Tag: American Christianity

Are You Being Tempted by Satan? I Doubt It.

I recently had coffee with a new friend from church who listens to the podcasts of a well-known, influential mega-church pastor.

My friend began to tell me about this pastor’s latest sermon on temptation and the role of wicked thoughts in the Christian life. The preacher’s main point was calling people to recognize that evil thoughts or fantasies are never my own. Rather, such temptations are planted in my mind by the devil.

He urged his listeners to tell themselves, “These aren’t my thoughts; they are the devil’s thoughts. So, devil, get away from me!” That was his recipe for dealing with temptation.

I hear this kind of thing a lot in Christian circles. You have probably heard it, too. I sometimes get the impression that a certain brand of church-goer imagines a demon lurking behind every bush, waiting for another opportunity to harass the hapless Christian and sabotage her life.

Don’t misunderstand me.

I believe in a personal Satan. Defeating demonic powers was an important aspect of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Such work was central to Jesus’ message about the coming kingdom of God.

The question is, what does that mean for Christians today?

When I told my friend that I thought the radio pastor was wrong and that he was giving his listeners very bad advice, his reaction was predictable. He immediately quoted 1 Peter 5:8b, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Don’t Peter’s words prove the pastor’s point?

The answer depends on what we take Peter’s words actually to describe. What specifically does he mean? I don’t believe he means that every individual’s struggle with sin and temptation is the direct result of personal demonic interference.

My first problem with this popular misunderstanding is that it lets the Christian off the hook. In other words, we shift the responsibility for sin and temptation in our lives away from ourselves and onto an invisible, (apparently) ever-present force we call the devil. As the comedian Flip Wilson used to say, “The devil made me do it!”

Or, at the very least, the devil made me think about it!

Not only is this mantra that way too easy, but it also underestimates the significance of my own personal sinfulness.

Blaming the devil for my personal temptation and sin creates a serious spiritual hazard because it fails to take my “sinful nature” as seriously as it deserves. I am a sinner. So are you. I am born into this world as a fallen creature with a predisposition to disobey God and rebel. I don’t need to face demonic temptation in order to consider evil and to do wrong.

I am very good at tempting myself and embracing wickedness all by myself, thank you very much. I don’t need the devil’s help to be a sinner. It comes naturally to me, as it does to you. The world has been this way ever since our first parents rebelled against the Creator in the Garden.

Yes, Genesis 3 gives us a story about a personal Satan personally tempting Adam and Eve. But the result of their first rebellion was the thoroughgoing corruption of all creation, including every human being. At that point, Satan’s goals had been accomplished. He didn’t need to tempt each and every individual personally for the rest of history. The sinful inclination had taken up residence within us just as Adam and Eve’s failure had thrown a monkey wrench into God’s original design for the world.

Satan was free to sit back, sip a martini, and watch human history fall apart all on its own.

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Furthermore, I can’t help but notice the absence of any clear, New Testament evidence instructing Christians to view their lives as an ongoing contest against the devil.

Two New Testament passages explicitly discuss the inner turmoil caused by temptation. They are Romans 7:7-25 and James 1:12-15. Both passages have at least two points in common.

First, neither text says anything about the devil even though both of them offer a perfect opportunity to do so had the apostles imagined that the devil played a significant role in personal temptation.

Second, both texts place the blame for temptation and sin squarely onto the sinful inclinations that dwell within us all. Again, the devil is most noticeable by his absence.

Paul exclaims, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He does not say, “Who will rescue me from this demonic harassment?”

James explains, “Everyone is tempted when, by his/her own [fleshly] desires, he/she is dragged away and enticed.” Again, I can’t imagine a better context for making the devil’s role in temptation clear, if indeed he has any role at all. Yet, that’s not what James says, either.

Both apostles tell us to focus upon ourselves. We are the problem, not the devil.

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What about Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness? Isn’t this story the final proof that Satan does attack Christians individually?

I am not arguing that personal demonic temptation may never happen. But can we really compare ourselves to Jesus? Are any of us as important to God’s work of redemption as he is? I think that Christian humility demands that we recognize that I am not the most important component in God’s cosmic plan. Many others are more important than I am. Personal attacks may happen at times to some. But it is certainly not the normative experience that so many make it out to be.

It’s also important to understand that when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he confronted Satan as the new Adam – an important New Testament theme.

Jesus had to succeed where the first Adam had failed.

If Satan could derail Jesus’ mission and personal identity before it even got started – as he managed to do with Adam and Eve – then perhaps he could once again sit back and sip another martini for the rest of time. God’s plans for recreation would be as hamstrung as were God’s intentions for the initial creation.

Particularly important, I think, is the explanation Satan offers to Jesus for why he is able to tempt Jesus as he does. In the gospel of Luke, Satan shows Jesus “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” and then explains, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me.”

In some mysterious transaction that is not explained, Satan’s victory over Adam and Eve allowed him to go on to dominate every human society throughout history. The devil’s power to pervert has permeated “all the kingdoms of the world” such that “their authority and splendor” are all his.

Evangelicals have traditionally limited their public concern for this demonic dominance to three areas: sex (read pornography), money (read tithing to the church), and alcohol (read tea-totaling). But these individual concerns only scratch the surface of our larger social problems, in ways that are not always helpful.

Satan’s boastful words open the door on how God’s people confront demonic temptation on a daily basis, in the all-pervasive authority structures of our dazzling but corrupted societies and cultures.

When wickedness is made normative, it becomes normal to accept wickedness as, well, normal. So normal, in fact, that it is not recognized for what it truly is.

