Tag: American Christianity

Wheaton College Prof, Vincent Bacote, says US Evangelicalism is Fractured Due to a Lack of Discipleship

I have been reading Tim Alberta’s new book, The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory (HarperCollins, 2023). The book analyzes the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA Christianity within American evangelicalism.

How is it that Christian devotion to such a pagan politician has succeeded in splintering American evangelicalism?

I believe that Vincent Bacote, theology professor at Wheaton College, hits the nail on the head when he accuses American evangelical leaders of failing to disciple, to catechize, their people.

I couldn’t agree more.

For instance, the so-called “Great Commission” is not a command to evangelize unbelievers. It is a command to disciple, to teach and rigorously instruct believers into faithful Christian discipleship. Evangelism is crucial, but it is only the entry point for the radical demands of true Christianity.

Jesus commands his followers, “Go and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).

A Christian disciple is someone who puts into practice all the upside-down, crazy, counter intuitive, radical lifestyle choices that Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to embrace. That requires a lifetime of sacrificial self-denial and devotion.

Along these lines, Alberta quotes Professor Bacote:

“Jesus loved them [the 12 disciples] but he did not infantilize them. Time and again, when His disciples got something wrong — or even when they simply showed human weakness — Jesus rebuked them. He chided them for being faithless. He censure them for the vanity and biotry and prejudice. He criticized them for not grasping His instruction.”

This is what discipling loopks like And this . . . is what’s absent inside much of the American evangelical Church.

“If you ask me what’s the biggest problem with evangelicalism, I’d say it’s a catechesis problem. It’s a formation problem, a discipleship problem. These are people who are supposed to have a knowedge of the Bible, but many of them don’t . . . A lot of these people are just not going deep enough.”

By remaining shallow in the scriptures, Bacote said, too many American Christians have avoided a necessary showdown between their own base cultural proclivities and God’s perfect standard. When Christians are discipled primarily by society, inevitably they look to scripture for affirmation of their habits and behaviors and political views. But if the Bible is the word of God, then God ought to be interrogating those things.

Check Out My Conversation About Christian Nationalism This Thursday (4/4/24)

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?

If you have not read it already, you can prepare for the conversation by reading my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship  in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

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:

Christianity Today Pedals More Malicious, Illogical Tomfoolery

Let’s watch a video together, then check  out my analysis afterwards:

Yes, Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist writer, activist and fighter who worked to liberate both Martinique and Algeria from French colonialism.

His two famous anti-colonial books (which I have read), The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, advocated violence as the necessary means for overthrowing western, colonial rule throughout Asia and Africa.

On the basis of this association, the Christianity Today (CT) video implicitly assumes that, like Fanon, all anti-colonial movements must advocate and engage in violence, by definition. Since this particular video is set within the broader context of CT’s current pro-Israel, pro-Zionist video series, I can only assume that this critique of “violent” anti-colonial ideology is somehow related to Israel’s current war in Gaza.

The most common framing of anti-Zionist criticism of Israel nowadays is to describe the country as a settler-colonial state in need of an anti-colonial deconstruction. Hamas is sometimes described as an anti-colonial, revolutionary movement.

Implicitly, then, CT is portraying the Hamas attack against southern Israel on October 7, 2023 as a contemporary example of Frantz Fanon’s violent, anti-colonial philosophy working itself out before our very eyes.

Again, by saying that “anti-colonialism is not value neutral” we are meant to conclude that all anti-colonialism embraces Fanon’s perspective on the use of violence. Hamas becomes the implicit proof of this implied conclusion.

So, what’s wrong with all of this?

First, notice how much of the heavy lifting in this CT presentation is being done through implication. Very little is said explicitly. The supposed lessons to be learned about the inherent violence of anti-colonial movements today – which includes the majority of folks, like me, who are criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – are a subtle subtext resonating between the lines of what CT is saying out loud.

This method of communication is a common feature of political propaganda: don’t openly accuse your opponents of being horrible monsters, but sprinkle enough rhetorical breadcrumbs to lead your listeners to the intended, malicious conclusion. It will become embedded in their consciousness as an “obvious” conclusion they arrived at under their own steam.

