Tag: Christian Ethics

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.

A Review of “Jesus and the Powers” by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird

A Review of N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness In an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan, 2024, $22.99)

As I begin this review, I must admit that I am not a dispassionate analyst. I do have some skin in the game since this new book by Wright and Bird covers very similar ground as does my book, I Pledge Allegiance. I have some firm opinions in this area of study.

Having put my cards on the table, however, I can say that Wright and Bird have given the church a very helpful book providing biblical guidance on how followers of Jesus are to deal with the practical matters of church–state relations. Can a Christian be involved with politics? What is the proper relationship between church and state? How are disciples to conduct themselves as responsible citizens? What guidance does scripture offer for answering these types of questions?

All this and more is tackled here with the deft biblical–theological hand one has come to expect from Wright and Bird.  With numerous historical examples illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of alternative approaches to such matters.

The first three chapters lay out the church’s relationship to world empires, beginning with Rome’s domination of Jesus’ homeland, up to the church’s contemporary interactions with the Soviet Union, China and the United States. The spiritual backdrop to these interactions is helpfully cast in terms of the spiritual, cosmic powers always at work behind the temporal authorities we see in our national, international, global relations. Thus, Wright and Bird endorse Walter Wink’s important three–volume work on Christianity and the Powers.

Chapter four, “The Kingdom of God as Vision and Vocation” begins the turn to a more pragmatic description of what exactly Christian disciples ought to be doing, and how we ought to be thinking, about our place in secular society. Here they thankfully emphasize the vital unification of both gospel proclamation and social justice activism as equally vital, and ultimately indivisible, kingdom activities for the local church. Across the entire spectrum of Christian, kingdom activities we are reminded that “the whole purpose of Christian influence is not the pursuit of Christian hegemony but the giving of faithful Christian witness,” thereby endorsing James Davison Hunter’s concept of the Christian church offering a “faithful presence” in the world (93).

The book’s second half focuses on matters of church–state relations in the modern day. There is an excellent critique of Christian Nationalism,” as well as the vigorous defense of liberal democracy, pluralism and secularism as the political venues most conducive to religious freedom.

The book’s conclusion reminds its readers that “we are called to be disciples with a theo–political vision of the gospel” (174) meaning that “a kingdom perspective requires prophetic witness, priestly intercession and political discernment” (175). The church cannot build the kingdom of God, only God can construct his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven (176).

This is a fine piece of work. And I am happy to encourage my subscribers to read this book by Wright and Bird, although I encourage you to do it in tandem with my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018).

Now I must turn to my critical analysis of the work.

Wright and Bird have written a handbook of sorts dealing with the questions of church–state relationship and Christian political involvement. Biblical references are treated as proof–texts cited in footnotes with no close reading or interpretation provided along the way. Since both of these men are fine New Testament scholars, this was obviously a deliberate decision. But this  omission leaves the reader with yet another book on politics and theology where we are simply expected to take the authors at their own authoritative word.

The problem with this decision appears most obviously in the discussion of Romans 13. Despite the fact that Paul never uses the vocabulary of “obey” or “obedience” in these verses, Wright and Bird repeat the frequent mistake of taking Paul to say that Christians are responsible “to obey” their secular, civic authorities (105, 109, 110). But this is not the case, and I explain why at some length in my book, I Pledge Allegiance (55–62). Granted, the authors redeem themselves by eventually, and quite rightly, explaining that it is “only good government can claim the mantle of a divinely appointed authority. Accordingly, God brings order through government but does not ordain every individual ruler” (112). Thus, Paul does instruct us to submit to the divine ordering of government, but we are not responsible to obey every person or directive in authority.

Again, Wright and Bird finally reach this conclusion themselves in their section discussing civil disobedience (107–121). They agree that unjust laws may be resisted or disobeyed by believers, although, while admitting that “one needs to have criteria for determining unjust laws,” no specific guidance is offered (119).