For American Christians – at least for those who fail to take seriously their proper place as citizens in the kingdom of God – such wicked abominations as manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, nationalism (especially religious nationalism), militarism, white privilege, systemic racism, neo-liberal economics, commercialism, consumerism, competitiveness, multi-generational poverty, a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and a host of other structural, authoritative networks of evil influence, all conspire to deform God’s purposes in our world.

When we cooperate, we surrender to sin and incur guilt.

We “give in” to these degenerate forces because it’s all so normal. It’s what everyone else does and believes. The devil doesn’t need to do a thing to any of us personally, or individually, because he has already done the greatest part of his evil work corporately, collectively.

He has succeeded in making evil look normal. And if it’s normal, it can’t be evil. Right? After all, it’s the way the world works. It’s the air we breathe. It generates the system that sustains us as Americans in our Americanisms.

One of our problems in this country is that we are far too individualistic and melodramatic. I suspect that these, too, are wicked features of the way Satan has structured American culture.

The Christian love of melodrama habituates us to the excitement of fighting as “warriors,” typically as “prayer warriors,” in the cosmic battle of righteousness against wickedness.

Personally defeating, whether by calling out, or standing against, or binding, or exorcising, or naming, the demonic powers attacking me makes me a “victorious” Christian.

Aside from the fact that I am convinced this is rarely an accurate description of a Christian’s struggles in life, such a focus on personal, spiritual melodrama effectively blinds the Christian to the real, overwhelming, systemic dangers that have entangled us all in their web of corruption and deceit.

So, we bow to the authority of our preferred political party and behave accordingly, treating others as the enemy because that’s what politics does to us nowadays.

We approve of another US military intervention, and cheer on American forces as they slaughter foreigners who also are made as the image of God.

We look forward to buying the bigger, better, shinier, more expensive, upgraded model of whatever it is we want because that’s the normative behavior for an American consumer. Never mind the corrosive, personal, spiritual effects of our habitual, often addictive, acquisitiveness.

We stand with everyone else in opposing low-income people of color moving into our neighborhoods because it will lower property values. It’s only the wise, economic thing to do.

The examples and illustrations are endless. And through all of it we are  blissfully obtuse to the multitude of ways that we remain spiritually stunted, immature, and overwhelmingly guilty of normalized sins that contradict everything we ought to understand about life in the kingdom of God.

Yet, we never consider these types of behaviors as demonic. They aren’t wicked temptations, we tell ourselves; they are opportunities that smart people take advantage of. Or they are responsibilities that every good citizen must fulfil.

Yep, the devil has us exactly where he wants us, behind the spiritual eight-ball, when we behave “normally” like the average, civil, well-behaved, successful, patriotic American.

I can see Satan now, sitting back, legs up, taking long sips on another big American martini.

It’s Upsetting to Sit in a Church Applauding for More War

I believe that the speaker at my morning worship service was trying to be nonpartisan. And I appreciate that.

But it’s hard to keep our biases in check, especially when they are rarely confronted by someone who sees the world differently.

Hers were showing this morning.

In the opening moments of the sermon, the speaker began to lead a prayer

A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, arrives at a hospital in Kabul. The Pentagon confirmed at least two blasts outside the Kabul airport and said there were a number of casualties. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)

on behalf of the families of the 13 soldiers recently killed by 2 suicide bombers in Afghanistan. She didn’t mention the 170+ Afghan civilians, men, women, and children who died, as well.

Then she included a prayer request for the Christians in Afghanistan who will almost certainly suffer under Taliban rule. I could see people nodding their heads in agreement.

But the real enthusiasm was yet to come.

Finally, she mentioned the need for our nation’s leaders to be directed by

God’s wisdom in their decision-making. Wow. Suddenly, the congregation erupted in applause and loud “amens” rippled throughout the auditorium.

Obviously, the community agreed heartily that THIS was the most essential request — “God, give us leaders with greater wisdom.”

I agree with these words, but I know that the kind of wisdom I was praying for is very, very different from the “wisdom” my fellow church members believe is now lacking in Washington, D.C.

You see, I know my community.

I know that the majority of the folks in my church are devoted consumers of Fox News. Many also watch Christian television, with people like Pat Robertson offering their “religious” views on world events. Consequently, their perspective on world affairs is shaped heavily by these dual propaganda outlets of the Republican party. (CBN news is only Fox News with a smile.)

Ever since president Biden initiated our withdrawal from Afghanistan (which, remember, will never entail a complete withdrawal of all special forces, intelligence operatives, and drone strikes), the Republican party and the entire assembly of corporate, cable news outlets have all uniformly condemned Biden’s withdrawal efforts.

More than that, they continually argue that US troops should remain in Afghanistan. But, of course, remaining in Afghanistan means more war, more killing and destruction, more dead Americans, more slaughtered, innocent Afghans.

No doubt, the current withdrawal could have been planned more thoroughly. But it is far from clear that all the blame should fall on Biden’s shoulders. There is more than enough blame to go around, and we ought to be heaping shovel-fulls of it onto the culprits in the Pentagon, the CIA, the State and Defense Departments, the weapons contractors, and the entire military command structure that all perpetuated this $2.35 trillion, 20-year boondoggle of a horror show on the Afghan and American people.

However, I know that the vast majority of the men and women who were enthusiastically applauding for “leaders with divine wisdom” in my worship service this morning were not thinking about the selfishness or the guilt of America’s bloodthirsty military-industrial complex — a complex that enriched itself to the tune of billions of dollars over the past 20 years.

No. They were condemning the president who finally decided “to end” this 20 war.