The second, more important problem with the CT video is its implication that Frantz Fanon’s embrace of violence is representative of all anti-colonial movements. But, of course, this is not true. One of the largest and most successful anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century was led by Mahatma Gandhi, a staunch advocate of non-violent resistance. Gandhi led the campaign to shed India of British colonial control and succeeded through using a variety of non-violent actions.

It is simply alse to suggest, as this video does, that all anti-colonial activists embrace violence as a legitimate means of resistance.

It is also worth noting that this argument is not only historically false, it is also illogical. The CT video draws out its false implication by means of something called a false syllogism. Here is an example of a false syllogism:

  1. Socrates is a philosopher
  2. Socrates is Greek
  3. Therefore, all Greeks are philosophers.

The conclusion (C) is obviously false even though the two premises (A, B) are both true. That is the essence of an illogical false syllogism.

The illogical argument embedded in the CT video goes something like this:

  1. Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist
  2. Frant Fanon was an advocate for violence
  3. Therefore, all anti-colonialists advocate violence

The scurrilous accusation implicitly embedded in the CT video – that I, for instance, encourage violence and warfare because I embrace an anti-colonial philosophy – is a politically conservative, pro-Zionist attempt to demonize my criticisms of the way Israel is prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.

It is also ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, the many Palestinian activists who follow the way of Gandhi by embracing non-violence in their anticolonial, anti-Zionist activities. Some of these brave men and women are my friends, and I have seen how frequently they are physically assaulted by violent Israeli soldiers while maintaining their peaceful behavior.

In this way, the video perpetuates American misinformation regarding the Palestinian people and the oppressive circumstances under which they live in Gaza and the West Bank.

In any case, according to international law, the Palestinian people have every legal right to employ violent measures in their attempts to rid themselves of Israeli colonial rule. Personally, I am a passivist, and my sympathies lie with my non-violent friends who are pursuing peaceful means of resistance.

And, yes, Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th for which the guilty should be prosecuted. But as a matter of law: Palestinians have a right to use force to free themselves, despite the video’s protestations. Here is another matter where American’s display their ignorance of Israel’s history and the current realities on the ground.

Israel is the blatant aggressor in the current Gaza conflict.

No amount of scare-mongering, illogical argument, false syllogism, or historical falsehoods can change that fact. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by CT’s lazy, malicious tomfoolery.

MAGA Pastors Hear More False Teaching from Eric Metaxas

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.

Chris Hedges: The Pedagogy of Power

[Headline image: Plato and Aristotle debate in the school of Athens]

Chris Hedges’ latest article at ScheerPost offers a great explanation of why we need to strengthen liberal arts education in this country, not gut it as is currently happening everywhere.

All across America, history, English, and philosophy departments are being downsized or eliminated altogether.

Conservatives want to reduce higher education to streamlined vocational training, while liberals want to sift it through the latest, reductionistic filter of identity politics. Both are equally ruinous.

Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said that democracy’s survival depends on having an educated populous. Truer words have never been spoken, as the current state of American politics attests.

Check out this excellent essay at SheerPost written by Chris Hedges about the foundational significan of education for a functioning democracy:

Here is an excerpt:

Plato

The ruling classes always work to keep the powerless from understanding how power functions. This assault has been aided by a cultural left determined to banish “dead white male” philosophers.

I am standing in a classroom in a maximum security prison. It is the first class of the semester. I am facing 20 students. They have spent years, sometimes decades, incarcerated. They come from some of the poorest cities and communities in the country. Most of them are people of color. 

During the next four months they will study political philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli,  Friedrich  Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Locke, those often dismissed as anachronistic by the cultural left.

It is not that the criticisms leveled against these philosophers are incorrect. They were blinded by their prejudices, as we are blinded by our prejudices. They had a habit of elevating their own cultures above others. They often defended patriarchy, could be racist and in the case of Plato and Aristotle, endorsed a slave society.  

