Unfortunately, the article is somewhat misleading because it presents Wilson as part of mainstream Evangelicalism. Wilson isn’t mainstream Evangelicalism. He’s not even mainstream Reformed Evangelicalism. He’s not the pastor of American Evangelicalism, nor does he represent ordinary Baptist, Pentecostal, non-denominational, Methodist, Holiness, or Reformed Evangelical congregations. His denominational world is small, his ecclesial reach is narrow, and most American Evangelicals have no direct relationship with his church, his denomination, or the Moscow project. This isn’t a defensive move meant to protect Evangelicalism from criticism. It’s an analytical distinction that any serious critique needs to make because if Wilson becomes representative of Evangelicalism as a whole, the critique becomes too easy for Evangelicals to dismiss and too imprecise to explain the actual problem.

Wilson’s fringe status doesn’t make him irrelevant. It explains the kind of influence he has. His influence isn’t numerical in the ordinary denominational sense. It’s institutional, rhetorical, and formational. Canon Press gave Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism a major publishing home, and Wilson has helped make a particular form of Protestant Christian nationalism sound intellectually serious, ecclesially rooted, and historically grounded. His broader world has also helped make classical Christian education one of the most significant formation projects on the conservative Protestant right. Movements don’t spread only through membership rolls or Sunday attendance. They spread through schools, books, conferences, podcasts, curricula, patronage, and the formation of people trained to see political order as a theological question before they ever enter public office.

The article reads like a politics writer trying to understand a religious ecosystem. Miller writes well, and the profile has the strengths of good political journalism, but he approaches Wilson through Washington, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, liberal democracy, and political influence. That frame gives the article energy, but it also blurs Wilson’s ecclesial location. A religion writer likely would have pressed harder on the difference between Wilson’s small denominational base and his wider symbolic influence. They also likely would have distinguished Wilson from generic MAGA Evangelicalism, Stephen Wolfe’s more theoretical nationalism, and the Woke Right represented by figures such as Dale Partridge, Joel Webbon, and Brian Sauvé. Without those distinctions, Wilson appears larger than he is in one sense and smaller than he is in another. He can look like the face of Evangelicalism, which he is not, or he can look like a strange pastor from Idaho whose significance is only local, which is also not true.

Wilson functions as the more respectable face of one particular stream of Protestant Christian nationalism. Respectable doesn’t mean moderate, and it doesn’t mean broadly acceptable within Evangelicalism. It means he can give the movement an older, literate, institutionally serious, Reformed appearance that many figures on the Woke Right cannot. He quotes Chesterton, debates atheists, builds schools, publishes books, pastors a church, and presents himself as sober and restrained even while defending far-right positions on women, sexuality, slavery, and political order. Compared with the more obviously online and pugilistic figures on the Protestant right, Wilson can make a similar theological-political trajectory appear deeper, older, and more disciplined. He doesn’t need to represent Evangelicalism as a whole in order to give Christian nationalism a more credible vocabulary and a more stable institutional form.

The article should have pressed harder on Wilson’s moderate self-presentation. Why? Because Wilson’s moderation is largely a matter of posture, not substance. The article records his view that married women should vote through their husbands as households, his call for anti-sodomy laws, his affirmation that the Bible allows slavery even though he supports abolition, his desire to dismantle the fences of liberal democracy, and his claim that public space belongs to Jesus. Those aren’t moderate positions. They are far-right theological and political claims presented through the voice of a man who knows how to sound more respectable than the claims themselves. Wilson doesn’t need to deny his radicalism if he can make radicalism sound patient, historical, and ecclesially serious.

Wilson’s project is not best understood as a sudden theocratic seizure of power. It’s better understood as a formation project with political consequences. He doesn’t need to demand an immediate transformation of American law if he can build schools, plant churches, publish books, shape young men, and wait for the cultural conditions to change. This is why the easy caricatures of Christian nationalism miss the more serious problem. The issue isn’t only whether someone wants forced conversion or a crude ecclesiastical dictatorship. The issue is whether a Christian account of public life becomes ordered around possession, hierarchy, and control rather than witness, neighbor love, and the mission of God.

Evangelicals shouldn’t dismiss Wilson too quickly. His fringe status is real, but it can’t excuse a lack of self-examination. Fringe figures often test what a larger movement will tolerate. They say more directly what others imply. They take the backlash, refine the argument, and watch which claims continue to travel. Wilson has been unusually skilled at this because he treats provocation as a strategy of movement rather than a failure of rhetoric. In his own terms, he says things outside the bounds of acceptable discourse because he believes that is how the bounds move. The problem is not only that he says offensive things. The problem is that the offense often serves a larger theological and political purpose.

The most effective Evangelical response is neither panic nor denial. Panic inflates Wilson’s importance, making him seem like the future of American Evangelicalism. Denial, on the other hand, diminishes him and overlooks how ideas spread through institutions that are small in number but highly ambitious culturally. A more serious response would acknowledge that Wilson is on the fringe of Evangelicalism while also asking why some of his ideas resonate beyond his own denominational world. That question can’t be answered by pointing to Trump, Hegseth, or political resentment alone. It has to be answered theologically. It requires asking whether parts of Evangelicalism have developed an account of Scripture, authority, gender, nation, and public order that can resist Christian nationalism on Evangelicalism’s own terms.

Wilson’s influence is evident here. He reveals a flaw that Evangelicals cannot dismiss by saying, “That is not us.” In one sense, that statement is true. Wilson doesn’t represent Evangelicalism as a whole. Yet the statement remains insufficient because Christian nationalism doesn’t need to represent the whole of Evangelicalism to influence certain parts of it. It only needs enough shared assumptions, enough institutional pathways, and enough political anxiety to make its conclusions feel plausible to people already convinced that secular liberalism has failed. Wilson gives those instincts a theological grammar. He gives them institutions. He gives them a way to imagine that the problem with American Christianity is not that it has loved power too much, but that it has not ordered power correctly.

Miller’s article should be read, but not without correction. Wilson isn’t the spiritual head of American Evangelicalism, nor is he the best representative of the average conservative Protestant church. He is a fringe figure whose influence runs through schools, publishing, networks, and proximity to power more than denominational size. That combination makes him worth taking seriously. If critics make him too representative, they will misread Evangelicalism. If Evangelicals make him too irrelevant, they will misread the moment. A careful critique has to do both things at once: keep Wilson in his actual place while still recognizing that his project reveals something many Evangelicals need to confront before Christian nationalism becomes easier to mistake for faithfulness.

My first series of paid content is called Inside Evangelicalism: An Outsider’s Guide to American Evangelical Theology. The essays will address what I consider to be the most important issues in contemporary American Evangelicalism. Below is the proposed order of essays.

1. Introduction - Unlike the rest of the series, this piece will be free to everyone.

2. Scripture and Authority: How Evangelicals Read the Bible and Why It Matters

3. Proximity to Power: Hegemony, Race, and the Church's Compromised Witness

4. Patriarchy, Complementarianism, and Authority

5. Gender, Sexuality, and the Christian Family

6. Immigration, Borders, and the Stranger

7. The Social Gospel and Government Assistance

8. Religious Liberty and Public Power

9. Public Education, Parental Rights, and Formation

10. Creation Care, Dominion, and Climate

11. A Christian Nation?

12. Conclusion

Inside Evangelicalism is meant to be a guide for anyone on the outside wondering why Evangelicals think the way they do. Each longform essay takes a specific question about Evangelical theology and tries to answer it honestly, accounting for the real diversity of voices within the tradition rather than pretending it all speaks with one mind. The essays draw on scholarship, but the goal is accessibility rather than academic performance. When all twelve are finished, I plan to release them together as an ebook.

I look forward to completing these essays soon and then unleashing them for criticism!

Empire cannot be reduced to one ethnicity, nation, or historical moment. Colonialism clearly participated in imperial logic, but the issue runs deeper than modern Western colonial projects alone. The larger issue is hegemony, the tendency of dominant groups within any culture to normalize their own assumptions and interests until they appear universal or simply “the way things are.” Edward Said’s analysis in Orientalism remains useful because he demonstrates that domination often operates culturally before it operates militarily. Cultures create narratives about outsiders, establish whose voices carry authority, and decide who fully belongs within the social order. Said focused primarily on Western depictions of the East, but the broader pattern extends much further. Majority groups in any culture can drift into hegemonic behavior because the temptation toward domination is not unique to one civilization or ethnicity.

Christians should resist collapsing empire into a single political tribe or contemporary slogan because empire is more pervasive than that. Every culture carries the impulse to preserve itself, justify itself, and elevate its own assumptions beyond criticism. Scripture repeatedly warns about the idolatry attached to nations, rulers, wealth, and power because temporary systems repeatedly become objects of ultimate allegiance. Babylon matters because it develops into more than a historical empire. Throughout Scripture it functions as a recurring pattern tied to domination, self-glorification, and maintaining order through force. Rome serves a similar role in the New Testament. Book of Revelation critiques Rome directly, but it also exposes the deeper logic underneath cultures that sustain themselves through violence, exploitation, fear, and unquestioned authority.

Christ’s teaching about authority confronts that pattern directly. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples that the rulers of the Gentiles “lord it over” others, followed immediately by the statement, “it shall not be so among you.” Christ isn’t rejecting authority itself. He is rejecting authority shaped according to the instincts of empire. Imperial systems measure greatness through dominance, coercion, status, and the ability to impose one’s will on others. Christ redirects authority toward service and responsibility toward neighbor. He confronts the powers of this world, but refuses to use their methods. He washes feet, identifies himself with the vulnerable and marginalized, and ultimately submits himself to imperial violence rather than securing authority through it. The cross exposes the logic of empire clearly because empire preserves itself through sacrifice, usually someone else’s, while Christ gives himself rather than demanding others die to secure his position.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t operate according to those instincts. It is shaped by the fruit of the Spirit, the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ’s command to love God and neighbor. Empire depends on fear, coercion, exclusion, and protecting insiders. The Kingdom of God looks different because it forms people through forgiveness, mercy, patience, faithfulness, and enemy love. Empire asks what must be protected and who must be controlled to maintain order. The Kingdom asks what love of God and neighbor require, even when those things threaten comfort, influence, or existing systems of power. The Sermon on the Mount does not fit neatly within the instincts cultures usually rely on to preserve order because it redirects attention away from domination, retaliation, and self-protection. Commands like loving enemies, praying for persecutors, and showing mercy to those without status do not function naturally inside systems built on fear and hierarchy.

When I connect empire to whiteness or to other hegemonic systems, I’m not arguing that one ethnicity is uniquely responsible for domination. The issue is broader and more historically persistent than that. Cultures repeatedly organize themselves around proximity to power, and eventually those arrangements begin to feel natural or inevitable. In some places that process has been racialized through whiteness. In other cultures it has operated through tribe, caste, class, religion, or nationalism. The forms change across history and culture, but the underlying instinct remains familiar because societies consistently drift toward systems that preserve themselves through hierarchy and exclusion. Allegiance to Christ confronts that pattern because the Kingdom of God refuses to ground human worth in power, status, blood, or national identity.

Following Christ therefore involves resisting the principalities and powers both spiritually and materially. Christians are called to reject the idea that empire gets to determine whose suffering matters, who belongs, or what human life is worth. The church doesn’t exist to secure cultural dominance or to baptize systems of hierarchy. Its calling is to bear witness to a kingdom where authority exists for the flourishing of others and where image-bearing is not determined by usefulness, threat, or status. Empire and the Kingdom of God are ultimately trying to form people toward very different ends.