They draw a distinction between civil disobedience and uncivil disobedience, the latter being “reserved only for violent authoritarians.” In the face of authoritarianism, Christians are justified in resorting to violence in their efforts to overthrow an oppressive, unjust government. In my view, this is where their argument and methodology go off the rails. Not only is there no biblical evidence on offer, but even the biblical footnotes disappear. Instead, the authors appeal to traditional just war theory, a few notable philosophers, and the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

I obviously disagree strongly with these (less than compelling) arguments justifying a Christian’s turn to violence in civil war. (Again, check out the extensive argument in my book insisting that Christians must always embrace non–violence in every circumstance.) Actually, Bonhoeffer’s own turn to violent anti–Nazi resistance is, in my opinion, the great tragedy of his otherwise exemplary life. For, when all is said and done, Bonhoeffer did not die as a martyr for Jesus Christ and the gospel. He died as a violent insurgent helping to plot a violent murder.

Here we come, perhaps, to the principal problem with Jesus and the Powers. For all the discussion of the kingdom of God and the need for Christian ethics to direct our political engagement, there is no extended discussion of the upside–down nature of Jesus’ kingdom ethics; no exposition of what numerous scholars have called the “kingdom reversal.” In my opinion, this is not only a major oversight but an inexplicable omission in a book like this. Jesus makes it clear, that living out the seemingly upside–down values of the kingdom of God — in every dimension of our public and private lives, political and apolitical — is THE means of demonstrating that the “not yet fulfilled” kingdom of God is, nevertheless, “already present” in this world. Living a non–violent life as Jesus lived a non–violent life, even in the face of the most authoritarian, bloodthirsty injustice exhibited on the cross at Calvary, is our gospel–kingdom mandate.

Similarly, a great deal of additional instruction in political directives could be added, but first we must immerse ourselves in a new way to think, a new way to view life in this world, a new way to live: an upside–down way, a contrarian way in all of life, whether the government is democratic or totalitarian. Unfortunately, Jesus and the Powers gives little attention to this crucial piece of the church and politics pie.

“What Would I Have Done?” We Now Know How to Answer that Question

What would I have done?

That’s the common question we usually ask ourselves when watching a movie like “Schindler’s List,” the academy award winning film about one man’s efforts to rescue Jews from Hilter’s gas chambers.

Schindler risked his life to save others. And he was not the only one.

Others such as the Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom, broke the law by hiding Jews inside their homes, risking their freedom while trying to rescue people like Anne Frank, who hid in her neighbor’s attic.

Even though the majority of German church pastors supported the Nazi regime, there was a small  minority of faithful ministers of the gospel who eventually lost their freedom because they would not remain silent in the face of Nazi criminality.

Books like Defying Hitler tell the stories of the many ways in which ordinary people in Nazi Germany said No, refusing to march with the majority who refused to speak up or to act out against the wanton atrocities unfolding around them.

Which, again, raises the question, What would I have done?

Would I have remained inactive and silent? Or would I have spoken up, protested, or used whatever means I had at my disposal to work against the genocide and save whomever I could?

Now we all know the answers to those questions. We don’t have to wait any longer.

We are living in a unique moment of history. For a real genocide, a horrendous program of ethnic cleansing is now occuring before our eyes.

Though the American/Western mainstream media gives it all scant attention, anyone with a wider bandwidth of human interest can watch the scandalous, ugly images of daily attrocities as they unfold in real time.

Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, The Electronic Intifada, The Gray Zone, and the Katie Halper Show (among others) are thankfully offering the news coverage that corporate America does not want us to see.

And that news is shockingly repetitious. For what Israel is now doing in Gaza and the West Bank “is a textbook case of genocide.” Those are not my words but the words of Craig Mokhiber, formerly the Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights.

Mr. Mokhiber is the former director because he recently resigned from his position at the United Nations over its efforts to censor his reports on Israel’s attrocities in Gaza.

As a result, Mokhiber ranks among the heroes with Mr. Schindler and Corrie Ten Boom for doing what he could to speak out, protest, and even to hinder the genocide unfolding before our eyes.

He has shown us how he answers the question, “What would I have done?”

It is all too easy to cast ourselves as heroes in our own imaginations, especially when we have no contemporary circumstances to offer us an immediate heroic option.

So, I always imagine myself the hero. But today I do not need to imagine anything. I can face the evidence squarely by looking at my actions today.

