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| Illustration by R.E. Slater & ChatGPT |
Preface
- nationalist idealism,
- providential political claims,
- civilizational fear and alarm,
- apocalyptic eschatology, and
- ideological certainty.
When faith seeks protection through political dominance, when religious speech inflates leaders into providential agents, when exclusion is moralized, when coercion is baptized, when cruelty is defended as order, and when nationalism borrows the garments of gospel, theological resistance must become necessary.
The problem is not public faith, civic responsibility, or moral engagement in political life.
The problem arises when Christianity is fused with ideological identity, nationalist mythology, coercive social order, or presumptive claims made on behalf of political leaders or movements.
At that point, faith risks becoming not witness, but (oppressive) instrument.
The gospel does not exist to sanctify a nation.
The gospel does not exist to protect a ruling mythology.
The gospel does not exist to baptize grievance.
The gospel calls persons and communities toward truth, compassion, justice, reconciliation, and peace.
Where these are eclipsed, deformation has begun.
1. Accommodation to Power
When the church seeks proximity to state, nation, party, or strongman as a source of identity rather than maintaining prophetic distance.
2. Ideological Idealism
When political myths replace moral discernment, and national destiny is narrated in quasi-redemptive terms.
3. Departure from Social and Ethical Responsibility
When concern for the poor, vulnerable, migrants, outsiders, women, and socially marginalized persons is subordinated to exclusion, identity preservation, or grievance.
4. Cruelty Masked as Moral Order
When coercive treatment, forced gender fixation, categorical exclusions, or inequalities are defended as righteousness.
Order detached from compassion becomes domination.
5. Mythologizing of Scripture
When the Bible is abstracted from history and turned into an ideological arsenal.
6. Presumptive Theological Assertions
When divine sanction is claimed where humility would require restraint.
7. Fracture as Fruit
When the result is broken families, ecclesial division, estrangement, fear, and diminished solidarity.
A tree is partly known by its fruits.
We reject the inflation of political leaders into providential figures.
We reject the conferral of messianic overtones upon rulers.
We reject the suggestion that Christianity’s future depends upon loyalty to a political personality.
Such claims do not strengthen faith. They weaken discernment.
They substitute devotion to power for fidelity to truth.
We reject the conflation of gospel and nationalism.
We reject the sacralization of violence through expansive just war reasoning.
We reject jingoistic Christianity that mistakes militarized identity for moral seriousness.
Peace is not naivete.
Peace is disciplined moral courage.
A faith centered in Christ cannot make coercion its grammar.
We affirm the dignity of persons as irreducible.
No person should be reduced to threat category, cultural symbol, or ideological enemy.
This includes immigrants seeking liberty and justice. This includes women whose gifts and leadership are constrained by rigid systems. This includes trans and gay persons whose humanity is often diminished in the name of moral certainty.
Any theology that requires inequality to sustain itself has already entered crisis.
From a process-relational understanding, divine power is not domination.
It is persuasive lure toward richer forms of coexistence.
Toward justice. Toward beauty. Toward truth. Toward compassion. Toward peace.
Movements shaped by exclusion, supremacy, coercion, or sacralized nationalism stand in contradiction to that divine aim.
Accommodation to power narrows relational possibility. It suppresses novelty. It diminishes mutuality. It closes what should remain open.
And closure is often a form of diminishment.
We affirm:
A Christianity of prophetic distance from power.
A Christianity of ethical responsibility toward all persons.
A Christianity of interpretive humility.
A Christianity of non-coercive peace.
A Christianity of relational solidarity.
A Christianity measured not by its power to preserve dominance, but by its fidelity to love.
We reject forms of accommodated Christianity deformed by:
Nationalism.
Supremacy.
Cruelty.
Exclusion.
Ideological absolutism.
Apocalyptic manipulation.
Presumptive religious certainty in service to political power.
Where witness becomes propaganda, resistance becomes necessary.
Where power eclipses compassion, repentance becomes necessary.
Where fear overrides love, reconstruction becomes necessary.
And where divinity is invoked to justify domination, theology itself must answer.
It concerns whether the language of faith will serve truth or illusion.Whether religion will deepen human dignity or sanctify exclusion.Whether Christianity will remain captive to power, or recover the difficult freedom of prophetic witness.
Each time fear is called faith.
Each time cruelty is called order.
Each time nationalism is called discipleship.
Each time power is mistaken for providence.
What has been accommodated may be disentangled.
What has been captured by ideology may be reclaimed by truth.
For the calling of Christianity is not to preserve dominion, but to bear witness.
Not to sanctify power, but to humanize it.
Not to defend empire, but to embody compassion.
Not to conquer through certainty, but to participate in truth.
Expanded Bibliography
I. Process Theology and Philosophical Foundations
Alfred North Whitehead
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected ed. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967.
John B. Cobb Jr.
Cobb, John B., Jr. A Christian Natural Theology: Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead. 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.
Cobb, John B., Jr., and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976.
Catherine Keller
Keller, Catherine. Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki
Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology. New York: Continuum, 1994.
II. Political Theology, Power, and Nationalism
William T. Cavanaugh
Cavanaugh, William T. Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.
Cavanaugh, William T. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Stanley Hauerwas
Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.
Hauerwas, Stanley, and William H. Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
III. Prophetic Critique, Scripture, and Public Faith
Walter Brueggemann
Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.
Brueggemann, Walter. Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.
N. T. Wright
Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.
Wright, N. T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.
Richard B. Hays
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996.
IV. Justice, Marginality, and Ethical Theology
Howard Thurman
Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
James H. Cone
Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. Rev. ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.
Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011.
Gustavo Gutiérrez
Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Rev. ed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.
Kelly Brown Douglas
Douglas, Kelly Brown. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015.
V. Christian Ethics, Peace, and Nonviolence
John Howard Yoder
Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.
Glen H. Stassen
Stassen, Glen H., and David P. Gushee. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016.
Dorothy Day
Day, Dorothy. The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day. New York: Harper & Row, 1952.
VI. Hermeneutics, Scripture, and Theological Method
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Paul Ricoeur
Ricoeur, Paul. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.
Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976.
VII. Contemporary Critiques of Christian Nationalism
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. New York: Liveright, 2020.
Jemar Tisby
Tisby, Jemar. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019.
Samuel L. Perry
Perry, Samuel L., and Andrew L. Whitehead. Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
