“Discernment is not simply a matter of telling the difference between what is right and wrong; rather it is the difference between right and almost right.” -Charles Spurgeon
A Conservative Denomination Just Took Christian Nationalism Apart — From the Inside
A major conservative Christian denomination has released an interim report on Christian Nationalism, and it does something I did not expect to see done this thoroughly. It denounces the thing. Not with a press release or a strongly worded tweet, but page after page, leg by leg, taking apart the structure that props Christian Nationalism up and dismantling it theologically.
When I first saw it, my reaction was the lazy one – why does anyone need a year of study to figure out that this is wrong? I already knew it was bad. But after reading it, I understood why. There are PhDs and serious scholars on this committee, and instead of swinging wildly at a caricature, they went after the actual load-bearing arguments and knocked them out one at a time, with Scripture and with their own confessional standards.
I was very happy to see the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has adopted a preliminary report that basically condemns the ideology of Christian Nationalism as incompatible with Biblical theology.
I wanted to post the entire PDF file here for you to download. It’s very good reading and packed with solid Biblical reasoning and arguments that expose Christian Nationalism for the very unchristian movement it actually is.
Well, it’s actually not a new movement, but it’s one that many Christians haven’t figured out yet. It’s a political movement and perhaps, ironically, it comes from the so-called Christian Right. That’s the side of the aisle that considers itself the protector of Christianity.
The movement I’m referring to is, of course, the
MAGA movement or President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
From the president, on down to his biggest fans, they claim that one of their primary goals is to make America safe for Christians “again”. But anyone who is biblically literate and knowledgeable of geo-political history of, say, the last hundred years or so, can hear in their pronouncements echoes of some of the most dangerous and tyrannical regimes on modern memory.
I have let this site lie mostly dormant for the last 8-10 years because I thought I had said just about everything I needed to say about the subjects I had originally created it for.
But now a new counterfeit is here. One that isn’t exactly a heresy in the technical sense, but is every bit as dangerous. It’s a political counterfeit of the Gospel. It’s drenched in Christian language but it teaches self-centeredness and hate rather than love and compassion. And it preaches “Christian nationalism” instead of the Kingdom of God. And it’s all about political power rather than the glory of God.
For those who have listened closely, it has been clear for a long time that this false gospel would eventually lead to the persecution of devout Biblical Christians. And we are now starting to see the first concrete outlines of how that persecution will begin to take form.
A story in Christianity today really grabbed my attention the other day. It was about how agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) are literally targeting Christian immigrants and churches.
I made a video about it which you can see here:
In it I tell the story of a married couple from Iran, who came here a couple of years ago seeking refuge from the extreme persecution they suffered in Iran. They were arrested about a week ago in Los Angeles by ICE agents. They are slated for deportation back to Iran.
So the administration who promised to make America safe for Christians again is now persecuting Christians who have come here to escape persecution. We are sending them back into the arms of their persecutors. And this well represents the fruit of MAGA, as we’ve watched it develop over the last ten years. It is truly an un-Christian fruit.