What am I doing today to protest, to act, to work against the textbook case of genocide now being written in the pages of modern history with Palestinian blood?

This is the answer for both you and me.

If I am doing nothing to defend Palestinian life today, then that’s what I would have done to defend Anne Frank — nothing.

If I am doing nothing to protest the genocide now occurring in Gaza, then I would have remained silent as I inhaled the stench of Auschwitz.

We can all go to bed tonight knowing that we have answered the perpetually troubling moral question: What would I have done?

Can you still sleep well?

Read About an Excellent Book, Gay Girl, Good God, by Jackie Hill Perry

A book review of Jackie Hill Perry, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been (B & H, 2018), 193 pages; $16.99.

Author, Jackie Hill Perry

Seldom have I read a book with a more poignant story about the sovereign power of God’s amazing grace to save someone who was not looking for him. The author provides us with a beautiful memoir that should become a popular classic in the American tradition of A Faithful Narrative of a Surprising Work of God.

Growing up in East St. Louis, MO, Ms. Hill Perry had known that she was gay for as long as she could remember. She had only every been attracted to girls and young women. Except, there was one problem. Having been raised in the Christian church, she was familiar with all the biblical teaching that condemned her sexual proclivities.

She didn’t believe any of it, of course. But she remembered it. All of it.

She writes about the confusion she eventually felt over how God could possibly be unhappy about the same-sex love affair that filled her with so much joy:

“As much as I wanted to believe God grinned when He thought of my life, I knew He didn’t. My conscience spoke to me throughout the day. In the morning, it reminded me of God. A few minutes before the clock brought the noon in, it brought God to mind, again. Night was when it was the loudest. On the way to sleep, my head lay relaxed on my pillow surrounded by the natural darkness of night, I thought about God. If being intrigued by Scripture and reading it to cure boredom had done anything, it had made me aware of a truth about me and Him that I couldn’t shake even if the earth moved. I was His enemy (James 4:4). How could I, an enemy of God, have sweet dreams knowing that He sat awake throughout the night? . . . It was maddening to try and sleep with so much noise in the room” (59-60).

Eventually, she would come to understand that God was not calling her to become heterosexual. He was calling her to become holy, like Him. Again, Ms. Hill Perry writes:

“I know now what I didn’t know then. God was not calling me to be straight; He was calling me to Himself. The choice to lay aside sin and take hold of holiness was not synonymous with heterosexuality. . . (God was) after my whole heart, desperate to make it new. Committed to making it like Him. In my becoming Holy as He is, I would not be miraculously made into a woman that didn’t like women; I’d be made into a woman that loved God more than anything” (69).

But in learning this she also knew that a holy life would mean turning away from her gay lifestyle.

After surrendering herself to Jesus while laying alone in bed, her first task was to break up with her longtime girlfriend — a heartwrenching decision movingly described.

She now understood that living to please her Lord Jesus, the Savior who died to free her from all of her sin, was the most important thing she could do with her life.

After telling the rest of her story, all of which is worth reading as an exemplary instance of what it means to follow Jesus through thick and thin, the author concludes with several chapters offering solid, biblical advice to people who either struggle with “same sex attraction” themselves, or are talking with someone who does.

You can’t go wrong by reading this book by Jackie Hill Perry yourself and then passing it along to a friend, whether gay or straight.

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.

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.

Some Thoughts on the Christian Church and Gay Pride Month

Gay pride month, with its rumblings over pronouns, sexual identity, and LGBTQIA issues, has stirred me to share a few of thoughts about the subtleties involved in these gender conversations which are generally overlooked by many of those who argue over them.

Christians are no exception to this generalization. In fact, we are often the worst at neglecting the relevant nuances when we ought to be the most sensitive to them. For these subtleties are uniquely Christian contributions to the public discussion about gay marriage and sexual-gender identities. If we don’t offer them up, it’s unlikely that anyone else will.

Shame on us for not being more biblically and theologically astute.

[By the way, my pastor recently gave an excellent message on these issues. Here is the link if you want to listen. The entire message is well worth your time, but his discussion of Pride Month begins at the 20:10 mark.]

