What if America is just like all the other empires? What if America’s power and wealth aren’t a mark of divine favor, but merely a byproduct of empire-building?
And what if, by mistaking the fruits of empire for God’s blessing, Christian nationalists have gotten confused about what sorts of things God favors—confused about the features of our civilization that believers should make an effort to cultivate and amplify into the future?
For example, what if it’s just a very, very bad thing that our government systematically slaughtered and dispossessed indigenous peoples and desecrated their sacred places? What if that’s just all there is to it: no manifest destiny, nothing redeeming about it—just really bad?
And what if it’s just very, very bad that a lot of America’s early wealth issued from labor that was straightforwardly stolen from people who were kidnapped and sold into slavery. What if that’s just evil, full stop?
Read the Exodus account and ask yourself where you fit into the narrative. If you’re a white American evangelical, you’re not among the Israelites—plainly, you’re with the Egyptians. And why think the American empire is any different from that of Egypt, or Babylon, or Rome?
I don’t understand what Christian nationalists are up to, theologically speaking. I just can’t imagine the early Church concerning itself with Rome’s GDP or reputation on the world stage. The greatness of the Roman Empire was perfectly irrelevant to Christ and his followers.
Of course, as an American, I might concern myself with the American economy, national security, etc. But my concern for such things will be tempered by my Christian faith; it certainly won’t be a consequence of my faith.
The notion that Christianity stands in a special relationship to America makes about as much sense as the idea that Jesus took on flesh to make Rome great again—which is to say, it makes no sense at all: it misunderstands what Christianity is about.
So when, as Christians, we see our nation pursue policies that threaten the well-being of orphans and immigrants in our midst, we really don’t have any business asking whether these policies are good for America. That’s not our concern.
Our concern should be for the ones oppressed, regardless of whether that concern is consistent with ephemeral notions of what makes America great.
Christ has no use for the cultural nostalgia of white American churchgoers: Christ simply doesn’t care whether America is great, or ever was or will be.
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Within authoritarian ecosystems, men in power often lie about their opponents in a way that desensitizes their audience to some unpalatable truth about themselves.
Here Joe implies that David French and Russ Moore hold liberal democratic norms on par with scripture—an obvious falsehood.
True to form, Joe doesn’t state the falsehood explicitly—he merely implies it in a way that any competent language user understands.
(French or Moore might claim that modern liberal democracy is rooted in the Christian intellectual tradition, or that liberal norms can be derived from biblical norms. Not sure exactly what their respective views are here, but:
The substantive point is not in dispute: you didn’t read the book prior to commenting on it.
Here you speculate about what arguments are likely to be presented in the book (see screenshot—same screenshot from before, with relevant portion circled).
So why did I highlight the sentence in which you claim the book isn’t meant to be read?
For the same reason I highlighted the sentence before it (which also doesn’t imply that the author hasn’t read the book): namely, that your unearned confidence is hilarious.
If you say that isn’t white Christian nationalism, the disparity in our understanding of what words mean is most likely such that it’s not worth attempting to converse on this or any subject.
If you concede that it is white Christian nationalism, what am I to believe?
Do I believe Stephen Wolfe when he explicitly, obviously, and undeniably advocates *white* Christian nationalism?
Or do I believe him when he denies that he’s advocating white Christian nationalism?
The hermeneutics of legitimization: an approach to biblical interpretation that consistently produces moral justifications for social practices and institutional arrangements that benefit oneself.
The hermeneutics of legitimization has three defining features:
1. Proof-texting; 2. Motivated literalism; 3. Theological paradigm of authority and submission.
This is philosophically and theologically illiterate.
Thread:
Either Bathsheba was raped or she committed adultery. There is no gray area. If you say that she wasn’t raped, you are saying that she committed adultery.
It makes no sense to say that she wasn’t raped on the grounds that the text doesn’t explicitly describe a violent rape: that would be tantamount to claiming that she committed adultery, and the text doesn’t say that either.