This becomes especially visible when disability enters the discussion. Disability, chronic illness, and prolonged suffering expose assumptions embedded within modern moral reasoning that often remain hidden beneath health, productivity, youth, and independence. It is easy for contemporary American culture to celebrate autonomy when bodies cooperate with ambition and when individuals remain economically productive. Those assumptions become much harder to sustain when dependence, limitation, and vulnerability become unavoidable realities. Disability often reveals that contemporary society speaks the language of dignity while continuing to organize itself primarily around productivity, independence, and usefulness. The modern West continues speaking the language of equality, inclusion, and compassion while quietly attaching dignity to utility, speed, and social usefulness.

The deeper problem extends beyond individual prejudice against disabled people because the moral assumptions shaping late modern society are structural. Empire in this sense should not be reduced simply to military conquest or political dominance. Rather, empire represents a way of organizing society around power, preservation, consumption, and the maintenance of systems organized around utility and control. Babylon functioned this way. Rome functioned this way. Contemporary technological and consumer societies function similarly even if the mechanisms differ significantly. Human beings increasingly become valuable according to what they contribute to the system and burdensome insofar as they interrupt efficiency, productivity, or economic momentum.

Disability becomes ethically disruptive because disabled people often require forms of patience, accommodation, dependence, and long-term care that resist the logic of efficiency. Consumer society generally tolerates temporary disruptions because temporary disruptions can be managed without fundamentally altering the structure of the system itself. However, chronic illness, degenerative disease, cognitive impairment, and long-term disability do not function this way. They frequently require ongoing sacrifice, adaptation, communal support, and patience. These realities become uncomfortable within societies shaped primarily by productivity and autonomy because they reveal how fragile modern assumptions about independence actually are. Within the moral logic of empire, dependence increasingly becomes interpreted as failure rather than an ordinary feature of creaturely existence.

Modern societies often treat vulnerability as an interruption of normal human life when vulnerability is actually intrinsic to human existence itself. The issue is not that disabled people are uniquely dependent. The issue is that disability exposes forms of dependence the modern world spends enormous amounts of energy attempting to conceal. Human beings are always dependent upon one another socially, economically, emotionally, and physically even when contemporary culture mythologizes self-sufficiency. Disability simply makes this reality more visible. Disability does not create dependence so much as it reveals dependence already present within human existence.

The Good Samaritan highlights precisely this issue because the Samaritan does not merely stop long enough to stabilize the wounded man before continuing on his journey. He interrupts his own plans, expends his own resources, transports the man personally, and leaves provisions behind for his continuing care. The Samaritan does not treat care as a temporary interruption before returning to normal life. Rather, neighbor love creates continuing obligation. The Samaritan understood that the wounded man’s humanity did not cease once the immediate emergency passed. Care extended beyond temporary intervention into ongoing responsibility for another person’s wellbeing.

Disability and chronic illness make this tension difficult to avoid because many forms of suffering are not temporary interruptions that can be resolved quickly. They become ongoing realities requiring continuing forms of patience, sacrifice, and communal obligation. This differs substantially from many contemporary moral frameworks because modern ethics often asks what minimum obligations are necessary in order to avoid guilt or condemnation. The ethic of the kingdom asks something far more difficult because Christ does not merely command believers to avoid harming their neighbors. He commands them to love their neighbors as themselves. Human beings generally seek ongoing care for their own wounds, fears, limitations, suffering, and weaknesses. People pursue treatment, rest, healing, accommodation, patience, and support over time because serious suffering rarely disappears through singular moments of intervention. Loving one’s neighbor as oneself assumes a depth of concern extending far beyond mere noninterference or temporary stabilization.

Disability reveals how incapable empire is of sustaining this kind of love because prolonged care interrupts the moral assumptions empire depends upon. A society organized around autonomy will inevitably struggle to understand dependence as anything other than weakness. Similarly, when productivity becomes the primary measure of value, dignity itself becomes attached to usefulness even while societies continue using the language of equality and compassion. Empire rarely rejects concepts like dignity, compassion, or inclusion outright. Rather, it redefines them within frameworks still governed primarily by productivity, autonomy, and consumption. The same logic appears in consumer culture where sacrifice is often tolerated only insofar as it remains personally beneficial or transactional. Late modern society may celebrate inclusion rhetorically while continuing to structure public life around speed, competition, efficiency, and economic output. Disability therefore becomes acceptable rhetorically and symbolically while remaining disruptive to systems still organized primarily around productivity and efficiency.

The inability of modern ethics to answer these tensions adequately seems connected to a deeper issue regarding theological anthropology. Ethical reasoning is always rooted in assumptions regarding what human beings are and what human life is actually for whether societies acknowledge those assumptions openly or not. This is why the Sermon on the Mount remains indispensable to Christian ethics. Christ does not frame righteousness around autonomy, self-expression, or self-actualization. He frames it around mercy, reconciliation, humility, enemy love, faithfulness, purity of heart, and peacemaking. The Sermon consistently redirects ethical reasoning away from the self as the center of moral calculation. The issue is no longer merely what a person is permitted to do. The issue becomes what kind of person one is becoming and whether one’s loves are rightly ordered.

Socrates was correct that the unexamined life is not worth living because ethical reflection requires self-understanding. Christianity extends this even further because self-understanding cannot occur apart from understanding humanity’s relation to God and neighbor. Modern ethics frequently assumes that human beings are primarily autonomous individuals negotiating competing desires. Christianity instead understands human beings as relational creatures whose loves are either rightly ordered or disordered. Augustine’s distinction between the city of God and the city of man is useful here because the city of man is ultimately shaped by disordered love rooted in self-exaltation while the city of God is shaped by rightly ordered love directed toward God and neighbor. Ethics therefore cannot simply be reduced to individual choice because human beings are always being formed by the moral orders in which they participate.

This also helps explain why many Indigenous ethical traditions often preserve insights contemporary Western societies struggle to recover. The so-called “seven generations” principle commonly associated with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy reflects an ethical orientation that evaluates decisions according to long-term communal consequences rather than immediate individual preference. Whether modern retellings simplify the concept matters less than the broader moral contrast being exposed. Contemporary Western culture frequently asks what maximizes freedom, efficiency, and consumption in the present moment. Healthier moral traditions ask what kind of world current desires are creating for future generations. Ethical reflection therefore becomes tied to communal continuity and responsibility rather than immediate personal preference operating in the present moment.

Similarly, root cause analysis in organizational systems often uses the “5 Whys” method in order to move beyond surface-level symptoms and uncover deeper structural causes. Ethical reasoning requires something similar because contemporary moral language frequently conceals assumptions regarding productivity, autonomy, usefulness, and ultimately which kinds of lives society considers valuable. For example, modern Western culture continues producing profound loneliness and despair despite unprecedented technological advancement and material abundance. Societies centered around autonomy also continue generating isolation and fragmentation while vulnerable populations become increasingly viewed as burdens rather than neighbors. Questions surrounding disability, suffering, aging, and dependence eventually force societies to reveal what they actually believe about weakness, usefulness, and human value.

The Christian tradition has historically approached the question differently because the kingdom of God does not begin with autonomy or utility as the primary measure of human value. From a Christian perspective, human dignity cannot be grounded in usefulness, productivity, or independence because dignity originates in humanity bearing the image of God rather than in economic or social contribution. This is why Christ consistently moves toward the poor, the weak, the mourning, the dependent, and the socially discarded. Historically, empires survive through maintaining social order, consolidating power, and preserving the systems that allow them to expand and sustain themselves. The kingdom of God moves differently because Christ consistently moves toward those who possess little status or usefulness within the broader social order. Once autonomy, productivity, and self-sufficiency are removed as the primary measures of value, modern societies are forced to confront questions they often spend enormous amounts of energy attempting to avoid, namely what human beings are, what human life is for, and what obligations emerge from living alongside one another as vulnerable and dependent creatures.

My experience with these crashes has been that they are brief, typically lasting between 1 and 3 days. They usually result in muscular myopathy, which feels like muscle exhaustion with tightness and cramping. The best way I can describe it is that each muscle in your body feels like a sack, and after doing even the smallest thing, that sack fills with sand so that by the end of the day you can barely move. This feeling is accompanied by sleeping through a full day and part of an additional day before feeling well enough to participate in life’s normal rhythms such as kids, work, and chores.

This time was drastically different. It started off in a familiar way, but instead of clearing up in a few days, it persisted and in some ways was much worse than what I am used to. I had the familiar myopathy in my legs, I slept for 18 hours straight, and then it continued. I could not walk from my bed to the master bathroom without being winded. Doing the dishes made me sweat and elevated my heart rate to the point that I needed to sit down for up to an hour before I felt well enough to resume chores. I had to use both arms to raise a Stanley tumbler to my mouth to drink. I could not lift anything over 5 pounds. I had to use a scooter to get around the grocery store. My neck and shoulders ached from holding my head up. I experienced short bursts of tremors twice. I needed three-hour naps every day to feel “normal.” I even considered giving up on my doctorate, even though I am so close to a defense, because I literally could not understand the words my chair was speaking when reviewing revisions. All of this would have seemed improbable to me before. The severity of these symptoms persisted for two weeks.

Two weeks of feeling helpless, like a failure, even though I knew it was caused by something I have no control over. Then at 5:30 p.m. on the third Saturday, I felt some relief. The pain and fatigue started to wane. As if by a flip of a switch, I was “better.” My better still includes fatigue, but not the 18-hours-of-sleep variety. Thank God for that, because I was considering applying for disability. What is striking to me is that after looking into the time it takes to receive disability and the restrictions on income, I realized that applying and going through the expected process of initial denial and appeals would somehow leave us in a worse financial position than we are now.

What I am still experiencing is an inability to lift things over 10 pounds and increased fatigue from doing even the smallest chores. That has meant stepping back and learning to navigate what could be a new normal. This shift in perspective is painful, but it is helping me understand what the ethics of empire, as explored in my previous essay, has to say about disability. While I cannot speak for all disabilities, I can speak to mine, and in my next post I will finally get to Disability and Empire.

Early in the semester, I ask my Christian ethics students to examine several major approaches to moral reasoning, including divine command theory, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. I then ask them how they actually make ethical decisions. Most quickly recognize that they don’t reason from one system alone. They may privilege one or two primary lenses, but their actual moral reasoning often draws from several traditions at once. A student may appeal to divine command when discussing obedience, to consequences when discussing public policy, and to virtue when describing character, which reflects the complexity of moral reasoning in lived experience.

The more difficult move comes when students are asked to move from personal ethics to systems ethics. If a claim is morally true at the personal level, why doesn’t it transfer cleanly into government, law, economics, immigration, capital punishment, or war? This question exposes the instability that emerges when ethical commitments are mediated through institutions. At the personal level, students may affirm mercy, truth, justice, and human dignity, but at the systems level those same commitments are often filtered through efficiency, cost, security, legality, and social order. The moral vocabulary remains, but the operative logic shifts in ways that aren’t always immediately visible.

Capital punishment makes this tension especially visible. Many students enter the course assuming the death penalty is morally justified, and some assume it’s required by divine command. The claim is usually straightforward. Justice demands a life for a life, so the state should carry out that judgment. Yet when students consider wrongful convictions, racial disparities, prosecutorial incentives, inadequate defense, plea pressure, and the limits of human judgment, that confidence often weakens. Most don’t become full abolitionists because they still believe punishment can be morally justified, but many become procedural abolitionists because they no longer trust the American judicial system to carry out irreversible judgment righteously.

The deeper issue appears when a student follows the logic of the system to its conclusion. I once had a student argue that even if innocent people are executed, the death penalty can still be good for society because society needs a mechanism for recourse, and a conviction itself carries moral weight. That claim wasn’t common, but it was revealing because it showed what happens when the system becomes the primary moral reference point. The question no longer centers on whether the act is just. It centers on whether the system must be preserved, even when preserving it requires outcomes that would be morally intolerable at the personal level. This is what I mean by the ethics of empire, which names the moral logic that emerges when systems treat their own continuation as the highest practical good.