First, Christians must remember that sexual identity does not entail (much less require) sexual activity.

The secular world jettisoned this fact long ago. Society assumes that whatever you “are” – gay, straight, bi, trans, what-have-you – you will be engaging in that particular “mode” of sexual activity. To be a sexual person means to be sexually active. It is both natural and inevitable.

Tragically, the Christian church has fallen into the trap of sharing this assumption, not only concerning those outside of the church but for those within it, as well.

We assume that a sexual-gender identity will always entail sexual activity. This is why straight men can become particularly cruel and heartless when discussing gay men. They imagine the sex acts involved and are often repulsed. That sense of revulsion is then sanctioned by the demeaning attitudes too often shared by fellow Christians. Thus, base cruelty, born of presumption and self-righteousness, becomes acceptable among the “godly.” This ought not to be.

The fact that the New Testament does, in fact, prohibit gay sexual activity is beside the point for now. As a Christian I understand that scripture only approves of sexual activity within the confines of marriage – that is, a life-long commitment between one man and one woman. All other sexual practices, whatever they may be, with whomever they may happen, fall under the condemnation of that old fashioned word fornication.

Fornication is an equal opportunity sin. It does not discriminate between straight, gay, bi, or what have you.

Anyone engaging in sexual activity with anyone other than his/her heterosexual spouse is guilty of sin. The intimate, mechanical details of this activity are irrelevant. No one needs to imagine anything. The only relevant question is this: is it marital sex (biblically defined) or fornication? It’s really that simple.

We also see this confusion arise when conservative Christians insist that “gay people cannot hold positions of church leadership.”

This simply is not true.

Nowhere does scripture condemn people for being born with gay or lesbian inclinations. Same-sex attraction is no more sinful than heterosexual attraction. The restrictive question is not one of attraction or inclination but of activity (real or imagined) with a particular partner.

Of course, gay people can serve as church leaders, provided that they remain celibate. Just as straight people can serve in church leadership, provided they remain celibate if single and faithfully monogamous if married.

The Christian church has an ancient, venerable tradition of life-long celibacy among its leaders, notwithstanding the horrific legacy of sexual abuse now on display within the Roman Catholic and many Protestant churches. Sin needs to be corrected, not awarded the power to scuttle right practices. Vows of celibacy are as old and as respectable as the apostle Paul.

Christians who automatically reject the idea of accepting gay Christians into leadership roles reveal that they too are making false assumptions. Remember, sexual natures do not require sexual activity. Celibacy is possible, especially when that leader is surrounded by an understanding, compassionate community of faith.

The second neglected subtlety concerns the place of sin, specifically our understanding of the Fall described in Genesis 3, within the workings of creation.

Only last night I listened to an interview with one of the leaders of America’s largest Protestant denomination. He was discussing the current controversies surrounding the “treatment” of childhood transgenderism. With great authority he declared that God had created only two genders/sexes: male and female. Thus, according to him, there could be no such thing as a genuinely transgendered human being.

You’ve probably heard this kind of thing before.

Unfortunately, this Christian leader (and all those like him) are wrong on both their theology and biology.

For starters, the creation story is followed by a sequel – the horrific story of the Fall in Genesis 3. Satan successfully tempts the first man and woman to disobey their Creator, thereby throwing a monkey wrench into God’s original design. Original sin is all pervasive, creating brokenness, rifts, splinters, and unintended consequences all throughout God’s creation. Things are no longer the way they were supposed to be.

Every Christian ought to understand this.

Furthermore, as a result of the Fall, even though God may have originally created only male and female, the monkey wrench of sin has complicated the gender mix considerably.

Now precious human beings who bear the Image of God can also be born as “intersex” individuals, possessing some combination of both male and female sexual organs. In fact, some medical professionals estimate that intersex births may be as high as 2% of annual birth rates. [I recommend watching the touching documentary Some Body to begin your introduction to this issue.]

Gender dysphoria – where a person is convinced that their true gender is inhabiting the wrong sort of body – is a genuine psychological condition, I believe. The monkey wrench of sin has damaged human psychology and genetics as well the human will and imagination.