They were also — knowingly, self-consciously — endorsing the litany of war-mongering media figures now  calling for American troops to remain in Afghanistan to keep up the fight.

Implicitly, they were praying for more death and destruction because, rather than thinking with the mind of Christ, they have been thoroughly propagandized and brainwashed by our corporate media whose corporate owners ALL LOVE WAR.

It is always a struggle for me to worship with people who embrace without question (and applaud with both hands) the egocentric brutality of the American Empire with its colonial hubris and penchant for human exploitation.

But I am a part of Christ’s church. So I stay. And I pray in my own way. And I try to talk with others about these things whenever I can. Though few will listen for long.

I also pray for Jesus to return soon.

 

Study Uncovers the Core of White Supremacy at the Heart of Jan. 6 Insurrection

Robert Pape is a researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago.

He recently published the results of a study into the backgrounds and identities of all those arrested and charged for their participation in the January 6th attack on our Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

We have long known that Christian Nationalism was an important, motivating ideology for many of the Trump followers involved in that attack.

Dr. Pape’s report now shows the equally important role played by White Supremacy in motivating that attack.

This marriage of Christian Nationalism with White Supremacy is not new, of course. It has a very long history in this country.

The fact that many people who call themselves Christians believed that Jesus Christ had blessed this violent attack; the fact that they claimed their involvement was integral to their patriotic, Christian witness; that “keeping America white” is a major plank in their “Christian worldview”; all combined with the evidence indicating that this movement continues to expand is more than abundant reason to weep for the evangelical church in this country.

If you know Christian leaders/teachers who are instructing their congregations about the gross, anti-Biblical, anti-Christian errors of this American idolatry, then please encourage them and offer your support.

If the leaders and pastors of your church are remaining silent or, worse yet, endorsing the heresies of Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy, then talk with them, correct them, express your dissatisfaction with their departure from Biblical truth; tell them that they are wrong and pray for their transformation.

The Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the line.

The New York Times article by Alan Feuer entitled “Fears of White People Losing Out Permeates Capitol Rioters Towns, Study Finds” explains the details [all emphasis is mine]:

Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population were the most likely to be homes to people who stormed the Capitol.

Jason Andrew for The New York Times

When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.

But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.

If Mr. Pape’s initial conclusions — published on Tuesday in The Washington Post — hold true, they would suggest that the Capitol attack has historical echoes reaching back to before the Civil War, he said in an interview over the weekend. In the shorter term, he added, the study would appear to connect Jan. 6 not only to the once-fringe right-wing theory called the Great Replacement, which holds that minorities and immigrants are seeking to take over the country, but also to events like the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 where crowds of white men marched with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us!”

“If you look back in history, there has always been a series of far-right extremist movements responding to new waves of immigration to the United States or to movements for civil rights by minority groups,” Mr. Pape said. “You see a common pattern in the Capitol insurrectionists. They are mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around them, they will see a decline in their status in the future.”

One fact stood out in Mr. Pape’s study, conducted with the help of researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, a think tank he runs at the University of Chicago. Counties with the most significant declines in the non-Hispanic white population are the most likely to produce insurrectionists. This finding held true, Mr. Pape determined, even when controlling for population size, distance to Washington, unemployment rate and urban or rural location.

Law enforcement officials have said 800 to 1,000 people entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, and prosecutors have spent the past three months tracking down many of them in what they have described as one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history. In recent court filings, the government has hinted that more than 400 people may ultimately face charges, including illegal entry, assault of police officers and the obstruction of the official business of Congress.

In his study, Mr. Pape determined that only about 10 percent of those charged were members of established far-right organizations like the Oath Keepers militia or the nationalist extremist group the Proud Boys. But unlike other analysts who have made similar findings, Mr. Pape has argued that the remaining 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are part of a still congealing mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put “violence at its core.”

Other mass movements have emerged, he said, in response to large-scale cultural change. In the 1840s and ’50s, for example, the Know Nothing Party, a group of nativist Protestants, was formed in response to huge waves of largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. After World War I, he added, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival prompted in part by the arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the so-called Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North.

In an effort to determine why the mob that formed on Jan. 6 turned violent, Mr. Pape compared events that day with two previous pro-Trump rallies in Washington, on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12. While police records show some indications of street fighting after the first two gatherings, Mr. Pape said, the number of arrests were fewer and the charges less serious than on Jan. 6. The records also show that those arrested in November and December largely lived within an hour of Washington while most of those arrested in January came from considerably farther away.

The difference at the rallies was former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Pape said. Mr. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 rally in advance, saying it would be “wild” and driving up attendance, Mr. Pape said. He then encouraged the mob to march on the Capitol in an effort to “show strength.”

Mr. Pape said he worried that a similar mob could be summoned again by a leader like Mr. Trump. After all, he suggested, as the country continues moving toward becoming a majority-minority nation and right-wing media outlets continue to stoke fear about the Great Replacement, the racial and cultural anxieties that lay beneath the riot at the Capitol are not going away.

“If all of this is really rooted in the politics of social change, then we have to realize that it’s not going to be solved — or solved alone — by law enforcement agencies,” Mr. Pape said. “This is political violence, not just ordinary criminal violence, and it is going to require both additional information and a strategic approach.”

Mr. Pape, whose career had mostly been focused on international terrorism, used that approach after the Sept. 11 attacks when he created a database of suicide bombers from around the world. His research led to a remarkable discovery: Most of the bombers were secular, not religious, and had killed themselves not out of zealotry, but rather in response to military occupations.

