Thread by @PMatzko

The ethno-nationalist heresy that @roddreher describes here is of a similar species to that in the biblical accounts of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which ended, days later, with the same crowd baying for his crucifixion. What gives?
theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-…

The key to understanding that mood shift was the palm branches being thrown at Jesus's feet, which were symbols of Jewish ethno-nationalist resistance. Indeed, it was the palm that adorned currency during the nationalist Maccabean regime two centuries prior.

In other words, the crowd singing hosannas to Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem were looking for a revolutionary leader to lead an armed insurgency to Make Israel Great Again.

They had *zero* interest in a messiah seeking to save all the nations. And so the mob turned on him and happily supported clemency for Barrabas, possibly a freedom fighter of a sort, over Jesus when the Roman authorities came looking for a scapegoat.

And now, 2,000 years later, another religious mob blinkered by ethno-nationalist longings rejects a gospel for the nations in favor of an "American Caesar" who will fight for blood and soil. It's a heresy of the grossest kind and it is rife in American evangelicalism today.

I should note that I got the but about the nationalist roots of the palm branch from Oscar Culmann's absolute classic book, "The State in the New Testament." amazon.com/State-New-Test…