Though I suspect that gender dysphoria is much rarer than many activists would have us believe, the Christian church must be a place where people struggling with this type of gender confusion can find God’s grace and compassion extended to them through a flesh and blood community.

To insist that God only created male and female is wrongheaded because it tells only half the story.

The second half of God’s story reminds us that nothing today is that neat and clean. For Satan then stepped into God’s creation to make a mess of things. And, with our help, he succeeded royally. Today’s church is called to deal graciously with that mess, the mess we call real life, where very few things, including sexual identities, are as neat and clean as we might like.

To retreat behind bad theology or poor Bible reading; to neglect important subtleties due to thoughtlessness; to make unwarranted or false assumptions about others; to compromise with the secular norms around us; or to forget that Jesus loves broken, hurting people – including you and me – is to fail in our responsibilities as God’s people.

The beauty of the gospel is that God’s grace through Jesus Christ is extended to everyone without discrimination, whether gay, straight, LGBTQIA, or something else altogether.

If you are a sinner like me, then Jesus loves you.

The church needs to become more informed, less reactionary, more biblical, less susceptible to following in the steps of society, and more exemplary of God’s Amazing Grace extended to all.

Eric Metaxas Encourages Violence While Dietrich Bonhoeffer Rolls Over in His Grave

Are American church/state relations in 2022 comparable to German church/state relations in 1933 when the Nazi party began its rise to power?

Eric Metaxas thinks so, and he wants to warn the American church of the existential threat it now faces.

Metaxas’ new book, Letter to the American Church (Salem, 2022; 139 pp., $22.99), begins by declaring that “the parallels [in the American church] to where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim” (ix). These “parallels” are most clearly seen as the evangelical church remains silent in the face of America’s own Nazi-like atrocities.

America’s atrocious sins, which are allowed to flourish in the face of evangelical silence, are comparable to Nazi preparations for the Holocaust. These sins are listed as abortion, globalism, Critical Race Theory, transgenderism, creeping communism, and the state-directed church closures ordered during the covid-19 pandemic, all of which express an “atheistic Marxist ideology” otherwise known as cultural Marxism (xii, xiii, 13-15, 91).

The only solution to society’s slide into increasing moral chaos, according to Metaxas, is for a new crop of Dietrich Bonhoeffer-like church leaders to rise up and protest – violently, if need be (more on this below) – against the country’s drift toward cultural oblivion. Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer figures as the major source for this book’s political arguments, despite the very negative reviews Metaxas’ biography received from Bonhoeffer specialists. (see here, here, and here).

According to Metaxas, Bonhoeffer described a three-point solution to both Germany’s and America’s problems in his essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question.” They are [1] as the conscience of the state, the church must loudly protest against government wrong-doing; [2] the church must assist the victims of immoral state policies; and [3] if the state refuses to change its course, then the church must embrace political activism, shoving “a stick in the spokes” of the “rumbling machine of the state” (39).

The body of Letter to the American Church excoriates evangelical leaders for withdrawing from their obligation to agitate for public morality and, instead, cocooning themselves in an exclusive focus on evangelism. Metaxas’ attacks against “the idol of evangelism” (75-85) provide an important reminder (very positively, in my view) of the inherently offensive nature of the gospel and how easy it is for preachers to avoid difficult subjects like sin and judgment in order not to “offend” their listeners.

Unfortunately, Metaxas conflates his (a) justified critique of timid preachers who knowingly compromise the gospel message with (b) a highly dubious attack against evangelical leaders who will not rally their congregations to become outspoken, right-wing, Republican political agitators. Aside from Metaxas’ remarkable blindness to his own political, as opposed to truly Christian, partisanship, his apparent ignorance of American church history is surprising.

I can only assume that in wanting to write “a book for the moment,” Metaxas has restricted the horizons of his historical interest to the rise of Donald Trump and events subsequent to the 2016 presidential election. His complaints about evangelicalism’s political lethargy not only ignore the long, activist history of the Religious Right – a movement that finally threw its weight behind Trump’s campaign and carried him to victory – but seems to know nothing about the long history of evangelical activism in progressive politics, represented by people like Jim Wallis and the Sojourners’ community.

