In this episode Rev. Deborah Duguid-May and Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe define Christian Nationalism. They discuss how religion has played into America’s history, both as a legal framework and a narrative. Rev. Deborah compares that to South Africa and notes how different the impact of patriotism and religion is in other parts of the world. The consider the impact of Christian Nationalism in America today.
Transcript
Transcription provided by automated service.
DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy and action.
MET [00:40] So here’s a fun tidbit. I know the words to every American military war hymn except for Space Force. But I do not come from a military family. How, you might ask, do I know the words to all the war hymns if I don’t come from a military background? Because we sang them in church every 4th of July. I know I say this and people often get kind of this horrified look on their face, but I was 100% raised in an environment where militarism, patriotism, and religion were all rolled up into 1 big ball. And it wasn’t really until I was much older that it occurred to me that this was weird or problematic, right?
MET [01:26] You know, whole Prince of Peace or so loved the world stuff. It was just kind of a matter of you love Jesus, you love America, so you love Jesus and America together. And all the churches I went to as a kid went all out for Fourth of July and sometimes even Memorial Day, never Labor Day. I mean, honestly, can you imagine? Sometimes even Flag Day, whatever excuse they could to bring out the red, white, and blue. Looking back, I don’t know that I would say I was raised as a Christian nationalist. I don’t think I would have gone that far, but I was certainly adjacent.
DDM [02:04] Yeah, sounds like it. It’s an incredibly different background from my own because there really is not that same sense of patriotism where I grew up in South Africa And I wonder if that is because we are not a military culture in South Africa, you know So we may be proud of our culture our sports teams But that national patriotism as you find it here in the USA It’s simply not there and and I think that’s healthy certainly from a faith perspective we don’t struggle with that very toxic fusion of the military, patriotism and faith. It’s just simply not there.
DDM [02:45] Although what is interesting is that under apartheid there certainly was the co-opting of the Christian faith to support the apartheid regime and policies. But the broader church certainly termed that heresy and deeply sinful and problematic. So it’s certainly the post-apartheid church, I don’t think struggles with this particular issue at all. For instance, we would not even think of flying a national flag in the church. Yeah, because the church is global. It belongs to all nations and all nationalities are welcome and belong equally. But I also think in South Africa, living in a pluralistic faith nation, certainly that helps.
MET [03:30] Yeah, I would agree with that. That’s probably a pretty astute observation. I do want to talk about what Christian nationalism is. Let’s get, you know, define your terms like all professors, you know.
DDM [03:45] But I think it’s helpful so we know what we’re speaking about.
MET [03:47] Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. You hear the term thrown around a lot these days. It’s really popular in political discourse and people like to bandy about as kind of a devil term, and I can define devil term if you need me to, but it’s probably self-explanatory. People label that as somebody who is in the wrong on the political spectrum a lot. However, on the other hand, some people wear it like a banner. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Boebert and some of that ilk have proudly adopted the title of Christian Nationalist. So I want to talk about what that means.
MET [04:26] Christian Nationalism really is the merging of state and religion. It is when you subsume your national identity to your religious 1 So when you can’t keep your state and religion apart what you end up with is theocracy a Christian nationalist believes not just that it is good to be patriotic, or that America is a blessed nation, but that God should be at the heart of America’s laws at the expense of all other things. So all other religions, all other ideologies, right, they are below these things.
DDM [05:05] Classic idolatry, right?
MET [05:06] Right, right, right. Christian nationalism is exclusive and restrictive, but I also want to point out it is very specific. Christian nationalism is not just Christian, it is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And not just any Protestant, right? It is evangelical. That’s not to say you won’t find any Catholic or Black Christian nationalists, but the innervating ideology at the heart of Christian nationalism is very white, and by that I mean it is racist. It is a very specific brand of Christianity, and it demands adherence to a particular kind of dogma. So, you’re not gonna find too many progressive or gay-friendly Christian nationalists or paintings of black Jesus in Christian nationalist churches, right?
MET [05:51] Christian nationalism is a particular brand of faith that elevates a restrictive brand of Christianity, and it basically boils down to – I’m going to use the word hegemony, and I know that’s a big academic word that we don’t like to throw around, but I mean, it’s kind of 1 of those things that you say it and it’s kind of just a really basic observation that just means that there are structures in place that oppress people, right? It’s not a complicated idea, it just means some people have it harder than others. And it’s really important to understand that because it’s hegemonic, it’s patriarchal, and it’s all about power, not Christ.
