Thread by @howertonjosh

🧵UNPOPULAR TAKE ON CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM🧵

Increasingly, any Christian politician or voter advancing their values is decried as “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM!”

Reality in thread to follow:

Gentle watch-out:

The vast majority of the time “Christian Nationalism” is a scare-label whose subtext is, “You can’t advocate for your values in the public square, but I can advocate for mine.”

Let me show you…

THEM: “You can’t force your beliefs on people who don’t share them!”

ALSO THEM:

THEM: “You can’t mix politics and religion!”

ALSO THEM:

SECULARISTS: “Evangelical Christians are sooo politicized.”

DATA: Secularists (atheists and agnostics) are the most politically partisan + politically active group in the US, far more than “evangelicals”

“BUT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!”

Secularism twisted “separation of church & state” to mean opposite of its intent. Separation of Church & State does not mean…

Separation of God & state
Separation of morality & state
Separation of politics & religion

How do I know that?

FAST FACTS:

- The US Supreme Court said in an 1892 ruling, “This is a religious people… This is a Christian nation.”

- 6 of 13 original colonies required every public official to be a Christian and swear allegiance to Christian doctrines

FAST FACTS v2

- When the Constitution was adopted, 8 of 13 states had an official Christian denomination

- Of the remaining 5 colonies, 4 established Christianity as the official state religion

FAST FACTS v3

- 50 of the 55 men at the Constitutional Convention were orthodox Christians

- In their political literature, the Apostle Paul was quoted as often as Montesquieu and Blackstone

- Deuteronomy was quoted twice as much as John Locke

Separation of Church & State means a separation of governments: that the leadership of the church and the leadership of the state shouldn’t be same

& its intent was to keep the STATE from interfering w the CHURCH (like, for example, trying to shut churches down for 18 months😉)

“Yeah, but you’re trying to impose your beliefs on people who don’t share them!”

Yes. And so are you.

EXAMPLE:
You say when I oppose abortion, my morality is imposed on the woman. But when you support abortion, your (this should be italicized) morality is imposed on the baby...

The question isn’t whether morality gets legislated.
The question is “Whose morality gets legislated?”

EVERYONE in a democracy is advocating for beliefs they think are best for society that some don’t share.

"THE CHURCH IS GETTING MORE POLITICAL!”

No, politics is getting more theological

When u move past building roads & issuing driver’s licenses to redefining marriage, erasing gender, cheering abortion as “reproductive rights”, & indoctrinating kids – we didn’t move

Politics did.

FINAL THOUGHT:

Christians must NOT embrace a "political idolatry" because Jesus is Lord (not Ceasar).

But Christians must also reject being gaslit into public-square-passivity that refuses to be salt and light in cultural decay.

And a play is getting run on you...

REALITY: a "marriage to the Right" (which I reject) is simply not in the universe of the NET problem we're facing, & that feeling may be to map a 1989 reality onto a 2023 world

In addition to the majority of the under-35's in ur church being discipled by secular progressivism...

The state is blue

The money is blue

Academia is blue

Journalism is blue

The data (and the pastoral reality for anyone pastoring people under the age of ~40) simply shows that a disproportionate focus on a marriage to Republicanism (which Christians should *not* do) may be to bring a fire extinguisher to a flood.

ADDENDUM: Public Christian figures will have to be "as wise as serpents"

Bc out of a desire to be seen as "reasonable" & "fair-minded", they'll willingly be used by hostile secular ppl who created the scare-label to condemn it & feed narrative Xian political engagement is evil