What can these philosophers say to the issues we face — global corporate domination, the climate crisis, nuclear war and a digital universe where information, often manipulated and sometimes false, travels around the globe instantly?  Are these thinkers antiquated relics? No one in medical school is reading 19th century medical texts. Psychoanalysis has moved beyond Sigmund Freud. Physicists have advanced from Isaac Newton’s law of motion to general relativity and quantum mechanics.

You can read the entire essay here.

What is ‘Cultural Marxism’ and Why is It the New Conservative Boogyman?

[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.

Burgis has written a good article at Jacobin titled “Conservatives Think ‘Marxism’ is Anything That Scares Them.” He clearly explains what Marxism really is and why this new label consistently misunderstands the issues involved:

Here is an excerpt:

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?

You can read the entire article here.

Remembering that Forgiveness is a Christian Imperative

Mark Galli, former editor at Christianity Today, now manages of personal blog called “Peripheral Vision.” His most recent post is titled, “What to Do with Notorious Sinners: Maybe Befriend Them? Really?”

It is a fine post which I repost here because the church struggles with implementing Jesus’ teaching on this subject.

Of course confession, repentance and a request for forgiveness are important components in the overal process of personal forgiveness. But the radical — and I mean RADICAL — nature of Jesus’ teaching on the necessity of forgiveness cannot be sidestepped by the seemingly reasonable, psychological provisos that so easily qualify the Christian imperative of forgiveness.

Sit down and reread  one of the Synoptic Gospels and notice how often Jesus emphasizes the importance of forgiving others with the same graciousness with which God has forgiven us.

I am afraid that, on this score, we regularly lose sight of just how unbelievably radical is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is an excerpt of Galli’s article:

A friend has committed a grave sin, and even broken the law—let’s say by having sex with a minor.  We may find it morally reprehensible even to remain friends, especially if we have a teenage daughter.  We may wonder if continuing the friendship will signal indifference to what the offender has done. Or we simply may be confused about how to reach out. In the end, we may not make a conscious decision to reject the offender, but we simply don’t reach out, we don’t stay in touch, we just slowly walk away from that relationship.

That response is understandable—we’ve all done it. But at this personal level, here’s the deal: Though God lets sinners walk away from him, he never walks away from sinners. (my emphasis)

You can read the entire article here.

Solving a Problem Begins with a Correct Diagnosis

Christian denominational leaders continue to fret over how to recoup the attendance losses suffered during the covid shutdowns.  Church attendance has not rebounded to its pre-covid levels, making sociologists and church-growing afficionados eager to offer their professional analysis, complete with recipes for reinvigorating local church life.

As I read such articles I am continually amazed at how many of them never bother to touch on the basic question of what a church is supposed to be. They never mention Jesus or the gospel message or worship or what it means to be the Body of Christ in a fallen world. [For one recent, woeful example, see this article in Christianity Today.]

Thankfully, today I came across the most perceptively biblical account of this issue I have yet seen. Dr. Kirsten Sanders offers an acute analysis of both the problems and the “solutions” that must be understood by anyone hoping to “restore” their local church.

Her article, addressing the question of “Why I should be a part of a local church?”, is titled “Why Church is the Wrong Question“. I highly recommend it, especially if you are asking similar questions yourself.

It is also found in Christianity Today.

Here is an excerpt:

One question I encounter regularly these days is why the local church matters. This, I think, is the wrong question.

Disaffected Christians want to know why they should attend church when it has sheltered so much harm. Pastors and leaders want to know how to communicate to others, especially young adults, what good the church has to offer.

We are in a crucible that should burn off wrong answers about the church. Two years of pandemic-related church shutdowns has led many congregations to move their worship online. Church services were livestreamed and accessed in people’s living rooms. Communion was sometimes taken at the kitchen table, or not at all. Music was streamed virtually. And Christians gathered—or didn’t—with their immediate families to worship.

It would be misguided to suggest that such arrangements are not worship. Indeed, the psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and the Lord himself says, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I” (Ps. 19:1; Matt. 18:20). The instinct that God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV is not wrong. The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything and can be near people through matter—even when conveyed by data packets to a screen. God indeed dwells with his people, gathered in homes across the world.