Empire isn’t limited to Rome, America, or any single nation-state. It names a recurring pattern of power in which human systems order the world around their own continuation. Preservation becomes self-perpetuation, even though every empire, economy, ideology, and political arrangement is temporary. Scripture’s image of Babylon captures this pattern with theological force. Babylon functions not only as a historical empire but as a symbol of human systems that exalt themselves, demand allegiance, and sustain their power through control. In that sense, all human systems are different shades of empire, not because they’re morally equivalent, but because they share a tendency to treat their own continuation as necessary.

This pattern appears across ideological forms. Communism promises liberation from exploitation and imagines a classless society, yet the state often becomes the instrument that must secure that future. Once the future has to be protected at all costs, present sacrifices become easier to justify, dissent becomes a threat to the system, and control becomes morally necessary. Socialism, especially in democratic forms, often carries a genuine concern for the common good, equity, and shared responsibility, yet it still must navigate tradeoffs, incentives, and institutional preservation in ways that can shift attention from serving people to defending the structures meant to serve them. Critical theory rightly names the way power shapes outcomes and can produce harm, yet when the oppressor and oppressed framework becomes totalizing, it can harden categories, attach moral judgment too closely to group location, and sustain the divisions it seeks to expose.

These systems aren’t identical, and their differences matter. Some restrain violence more effectively, some protect rights more consistently, and some distribute resources more justly, and those distinctions deserve serious moral analysis. Yet we’ve been sold a bill of goods if we believe any political, economic, or ideological system can finally produce human flourishing. Systems may organize life, restrain evil, and promote real goods, but they can’t heal the disorder they inherit.

Jesus’ words about mammon press directly into this problem. In Gospel of Matthew 6:24, Jesus says that no one can serve both God and mammon, and that term carries more weight than a simple reference to money. Mammon names wealth as a system of trust, where material security, accumulation, and control become the foundation that makes life stable. It isn’t merely something a person possesses, but something that begins to shape loyalties and decisions because it promises safety, stability, and assurance.

Empire runs on mammon. It does so not only through markets, capital, or money, but through the deeper logic of trust placed in systems that claim to secure life. Mammon assumes that enough accumulation, control, and stability can guarantee safety, and empire scales that assumption across societies. Nations accumulate power, economies accumulate capital, and institutions accumulate authority, each bending toward self-perpetuation and asking for allegiance.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t present mammon as something that can be carefully balanced with devotion to God. He names it as a rival master. The issue isn’t whether money, governments, laws, or economic systems have legitimate uses, because they do. The issue is whether they become ultimate sources of security and meaning. Every ethical decision therefore reveals what is being trusted. When a system justifies harm to preserve order, it reveals trust in mammon. When people are reduced to usefulness, productivity, legality, cost, or threat level, mammon’s logic is already at work. When innocent lives become acceptable losses so that a system can continue functioning, allegiance has already been given.

The kingdom of heaven moves in the opposite direction. Empire orders the world toward self-preservation, while the kingdom orders the world toward self-giving love. Empire promises peace through control, while Jesus reveals peace through the cross. Empire determines who may be sacrificed to maintain order, while Jesus gives himself for those the world would discard. The kingdom doesn’t ground the good in the survival of a system, but in the life and character of God.

This doesn’t make systems irrelevant. Governments still govern, economies still function, laws still order common life, and institutions still shape human possibility. Christian ethics can’t avoid those realities, but it must place them within a proper theological frame. Systems are provisional, not ultimate, and their legitimacy is measured by a good they don’t create and can’t control. The question isn’t whether structures matter. The question is whether they’re allowed to define the good in ways that override the dignity of those they’re meant to serve.

In the end, Christian ethics returns to relation. Relation to one another affirms that dignity isn’t assigned by usefulness, productivity, citizenship, status, or category. Relation to creation resists the reduction of the world to raw material for consumption and treats it as a gift to be stewarded. Relation to God grounds the good beyond the success or failure of any system, which means that faithfulness isn’t measured by whether structures endure, but by whether love remains rightly ordered within them.

This is the decision beneath every ethical decision. We’re always choosing what we’ll trust and what we’ll serve. Jesus’ claim that no one can serve both God and mammon isn’t an abstract religious warning. It’s a direct challenge to the logic that governs punishment, immigration, poverty, disability, war, economics, and law. It asks whether people exist for systems, or whether systems exist, in limited and temporary ways, for the good of people before God.

Next week, I hope you come back to read a deeply personal post called Disability and Empire.

Genesis doesn’t begin with a world in chaos that God somehow turns into something barely workable. It begins with a world God orders, calls good, and holds together in perfect unity under his rule. Fall does not stop creation nor transform it into something else; it “merely” disrupts and disorders it. The world is still God’s world, but it no longer moves in the peace for which it was made. That means suffering isn’t something baked into goodness from the beginning. It is part of what happens when life with God is bent out of shape. In that sense, the tension in Genesis is not only between obedience and disobedience. It is also between God naming the good and human beings deciding they can name it for themselves. God calls creation good, and then the man and the woman look at what has been forbidden and judge it good on their own terms. That is still our problem. We do not usually reject goodness outright. We redefine it.

Augustine understood this well. He realized that the human issue is usually not a love for clearly malicious things, but rather a love that has become disordered. We take real goods and ask them to sit in a place they were never meant to occupy. We seek comfort to support us, pleasure to keep us united, and happiness to tell us if life is truly okay. Augustine’s point was that what a person loves tells you a great deal about who that person is, and the Christian tradition that follows him often describes sin as the inordinate desire for a lesser good over a greater one. That gets close to the problem with making happiness the highest good. Happiness is real, but it is unstable. It comes and goes. Even modern work on well-being distinguishes between happiness understood as pleasure and the deeper question of what it means for a human life to be fully formed and rightly directed. Once happiness becomes the standard by which we judge whether life is good, suffering starts to look like absolute contradiction instead of one feature of a fallen world. Then we don’t just grieve pain, we let pain define reality.

Paul gives us something steadier when he says he has learned contentment. He doesn’t treat contentment as a matter of temperament, and he doesn’t talk as though some people are simply born with it. He learned it, which means contentment is developed through experience. It is cultivated both in times of scarcity and abundance, under pressure and relief, on days when life goes smoothly and when it doesn’t. That is why contentment belongs with sanctification. Sanctification is not God making us slightly more manageable people. It is God reshaping us in the middle of disorder so that our peace is no longer built on circumstances that shift by the hour. That also clarifies James’s message. “Count it all joy” doesn’t imply that suffering is inherently good. Instead, it encourages Christians to interpret trials through God’s work rather than falling into despair. Trials uncover what comfort conceals, revealing our trust, fears, and reliance on things going as hoped. They also force the question of Christ. He is not merely our example in suffering. He is the interpretive center of suffering. Hebrews doesn’t say Jesus enjoyed the cross. It says he endured it “for the joy set before him”, which means his endurance was anchored in the Father’s promise and in the end toward which his suffering was moving.

The early church, under Roman rule, was often viewed with suspicion because it declined to integrate its worship into the empire’s civic life. Some pagans called them atheists because they rejected the gods that structured public life, and that charge shows just how strange and exposed Christians looked in Roman society. They were also mocked for worshiping a crucified Savior. The Alexamenos graffito, likely from the late second or early third century, depicts a crucified figure with a donkey’s head and appears to mock a Christian named Alexamenos for worshiping his God. Jewish-Christian tensions also need to be handled carefully. The separation between synagogue communities and followers of Jesus did not occur in a single moment, nor is there strong evidence for a single, universal ban that explains everything. The social reality was more local, more uneven, and often more complicated than older accounts suggested, but it could still be costly and disruptive for those who confessed Jesus openly. So the early Christians were not people with social security, cultural approval, and political calm on their side. They learned contentment where none of those things could be trusted to hold.

That is part of why the anchor mattered in early Christian symbolism. It was a confession about hope in conditions that remained unstable. Vatican materials on the catacombs note that the anchor symbolized the firmness of faith, and John Paul II explicitly linked it to the security of faith and Christian hope. That image still says something important for us today. The point of an anchor is not that the sea has become calm. The point is not that the sea has become calm. The point is that Christians are not left to drift. That connects to what I mean by a doctrine of man, an account of what a human being is, what human life is for, and what actually counts as a good life. Our age has its own answers, and most of them sound convincing when life is manageable. Stay true to yourself. Shape your identity. Take control. Protect your peace by managing every variable you can. But those ideas fall apart once suffering, loss, or disappointment presses in, because they depend on conditions holding steady, and conditions never do. Christian contentment begins somewhere else. It begins with the claim that a human being is not self-created, not self-sustained, and not rightly ordered by desire alone.

That is also why recapitulation matters. Irenaeus did not imagine Christ as someone who merely helps us survive a damaged world until we escape it. He saw Christ as the one who sums up all things in himself, the one who takes up the broken human story and sets it right from within. What was disordered in Adam is not simply tolerated in Christ. It is answered in Christ. That does not remove grief, and it does not mean Christians need to pretend anxiety is weak or pain is unreal. It means disorder does not have final authority. Creation is still creation, though disordered. Suffering remains suffering, even if it is not good. Sanctification continues to be real, even if it is incomplete. And Christ remains the center through which all of it has to be read. So no, you can’t always be happy. Happiness comes and goes, and if you make it your highest good, you will spend your life trying to hold on to something temporary. But you can learn contentment, because contentment is not anchored in your mood, your comfort, your success, or your control. It is anchored in Christ, who does not change, and in the promise that he will not leave creation bent forever.

That has consequences, because we can live in a near constant state of alertness and barely notice what it’s doing to us. Everything feels urgent, morally loaded, and as if it demands a response. Even when we step away from the stream, many of us don’t actually rest. We simply trade one kind of noise for another. We turn off the news and fill the silence with bingeing, scrolling, and distraction. We step away from one source of noise only to hand ourselves over to another.

This is why Sabbath matters now in a way many Christians have forgotten. Walter Brueggemann was right to describe Sabbath as both resistance and alternative. His point wasn’t that Sabbath is a quaint religious habit or a sentimental day off. His point was that Sabbath interrupts Pharaoh’s world, a world organized around production, anxiety, coercion, and endless demand. Sabbath is a refusal to let the empire define reality for us (Brueggemann, 2016).

That isn’t just an ancient insight, because it lands right on the world we live in now. The empire mindset isn’t only political, but personal and spiritual. It’s the assumption that we must consume, strive, manage, and stay activated within the world’s system in order to matter. It prefers what works over what’s faithful. It treats outcomes as decisive and means as negotiable. It rewards outrage because outrage feels strong. It gives us enemies, sharpens our certainty, and makes us feel grounded in a chaotic world. But it also deforms us by narrowing our moral vision and training us to resist people instead of seeking them.

This is where disengaging and engaging have to be held together. It isn’t enough to unplug, because most of us already know how to stop one activity and replace it with another. The harder task is to disengage from the outrage machine and then re-engage with God, with creation, and with the physical world around us. Sabbath isn’t just about stopping, but about stepping away from one set of demands so that we can give our attention to something better.

That’s why silence matters, and why practices like prayer, contemplation, fishing, hiking, and walking without a screen in hand matter as well. These things matter not because they feel simple or calming, but because they retrain us to pay attention. They force us to stop consuming stimulation long enough to notice that we’ve lost the ability to be still.

The story of Elijah helps make the point. He hid in a cave, and when the moment of divine encounter came, the voice of God wasn’t in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire. It came in the quiet. The problem wasn’t just the noise, but that Elijah expected God to show up in spectacle. We have the same problem. We’re so accustomed to noise, urgency, and emotional force that quiet can feel empty to us, even when it’s the place where God is speaking.

