Thursday Theology: What’s Driving America’s Christian Nationalism

written by Support | October 18, 2024

Co-missioners,

Our editor points you this week to an item published elsewhere that he urges you to read.

Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community

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What’s Driving America’s Christian Nationalism?
by Jerome Burce

From Canva

I’ve caught some muttering in recent months about how Crossings should address the matter of so-called Christian Nationalism in the U.S. Since I can’t imagine that anyone who connects regularly with Crossings would identify as a Christian Nationalist, I’ve been reluctant to push for this conversation. I can see it devolving all too quickly into a session of self-righteous handwringing over the wickedness of “those people.” Our Lord, recall, was not a fan of such things and doubtless still isn’t.

Even so, the wickedness is there; and as columnist David French made plain in the New York Times two Sundays ago, there is much more to it than lots of us will have guessed. Here I send you straight to French’s column: “JD Vance and the Prophets of Trumpism.” If you haven’t caught this yet, I can’t urge you strongly enough to add it to your reading list. Better still, read it now. (Not a subscriber? The NY Times lets the likes of you read ten free articles every month. It used to be twenty. So much for their kind of righteousness.)

Two quick observations of my own, or maybe three:

  1. Where we at Crossings are concerned, what French describes in this column is Christian heresy plain and simple. It is flat out wrong. It is dangerously wrong. It contradicts Christ. One of the reasons I’ve come to appreciate French as much as I do is his ability to point these things out as clearly as he does to a readership that regards “heresy,” like “sin,” as an antiquated and all but laughable concept. Turns out there is nothing laughable about Lance Wallnau, the character French will introduce you to. There is nothing true about the Seven Mountain Mandate that Wallnau espouses. So much for the pretense that gets mouthed so often and so carelessly in mainline circles about all believing being more or less of equal value. But this is nonsense. It always has been. It always will be. When the woman stood at the primordial tree weighing options—to eat or not to eat—she was asking whom to believe, the Lord or the snake. It was one or the other. She could not believe both. As it happened, she chose poorly, to use one of my favorite lines from the Indiana Jones movies. In the same way Lance Wallnau and his ilk are a very poor choice of voices to trust. This needs to be said out loud to those who might be tempted to think otherwise; but let those who say it do so in the fear and trembling of deep humility. Where is the Christian outfit out there that doesn’t have its version of nonsense to peddle? Lord, have mercy on us all, including the likes of Wallnau.

  • As for why one can say with such finality that Wallnau is wrong, listen closely when you get to church this coming Sunday. The Gospel text from Mark 10 is about James and John begging for seats at Jesus’ right and left hands. One of the folks in the pericope study I attend every Tuesday noticed how there’s a phrase in this passage—“Give us whatever we ask”—that connects it to the episode of John the Baptist’s beheading in Mark 6. The point, as Fred Niedner pointed out, is that there are starkly antithetical ways of being a king: Herod’s way and Jesus’ way. Herod’s way has impassioned citizens assaulting the Capitol to “stop the steal.” (Please!) It involves the agenda laid out in the Seven Mountain Mandate the French’s column will introduce you to if you haven’t heard of it yet. Need I bother to mention the screaming contrast between this and Jesus’ way? Here the king is on his knees washing the stinky feet of the feckless dolts he has chosen to keep him company. When he’s done with that he’ll march off with a cross on his back to die for them, and not merely for them, but for a whole wide world that includes the like of Herod . and all those others out there who mock him and despise him.

Follow me,” he says to us.

  • Let’s all give thought this week to what this following might entail as we’re dragged with the rest of the country through the coming election. May the Holy Spirit of King Jesus be the One who shapes our thinking and doing. An immediate question: “How do we lay our own lives down for the sake of the neighbor?” If any of you have share-worthy thoughts about this, send them to me.

  • One last thought: there seems to be a fascinating similarity between the folks that David French describes and the ones that Martin Luther dealt with in the early stages of the Reformation. “The fanatics,” as he called them. Thomas Münzer, for example. If any specialists in those Reformation years would care to comment on this, please send that too.

  • Again, read French’s column. This time follow the abundant links he gives us to click on, as in “Learn More Here.” And when you’re done, join me in a prayer our Lord has promised to hear: Kyrie eleison.

JEB