MET [06:30] That’s what the heart is of that movement. And there are militaristic aspects of nationalism. Christian nationalists are not interested in Jesus as the Prince of Peace, they’re interested in expansion of the state. It’s authoritative, it’s hierarchical in that way. It doesn’t, so Christian nationalism purports to spread democracy, but there’s nothing democratic about it, I mean it’s fascist at its worst.
DDM [06:57] It’s interesting Elizabeth, because it’s almost like there’s nothing Christian about this and there’s nothing democratic about it. Like, what are we doing here? Right, right. It’s a very unique form of ideology that’s emerged in the USA.
MET [07:09] And I think when you say idolatrous, like that is the word, right? It takes a fundamentalist approach to religion and scripture, and they want to apply that to government. And it’s directly oppositional to the tenets of a liberal republic. And I don’t mean liberal in terms of progressive, I mean liberal in terms of a liberal democracy, which is what we’re supposed to have. And some people want to make this a conversation about the separation of church and state, but that’s not it. That’s a part of it. But theocracy is bad and we don’t want that.
MET [07:41] It’s much bigger than that. It’s a culture of militarism, whiteness, patriarchy, and politics.
DDM [07:46] You know, Elizabeth, may I interject? Yeah, absolutely. I remember the first time I befriended somebody in my community who lives where we do and I got on their Facebook page and the front picture was of this woman half clad on a motorbike and it was emblazoned on the top, God, guns and glory. And I was like, God and guns and glory? Like I was trying to integrate those 3 words together and then this half-naked woman on a motorbike. You know? I mean, it’s a form of, I don’t even want to say Christianity, but that has developed that is not found almost anywhere else in the world.
MET [08:23] Yeah. Oh, yeah, we’re doing our own thing.
DDM [08:25] It’s unbelievable. Yeah, carry on. Sorry.
MET [08:28] No, I was headed in that direction, right? I mean, Christian nationalism is about spreading the faith, it’s about spreading the empire. And you may recall that when Jesus was tempted with empire, his response was, get away from me, Satan.
DDM [08:42] Right, right, right.
MET [08:42] So it’s really important to clarify all this because Christian nationalists are not just people who want to put prayer back in schools – and I have all sorts of issues with that
MET [08:51] or find our moral center again. They’re anti-democratic, authoritarian, racist, militaristic, and it is polarizing, right? These forces are intent on drastically changing up our nation’s laws. This is not about wholesome churchgoers who want to see our nation become more charitable and more Christian. This is dangerous. And these are people who are willing to be violent to get what they want. And you may say, oh, that’s an exaggeration. But we literally saw a coup attempt on January 6th. Yeah. These are not people who are kidding around.
DDM [09:30] Right, right. So let me interact a little bit with what you’ve shared.
MET [09:33] Absolutely, I want to hear it.
DDM [09:34] So you know you spoke firstly of how Christian nationalism is when your national identity overtakes your religious faith-based identity. I think this is a huge problem for the Christian Church because our identity as Christians first and foremost needs to be through our baptisms. You know firstly before anything else we are always baptized children of God, beloved and belonging to the body of Christ. And so no identity is ever to come before this. And so even Paul, for whom we may have many issues, even Paul says there is no longer male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free.
DDM [10:20] I’m sure he would add white or black, right? All of those divisions within Christianity and the gospel are done away with. And we are literally brought into a new community. And that community is first and foremost, the family of God. So within our Christian faith, that has to be our primary identity. So when we start to bring in these other divisions of American versus Mexican, or American versus Russian, What we’re doing is we’re placing our national belonging over, as you said, our faith belonging. And that is clearly within Christian thought, both a heresy, but also a sin.
DDM [11:04] So at its absolute heart, Christian nationalism really is a contradiction in terms, because Christianity is about creating a new community of many nations, many cultures, many races, and genders that are all bound through baptism into a new faith family. Secondly, the notion that America is more blessed or chosen than other nations, I think that’s simply nonsense, right? Because if you go back to Scriptures, there is absolutely no mention of the USA.
MET [11:39] What? You mean Jesus wasn’t a white American? I’m shocked by this information.
DDM [11:43] America doesn’t feature, right? We are all part of the Gentile world that in Scripture is literally grafted into the body of Christ. And the Scriptures show that God is more interested in how you live and follow Christ, in loving God and loving your neighbor and yourself, than in what nationality or race you belong to. And so blessing in Christian scripture is because of righteousness, living in right relationship with God, ourselves, the earth, and 1 another, rather than what cultural group you belong to. And it’s interesting that we talk about national blessing because in the New Testament that is precisely what the Jewish community are struggling with because there was this ideology that they are more blessed, that they are chosen simply because they are Jewish.