Scripture presses us toward a different kind of life. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace. Paul says to be anxious for nothing, but to receive the peace of God that surpasses understanding. He also says that he learned contentment regardless of circumstance. These aren’t optional Christian virtues, but signs of a life shaped by the Spirit. They describe people who are no longer ruled by urgency, reaction, and fear, but who’ve learned to rest in God rather than in control.

There’s a historical layer to this that we tend to forget. The earliest Christians weren’t trying to balance Christ with Rome, because their worship and allegiance made that impossible. In the Roman world, imperial cults were woven into civic and religious life, and failure to participate in honoring the gods could mark a group as socially disruptive or impious. That didn’t mean Christians were always persecuted simply for refusing emperor worship in isolation, but it did mean that their loyalty to Christ placed them at odds with the habits of imperial life (Harland, 2013).

Because of that, the early church developed practices that didn’t depend on imperial approval. Christians gathered, prayed, shared meals, and cared for one another in ways that formed a distinct people. These weren’t just acts of devotion, but practices that marked Christians off from the world around them. They trained Christians to live without relying on the structures, rewards, and anxieties of the order around them.

That context matters when we read Revelation. Revelation isn’t merely about a distant end of the world. It addresses the ordinary political, religious, and economic pressures facing Christians under Roman rule and seeks to change how they see public life. It unveils empire as something that doesn’t merely threaten the church from the outside, but works to shape its desires from within. It offers security, identity, and participation, but at the cost of allegiance (Koester, 2016).

Christ doesn’t accommodate that system, but stands against it and exposes it for what it is. Revelation portrays imperial power with beastly imagery and warns against forms of participation that amount to idolatry. The point isn’t simply that Rome was brutal or corrupt. The point is that empire makes claims on desire, loyalty, and imagination that belong to Christ alone. The call to come out isn’t just about location. It’s about formation. It’s about refusing to let empire define what’s real, what’s urgent, and what deserves our attention (Harland, 2013; Koester, 2016).

That lands directly on us, because we aren’t excluded from these pressures in the way the early church often was. In many ways, we’re immersed in them, not just politically, but emotionally and psychologically. The outrage cycles, the constant input, and the demand to stay engaged at all times aren’t neutral forces. They’re shaping us. Which means the question isn’t whether we’re being formed, but whether we’re aware of how it’s happening.

This also helps explain Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism isn’t merely a bad set of political ideas, but one expression of malformed discipleship. When Christians are trained by outrage, habituated to threat, and unable to disengage from the demands of the age, they become more susceptible to visions of power that promise solidity and control. In that environment, reaction starts to look like conviction, and domination starts to look like faithfulness. Sabbath exposes that confusion because it refuses to let anxiety and power have the final word.

The Christian hope is Zion, the city of God, the place where sorrow, sickness, and the reign of fear don’t have the last word. That vision stands against the city of man at every point. The city of man is built on disordered love, on loving control and security more than God and neighbor, and then building a social world around those loves. It is marked by urgency, outrage, and the constant pursuit of control because its peace is fragile and its loves are out of order. The city of God is marked by rightly ordered love, where God is loved above all and peace is no longer built on fear or control. Sabbath doesn’t bring that kingdom in, but it does train us to live now as people who belong to it.

That’s why revisiting Sabbath matters in the first place. In an age of permanent reaction, Sabbath is resistance because it refuses to let outrage do our discipling for us. It’s the choice to disengage from the machinery that keeps us restless and to re-engage with the God who speaks in the quiet. Without that movement, we shouldn’t be surprised when our public witness becomes anxious, angry, and captive to the very systems we claim to oppose.

The system will keep demanding our attention, because that is what it was built to do. The real question is whether the church will keep confusing constant reaction with faithfulness. At some point we have to relearn how to step back, become quiet, and receive again. Otherwise we’ll remain loud, certain, and spiritually exhausted, while calling it discernment.

References

Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192–205. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353

Brueggemann, W. (2016). Sabbath as alternative. Word & World, 36(3), 255–261. https://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/36-3_Sabbath/Sabbath%20as%20Alternative.pdf

Harland, P. A. (2013). Imperial cults, persecution, and the Apocalypse of John. In Associations, synagogues, and congregations: Claiming a place in ancient Mediterranean society (pp. 212–233). https://philipharland.com/Courses/Readings/3422/Harland%202013%20Imperial%20Cults%2C%20Persecution%20and%20the%20Apocalypse%20of%20John.pdf

Koester, C. R. (2009). Revelation’s visionary challenge to ordinary empire. Interpretation, 63(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096430906300102

So here we have a group of non-theologians, non-ethicists, and narcissists proclaiming their absolute superiority because ‘Merica. The complete hubris of it all is quite startling, even if not unexpected. The first two don’t see the deep connection between morality, theology, and politics, all the while letting their politics override any veneer of alleged religious devotion. Instead, they subordinated their religion to the aims and interests of their politics. And Trump, he cannot help but make it about himself. He doesn’t touch on morality; he makes it directly about himself. He maintains his America-first rhetoric in his ranting (“because he was American”) and centers himself as the chief opponent of the Catholic Church. Unironically, he is correct in a certain way. His actions, and those of his administration, are anti-Christ and align with the beast of Revelation more than they could ever expect in their ill-formed imagination.

The actions by Trump were rebuked by America’s MAGA bishop, Robert Barron, who called Trump’s words “inappropriate and disrespectful” and said that they should lead to an apology. Which, of course, we know won’t happen because Trump has said he’s never repented of sin to God, so what makes anyone think he would admit to wrongdoing to any man, no less than the vicar of Christ.

Then there was the “doctor Trump” photo that very clearly evoked religious imagery and portrayed Trump as a savior. Many people, no doubt, are responding to that now-deleted image by shaking it off as a misunderstanding and gaslighting those of us who saw it for what it was by saying, “There were no spiritual references… There is so much ill-intended speculation. I think his enemies are always foaming at the mouth… to make him look bad.” Even if that is the truth, and it is for some, Trump consistently looks bad publicly by doing what he does best, but that’s something else to TACO ‘bout.

Folks, I’m tired. I didn’t even start out to write about this. Instead, I wanted to write about a Facebook post from an esteemed academic friend of mine that discussed cleaning out his office after being let go from his seminary faculty job just last week after 5 years. In that thread there were many well-wishers and students thanking him for the impact he had on them. However, hidden in the thread was a twisted comment from someone who clearly lets their political allegiance drive their spirituality that scolded him for being “anti-Trump” which they thought to be unbiblical since, per their opinion, Trump “has done more for brining this great country back to the principles it was born on, than any other president” and that Trump is the best president America has ever seen. The short reply from my esteemed colleague, “stop worshipping one of the many beasts.”

And this is the real problem. The American Evangelical machine puts many of its theologians, biblical scholars, et al. at odds with American Evangelicalism. We shouldn’t expect any less though. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus famously states, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

This passage is amidst the 7 woes where he calls out the tradition of the teachers of the law and Pharisees for neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness, for being full of greed and self-indulgence, for pretending to be godly, but being full of hypocrisy and wickedness, and for claiming they would not kill the prophets, sages, and teachers of Israel’s history as their ancestors did.

If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This is exactly what is happening in American Evangelicalism. The prophetic voices have always been the loneliest. American Evangelicalism largely serves the mammon of politics and empire by whitewashing its own history and the history of the United States into small, easily chewable, digestible pieces of super-processed food that have the same taste and nutritional value coming out as they did going in.

Many Evangelical scholars are afraid to come out against the empire of America and its Evangelicalism because they have spent their lives inside it and depend on it for their livelihood. Some, like my friend, have had a lion in their lungs and a burning in their bosom to be prophetic, and they have paid the price. Whether you are like most or like my friend, remember the ways of this world will never understand the ways of the Spirit, just as the light overcomes the darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.

What we are watching, then, isn’t just a political collapse, it’s a spiritual one as well. When loyalty to power crowds out truth, and when partisan devotion disciplines the conscience more than the words of Christ, the church loses its witness long before it loses its platform. That is why the prophetic voice is so often punished. It reminds the powerful that they are not God, and it reminds the rest of us that no nation, no party, and no leader can bear the weight of our worship.

American Evangelicalism doesn’t need more access to power. It needs repentance. It needs the courage to tell the truth about its history, the humility to confess what it has baptized in the name of faith, and the moral clarity to stop confusing proximity to empire with fidelity to Christ. Until that happens, many of its brightest and best will continue to find themselves alienated from the very world that formed them.

Still, that is not the end of the story. God has always preserved witnesses who refuse to bow to the beasts of their age. They may be marginalized, dismissed, or pushed out, but they are not alone, and they are not wrong to speak. In an age of spectacle, flattery, and fear, faithfulness still looks like truth-telling. And in a church tempted to serve empire, the prophetic task remains what it has always been: to call the people of God back to the way of Jesus.

The issue is not whether one official used one provocative historical phrase. The issue is that a state appears to have called in a religious representative after that religious body publicly criticized war or the threat of war. That matters because it suggests an expectation. The church may speak, but only up to a point. Once its criticism touches national power too directly, the state steps in to manage the relationship. Even if the meeting was polite, the symbolism is hard to miss.

This is why the Avignon papacy matters. The Avignon papacy refers to the period from 1309 to 1377 when the popes resided in Avignon rather than Rome. Britannica describes it as a major political victory for Philip IV of France over the papacy, and notes that the period damaged papal prestige because of the heavy French influence over the church. That is why the image carries weight. Avignon is not just a medieval detail. It has become shorthand for a church drawn into the orbit of state power.

But the deeper historical issue is not Avignon by itself. It is the long American suspicion that Catholics had a divided allegiance. For generations, Catholics were treated as politically suspect because they answered to Rome. That suspicion helped shape public life, politics, and education. It also helps explain why Catholic institutions, including parochial schools, developed with such force in the United States. Catholics were not only building their own structures out of preference. They were doing so in a culture where Anglo-Protestant norms were often treated as public norms and Catholic commitments were treated as suspect. That dynamic is well documented in the standard historical literature on American Catholicism.

That history matters because it sets up the Americanism controversy. In 1899, Leo XIII issued Testem benevolentiae, warning against tendencies associated with “Americanism.” The issue was not whether Catholics could be patriotic Americans. The issue was whether the church would absorb the nation’s assumptions so deeply that it would lose the ability to judge them. The letter itself warns against muting or obscuring Catholic doctrine in the name of adaptation, and later Catholic summaries tied the controversy to the danger of reshaping the church according to modern cultural expectations.

This is one place where Catholicism offers a real defense against Christian nationalism. At least in principle, the Roman Catholic Church is transnational. Its center of doctrinal authority is not supposed to rise and fall with one nation’s politics. That does not make Catholicism immune to nationalism. History gives too many counterexamples for that. But it does mean Catholicism has at least some structural capacity to say that the nation is not ultimate. It has a way, however imperfectly practiced, of saying that no one people gets to define the faith for everyone else. That matters.

American Evangelicalism is more exposed. Part of that is institutional. Many Evangelical churches are non-denominational or part of loose cooperative bodies with weak mechanisms for theological correction. There is often no authority capable of saying that a movement has confused nationalism with Christian faith. But the problem goes deeper than that. Even if American Evangelicalism had hierarchies that looked more like Rome, it would still likely fall prey to Americanism because American denominations are usually national bodies, not transnational ones. They are formed inside American political culture, governed inside American horizons, and accountable largely to American constituencies. The issue is not only decentralization. The deeper issue is national formation.

A church can have hierarchy and still be captive to the nation if its hierarchy shares the nation’s assumptions. A denomination can have doctrine and still baptize national myth if that doctrine is interpreted inside a thoroughly national frame. Rome at least has the possibility of telling one nation that it is not the center of the church. American churches usually have a much harder time doing that because they are so often enclosed within the nation’s own moral imagination. That is one of the clearest connections between the Americanism controversy and current Evangelical Christian nationalism. In both cases, the issue is whether the church is being formed deeply enough by the gospel to resist being remade in the image of the nation.