But then, Metaxas suggests that all Christians with a progressive political bent have been deceived by Satan, so their activism only contributes to the cultural Marxist dangers threatening America.

Metaxas also appears to be unaware of the wide stream of American dispensational evangelicalism-fundamentalism, going back at least to the early nineteenth century, that actively discourages Christians against political activism. Shunning politics hardly originated with those contemporary pastors now intent on putting out the fires of political divisiveness consuming their congregations.

But Metaxas is clearly in favor of churches dividing over partisan politics. In an obvious reference to MAGA-enamored churchgoers leaving congregations where their politics are not sufficiently affirmed, Metaxas says, “Many Christians are abandoning such churches for the few that are alive to the situation, where the pastors are less timid about saying what needs to be said” (36).

Certainly, the most disturbing aspect of Metaxas’ book is its subtle yet clear justification of violence for political ends. The argument is carefully, if subtly, constructed.

First, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is Metaxas’ model of Christian virtue not only because he openly criticized the Nazi regime – along with many others; Bonhoeffer was not alone in doing this – but because Bonhoeffer participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. It is Bonhoeffer’s willingness to embrace violence as a political weapon, the very definition of terrorism, that makes Bonhoeffer a hero to Metaxas. And this is the exemplary aspect of Bonhoeffer’s life that Metaxas clearly wants his readers to emulate, for “Bonhoeffer understood that to eschew violence whenever possible did not mean that it was always possible” (109).

Though he never says it explicitly, the unavoidable implication of Metaxas’ argument, from beginning to end, is that faithful Christians will do whatever it takes to change society and move it in the right-wing direction of Metaxas’ preferred political agenda. This includes resorting to violence, if need be.

Metaxas lays the “biblical” groundwork for his call to violence-when-necessary with several specious arguments.

He begins by describing his Manichean view of the world. Everything is black or white. Anyone who dissents from his verdict on the evils destroying American society is categorized as “demonic,” a tool of Satan (96, 101, 113-114, 117). The American culture wars are a fight of good against evil, of divine forces against demonic opponents. As Metaxas draws up the battlefield, people like Jim Wallis (a Christian active in progressive politics) and Andy Stanley (a pastor combatting political division within his church) are on the Devil’s team.

Furthermore, Metaxas seems convinced that if society is in decline, then it must be the church’s fault. A faithful, protesting, politically active church would presumably carry the day and turn the tide of spreading immorality.

Metaxas anticipates the inevitable objections to his promotion of political violence by distorting the biblical view of God with his own (ironic!) version of “cheap grace,” the very problem Bonhoeffer famously attributed to the German church under Hitler.

According to Metaxas, God is not looking for believers who concern themselves with purity. Rather, God is seeking courageous, even reckless devotees who are willing to risk incurring guilt as they sin on God’s behalf. This component of Metaxas’ argument is so shocking that a few quotations are warranted to make the point:

Page 110 – To love unreservedly – which is God’s call to us – is to risk everything, our lives and our reputations. Bonhoeffer’s view of God’s real grace made it possible for him to trust Him completely. As long as he earnestly desired to do God’s will and acted from that motive, he knew the God of the Bible would see his heart and grant him grace, if it happened that he had erred.

Page 118 – (Bonhoeffer understood that) God was calling His people to something far above merely avoiding sins and keeping their noses clean. . . Being a Christian is not about avoiding sin, but about passionately and courageously serving God.

Page 120-21 – God is not a moralistic fussbudget or nitpicking God who is lying in wait. When we tell a lie for a larger good, He does not swoop in and say “Aha!” and condemn us. If we know who God truly is, we know that He is not against us, but for us. He is not Satan the accuser, looking for what sins He can find to condemn us. He is the gracious and loving God who sent His own Son to die so that we could be forgiven and saved. And when He sees us act in a way that is not calculated to protect ourselves but that is rather magnanimous and self-sacrificing for the sake of another, He rejoices.

In any other context, Metaxas’ words might sound innocent enough. But tied as they are to Bonhoeffer’s willingness to commit murder, Metaxas’ urgings for courageous Christians to behave radically, even to the point of knowingly engaging in sin, take on an ominous significance.