DDM [12:36] And Jesus says, I could raise up ancestors from these stones. There is no merit in your culture, race or gender, according to Scripture, but there is in our character, in how we live our lives, and also in the relationships we build. And so I think, you know, you really hit the nail on the head when you said Christian nationalism has so often been about white masculine power and that co-opting of the Christian faith for power and military strategies. There is such a violence embedded at the heart of Christian nationalism that honestly we can only call it out as a heresy and deeply sinful.
DDM [13:19] But I think in the USA we have a terrible problem on our hands because Christian nationalism is really becoming the face of Christianity. And it could not be further from the truth, but for many people in the USA, this is what Christianity is. And for many of us who take our faith very seriously, I think we’re just simply not speaking out and teaching enough about the heresy that this is, and how it completely undermines the gospel of Jesus. So we really have a contemporary problem on our hands, a battle you might say for the soul of Christianity in the church.
MET [14:00] I think that’s a really good observation. And I also think it is important to understand that Christian nationalism is becoming not just a prominent movement, but a lot of people associate Christians with that idea. So when discussing Christian nationalism and really any kind of understanding of America’s relationship to God, which is kind of what you’re talking about, or church-state issues, I think we have to look back a little bit. Okay, so the first European, of course, I’m gonna give you a history lesson, like what else am I gonna do? The first European Americans were religious settlers, and we have like these whole narratives about them, right?
MET [14:47] But the question is, were they looking for religious freedom or something else? The truth is, the pilgrims who came to the New World weren’t looking for religious freedom as we think of it. They were looking to start theistic colonies. What they started here were pretty much the opposite of religiously free societies. The colonies they started were strictly ruled by religious law and dogma and were not accepting of outside religions. So while they were searching for religious freedom for themselves, when they got here, they established colonies that had no religious liberty. Now, there were some places that eventually expanded into more welcoming places, but when we got here, that was not the goal.
MET [15:29] So when we say the first settlers here were looking for religious freedom, we have to be careful because that is in some ways a misnomer. And the religion was nothing like any religion practice in America today. I love how evangelicals are like, we need to get back to the religion of the founding fathers. I’m like, okay, so do we all need to become Episcopalians? Because that is 100% what the founding fathers would have been. But at that point, Easter and Christmas were outlawed as pagan festivities, for example. The church was the organizing factor for everything, social, commercial, political, familial.
MET [16:08] So we can’t really use the American Christians, the first America Christians, as examples or guides, because their goals and ideas were so radically different from ours.
DDM [16:18] And it’s interesting you say that because I actually think we’re seeing some real resurgence of this in conservative Christian circles.
MET [16:25] I think that’s an interesting conversation.
DDM [16:27] The resurgence of Easterist paganism, Christianist paganism, This Christianity needs to guide all our familial, cultural, political systems. It really seems to be resurging.
MET [16:39] Yeah, I think we could do a whole thing on that right there. But in short, they didn’t want religious freedom so much as they wanted theocracy. It’s why we get such radically different ideas from the founding fathers as we get from the founding colonies, actually. In Congress on July 4th, 1776, we got a very different take on religion and public. The unanimous declaration of the 13 colonies of the United States of America was, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for 1 people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
MET [17:34] Okay, what a lot of people don’t realize, especially people who claim that America is a Christian nation, is that God is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. Not once. Now, I just read from the Declaration. He’s mentioned in the Declaration, right? Nature’s God. But the founding fathers wrote purely secular laws. Our Constitution is founded actually in the idea of what’s called natural rights. Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, so they are universal, fundamental, and inalienable. So the idea of human rights derives from theories of natural rights.
MET [18:20] This is all complicated, but you need to understand where we’re coming from. So people rejecting a distinction between human rights and natural rights view human rights as the successor that is not dependent on natural theology or Christian theological doctrine. This is where the Founding Fathers come from. So, there’s a reason for the secular grounding too. The thing is, Americans were specifically rejecting the divine right of kings.
DDM [18:47] Ah, the monarchy.
MET [18:48] Yes. The divine right of kings was the idea that a person was king because he was ordained by God. If a person was ordained by God, then they couldn’t be challenged because then you would be challenging God’s will and thereby challenging God himself. You couldn’t get to be king unless God wanted you to be and then you couldn’t be questioned because you were chosen by God. The founding fathers flatly rejected this. They were specifically trying to get away from this thinking when they broke from England. So the Constitution is a particularly secular document. America’s beginning is literally a challenge to the king.
MET [19:27] Anything that smacked the divine rights obviously had no place in our laws. So America then is very much an enlightenment experiment. It is the result of new and developing ideas that were breaking away from theology and the church and striving to establish ways of thinking outside of religion. So the goal was to ground authority not in God, but something else. Now 1 piece of this puzzle that a lot of people don’t know is actually something called the Treaty of Tripoli. We don’t think of treaties as being particularly founding documents, but it tells us a lot.