That is why this Pentagon story matters. It is not just about one meeting. It is about whether the church in America can still speak as church when the state does not like what it hears. Catholics know something about what it means to be viewed with suspicion when they do not align neatly with American expectations. Evangelicals should pay attention to that history. Many of our churches are more vulnerable to national capture than we want to admit.

That, it seems to me, is one of the clearest ways to diagnose what is actually going on. Christian nationalism isn’t just about love of country, concern for morality, or frustration with cultural decline. It is rooted in a deeper crisis of trust. It reflects a loss of confidence that the Holy Spirit is sufficient to form and sustain a faithful people without political leverage, cultural dominance, or some kind of protected status. In that sense, Christian nationalism doesn’t simply overestimate the nation. It underestimates God.

Sociology can help explain part of this. Demographic change matters. Political backlash matters. Resentment matters. But sociology can only take us so far. Beneath the anxiety, beneath the rhetoric about decline, and beneath the appeals to order is a theological fear that deserves to be named clearly. Many Christians no longer seem convinced that the church can remain faithful if it loses influence, prestige, and control. Once that fear settles in, political power starts to look like wisdom, and dependence on the state starts to look like moral seriousness.

That is why I think Christian nationalism should be understood as a crisis of trust in the Holy Spirit. It asks politics to do what the church is supposed to trust God to do. It asks the state to preserve what the church is supposed to embody. It asks law and power to carry the weight of formation, identity, and moral order. What gets presented as realism is often a sign that the church has lost confidence in the very means by which God has always sustained his people.

That is also why I find Pentecost so important here. In Acts 2, the Spirit doesn’t create a nation. The Spirit creates a witness-bearing community. The church is not brought into being by legal privilege, cultural sameness, or political force, but by the outpouring of God’s presence. Pentecost does not erase difference. It gathers difference into praise. It does not produce unity by coercion. It creates communion by the power of God. That stands in direct opposition to the logic of Christian nationalism, which sees plurality and assumes that control is the only answer.

If the church is truly a people formed by the Spirit, then it does not need political dominance to remain faithful. It does not need cultural centrality to remain holy. It does not need privileged status in order to bear witness to Christ. But when Christians begin speaking as though the loss of social control means the loss of Christianity itself, they reveal how deeply they have confused discipleship with dominance. They reveal that they have come to trust favorable conditions more than the God who raises the dead and keeps his church.

This is one reason the early Pentecostal witness matters to me in this conversation. Early Pentecostals were not formed in places of cultural security or political influence. They were often poor, vulnerable, and dismissed. Yet they did not conclude that faithfulness required control. They built communities around prayer, testimony, worship, discernment, and dependence on the Spirit. At their best, they believed that God was able to sustain a faithful people without the machinery of dominance. That does not make early Pentecostalism pure, and it certainly does not excuse its contradictions and failures, especially around race. But it does make one thing plain. The church does not need to rule in order to remain the church.

For that reason, I don’t think Christian nationalism should be described merely as excessive patriotism or even as conservative politics wrapped in Christian language. It should be named for what it is. It is a theological reordering in which trust is shifted from divine action to political leverage. Its deepest temptation is not only idolatry of nation, though that is certainly part of the story. Its deepest temptation is unbelief dressed up as realism. It is a practical denial that God is enough to sustain his people in a world they do not control.

That is why the answer cannot be merely political critique. The church does need to reject Christian nationalism politically, morally, and theologically. But if the deeper issue is misplaced trust, then the deeper response has to be the recovery of a church that actually believes God is capable of forming a faithful people without the props of cultural privilege. The church does not need a better strategy for preserving dominance. It needs confidence in the Spirit again. It needs churches that can endure loss without panic, witness without control, and remain faithful without mistaking influence for fruit.

My position, then, is simple. Christian nationalism should be rejected because it distorts theology before it ever distorts politics. It misidentifies the church’s problem, misplaces the church’s hope, and misunderstands the church’s source of life. The church was not created by political order. It was created by the Spirit of God. And if Christians actually believe that, then they should stop speaking as though the future of the faith depends on who controls the nation.

my mind wandered and I thought, “what is the good part of Good Friday?”

and I was reminded that he,

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

He bore our sorrow…and our infirmities.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Good Friday is good precisely because God became a man who was tested, suffered, and ascended to the Father.

Christ, as the firstborn of all creation, undoes the curse of sin by ushering in the new creation that we, as believers, are and now participate in.

The tree of life, that was once verboten with the penalty of death, is reversed by the tree of death that Christ hung on, as he freely emptied himself to give us life.

Christ suffered and died willingly in obedience to the Father so that we could know that our suffering and our endurance will result in the restoration of our communion with God.

The first Good Friday makes every day since a good day. I suffer from disease; others, famine and pestilence. Regardless of our differences, it is the earthly suffering and the spiritual victory that we share in. This, to me, is the meaning of Good Friday: that the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwells in our mortal body.

Then about 8 months into my director position an unspeakable evil occurred. One that I won’t share here publicly because of its extremely sensitive nature and out of deference for those involved. It sent our family spiraling. When evil is thrust upon you without resolving in justice, it can break you. In this case, it became very close to doing so.

We left our home state to start over. That included leaving a company I’d been with for over 8 years, leaving the place where we had helped plant a church and worked to revive another and set out for Texas. The very next year, I was diagnosed with Kearns Sayre Syndrome which is a rare neuromuscular condition that is progressive and primarily impacts the eyes, heart, muscles, and cognition. I had noticed a decline in my ability to complete weight workouts and runs, but thought it was related to just getting older.

Unfortunately, that was not the case because, as I learned, there are two other very important symptoms: heat intolerance and exercise intolerance. Exercise intolerance causes excessive fatigue from exercise and even from common household chores, while heat intolerance is a heightened sensitivity to warm temperatures, leading to excessive sweating and a feeling of overheating in temperatures that others may find comfortable. For me, this means that I am often breathless after folding clothes, can’t lift heavy things (thank God for my 15-year-old son), and that I stay indoors as much as possible when it is over 80 degrees. To give an even clearer picture on exercise intolerance, I used to run 30 miles a week and even trained for a marathon. The amount of fatigue I feel in my legs after walking a mile inside is the same as the fatigue of running five miles outside at a 7:30/mi pace.

During this same time in 2016-17 I began an MA, Theological Studies at Multnomah Biblical Seminary, mainly under the tutelage of Dr. Paul Louis Metzger. As soon as I graduated in 2019, I looked for PhD and ThD programs that were affordable, accessible, and had limited or no residency requirements. I found Evangelical Seminary, now part of Kairos University and applied. Why did I begin my doctoral journey in the midst of all that moral and natural evil?

It was because I needed something consistent that was outside of myself to keep me from melting down completely. During that time I was happily involved in pre-reading and commenting on some of what would become Dr. Metzger’s A Personalist Ethics for A Throwaway Culture. It is with a bent towards Personalism that I decided to pursue the subject of my doctoral work: The Boundaries Between Evangelical Theology and Christian Nationalism. As I worked through the beginning stages of that process, I focused on dehumanization in my studies. At the same time, I was putting up about 50,000 miles a year driving around Texas for my job. A lot of those drives were filled with prayer, crying, and listening to Tripp Fuller’s Homebrewed Christianity. I started from the beginning of the podcast’s massive library and worked my way forward. I was especially touched with the “Why Go” series he did that touched on different traditions inside of Christianity and how they dealt with theodicy and the relational nature of the Christian tradition.

It took about 3 years to get to a place where I wasn’t crying over the grave injustice done to my family and as I was coming out of that low place, I was hit with the Kearns Sayre (KSS) diagnosis and hit with some stark statistics. At 38, I was told that most people with the disease die in the fourth decade of life and that there is about a 20% chance that I would die from sudden cardiac death. This, of course, almost catapulted me back to the beginning of my mourning cycle.

Again, my studies were the only thing keeping me from going completely off the rails in despair. Now, at almost 45, I am dealing with a new threat. My physical health is greatly deteriorating. It is painful to get up in the morning, it is painful to drive to work, it is painful just to be awake. My left eye is almost completely unable to move and my severe KSS related ptosis makes my left eye almost unusable while also affecting my right eye. But those are just things I’m dealing with, the real threat is that I was recently let go from my job.

What this means for my family is selling everything we own, moving out of state to live with relatives (thank God), leaving bills unpaid (I generally incur 20k in medical bills a year out of pocket), and not being able to pay for my clinically diagnosed social-phobia son’s therapy which has been absolutely live giving over the last 3 months, the loss of access to the myriad of prescription and non-prescription medicines I must take to lead a life that at least looks semi-normal, foregoing many specialist doctor’s appointments, and a potential bankruptcy. Not to mention the yanking of my children from their home and friends.

This will be the second time since 2023 that we will have to find a place to live in an emergency situation. After I was let go in a reduction of force at a startup company that we still haven’t fully financially recovered from. Through all of this, I just realized something yesterday while listening to the worship song “Not Alone” where the lyrics go “When I walk through deep water, I know that you will be with me, When I’m standing in the fire, I will not be overcome” and then later “in the midst of deep sorrow, I see your light is breaking through, the dark of night will not overtake me, I am pressing into you.” There is a difference in singing these songs when things are fine and when things are an absolute disaster, where you feel like you are drowning and are in a literal fire. The good news is, I’ve been through these type of waters and these type of fires before and come out the other side scarred, but smarter.

To clarify, I don’t believe every public display of Islam is identical, and I don’t think Christians should act as if it is. Prayers in Trafalgar Square don’t bother me as long as they occur in designated areas, don’t hinder others, and are treated like any other public religious event in a diverse society. The London debate intensified after some politicians called Muslim prayers during the open iftar in Trafalgar Square an “act of domination,” while others argued that public Christian ceremonies have long taken place in similar civic spaces. If Christians seek religious freedom, they shouldn’t assume that visible religious expression is unacceptable once Muslims participate. Meanwhile, the issue of the call to prayer in Dearborn is different. A public gathering isn’t the same as an amplified call broadcast into shared civic space—those are two distinct acts, and the difference is important. Reports indicate that some Dearborn residents oppose outdoor prayer calls on loudspeakers, while officials defend them as lawful under local noise regulations. The core question isn’t whether Muslims should be allowed to worship—of course they should—but whether repeated amplified calls into shared space should be considered the same as other public religious events. I believe they shouldn’t.

I also believe that the effort in Texas to prevent voucher funds from going to Islamic schools is wrong. If the state opens the door to religious schools, then it should not try to close it when Muslims walk through. The Texas Tribune reported that Muslim families and Islamic schools challenged their exclusion from the state’s voucher program, that a federal judge extended the application deadline after discovering serious issues with that exclusion, and that state officials later revoked approval from one Islamic school. This is not fair religious liberty; it is selective religious liberty. Christians should not seek special treatment for themselves while denying others the same legal rights.

So yes, I want to consider Hitchens’s piece as a conversation partner, not just something to dismiss. I believe he recognizes part of the problem. There’s a reason many Christians feel uneasy when they see a stronger public display of devotion from another faith. Some of that discomfort comes from the fact that many churches no longer prepare people well. Too many churches are influenced more by comfort, politics, self-help, consumer habits, and image than by prayer, repentance, Scripture, worship, and costly obedience. We shouldn’t be surprised when communities with stronger patterns and clearer demands appear more serious than ours. That is not primarily an Islam issue; it is a church issue.

