He said, \u201cI know you all want to reach people\u2014but it seems to me, when you\u2019re choosing between comfort and blood, too many of you are making the wrong choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think of that conversation often when I think of the way many of us have grown alarmed by what\u2019s sometimes called Christian nationalism\u2014either in its more common and less virulent strain of \u201cGod and country\u201d civil religion, or in the more explicit and terrifying ways we have seen Christian symbols co-opted by demagogic and authoritarian ethnocentric or nationalist movements.<\/p>\n
Yes, this degrades the credibility and witness of the church. It grants delegated legitimacy to what the Bible itself denounces, and it turns the church into a captive servant to what can only be called an idol. What we often miss, though, is that what these nationalistic movements trade away is blood.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason we see an American church riven apart by resurgent heresy trials. These inquisitions are far less likely to be about essential matters of Christian doctrine\u2014the Trinity or the Virgin Birth or the bodily resurrection\u2014than to be about some talking point of populist politics. In our world, politics is no longer about philosophies of government but about identity (\u201cWhole Foods vs. Walmart\u201d). And in such a world, nationality and politics, even in their smallest trivialities, seem far more real to people than kingdom-of-God realities that Jesus described in terms of a seed underground or yeast working through bread or wind blowing through leaves.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Christian nationalism isn\u2019t just bad for democracy; it\u2019s heresy too.<\/p>\n My Nov @CTmagazine<\/a> column is out from behind the paywall:https:\/\/t.co\/vgt41BwQ02<\/a><\/p>\n — Russell Moore (@drmoore) October 28, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n