American officials eventually used the findings to persuade some Sunnis in Iraq to break with their religious allies and join the United States in a nationalist movement known as the Anbar Awakening.

Recalling his early work with suicide bombers, Mr. Pape suggested that the country’s understanding of what happened on Jan. 6 was only starting to take shape, much like its understanding of international terrorism slowly grew after Sept. 11.

“We really still are at the beginning stages,” he said.

America’s Warmongering Civil Religion

An American “Christian” flag

Perhaps the most grotesque feature of American civil religion is its  manipulation of Christian faith to fit the role of pious cheerleader for this nation’s militaristic imperialism throughout the world.

Of course, this requires the collusion of our religious leaders — I hesitate to call them “Christian” — who applaud the “sacrifice” of our noble troops, willing “to give their lives for the nation.”

You can find my critique of civil religion, nationalism, and the collusion of American evangelicalism with our militaristic, national idolatry in my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

More recently, Dr. Kelly Denton-Borhaug, a professor of religious studies at Moravian College outside Philadelphia, has written a book entitled, And Then Your Soul Is Gone: Moral Injury and US War-Culture.  Her book explores the ways in which Christian vocabulary is used to justify, and to valorize, America’s endless wars.

She further explores the long-term damage of “moral injury” ravaging the consciences of soldiers who come home from the battleground.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Dr. Denton-Borhaug conducted by Robert Scheer and Scheer Post. The interview transcript is titled, “Christianity is the Linchpin in America’s War Machine,” a title that ought to make every Christian gag. [All emphasis mine.]

RS: Well, really what you’re talking about is a sickness, a profound cultural sickness that has a unique, dare I say American-exceptional variant in its relation to Christianity, modern Christianity, that has inflicted great pain not only on the world–I shouldn’t say “not only”–and on innocent civilians throughout the world, but on the warriors that are summoned or encouraged or paid–mercenaries–to go out and do this. And you’re saying there’s a fundamental connection as well as a contradiction between this nation’s claim to be influenced by notions of a deity and an almighty and accountability in a religious sense, and the barbarism–the barbarism that has consumed our relation to the world.

KDB: That’s absolutely right, and you know, part of the–I’m really glad that you used the word “contradiction,” because contradictions abound in this landscape. And part of the contradiction has to do with the way that U.S. Americans tend to understand ourselves, and especially our system of government, with respect to religion. So we like to think that we have these nice and comfortable and straightforward separations between the ways that we operate in the world politically and whatever religious commitments we may have. We like to think that we have successfully relegated those kinds of commitments to the private sphere. But what I have come to understand is that that, in fact, is not true at all. There’s a tremendous amount of interplay that goes on between those supposedly private commitments and then the way that we understand and act within these much larger political realities.

So of course, a lot of this falls under the heading of what scholars call civil religion: the way in which religion is intertwined with, and impacts, our systems and our practices and our rituals of civil government. But I think we have tended to think that all of this is very conscious and under control, and thoughtfully executed. And my work really exhibited to me that there is this sort of deep emotional, rather subconscious and very destructive subterranean stream of religious violence that impacts the ways that we think about war, and actually that acts also as a very strong mechanism of concealment and mystification. So we tend not to see these things; we tend not to be aware of them. And simultaneously, we’re really deeply impacted by them. We approach the realities of war and militarization in the United States as a kind of sacred reality.

But, again, even as I say that, when these subterranean streams are lifted to the surface, because they have become sacred in so many people’s ways of thinking, it can be very disconcerting to hear them named as such. And it can raise a lot of uncomfortable feelings, and even feelings of anger, on the part of many people.

RS: Well, but your basic research is with the one set of victims. I mean, we should never forget that bombing weddings with drones creates, in a traditional sense, real victims out there that we sort of discard; we think of war as a video game now, and we just blow people up all over, and we’ve been doing it, whether it was shock and awe and the great display of military power, or what we do mindlessly, or our president does almost every day, whether it’s Biden or Trump. But you’ve focused on the warriors.

KDB: Right.

Read or listen to the entire interview here.

Is Mega-Church Pastor John MacArthur a Racist?

I recently came across this interview with the well-known US, mega-

Pastor John MacArthur

church pastor, John MacArthur. He is being asked about Critical Race Theory, which he describes as THE greatest danger to the evangelical church in the last 100 years.

Really?

Check it out below. My thoughts appear afterwards:

First, the majority of MacArthur’s remarks are, frankly, incoherent. He is rambling. There is no logic to anything he says. He is simply making “authoritative” declarations, without any apparent logical connection linking them together, while expecting his listeners to take him seriously.

Apparently, MacArthur has basked in his status as an adored, authoritarian mega-church preacher for far too long.

Second, MacArthur is obviously a dedicated American individualist, as are  most evangelicals in this country. He speaks strictly in terms of individual sins and personal responsibility. But that is only half the picture. Every society is a collective enterprise in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

Thus, social evils are always sins of the collective. And the collective is only changed through new legislation, restructuring, and advocacy for a renewed type of social conscience. MacArthur is either unwilling or incapable of recognizing this fact. Thus, his comments have little relevance to people working to improve the broken social structures in which we live.

To pursue justice within a society, it is not only possible but necessary to address the problems of BOTH individual AND corporate, collective sins. Like far too many evangelicals, MacArthur cannot or will not acknowledge this fact.

Third, MacArthur believes that the current controversies over “social justice” (SJ) within evangelicalism pose the most dangerous threat to the church in the past century!

Frankly, that assertion strikes me as a remarkable “chicken little” type of over statement, to put it mildly.