Still, this is where I believe Hitchens makes a mistake. The solution to Christian weakness isn’t panic. It’s not blaming Muslims as the main problem. It’s not treating every public display of Islam as evidence that Christian society is falling apart. That kind of reaction can seem forceful temporarily, but I think it usually masks something weaker beneath. It’s easier to talk about threats outside than to confront the emptiness inside. It’s easier to blame the dedication of others than to address the poor formation of our own community.

This is also where I would introduce Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is often portrayed as the bold answer to Christian decline. It’s marketed as if the church can regain strength by aligning more closely with nation, law, public symbols, and political power. I don’t see that as strength. I see it as panic. Christian nationalism is often a sign of Christian panic. It appears when Christians lose confidence in the slow, costly, ordinary way of Jesus and start looking for protection in power, control, and public dominance. It’s what happens when the church no longer trusts discipleship to do its work.

Panic causes people to act strangely. Sometimes it makes them withdraw. Sometimes it makes them lash out. Sometimes it drives them to the state, claiming they are being faithful. Beneath all these reactions is the same fear: that Christianity cannot survive unless it is publicly favored, culturally central, and politically supported. That’s why I don’t see Christian nationalism as a solution to church weakness. I see it as another sign of it. A church that believes it needs coercive power to stay true to itself is already revealing how unsure of itself it has become.

Stephen Bevans plays a key role here. His countercultural model reminds us that the church exists within a culture, speaks within a culture, and ministers within a culture, but it can’t simply accept that culture on its own terms. It must affirm what is good, reject what is false, and challenge what distorts life before God. Orbis notes that Bevans added the countercultural model in the revised edition of ‘Models of Contextual Theology.’ That’s helpful because the church faces multiple temptations simultaneously. It can’t just blend into the age, nor can it panic its way toward faithfulness.

That also brings me to the upside-down approach of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus didn’t train his followers to preserve themselves through domination, anxiety, or cultural control. He taught them to take the lower place. He taught them to serve. He taught them to love their enemies. He taught them to speak the truth, bear suffering, and remain faithful when they are not in charge. The disciples weren’t trained to panic when outnumbered. They were trained to bear witness. They weren’t told to grasp for control. They were told to follow Jesus.

This partly explains why many Christian reactions to Islam don’t sound right to me. They don’t come across as gospel confidence. They seem rooted in cultural insecurity. They sound like a church that has forgotten how to live without being centered and privileged. They seem like Christians who believe the faith can only stay strong if it maintains symbolic control over the public square. But the church has never been at its best when it relies on dominance. It’s at its best when it knows who it is, practices deep obedience, and lives in a way that’s steady, holy, and distinct.

For Americans, I believe the solution starts with honestly confronting what has shaped us. Many of us have been shaped more by the nation, outrage, media habits, comfort, and partisan instincts than by the teachings of Jesus. But this isn’t just an American issue. It’s a human issue. It shows up anywhere Christians start confusing faithfulness with influence, noise, or control. The solution isn’t to become louder. It’s to become deeper.

This renewal won’t start with national strategy. It begins with churches and households reclaiming normal Christian practices. Prayer needs to be normal again. Repentance needs to be authentic again. Scripture needs to be taken seriously. Worship should not be reduced to a performance. Pastors need to disciple rather than perform, and parents must recognize that formation happens every day through phones, habits, entertainment, school, and politics. Christians should spend less time asking how to win the culture war and more time asking whether their lives align with the Sermon on the Mount.

Christians should be able to affirm two truths simultaneously. Islam and Christianity make different truth claims, and those differences matter. They should not be blurred. But the answer to weak Christian witness isn’t a more tribal, bitter, or panicked Christianity. The solution is deeper discipleship, clearer teaching, stronger community, and a church that more closely resembles Jesus—less like the habits of the age.

So yes, I think Hitchens recognizes something real when he talks about weakness in the modern church. But I believe he misjudges the deepest danger. The church’s biggest problem isn’t just “the power of Islam.” It’s a church that seeks public recognition without holiness, cultural memory without discipleship, and influence without the cross. Christian nationalism won’t save that church because it’s often just another symptom of Christian panic. Christian panic won’t save the church. Repentance might. Depth might. Real discipleship might. The upside-down way of Jesus and his disciples just might.

At the center of Reno’s case is a premise that I think most people should be willing to grant, at least in part. Political communities aren’t morally neutral. Nations are shaped by traditions, moral assumptions, memory, and a vision of what human beings are for. Public life is always being formed by some account of the good, even when that account presents itself as neutral or purely procedural. Laws don’t come from nowhere. Institutions don’t float above moral judgment. Every society forms its people in some way. Reno is right about that, and I think part of the reason his argument has force is because many Christians know that the language of neutrality often hides its own kind of formational agenda.

That’s where my own essay begins, and it’s also where my response differs from Congdon’s. Congdon is less interested in granting Reno’s premise than in exposing the wider ideological world around it. He presses on the political logic, the rhetorical moves, and the broader project that Reno’s argument serves. That kind of writing has value. Some arguments need to be clearly named and contextualized so readers can better understand what is being presented. Congdon’s essay does this, and it helps readers see that Reno’s argument isn’t just an isolated thought experiment.

My own essay does something different. I wanted to begin closer to Reno’s starting point because I think many Christians, even those who are uneasy with Christian nationalism, do recognize that public life is never morally empty. They know that institutions shape people. They know that law and culture train desire and reinforce certain visions of the good life. I also think Christians should be able to say plainly that Christianity has deeply shaped the moral imagination of the West. Ideas like dignity, charity, responsibility, and limits on power did not develop in a vacuum. To say that isn’t to endorse Christian nationalism. It’s just to speak honestly about history.

Where I part company with Reno is in what he does next. To say that Christianity has shaped a society is not the same thing as saying that a nation should define itself as a Christian political project. Those are different claims. The first is historical. The second is political. The first describes moral influence and inheritance. The second raises questions about power, identity, belonging, and the use of public authority. Too much of this conversation slides from the first claim into the second as if that move is obvious. It isn’t. A society can be shaped by Christian moral influence without making Christianity and national identity the same thing.

That’s where the real questions begin. If politics is morally shaped, then who is doing the shaping, by what means, and toward what end? What happens to religious minorities in a nation that defines itself in explicitly Christian terms? What happens when Christians themselves disagree, as they always have, about what faithfulness requires in public life? What keeps moral conviction from hardening into coercion? What keeps Christian language from becoming little more than a tool of civil religion? These are not side questions. They are the questions. And they are the questions Reno doesn’t really answer.

This is why I think Congdon’s essay and mine are complementary rather than competitive. Congdon presses harder on the dangers that appear when Reno’s argument is placed in its wider ideological and political setting. He is warning readers not to mistake a morally charged account of society for a harmless argument about tradition and order. My own essay tries to show that even if one grants Reno his core premise, that still doesn’t get you to Christian nationalism. In that sense, the two essays are doing related but distinct work. One is more focused on exposing the project. The other is more focused on separating a true insight from a false conclusion.

For me, the New Testament remains decisive here. Jesus does not come announcing a program of national renewal. He comes announcing the kingdom of God. He forms a people whose life is marked by mercy, holiness, truth, humility, and love of enemy. That has public implications, of course. It always will. But the center of Christian identity is not the nation. It is the church. The church does not exist to give sacred meaning to national identity. It exists to bear witness to a crucified and risen Lord whose reign cannot be reduced to heritage, borders, or political sovereignty.

The difference matters because once the nation becomes the primary bearer of Christian meaning, the faith itself starts to bend. Christian language begins doing civilizational work. Scripture starts functioning as support for cultural memory, political recovery, or social hierarchy. The church’s witness narrows. The neighbor becomes easier to sort than to love. What begins as a concern for order can become fear of loss, and fear of loss can justify almost anything. That is part of what worries me in Reno’s argument even where I think he has identified something true. He sees that societies are shaped by moral visions, but he moves too quickly from that insight to a proposal that puts Christianity in too close a relationship with national identity.

That’s why I think both essays are worth reading. Congdon’s piece helps readers see the ideological and political hazards around Reno’s case. My own piece tries to preserve the important truth Reno names while rejecting the conclusion he draws from it. I don’t think those are rival tasks. I think both are needed. We shouldn’t surrender the language of formation, moral vision, and public discipleship to Christian nationalists as if they alone understand that politics shapes people. But we also shouldn’t accept the false choice that often follows, as if the only alternative to secular neutrality were the nation reimagined as a Christian political project.

The deeper task is slower than that. It is the task of recovering a faithful public theology that takes moral formation seriously without confusing the kingdom of God with the life of the state. It is the task of remembering that Christianity has often shaped public life best not when it ruled in its own name, but when the church told the truth, served its neighbors, suffered faithfully, and embodied a different order of love. Reno is right that politics is never morally empty. He is wrong to think that this truth leads naturally to Christian nationalism. If anything, it should send Christians back to the harder work of becoming the kind of people whose common life makes Christ visible in the world.

For all the talk of immigration throughout our nation’s history and its proclivity towards privileging and sacralizing Anglo-Protestantism, there is one commonality for most of America’s immigrants. That “truth is that immigration is inherently risky: the ultimate high risk / high reward gamble, in which immigrants make a bet on geography, with the stakes being their lives. Their whole lives.”

All but my paternal grandfather’s ancestors arrived in the New World by the mid-1600s as opposed to 1929. Given the history that passed and the way “progress” is often measured, one might think that there is little in common between my ancestors and Santiago, but that is not the case.

Aboard the Mayflower was an indentured servant named John Howland. He is not one of the names most Americans are taught to remember. He did not arrive with rank, wealth, or any obvious claim to distinction. He came as a servant, one of the many vulnerable people carried across the Atlantic by hope, necessity, and forces beyond his control. That is part of what makes his story worth telling. It gets beneath the polished mythology of origins and back to the fragile reality of human lives.

During the voyage, Howland was swept overboard in a storm. For a moment, his story ended there, swallowed by the Atlantic before he ever reached the shore that would later be folded into the American story. But by some stroke of luck or providence, he managed to catch hold of a trailing rope and was pulled back aboard. It is difficult to imagine a clearer picture of how risky immigration is than that. Before there was settlement, before there was opportunity, before there was any future to build, there was simply a man in the water trying not to die.

The danger did not end when the ship reached land. The first winter at Plymouth was devastating, and Elizabeth Tilley, the woman Howland would later marry, lost both of her parents in that season of death. That detail alone should interrupt any attempt to romanticize the settlement story. These were not people stepping into comfort or stability. They entered hunger, disease, grief, and the collapse of almost every expectation they could have carried with them.

And yet out of that precarity, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley built a life. Their marriage was not the neat beginning of a heroic national legend. It was the joining together of two people marked by survival, one nearly taken by the sea and the other left parentless in a new and unforgiving world. That is why the distance between Santiago and Howland is not as great as it first appears. The years are different. The conditions are different. The languages, laws, and national myths are different. But the wager at the center of immigration remains much the same.

Howland’s descendants are now estimated in the millions, often placed somewhere in the range of two to four million. That number is staggering on its own, but it becomes even more striking when one considers how narrowly he survived. A man almost lost overboard became the forebear of an enormous line of Americans. Among his direct descendants are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, from the founding generation, Nathaniel Gorham, a signer of the United States Constitution. That does not make his life more meaningful than Santiago’s, or anyone else’s. It does, however, reveal how often the people later absorbed into national memory begin as people whose lives once hung by a thread.

That is part of what our immigration arguments so often miss. We speak as though some arrivals belong to myth and others belong only to controversy. We sanctify certain migrant stories because time has made them familiar, and we resist others because they still feel socially or politically disruptive. But much of that distinction is artificial. The old stories seem noble because they have been retold for generations, not because they were less risky, less painful, or less contested in their own time.

