. But while it appears to make its user sound smart, it only reveals the shallowness and dishonesty of their analysis.
To better understand why this is the case, I highly recommend this article by Ben Burgis.
Earlier this month, best-selling author Jordan Peterson declared that “climate justice” is “the new guise of murderous Marxism.” The same day, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis appeared at a town hall event sponsored by WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire. A voter asked DeSantis, who often rails against all things “woke,” to define his favorite term. DeSantis replied that “woke is a form of cultural Marxism.” Speaking of Manchester, a few days after the DeSantis event a member of New Hampshire’s legislature accused the city’s mayor, Joyce Craig, of promoting “Marxist indoctrination” in the public schools.
“Marxism” seems to be taking up a lot of space in the heads of contemporary conservatives. But, as they use the term, what does it mean?
All too often, it’s a catch-all term for every left-coded trend they find frightening. . .
. . . What does Marxism mean here? What could it mean that’s consistent with the idea that “major corporations” are in Marxist hands? One would think any “Marxist activist” would want those corporations to be either nationalized or turned over to some form of worker-ownership. Why haven’t the Marxist activists controlling them taken steps in this direction since the summer of 2020?
If Marxist activists have taken over “most important news media,” shouldn’t such media be agitating for expropriating the means of production? If they’ve taken over the universities, shouldn’t economics departments long filled with mainstream, pro-capitalist economists now be populated by, well, Marxist economists?
reading my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).