Why does he believe the social justice movement is so dangerous? Because, (a) in his view, social justice is actually socialism, the eternal boogey-man for American conservatives. [Does he honestly not understand that history has been filled with godly Christian socialists?]  (b) He further claims that SJ is simply a “euphemism for equality of outcomes.” (c) “Critical Race Theory only wants to destroy,” “to abolish everything.” And (d) CRT insists that individuals are not responsible for evil; only society bears that responsibility.

MacArthur’s claims are nothing more than fear-mongering falsehoods. Frankly, he does not know what he is talking about, plain and simple. Each of these points is demonstrably false.

CRT uncovers the many ways in which western society, constructed by white Europeans, has legalized an unequal social system that has historically granted significant advantages to white folks while denying them to people of color. That sort of system needs to be torn down in same way that slavery was torn down by Christian politicians in 19th century England.

Every follower of Jesus, who sees every fellow human being as made in the Image of God, should want to see all racial privilege and systemic inequalities abolished! There is nothing the least bit radical about any of this!

The fact that SJ is now “dividing the church” simply reveals how deeply paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — more specifically, white, paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — is embedded within American evangelicalism!

It is always difficult for those who rest easy in the enjoyment of their social privileges to recognize, confess, and repent of their ignorance and indifference to the difficulties created for others by the very system from which they have always benefited.

I do not know John MacArthur’s heart.  But I will say that he is a misguided, reactionary white man whose “criticisms” of SJ and CRT are very similar to the arguments used by Southern segregationists as they combatted the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.

Leaders like John MacArthur need to be ignored when they address important topics with such arrogance and self-satisfaction.

The Dangers of Absolute Truth

  • I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a serious dilemma for conservative Christians.

One of the messier lessons to be learned – or to be reminded of – by the rise of Trumpism in America is the powerful allure of authoritarianism to conservative Christians.

American evangelicals are especially susceptible to falling in love with authoritarian leaders such as Donald Trump. It’s true that this tendency hasn’t been limited to the Christian church. In fact, the majority of registered Republicans, whether religious or not, remain loyal to Trump and still believe that he won the November election.

This rigidly predictable overlap between conservative politics and conservative religion (I am hesitant to call it theology) has long been the crippling, besetting sin of the evangelical wing in the American church. We have always had great difficulty in separating our social, economic, cultural preferences – dare I call them prejudices? – from our conceptions of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the gospel of God’s kingdom.

We should never underestimate the preemptive power of human socialization to squelch the development of a distinctly Christian conscience. Believers beware…

Sadly, there is nothing surprising about this coincidence of secular and religious allegiances, for there is really nothing coincidental about any of it. This alliance in outlooks is no accident. As the linguist and cognitive scientist, George Lakoff (at UC Berkeley), explains in his several books on neuroscience and political decision-making, conservative personalities tend to view the world through a binary framework: there is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, with little if any room for the grayish hues of nuance, ambiguity, or uncertainty.

The conservative view of human relationships also places an authoritative father-figure at the top of this binary framework. Thus, authority figures are always to be obeyed, whether that figure is the father in the home, the police officer pulling you over, or the president in the White House. These authority figures are the ones who get to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Sure, the authority figure will insist that he/she is merely the human face of some ultimate law or code that stands above everyone regulating all of our behavior. But it takes very little life experience to learn that these “codes” rarely apply to authority figures in the same way that they apply to regular folks.

There is a good reason that Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd was hailed as an all-too-rare victory in the fight against the excessive use of force, especially against people of color, by American police officers.

One would hope that the Christian’s habitation by the Holy Spirit would provide abundant testimony to a Christian counter-culture winding its way throughout secular society, infiltrating, subverting, weakening, overturning, even strangling secular ways of thinking and behaving among God’s people and the rest of society.

It does happen, but not nearly enough.

I do believe the Holy Spirit is alive and that he transforms disciples of Jesus into counter-cultural people. But not everyone who calls him/herself a Christian is a disciple. As Jesus predicted, those numbers are small and only “a few” walk the path of discipleship faithfully.

Furthermore, as if the challenge of brain chemistry were not enough of a problem, I am increasingly convinced that the Christian belief in absolute truth poses a unique complication for conservative, religious personalities (which, remember, seems to describe the majority of evangelicals).

When I believe in absolute truth, I will become an absolutist, at least in those areas of life that I believe are touched upon by that truth.

Don’t misunderstand.

There is nothing inherently wrong with absolutism. If only Nazi Germany had contained more humane, Christian absolutists willing publicly to decry Nazi crimes against humanity, standing firm to the point of death in defending all their fellow citizens. Being absolutely committed to following Jesus is the Christian ideal. So, no, religious absolutism per se is not the problem defacing American evangelicalism.

Rather, our problem appears in the fusion of our belief in absolute truth with our innate tendency to seek out and identify with authority figures who will enforce those absolutes (as we perceive them) in this world. After all, we all want the world to work for us.

Many habits of the Christian church are easily exploited by both (a) those who are eager to exercise authority over others as well as (b) those happy to remain subject to another’s authority. Thus, preachers who elevate themselves as God’s singular mouthpiece may often discourage (or never encourage) small group Bible studies throughout the congregation where others can learn from God’s word for themselves, without the pastor’s immediate input.

The popular confusion of church with society – a lingering ghost of western Christendom that continues to haunt US evangelicalism – leads conservative Christians to support leaders, whether Christian or not, who would make selected points of conventional, Christian morality equally authoritative for everyone else in the world, regardless of their attitude towards Jesus.

We want the world to be convenient for us.