John Howland was not a symbol when he was thrown into the sea. Elizabeth Tilley was not part of a national origin myth when she buried her parents in the first winter. Santiago was not entering a settled narrative either when he made his own bet on geography. In each case, a human being risked everything on the possibility that life on the other side might be different. That is the common thread. Beneath all our selective memory and national self-congratulation, immigration remains a gamble with one’s whole life.

All this is to say that immigration enlarges a nation’s imagination and potential. Without it, we risk our own Kafkaesque metamorphosis, becoming smaller, more fearful, and increasingly alienated from the very humanity that once made growth possible.

Because of this dynamic, many conservative Christians have concluded that the concept itself is meaningless. They assume that Christian nationalism is primarily an academic invention designed to stigmatize evangelicals who supported Donald Trump. When the phrase appears in discussion, the reaction is often immediate dismissal rather than careful analysis. The reasoning is straightforward. If the term is frequently used rhetorically, then the concept behind it must also be empty.

This reaction appeared recently in commentary by sociologist George Yancey. Yancey argues that the phrase “Christian nationalism” may not accurately describe politically active Christians and may instead reflect an attempt by academics to explain contemporary political behavior. His critique reflects a sentiment that has become increasingly common among conservative Christians. Many believe the term gained prominence largely as a way to explain evangelical support for Trump.

Yancey is correct about one thing. The phrase is often used carelessly. Critics frequently apply the label to almost any form of conservative Christian political engagement. When that happens the term stops functioning as a meaningful analytical category and becomes a rhetorical accusation. Conservative Christians are right to push back against that misuse.

Where this critique goes wrong is in assuming that rhetorical misuse means the concept itself does not exist. The fact that a phrase is used as a political weapon does not mean the phenomenon it describes is imaginary. Christian nationalism did not originate in contemporary American politics, and it certainly was not invented after the 2016 election. The ideological pattern long predates the current debate.

Christian nationalism is best understood as a political theology in which a nation’s identity and political order are defined through a culturally dominant form of Christianity. In this framework the nation is not simply a political community in which many Christians live. Instead, the nation itself becomes tied to the Christian narrative and is interpreted as possessing a particular role within God’s purposes for history. National identity and Christian identity become intertwined in ways that reshape how both the nation and the faith are understood.

This fusion typically develops through historical narratives that portray the nation as uniquely blessed, providentially guided, or morally set apart. The nation’s founding moments are interpreted through biblical imagery, and national decline is often framed as spiritual apostasy. Political renewal is then described in language that resembles religious revival. Over time the nation begins to function as a kind of quasi-sacred community whose preservation becomes a moral and sometimes theological obligation.

When this framework takes hold, political authority becomes linked to protecting or restoring the nation’s Christian identity. Laws, cultural institutions, and national symbols are often interpreted as expressions of that identity. Christianity therefore becomes not only a religious faith practiced by citizens but also a defining feature of the nation’s political character. This is the point at which Christian nationalism emerges as a distinct ideological structure.

Understanding the concept this way also explains why the debate often feels historically disconnected. Many people assume Christian nationalism is a recent political development tied to current American politics. In reality, the ideological pattern long predates the present moment.

Understanding Christian nationalism requires placing it within the longer history of Christendom. For most of Western history the idea that nations were culturally Christian was widely assumed rather than debated. Political communities were shaped by a dominant Christian culture, and national identity often developed alongside that religious framework. In societies where the overwhelming majority of citizens identified as Protestant or Catholic, it was not unusual for people to interpret their national story through Christian language and symbolism.

This helps explain why the idea of a Christian nation appeared relatively uncontroversial in the United States for much of its history. Well into the twentieth century the country was overwhelmingly Protestant, and the cultural institutions of American life reflected that reality. Public expressions of religion, references to divine providence in national rhetoric, and assumptions about shared Christian morality were widely accepted across the political spectrum. In that context the idea that the United States possessed a Christian cultural identity did not appear ideological. It appeared descriptive.

That cultural assumption began to change as American religious demographics shifted during the twentieth century. Immigration reforms, particularly the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, dramatically expanded the religious diversity of the country. As immigration patterns changed, the United States moved from a society dominated by Protestant Christianity toward a far more pluralistic religious landscape. What had once been a broadly shared cultural assumption began to look more like a political claim.

This historical perspective is important because it changes how we evaluate contemporary arguments about the term. If Christian nationalism is a recurring political theology that predates modern American politics, then critiques that treat it as a recent academic invention miss something significant.

This is where Yancey’s critique runs into a problem. In his discussion he suggests that the concept of Christian nationalism largely emerged as an academic attempt to explain contemporary political behavior. From that perspective the phrase looks like a sociological category designed to interpret modern voting patterns rather than a historically grounded ideological framework.

The difficulty with that interpretation is that it treats the term as if it were the phenomenon itself. The phrase may have gained prominence in academic literature and media commentary in the past decade, but the ideological pattern it describes is much older. Christian nationalism did not originate in the era of Trump, and it certainly was not invented by contemporary sociologists. The fusion of national identity and Christian narrative has appeared repeatedly throughout the history of societies shaped by Christendom.

This distinction matters because it reveals why the current debate often generates more confusion than clarity. Critics sometimes use the phrase Christian nationalism as a broad accusation against conservative Christians, applying the label to almost any form of religious political engagement. In response, many conservatives dismiss the term entirely as an invented smear. Both reactions treat the phrase rhetorically rather than analytically.

Ironically, this means that conservatives are often handling the phrase in much the same way their critics do. Critics use the label as shorthand for something they oppose, while conservatives reject the label without examining the concept behind it. The result is a debate in which the phrase becomes a symbolic weapon rather than a descriptive category.

If Christian nationalism is defined as the fusion of Christian identity and national identity, then it is important to recognize that the ideology could theoretically appear in more than one political form. The defining feature of Christian nationalism is not whether its policy goals are conservative or progressive. The defining feature is the belief that the nation itself possesses a distinct Christian identity that should shape its political order and historical mission.

In a conservative form, Christian nationalism usually emphasizes preserving or restoring what is understood to be the nation’s Christian heritage. Advocates may argue that the nation was founded on Christian principles and that its institutions should reflect that heritage. Cultural changes that weaken the influence of Christianity are therefore interpreted not merely as social developments but as threats to the nation’s moral foundation. Political action then becomes a means of defending or recovering the nation’s Christian character.

This version is the form most often discussed in contemporary American debates. Critics frequently point to calls for protecting Christian symbols in public life, defending traditional moral norms, or reasserting the idea that the United States possesses a uniquely Christian identity. When these claims are framed in ways that link national destiny to the preservation of Christian cultural dominance, they begin to take on the structure of Christian nationalism.

However, the ideological structure itself is not limited to conservative politics. A progressive version of Christian nationalism could emerge whenever a nation is interpreted as possessing a unique divine calling to advance a particular moral vision in the world. In that framework the nation might be portrayed as an instrument of Christian justice, equality, or liberation whose political mission reflects a sacred purpose.

The policy goals in such a vision would look very different from conservative nationalism, but the underlying logic would remain similar. The nation would still be interpreted as possessing a special place within the Christian story, and political authority would still be linked to fulfilling that perceived calling. The difference would lie in the moral vision attached to the nation’s mission rather than in the structure of the ideology itself.

Seen in this light, Christian nationalism is best understood as a vestige of Christendom. For centuries the political and religious life of Western societies developed within cultural frameworks where Christianity held a dominant position. In those contexts it was easy for national identity and Christian identity to become intertwined. As societies became more religiously diverse, those assumptions did not disappear overnight. Instead, they persisted in ways that sometimes continued to frame nations as possessing a distinct Christian identity and historical vocation.

This historical background helps explain why the current conversation about Christian nationalism generates so much confusion. Critics sometimes use the phrase Christian nationalism as a sweeping accusation against conservative Christians, while conservatives increasingly dismiss the term as an invented smear. Both reactions focus on the rhetoric surrounding the phrase rather than on the ideological pattern it describes. When the discussion stays at that level, the concept becomes little more than a symbolic weapon in political conflict.

Conservative Christians are right to resist careless accusations built around the term. At the same time, dismissing the concept entirely prevents serious reflection on how Christian language and national identity can become fused in ways that reshape both. Christian participation in politics is not the problem. The difficulty arises when the nation itself begins to function as a theological category within the Christian story.

The New Testament locates the people of God not in a nation but in the church. The church becomes a community that transcends ethnicity, language, and political borders. When nations are placed back into that covenantal role, the Christian narrative is subtly altered and the nation begins to take on responsibilities that Scripture assigns to the people of God.

Recognizing this distinction does not end political disagreement among Christians, but it does clarify the terms of the conversation. Christian nationalism is not simply a rhetorical accusation, nor is it identical to Christian political engagement. It describes a specific ideological pattern that emerges whenever national identity and the Christian narrative become fused.

Until both critics and defenders move beyond rhetorical reactions to the phrase, the debate will remain far more polarized than it needs to be.

It is important to begin by acknowledging where the religious right is correct. The Center for Biblical Unity raises a legitimate concern when it warns against reducing Jesus to a set of ethical slogans used to justify political agendas. The church has repeatedly fallen into this temptation. Political movements across the ideological spectrum have attempted to recruit Christ as a legitimating symbol for their preferred policies. When this happens Christian discipleship is distorted because Jesus becomes a rhetorical instrument rather than the living Lord who judges every political order. Any serious theological engagement with politics must remain alert to that danger.

Where the argument becomes less convincing is in the claim that Talarico represents a form of progressive Christian nationalism. That conclusion depends on a definition of Christian nationalism that is too thin to remain useful. If Christian nationalism simply means allowing Christian convictions to shape public life, then nearly every politically engaged Christian in history would qualify. Abolitionists who opposed slavery on biblical grounds would be Christian nationalists. Civil rights leaders who appealed to Scripture when confronting segregation would fall into the same category. A concept stretched that broadly loses its ability to identify the phenomenon it was meant to describe.

My own research suggests a more precise definition. Christian nationalism is a theological and political configuration in which national identity becomes sacralized, the destiny of the nation is fused with the purposes of God, and political authority is treated as an instrument for securing a distinctly Christian national order. In this framework the nation acquires theological weight and national history becomes part of a redemptive narrative. Political power begins to carry spiritual meaning that properly belongs only to Christ and his kingdom. This configuration is historically identifiable and theologically distinct. It should not be confused with the much more common belief that Christian convictions have moral implications for public life.

Much of the contemporary discussion about Christian nationalism has been shaped by the work of sociologists such as Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry. Their research helped bring attention to the phenomenon by identifying patterns in American religious and political attitudes. In particular their work showed that certain beliefs about the relationship between Christianity and American identity correlate strongly with views about immigration, race, and political authority. That sociological insight remains valuable and continues to shape the conversation.

At the same time the measurement tools used in public polling today differ from the framework developed in the original research. Much contemporary data relies on survey instruments used by Public Religion Research Institute. These surveys measure agreement with statements about whether the United States should be a Christian nation, whether government should advocate Christian values, and whether American success reflects God’s plan. Such tools provide useful insight into public attitudes but they do not by themselves define the theological meaning of Christian nationalism. Sociological measurement identifies patterns of belief while theological analysis explains the deeper logic connecting those beliefs together.

Whitehead and Perry’s broader description of Christian nationalism remains helpful precisely because it identifies that deeper structure. Their work describes an ideology that merges American civic identity with a particular understanding of Christianity and treats the nation as uniquely favored within God’s purposes. That functional description aligns closely with the theological pattern identified in my own research. Recognizing this distinction helps clarify the present debate. Christian nationalism is a real phenomenon that can be studied sociologically and analyzed theologically, yet the term should not be applied to every instance of Christian political engagement.