Since Bonhoeffer believed that God would forgive his role in Hitler’s attempted murder, Christians today should also understand that God will forgive them for whatever violent acts they commit in their “godly” efforts to redeem our society.

There is much more to criticize in Metaxas’ new book, but these are the most salient problems, in my view. I am sure that Metaxas would insist that I am wrong when I accuse him of fomenting political violence. He has constructed his book in such a way as to provide himself with “plausible deniability.”

But in today’s world, more specifically, in today’s America, my mind is not the only one that will read Metaxas’ book as a call-to-arms with a get-out-of-jail-free card neatly included.

So, beware the author who tells his readers that political violence can be the answer, describing it as a courageous act of the truly spiritual person who will be forgiven by God.

The Challenge of Non-Conformity and Its Implications

The following excerpt is from a fascinating book titled Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism, by George L. Mosse (University of Wisconsin, 1978, 2020).

Mosse traces the various currents of cultural, social, and political European history that eventually culminated in the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party, and the Holocaust.

The most interesting element in Mosse’s analysis, to my mind anyway, is the fact that none of these factors had anything to do with Christian theology or the Christian church.

Yes, many self-professed “Christians” and church leaders participated in the rise of anti-Jewish racism throughout post-Enlightenment Europe, but their arguments for eliminating the Jews had nothing to do with religion.

However, that does not mean they were not racists; many continued to despise the Jews.

The medieval Christian, anti-Jewish tropes and accusations were nowhere to be found in the new brand of post-Enlightenment, secular racism that was forged in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries throughout Europe.

I have a lot more to say about this, but I am still doing my research. Maybe I will post more about this in the future.

In any case, here is the excerpt from Mosse followed by a few of my observations for today’s church. When Mosse refers to “racism” he is thinking about all forms of racial prejudice and discrimination. Antisemitism is only one possible example of such racism. (All emphasis is mine):

Racism had no founding father, and that was one of its strengths. It made alliance with all those virtues that the modern age praised so much. Racism picked out such qualities as cleanliness, honesty, moral earnestness, hard work, and family life – virtues which during the nineteenth century came to symbolize the ideals of the middle class. . . Racism was associated with these virtues rather than with any single philosopher or social theorist of importance. . . Racism was not merely one form of social Darwinism, but instead, a scavenger ideology, which annexed the virtues, morals, and respectability of the age to its stereotypes and attributed them to the inherent qualities of a superior race.

 If racism annexed the virtues of the age, it also condemned as degenerate all that was opposed to such respectability. Not to exemplify the ideal-type of “clean-cut American” or “right-living Englishman” was a sign of an inferior race. Though racism was often vague, it clearly embraced all the values of middle-class respectability and claimed to be their defender. To be sure, few people at first went along with such a claim; to the vast majority of Europeans, it sufficed to be a Christian gentleman. But even here racism so infected Christianity that, in the end, no real battle between racism and Christianity ever took place. Both supported the same middle-class virtues and saw the enemy in the same nonconformists – be they Bohemians, Freemasons, or Jews. The support racism gave to ideals which were opposed to a threatened degeneracy was in practice more important than any differences between racism and Christianity.

 . . . The perimeters of racial thought are as elusive and slippery as the ideology as a whole. And yet, for all that, the myth was transformed into reality, not just during the Holocaust and the camps, but whenever ordinary people made judgments upon others based upon the implications of the racial stereotype.

 The Holocaust has passed. The history of racism which we have told has helped to explain the Final Solution. But racism itself has survived. As many people as ever before think in racial categories. There is nothing provisional about the lasting world of stereotypes. That is the legacy of racism everywhere. . . Blacks on the whole remained locked into the same racial posture which never varied much from the eighteenth century to our time. Practically all blacks had been outside Hitler’s reach; consequently, there was no rude awakening from the racial dream in their regard. Moreover, nations which had fought against National Socialism continued to accept black racial inferiority for many years. . . (They) did not seem to realize that all racism, whether aimed at blacks or Jews, was cut of the same cloth. (209-211).