The more authoritatively a public figure insists on universal conformity to his/her view of ethics, the more popular that authoritarian will become in evangelical circles.

When I was a teenager, one of the poster children for fundamentalist authoritarianism was Bill Gothard whose Institute for Basic Life Principles filled sporting arenas to overflowing with Christian devotees searching for someone to tell them how to live their lives. Holding Gothard’s thick IBLP binder open on their laps, the ultimate religious father-figure would direct them through the tiniest details of what a proper Christian life should look like.

I suspect that Jordan Peterson’s rapid rise to fame in evangelical circles provides a more contemporary example of the same conservative urge to seek out and surrender to an authority figure.

Frankly, every public figure I have ever listened to representing the Religious Right has struck me as an authoritarian personality. I am thinking particularly of people like Tony Perkins, Gary Baur, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed, to name only a few — all avid Trump supporters, by the way.

The allure of Donald Trump was like a pan of beer laid out for a garden full of slugs. Irresistible to evangelicals.

Never mind that he told the graduating class at Liberty University that they ought to throw out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. His commencement advice was “to get even” with very sharp elbows. Stab your competitors in the back. That’s what Trump advised an auditorium of right-wing, Christian graduates. But it was all ok. After all, Trump is a strong authoritarian who implied that he meant to impose conservative Christian values onto the rest of society, whether they liked it or not.

Fortunately, brain chemistry is not destiny, although far too many conservative Christians appear unaware of that fact. The work of the Holy Spirit, combined with the life and teaching of Jesus, mediated to us through the New Testament (and especially the four gospels) can mold a Spirit directed life, as opposed to an authoritarian directed life.

Lovers of authoritarianism who remain enamored with enforcing Absolute Truth forget that the Christian’s absolute truth is not a law or a code. It is not contained in a manual or a binder.

For the one and only Absolute Truth in this universe is our Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Our Absolute Truth is a Person – or a Trinity of equally divine Persons.

We don’t learn about absolute truth by memorizing the minutiae of a legal code.

We don’t honor absolute truth by riding herd over society’s degenerate, wayward cattle.

We only know Absolute Truth by surrendering ourselves to Jesus Christ. For he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Jesus never manipulates, coerces, bullies, or publicly shames anyone, especially not for his own advantage.

The Absolute Truth of Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant; the one who “came to serve, not to be served;” the one who gave his life and was crucified as the final sacrifice for the forgiveness of my sins; this is the only Absolute Truth for real disciples.

Jesus has little patience, I suspect, for evangelical authoritarians.

Michelle Goldberg on The Decline of the Religious Right

“The Religious Right is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It,” is the title of Michelle Goldberg’s recent article at The New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg, author and journalist

Ms. Goldberg has been following the Religious Right for some time. I recommend her insightful book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2007) for more of her analysis on white evangelicalism in this country.

Her current article in the NYT underlines the central, animating principle of American evangelicalism in the 21st century: the preservation of Christian cultural supremacy and entitlement.

If you don’t believe me, try this exercise the next time you hear another white, Christian “culture warrior” decrying the latest political act of “anti-Christian” oppression. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine the apostle Paul complaining about this social/cultural disagreement as a threat to the Christian faith or the church?”

Where did Paul ever insist that Greco-Roman society must abandon its idolatry in order for the church to thrive?

When did he insist that Christian organizations were being persecuted unless they were granted tax exempt status?

How often does he announce that the surrounding pagans must change their ways and conform to Christian moral principles in order that Christians may live more comfortably?

The answers are obvious.

Below is Ms. Goldberg’s article. She hits the nail on the head:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”

Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.

QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.

As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

Speaking Truth to Power in American Will Get You Death Threats

Somali born US representative Ilhan Omar recently asked the US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, an important question about America’s

Ilhan Omar questions Anthony Blinken by Zoom

relationship to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

She asked Blinken a thoughtful, necessary question which he skirted completely. Here is the complete transcription of that question:

Mr. Secretary, the last time you were here, I asked about the Trump sanctions on the ICC staff, so I wanted to thank you publicly for doing the right thing and lifting them. I know you opposed the court’s investigation in both Palestine and in Afghanistan. I haven’t seen any evidence in either case [sic] that domestic courts both can and will prosecute alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I would emphasize that in Israel and Palestine, this includes crimes committed by both the Israeli Security Forces and Hamas. In Afghanistan, it includes crimes committed by the Afghan national government and the Taliban. So, in both of these cases, if domestic courts can’t or won’t pursue justice, and we oppose the ICC, where do we think the victims of these supposed crimes can go for justice and what justice mechanism [inaudible 00:01:29]?

Given the long-standing US antagonism towards the ICC, including the scuttling of any and all cases that even tangentially involve the United States or Israel, Rep. Omar asks the obvious question: where can the victims of these crimes against humanity turn for justice?

Predictably, conservatives and pro-Israel apologists jumped on Rep. Omar immediately. In her defense she sent out the following Tweet:

We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked @SecBlinken where people are supposed to go for justice.

The pundit class immediately torn their clothes and screamed in outrage.

Anthony Blinken

How dare Rep. Omar put the US and Israel in the same class of miscreants as Hamas and the Taliban! She must be excoriated, even excommunicated, for her blasphemy against the lily-white mythology of “American (and Israeli) exceptionalism.”

Never mind the fact that those who study our history know full well that the US is every bit as guilty – many will argue even more so — of war crimes as are the Taliban or Hamas.

It did not take long for Rep. Omar to suffer the most hateful vitriol from not only her congressional colleagues but also conservative news media and the wider public.