Jemar Tisby highlights another dimension of the conversation that many white Christians overlook. The tradition of Black Christian public witness has deep historical roots that long predate the present debate. In the Black church theological reflection and public justice have long been intertwined. For many Black Christians the idea that faith should address public injustice is simply part of the church’s vocation. Understanding that tradition requires understanding how the Black church itself came into existence.

In 1787 Black worshippers at St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia were forcibly removed from their knees during prayer by white trustees attempting to impose segregation within the sanctuary. Leaders including Richard Allen and Absalom Jones walked out of the service rather than accept this humiliation. Their departure eventually led to the formation of the Free African Society and later to the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Black church therefore emerged not as a stylistic variation of American Christianity but as a response to exclusion within white congregations. It quickly became a central institution within Black civic and religious life.

There is also a more subtle factor shaping the reaction to Talarico. For many white voters he represents familiarity. He looks like them, he speaks with the rhetorical cadence common to white Protestant culture, and he openly identifies with the mainline Christian tradition that historically shaped American civic life. That familiarity matters because proximity often reinforces cultural authority within dominant institutions. As Edward W. Said argued, dominant cultures tend to normalize voices that resemble themselves while marginalizing those that do not. In this sense Talarico’s reception reflects both proximity and hegemony. His rhetoric feels recognizable within cultural frameworks that many white Christian audiences already inhabit.

At the same time that familiarity should not be mistaken for novelty. Much of what white observers find striking in Talarico’s rhetoric has long existed within the Black church tradition. Generations of Black Christian leaders have spoken publicly about faith, justice, and political responsibility in ways that closely resemble the themes now attracting national attention. The difference is not the existence of Christian public witness but the social proximity of the person offering it. When the messenger belongs to a culturally dominant group audiences often perceive the message differently.

The election itself, however, appears to have been shaped largely by ordinary coalition dynamics rather than symbolic identity narratives alone. Crockett received overwhelming support among Black voters, reflecting longstanding networks connected to Black churches and Democratic leadership structures. Talarico meanwhile built broader support among younger voters and across several racial groups within the electorate. Candidates who expand beyond a core constituency often gain the decisive advantage in primary elections. The electoral outcome therefore reflects coalition building rather than a simple moral verdict about identity or theology.

These debates also reveal something deeper about formation within American Christianity. Political reactions rarely arise in the moment. They are shaped over time by the narratives, institutions, and communities that teach believers how to interpret public life. When Christians encounter a political event they interpret it through the frameworks that have already shaped their imagination. For some the central concern becomes theological authenticity. For others it becomes racial representation or historical recognition. The same event therefore appears to confirm very different narratives depending on the community interpreting it.

American Christians therefore face a difficult but necessary task. The church must resist the temptation to baptize national identity while also resisting the temptation to instrumentalize Christ for political rhetoric. Christian discipleship cannot retreat into private spirituality that ignores public injustice. At the same time it cannot confuse the purposes of the kingdom of God with the ambitions of any political movement. Christ’s lordship relativizes every nation even as it calls believers to pursue justice within the societies they inhabit.

The translation model sharpens this work by distinguishing between what is essential and what is culturally contingent. The challenge for the American Protestant church is to discern where its theology has been shaped more by national myth than by biblical revelation. Just as Jesus reinterpreted received tradition with the refrain, “You have heard it said… but I say to you,” so the church must evaluate its inherited narratives in light of Christ.

The anthropological model calls the church to listen attentively to diverse cultural experiences within America. Dominant culture, African American communities, indigenous peoples, and immigrant populations each carry distinct historical memories. A prophetic theology does not flatten those differences. It discerns where contextual expressions of Christianity have fostered flourishing and where they have perpetuated harm.

Finally, the praxis model insists that theology culminates in action. Christian reflection must address unjust structures and seek their transformation. Yet such action must remain grounded in the Beatitudes’ upside-down logic. The church does not war against flesh and blood. Its struggle is spiritual before it is political. Where violence has marked Christian history, it must be named and critically examined in light of Christ’s example.

A prophetic contextual theology does not promise immediate unity or social harmony. It calls the American Protestant church to place its primary citizenship in heaven while engaging earthly realities with courage and humility. It seeks to loosen the grip of polarized ideologies by re-centering the church on Christ, the true image of God, and by orienting action toward relational shalom.

If the church can recover this eschatological imagination, it may yet speak with clarity in a fractured age. If it cannot, it risks becoming either a chaplain to nationalism or an echo of secular critique. The path forward is neither retreat nor capitulation but faithful participation in the unfolding kingdom of God.

There is a measure of truth in this observation. Political communities never exist in a moral vacuum. Laws, institutions, and cultural norms inevitably reflect deeper assumptions about justice, authority, and the good life. In the history of the West, Christianity has profoundly influenced these assumptions. Concepts such as the dignity of the human person, the moral limits of political authority, and the importance of charity and social responsibility emerged within a cultural environment deeply shaped by Christian theology. In this sense it is entirely reasonable to acknowledge that Christian moral thought has contributed to the formation of Western political life.

The difficulty in Reno’s argument emerges when this historical observation becomes the foundation for a defense of Christian nationalism itself. His essay appears to move quickly from acknowledging Christianity’s cultural influence to suggesting that the nation should consciously organize its political identity around Christianity as a defining characteristic. In doing so, Reno’s argument risks conflating two distinct ideas: the presence of Christian moral influence within a society and the claim that a nation should explicitly define itself as a Christian political project. The first describes a historical reality that has existed in many societies. The second proposes a specific political arrangement in which national identity is intentionally fused with religious identity. These claims are not identical, and failure to distinguish them obscures important theological and political questions.

A society may reflect Christian moral assumptions without grounding its political identity in Christian nationalism. Much of Western political development occurred within a framework that distinguished between the authority of the church and the authority of the state. Christian ethical ideas helped shape the moral vocabulary of public life while political institutions developed mechanisms intended to prevent the direct fusion of religious and political authority. The result was not a secular order devoid of religious influence but a political environment in which Christian moral concepts could shape public life without requiring the nation itself to become an explicitly Christian political entity.

The historical experience of American evangelicalism illustrates why this distinction matters. Evangelicals have long insisted that their political and ethical commitments derive directly from Scripture. This emphasis on biblical authority—often described as biblicism—forms a central component of evangelical identity. Yet the historical record demonstrates that appeals to biblical authority have rarely produced a unified political vision. Evangelicals supported both sides of the American Revolution while claiming biblical justification. They defended and opposed slavery in the nineteenth century using the same scriptural texts. During the Civil Rights movement many white evangelicals advocated gradualism or silence while other Christian leaders argued that racial justice followed directly from the ethical demands of the Gospel. Similar divisions later emerged over the Vietnam War, the role of government in economic life, and contemporary debates surrounding immigration and nationalism.

These examples suggest that biblicism frequently functions less as a coherent political theology than as a legitimizing language through which competing political visions are expressed. Evangelicals may agree that Scripture is authoritative while profoundly disagreeing about the political implications of that authority. The shared commitment to the Bible establishes a common identity, yet the interpretation of biblical teaching in relation to public life remains deeply contested. Biblical language can therefore unify a community symbolically while masking significant ethical and political disagreement beneath the surface.

This pattern becomes clearer when evangelical political mobilization is examined historically. Evangelical engagement with politics has often intensified during moments of cultural uncertainty or perceived loss of influence. During the early twentieth century fundamentalists responded to accusations of anti-Americanism during World War I by equating Christianity with patriotism. During the Cold War many evangelical leaders fused Christian identity with American opposition to communism, framing geopolitical conflict in overtly religious terms. The rise of the Moral Majority reorganized evangelical political activism around a cluster of cultural concerns including abortion, sexuality, and the perceived erosion of traditional family structures. In each case appeals to biblical authority accompanied these movements, yet the political priorities associated with those appeals shifted significantly in response to changing cultural pressures.

Within this broader historical pattern the contemporary resurgence of Christian nationalism may represent another moment in which evangelical identity seeks political clarity in response to cultural displacement. As secularization, demographic change, and declining institutional influence have altered the cultural position of white evangelical Protestantism in the United States, some voices have turned toward a more explicit fusion of Christianity and national identity. Christian nationalism offers a narrative in which Christian civilization once structured American life and could do so again if Christians regained sufficient political influence. The appeal of this narrative lies partly in its promise to restore cultural coherence during a period of social fragmentation.

Reno attempts to address concerns about the dangers of Christian nationalism by describing it as a self-limiting political framework rather than a totalizing ideological project. In his account, Christian nationalism does not imply theocratic rule or the direct governance of the state by ecclesiastical authority. Instead, he presents it as a political orientation in which the nation acknowledges its Christian heritage and allows Christian moral assumptions to inform public life while maintaining institutional distinctions between church and state. This framing is meant to reassure readers that Christian nationalism can coexist with political liberty and Western traditions of constitutional order.

The difficulty is that Reno’s account remains largely normative rather than practical. He describes what Christian nationalism ought to be without addressing how such a political arrangement would function within the institutional structures of a modern democratic state. By remaining at the level of abstraction, his argument avoids confronting the concrete political questions that inevitably arise once a nation defines itself in explicitly Christian terms. If a nation formally identifies itself as Christian, what implications does this have for citizens who do not share that identity? What mechanisms determine which expressions of Christianity shape national life? And how would the state adjudicate disputes among competing Christian traditions regarding moral and political authority?

These questions are unavoidable. Any political framework that grounds national identity in Christianity must eventually address issues such as religious establishment, civil rights for religious minorities, and the relationship between religious doctrine and civil law. Reno’s essay does not meaningfully engage these questions. Instead, it assumes that Christian nationalism can remain self-limiting without specifying the institutional mechanisms through which those limits would be maintained. The result is a conception of Christian nationalism that remains largely aspirational rather than operational.

Reno’s argument also depends upon a particular narrative about Jesus and the moral order he inaugurates. Christianity appears primarily as a civilizational force capable of shaping the ethical foundations necessary for political stability. Yet the Gospels present Jesus’s relationship to political order in a far more complex way. Jesus did not emerge within a politically neutral environment but within a deeply nationalistic context. First-century Judea was saturated with hopes for national restoration, and many Jewish movements expected the Messiah to liberate Israel from Roman rule and restore political sovereignty. Against this backdrop Jesus repeatedly resisted attempts to frame his mission in overtly national or political terms. When crowds attempted to make him king, he withdrew. When confronted with questions about imperial taxation, he refused to collapse religious allegiance into political loyalty.

Rather than reinforcing the national aspirations of his contemporaries, Jesus consistently redirected attention toward a kingdom that could not be identified with any existing political order. The kingdom of God proclaimed in the Gospels does not take the form of a program for national restoration but of a transformed moral community defined by humility, mercy, reconciliation, and love for enemies. The parable of the Good Samaritan makes this point with particular clarity. The Samaritan becomes the model of neighborly love precisely because he belongs to a group regarded as religiously deviant and ethnically suspect. By presenting the Samaritan as the true neighbor, Jesus shifts the focus away from political identity and toward ethical responsibility.

This does not mean that Jesus’s teaching lacks political implications. On the contrary, the moral vision of the kingdom carries profound consequences for public life. The doctrine of the imago dei affirms the inherent dignity of every human being, while the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus challenges systems of domination and calls believers to embody justice, mercy, and reconciliation within the world. Yet the New Testament consistently locates the center of this political witness within the life of the church rather than within the identity of the state.

Christian values may shape the moral instincts of a society in countless ways, but the attempt to fuse Christianity with national identity risks placing the weight of Christian moral authority on an institution that the New Testament treats as historically provisional. The church, by contrast, is presented as a transnational community whose allegiance to Christ relativizes every political order. The question facing Christians is therefore not whether faith should shape public life. It always has and always will. The deeper question is whether that influence is best expressed through the moral witness of the church or through the political identity of the nation itself.