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The intense, perennial pressures of cultural conformity are no more “provisional” today than are the ever-present stereotypes of racial prejudice. Yep, we got 21st century racists, too. Many of them within the Christian church.

Pressures for conformity continue to press against God’s people now just as they did in Nazi Germany and medieval Europe. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sadly, the Christian church – but especially its more conservative membership. . . can you spell MAGA? – is always inclined to endorse the cultural, social status quo, even if our preferred status quo is defined by a sub-culture.

Today’s (sub-)cultural norms are always more popular than Jesus.

For instance, studies consistently reveal that evangelical Christians share the same political priorities, endorse the same social, cultural agendas, and vote for the same political candidates as their non-Christian, non-church going neighbors – wherever they happen to live.

Is this an accident?

The evangelical wing of the Christian church fought against racial integration and condemned the civil rights movement as loudly and vociferously as did the worst racist politicians in the deep South. Men like governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace armed themselves with long, wooden ax handles while blocking the doorways to keep black students out of white, public schools.

And, yes, the southern, conservative church applauded both Maddox and Wallace and their violent racism.

Similar instincts are at play today when Christians join in the condemnation of Critical Race Theory, while not having the slightest inkling of what CRT really is.

What other sorts of violence, racism, bigotry, and close-mindedness are evangelicals, who claim the name of Jesus, following after today?

Pay attention to how closely “acceptable” church leadership conforms itself to the standard, middle-class, cultural virtues of the friendly, well-dressed, patriotic American. How much of this social conformity is the fruit of genuine Christian discipleship, following hard after Jesus, and how much of it is merely the required uniform expected of us by the world at large?

Neither the dangers of racism, in all of its various shades, nor the moral compromises on display when the Christian church surrenders itself to cultural conformity have changed all that much over time.

The pressure to conform never goes away.

The crucial question is: to whom or to what are we conforming? Middle-class values? Or Jesus of Nazareth?

How Do You Identify a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? The Bling.

I’d say that $1 million in jewelry is the modern-day equivalent of a good sheep’s skin.

Any preacher wearing this much bling while delivering a Sunday sermon is not only flashing his wolfish fangs, he is begging for lightning to strike.

Well, lightning struck a few weeks ago for New York City’s Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead and his wife Asia, pastors of a Brooklyn City church, when several thieves invaded the Sunday morning service and relieved the two church leaders of their jewelry — all $1 million dollars worth.

There truly is no honor among thieves as the gold chains, diamond rings, and jeweled necklaces were quietly transferred from one pair of thieves to another.

(It reminds me of the time a Mormon bishop believed he could relieve me of my soul as I prayed for his salvation. But that is another story for another posting.)

Don’t worry about the Bishop or his wife, however, since they undoubtedly have millions worth of additional jewelry stashed away in their safe at home.

As the Bishop told the Religious News Service, “It’s not about me being flashy,” Miller-Whitehead said. “It’s about me, purchasing what I want to purchase. And it’s my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase.”

Ok then. I feel so much better now about their so-called ministry.

At least we know where their hearts are really at. As Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and money. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Below is an excerpt of the article, “NYPD: Preacher, Wife Robbed of $1 Million in Jewelry During Sermon,” by Michael R. Sisak:

NEW YORK (AP) — A preacher known for his close friendship with New York City’s mayor was robbed of more than $1 million worth of jewelry Sunday by armed bandits who crashed his Brooklyn church service, just as he was sermonizing about keeping faith in the face of grave adversity, police said.

Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead, who embraces his flashy lifestyle and can often be seen driving around the Big Apple in his Rolls Royce, was delivering a sermon at his Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries when police say three robbers walked in. They showed guns and demanded property from Miller-Whitehead and his wife, Asia K. DosReis-Whitehead, police said. . . .

. . . In a video posted to Instagram, Miller-Whitehead said he felt a “demonic force” enter the church and wasn’t sure if the gunmen “wanted to shoot the church up or if they were just coming for a robbery.” . . . 

Of all people, the good Bishop ought to be intimately familiar with the feel of an approaching demonic force.

Click here to read the complete article.