Yet it would be incorrect also to call such a presence “church.” The church is not God’s guiding, consoling presence in one’s heart or the very real consolation and correction that can come when a group of Christians meets to pray. Nor is it what we name the occasional gathering of Christians to sing and study in homes or around tables worldwide.

In the Bible, the concern of God in creating the church is not to form persons but to form a people. . .

. . .What God called for, however, was not a moral or powerful people, but a peculiar one. Now it is true that part of the church’s peculiarity should exhibit itself in a certain morality. But morality itself is not peculiar in this particular way. What makes the church peculiar is its knowledge of itself as called by God to be his representative on the earth, to be marked by unwieldy and inconvenient practices like forgiveness, hospitality, humility, and repentance. It is marked in such a way by its common gathering, in baptism and Communion, remembering the Lord’s death and proclaiming it until he comes.

A peculiar church is one that realizes that its existence is to witness to another world, one where the Ascension is not a sorrow alone but an invitation to live into a new moment when the Son is indeed seated at the right hand of the Father. Its witness to another kingdom, a commonwealth in heaven (Phil. 3:20–21), is what justifies its existence.

This is not to say that churches should become internally preoccupied and aloof from their communities. The church has an implicit social ethic, as Hauerwas discusses, and is guided by Jesus’ call to imitate him in love for neighbor and sacrificial concern.

But the church’s reshaped community is formed out of its worship, which witnesses to another world where the Lord is King. The authors conclude, “The church, as those called out by God, embodies a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know.”

You can read the entire article here.

Caitlin Johnstone: Disrupt The Culture Wars

Ever since the rise of the “Religious/Christian Right,” culture war combat

Caitlin Johnstone

has been the number one activity highlighted by some sectors of the evangelical/ fundamentalist church.

I believe that this has been the root cause of the widespread fracturing we have seen among Christian churches in the Trump era. Such is the deceptive power of culture war combat ideology. We are told that the battle is for the casue of Christ. When, in fact, Christ has never called us to do any such thing.

Blogger Caitlin Johnstone offers a good analysis of this error embraced by today’s culture-warriors. They miss the bigger picture. American evangelicals are particularly guilty of this particular blindness.

Because evangelical Christianity has always preferred to identify with the wealthy and the powerful, the church rarely addresses the class war continually being waged in this society.

Fortunately, addressing the class conflict between the haves and the have-nots does not require an either/or decision, choosing between either class or cultural issues.

It is possible to address both at the same time. Sadly, evangelicals prefer to remain blind to the one and pour all their energy into the other.

Though I do not fully endorse Ms. Johnstone’s solution to this problem of neglecting the class issues in our society. I do find her social analysis to be spot on.

Here is a brief excerpt:

One of the great challenges faced by westerners who oppose the political status quo today is the way the narrative managers of both mainstream factions continuously divert all political energy away from issues which threaten the interests of the powerful like economic injustice, war, militarism, authoritarianism, corruption, capitalism and ecocide and toward issues which don’t threaten the powerful at all like abortion, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

This method of social control serves the powerful in some very obvious ways, and is being used very effectively. As long as it remains effective, it will continue to be used. The worse things get the more urgent the need to fight the class war will become, anf the more urgent the need to fight the class war becomes the more vitriolic and intense the artificial culture war will become in order to prevent political changes which inconvenience the powerful. This is 100 percent guaranteed. And what’s tricky is that all the vitriolic intensity will create the illusion that the culture war has gotten more important, when in reality the class war has.

It’s just a straightforward fact that the more miserable, impoverished and disempowered the public becomes, the more hateful and all-consuming the artificial culture war will be made to prevent revolution. That’s what’s been happening, and that’s what will continue to happen. You can hate hearing it, and you can hate me for saying it. But it is a fact, and I think we all pretty much know it’s a fact.

You can read the entire article here.

The Update to My Pride Month Post Has Been Added

For those of you who are interested in following up on my last post discussing the Christian church’s relationship to Pride Month, I promised you that I would add a link to my pastor’s Sunday morning message covering this topic.

You can find that link here. I hope you enjoy it and find yourself challenged and encouraged.