Below is a short video explaining the recent series of attacks against Rep. Omar and her family:

Let me say again, as I have many times before, I love Ilhan Omar.

She is a very brave woman of color with the integrity, strength of character, and rightly attuned moral compass to speak truth to power.

Sadly, for jingoistic, “patriotic” Americans, including politicians in both parties who have sold their souls to corporate power, genuine justice and equality before the law are nothing more than bland banners to wave at 4th of July picnics.

They have no hold in real life; certainly not in the hardball realm of Realpolik. They possess no power of moral suasion that might move the consciences of America’s leaders to confess and repent of the nation’s many, grotesque national sins – including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Why are all the members of Congress claiming to be Christians on the wrong side of this debate?

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am grieved that (almost certainly) a majority of American evangelicals share in the hateful attitudes now on display in these vile attacks against Rep. Omar.

We are seeing another clear example of the corrupting influence of Nationalism, and why all Nationalisms are antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nationalism is inherently incapable of genuine confession, repentance, rectification, and restoration. It is an ideology rooted in the elevation of the Collective Self, which has no relation to Christian discipleship.

Humility and self-abasement, cardinal attributes of authentic Christian faith, are anathema to Nationalistic sentiment. Thus, the label Christian Nationalism is an oxymoron, a blasphemous self-contradiction.

Ilhan Omar’s Muslim faith, combined with her life experience as a Somali refugee, has formed a more noble and enlightened conscience, a more Godly sense of right and wrong than we now see among any of the Family Research Council, Religious Right, Republican, or Democratic critics demanding that she be punished for asking the obvious and necessary questions about America’s place in the world.

This is why I pray from Ilan Omar. I ask the Lord to protect her and her family, and that she continue to find the courage to continue working for justice in this world.

And this is why I pray for American Christianity, that the Lord redeem us from our apostasy. And that we renounce the destructive sin of Nationalism with all its evil power.

Christian Nationalism and Political Conformity

Condemning Christian nationalism has become all the rage among certain members of the evangelical punditry. Even a few evangelical Republicans felt uncomfortable at the sight of Jesus flags and Christian paraphernalia on prominent display among the rioters who stormed Congress on January 6th.

In the immediate aftermath of those events, I saw a number of editorial condemnations on television and in print chastising any Christian’s involvement in violence or sedition. Each of them raised the same questions in my mind, for they all were morally tepid and intellectually shallow, ignoring the role those very media outlets had played in promoting president Trump’s “Big Lie” about a stolen election.

I wholeheartedly agree with the reminder that Christians should not commit acts of violence, especially when those actions lead to others being

FILE – In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, Trump supporters participate in a rally in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

killed and injured. However, I also found it very strange for right-wing, Christian, patriotic pundits, people who swear allegiance to a nation founded upon revolution, violence, and bloodshed, to suddenly clutch their pearls and faint at the sight of modern “patriots” doing what they believed needed to be done in order to save their nation and democracy.

I won’t even begin to address the hypocrisy on display when Religious-Right folks self-righteously condemn insurrection at home while heartily endorsing America’s many military coups and wars of aggression around the world! Apparently, Christians are only supposed to shun violence when the their fellow Americans become the enemy. Black and brown-skinned people around the world are always fair game.

All of this is very strange indeed unless we understand two crucial points:

First, these suddenly pacifistic, evangelical commentators were demonstrating how deeply embedded they are in the American, corporate establishment.

For all of their complaints about suffering as marginalized, Christian outsiders, none of them were willing to follow the logic of their messianic Trump-devotion to its logical conclusion. Why? Because they all had network executives telling them to toe a more establishment line or they would need to empty their desks and head for the unemployment line.

None of them were condemning police violence when BLM protesters were being assaulted by lines of militarized patrolmen wielding plexiglass shields and billy clubs.

Second, their exclusive focus on an anti-violence message exposed the consistent lack of self-awareness and intellectual rigor that characterizes so much of American evangelicalism today.

Of course, superficial critiques may be better than no critique at all, but if we only ever scratch the surface of a problem, then the underlying disease is allowed to deepen and spread. (On a side note, this was also my response to Mark Galli’s tepid critique of president Trump in his editorial at Christianity Today.” Only fellow evangelicals would interpret his words as shocking.)

Linking the errors of Christian nationalism to the dangers of patriotic violence (at home, mind you; violence abroad is always permissible for Christian America) is only the tip of the iceberg.

I recently began reading a book by the US historian, John W. Compton, entitled, The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors (Oxford, 2020). Compton first tells the story of how white Protestantism once led the way in condemning, addressing, and working to transform the many social, cultural, and political evils in this country.

Child labor laws, worker safety regulations, the 6-day work week, the 8-hour work day, a living wage, plus much more were policies all implemented in response to massive Christian political pressure during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But all of that changed in late 1970s-early 1980s with Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the rise of his neo-liberal economic agenda. Nowadays, Christians concerned with things like social justice are regularly condemned for compromising the gospel. What happened?

I won’t answer that question here, but I will share a few thoughts from Compton’s introductory chapter where he begins to lay out his argument about the transformation that led to the wholesale conformity of American Christianity to the social/political/cultural status quo.

Concerning Christian political involvement:

Religious believers are on average much like similarly situated secular citizens when it comes to their behavior in the political realm. Like their secular neighbors, believers routinely base their political decisions on self-interest or ingrained prejudice rather than careful and disinterested study of sacred texts or deliberation about the will of a higher power. (4-5)

On the Christian vision for the church’s role in transforming society:

…from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1960s, most non-Southern Protestants not only professed to believe that Christian principles, properly understood, favored government efforts to aid the downtrodden; they were also embedded in religious networks that were capable…of focusing attention on specific social problems and incentivizing the faithful to take responsibility for correcting them.