MET [20:00] It was signed in 1796. It was the first treaty between the United States and Tripoli, which is now Libya, and it secured commercial shipping rights and protected American ships in the Mediterranean Sea from local Barbary pirates. This document does not sound interesting in any way, right?
DDM [20:19] And if you’re African, I’m getting a little interested.
MET [20:24] It was ratified by the United States unanimously without debate on June 7th, 1797, and it took effect on June 10th with the signature of President John Adams. What is particular interest in this obscure bit of policy is Article 11 of this treaty. It reads, As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Musselman [sic], and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan [sic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between 2 countries.
MET [21:19] Obviously, this is outdated language.
DDM [21:21] How that has changed in contemporary history.
MET [21:24] Right. So we proclaim we’re not a Christian nation, and we will never fight with Muslims. So, we have come far.
MET [21:35] Right? That’s part of our founding documents history. So the US made it pretty clear in foreign relations that this is where we stood. There were domestic laws that seemed to imply God was more important, but the outward-facing part of the nation was claiming to be entirely secular. And then you combine that with Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. Now, Jefferson was the guy who said that our rights come from our Creator, which a lot of people use as evidence that America is a Christian nation. But we forget the Declaration is not a legal document.
MET [22:15] It’s a manifesto at best, but really more of an angry breakup letter. It’s not the law. Jefferson also wrote convincingly that religion and law should be entirely different matters. I’ve got these quotes from the Danbury letter, but I’m not going to read it to you. But he’s the 1 who first used the idea of the wall of separation between church and state. In this letter to the Baptists, he was like, we’ve got to have a wall of separation. This is literally where we get that idea of separation of church and state, at least those words, right?
MET [22:47] The separation of church and state is in that First Amendment, but these are the words we get from Jefferson. So we set up the framework for us to think about how we should think about religion and government.
DDM [22:58] Sorry to interrupt.
MET [22:59] Yeah, go for it.
DDM [23:00] You know, it’s so interesting that phrase wall of separation. You know, When I’m thinking about how they were creating this literal wall of separation between faith and the secular state, and yet now how those have in some ways almost collapsed. But now we have physical walls of separation but being built between ourselves and for instance, the Southern border. Right. I mean, sorry, my mind was just going off at a little tangent there.
MET [23:29] I think these are all applicable ideas. And it has to be emphasized that almost none of this history and fact stuff matters in the least when you compare it to the national narrative, because that is what people tend to rely on more than anything else. Absolutely. So here’s a story. There was this group of people, and they were thrown out of their homeland and forced to travel the world over because everywhere they went they were religiously persecuted until finally they came to a place that was rich in natural resources and they knew it was meant for them because God had blessed it and them.
MET [24:13] So God told them to conquer the people that were living there and cultivate the land and start a new place for his people to live and thrive. Okay, who am I talking about?
DDM [24:22] Well, can I tell you, I have to be honest, I immediately think of 3? I think of the USA. Yeah. I think of Israel, the so called nation. And I think of South Africa. You know, the axis of those 3 countries.
MET [24:35] You’re exactly right, because you could be talking about any of those people, because that is the narrative.
DDM [24:41] Founding narratives, absolutely.
MET [24:44] Yeah, so like and for Israel and the United States, these are important narratives because they mean we are blessed and chosen.
DDM [24:53] Which was also why under apartheid, Elizabeth, America and Israel were so hugely supportive of the apartheid government. Yeah.
MET [25:03] Yeah, so these are important narratives because we have from the beginning said, we are the new Israel. Right. And that narrative is so much more important than that secular constitution. I’ll give you an example. In 1763, going back again, this guy named Samuel Haven preached a sermon called Joy and Salvation by Christ, his arm displayed in the Protestant cause. And it’s basically about how Americans are blessed like the new Israel, and that’s why they are called to violently blot out the natives. That’s the Protestant cause in question. In case you need some textual evidence for any of this, you can legit Google this sermon.
MET [25:47] It is famous. And I say this as somebody who grew up around Protestants and was surrounded by this narrative. It is violent and it is exclusive.
DDM [25:57] And you know, it doesn’t then surprise us that America then foundational in this chosen mythology has genocide at its founding. Or Israel has genocide of the Palestinians at its founding. Or in South Africa and Africa, there is so many narratives of genocide of peoples. So I mean, it’s interesting how genocide is so woven into almost the bedrock of these forms of narrative.