On the current state of American evangelicalism:

In the new age of personal autonomy, the leaders of the Religious Right flourished by reshaping the Christian message to comport with the prejudices and material self-interest of their target demographic.

I will probably review this book here when I have finished digesting all that it has to say.

But in short, nowadays the average Christian doesn’t work at thinking, and thus acting, differently in the light of God’s word. We conform to the ways of those around us, ignore the illuminating study of the holy scriptures, and are afraid to stand alone on behalf of those less fortunate than ourselves.

For now, I will only note a deeper description of the dangers that accompany Christian nationalism. The heart of that danger is cooption, conformity to the national status quo — which explains a lot about American evangelicalism and the Religious-Right in this country.

Once Christians begin to imagine that their country is God’s country; that its national history is a story written by and for Christians like themselves, then it is a very tiny step to confuse national interests with Christian interests. National norms become Christian norms (think of laisse faire capitalism) and Christian norms become national norms (think of the fight over equal rights for gay citizens).

Granted, this confusion may require a reimagined past that describes our current state of affairs as a gross deviation from historic norms (think of  David Barton and Wallbuilders promoting a fictitious story of our “Christian” founding fathers and the Constitution’s adherence to the Bible). But modern diversions into sin cannot change America’s basic orientation as a “Christian nation” – at least, to the minds of Christian nationalists.

The identity between the one and the other is very simple for Christian nationalism and it goes far beyond a problem with violence. Christian values become America’s true, historic values. Thus, American true values are Christian values. This is where Christian nationalism becomes heretical.

Yet, this false identity between nation and church is ignored by pundits on the Religious-Right who now chastise Christian insurrectionists for colluding with violence.

The genuine danger for the church in this country is not that it would collude with violence but that it would continue to collude with American exceptionalism.

The greatest political danger facing evangelicalism today is our willingness to roll over and accept the economic and political status quo, embracing corporate, crony capitalism, labor exploitation, systemic racism, militarized policing, social Darwinism, and American exceptionalism as God’s preferred methods of directing a nation.

Where is the Christian voice of dissent to all these sins?

Where are the people who will not conform to their political surroundings and vote and think and act like their neighbors?

Where are the Christian activists willing to break away from the way things today are in order to pursue God’s vision of the way things ought to be tomorrow?

What the Church Can Learn from Eugene Debs

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was an American politician who became an important early leader in the labor union movement. He condemned

Labor activist Eugene V. Debs speaks at the Hippodrome in New York City in 1910

corporate greed, was a vocal proponent on behalf of American workers, helped to lead numerous strikes, and fought for genuine democracy in the workplace.

Naturally, figures like Debs are a thorn in the side of entrenched, establishment power, so he made many enemies in high places. President Woodrow Wilson had him imprisoned for speaking out against the US entry into World War I. [No, folks, “cancel culture” is hardly new!]

In my view, Debs is a true American hero who has been largely forgotten by mainstream America.

Ed Quish has an interesting article about Deb’s life and legacy at Jacobin magazine. It’s entitled “The Cold War is Over. It’s Time to Appreciate that Eugene Debs Was a Marxist.”

Whenever a learn something new about a figure like Eugene Debs (or a man like Henry Wallace, another person I admire for similar reasons) I can’t help but ask myself, “Where were his Christian counterparts?”

Though he didn’t claim to be a Christian (to my knowledge) in the

Eugene Debs

evangelical sense, his politics, ideology, and actions demonstrate a more profound appreciation for the nature of the kingdom of God and the demands that kingdom makes upon its citizens than is shown by the evangelical church today.

Below is an excerpt:

Throughout his life, Eugene Debs was smeared as an enemy of the American nation. During the 1894 Pullman strike, Harper’s Weekly attacked Debs’s leadership of the uprising as equivalent to Southern secession, claiming that in “suppressing such a blackmailing conspiracy as the boycott of Pullman cars by the American Railway Union, the nation is fighting for its own existence.” Thirty years later, when Debs was imprisoned for speaking against World War I, President Woodrow Wilson denied requests to pardon him, refusing to show mercy to “a traitor to his country.”

Debs’s sympathizers have often defended him against allegations of treason by highlighting his authentic Americanism. Rather than a traitor, they claim, Debs was a true patriot who stood up for nationally shared ideals like freedom and democracy while imbuing them with socialist values. Historian Nick Salvatore, for instance, argues in his landmark 1982 biography that Debs’s life “was a profound refutation of the belief that critical dissent is somehow un-American or unpatriotic.” Inspired by Debs’s example, socialists today might occupy the left flank of a progressive patriotism, pushing the United States to make good on its democratic promise in a way that liberals and centrists cannot do on their own.

Despite some intuitive appeal, this nationalist strategy is a dead end. . . At a basic level, democratic nationalism presents the nation as bound by a shared identity and shared interests, uniting different classes behind a common project domestically and internationally. In the United States, this project has only ever been a variant of capitalist empire that, even when grafted to the cause of democracy. . . 

In his own time, Debs rejected that kind of nationalist project, making his politics more than the radical edge of common sense “Americanism.” When Debs called out the absurdity of the wartime view that patriotism means dying overseas for capitalist profits while treason consists in defending workers everywhere, he showed us the proper response to nationalist ideology: not to try to hijack it for progressive ends, but to liberate us from its obfuscations.

Click here to read the complete article.