MET [26:24] Yeah, and we’ve been telling this story for generations, right? I remember it was part of Reagan’s campaign. We’re supposed to be a shining city on a hill. We heard in every political speech. And I could go through the wild and complicated legal history, but honestly, I think I’ve done enough to emphasize, right, this is part of who we are.
DDM [26:44] It’s incredible. It’s incredible.
MET [26:45] I know, right?
DDM [26:46] Yeah, you know, and I think unless, particularly as Americans, we can begin to unpack the absolute danger of these ideas. I mean, I know as a parish priest, I sometimes have people asking me, can we sing these nationalistic hymns on a particular day and Sunday in church. And consistently, I’ve just had to say no, no, because of everything that it signifies. But again, the question is, is are we unpacking this enough for our people for them to actually understand how dangerous this form of ideology is, because it’s not Christianity. I mean, to have these narratives that just breed genocide and human rights abuses, you know, We really can’t hold those in line with Jesus, right?
MET [27:35] So I want to give you an example that is not terrifying, like this is not genocide, because we could talk about things that aren’t genocide. But an example of something that is indicative of how we relate to God in America. So in 1954, under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. People younger than my parents are very often shocked to find out it was not originally in there. But the truth is the Pledge of Allegiance was written in the 1860s by a socialist Baptist minister.
DDM [28:11] Oh my God. Interesting.
MET [28:12] Yeah. And was way more about the unity of the nation and was probably a response to the Civil War more than anything else. The undivided part was the focus. The under God stuff didn’t get slipped in until decades later, and it wasn’t put in why you think it was. The arguments for adding under God to the pledge had nothing to do with being a Christian nation and everything to do with our enemies being communists. Communists, lawmakers reasoned, were atheists. And there was this panic that we were not doing enough to separate ourselves from our enemies.
MET [28:46] So 1 response was to add under God to the pledge, because if we were a nation under God, then we couldn’t be godless communists. And I am absolutely not kidding. I have read the congressional records. The whole reason under God was put into the pledge was so that it was clear we were separating ourselves from the Russians as far as possible. There was a guy who tried to rewrite the pledge to be specifically Christian and bring Jesus into it because he wanted to acknowledge that we are a Christian nation. This is also in 1954. But it was such a deeply unpopular move that it literally never made it out of committee.
DDM [29:22] Yeah, I’m not surprised.
MET [29:23] Yeah, so consider all of this together. America was designed to be a secular nation, but we talk about ourselves in a very different fashion. And how we talk about ourselves is often much more important than what is factual. It’s hard to have an honest conversation about God in America. And as for Jesus, you can just forget about it. And the narrative that has sustained us is rooted in exclusion and violence, as we’ve gone over in many ways. So bring us to the current day. The narrative has morphed into 1 of political authoritarianism and militarism. So in short, Christian nationalism has nothing to do with the Christ of the Bible and everything to do with a hackneyed story of empire.
DDM [30:05] Absolutely. And I think as Christians, we need to be very careful about that pledge of allegiance. Because once again, the primacy of our Christian identity as people who are Christian and hold this to be our faith, we are called to pledge allegiance to God alone, right? To Christ alone. So the idea of pledging allegiance to a flag or a nation state, That’s actually just an abomination.
MET [30:31] That’s a very international approach to it because like in America, we all grew up saying the pledge every day in school. Every morning.
DDM [30:40] But did you know not everybody did because your peace churches, so I’ve heard this from my wife who comes from the peace churches, in the Shenandoah Valley in the middle of Virginia, those who grew up in the Mennonite churches and all of your historic peace churches never stood up and said the Pledge of Allegiance.
MET [30:56] In public school you do it every day.
DDM [30:58] Yeah, and they would sit. They would sit or walk out of the classroom because they were taught and they believed that their faith did not allow them to pledge allegiance to anything except God alone. And so I actually think it’s something that as Christians in this country, we need to start seriously thinking about. To what do we pledge allegiance? Where is our ultimate allegiance, you know, to? And certainly how can we pledge allegiance to a flag?
MET [31:32] That’s rough stuff.
DDM [31:33] Mm-hmm. I think honestly, you know, I think for Americans this may sound pretty radical, but if you were a Christian in any other part of the world, it’s really a no-brainer. Pledging allegiance to any state, any political ideology, any flag, any sense of nationhood. It’s a very, very dangerous, very dangerous slope for us to go down as Christians. So I do think It’s something that Christians within America definitely need to start grappling a lot more with. And perhaps we need to be a little bit more reluctant about standing up and saying that pledge.
MET [32:11] Wow. Okay, I’m going to ask you to do something because I’ve been talking a lot. I would love for you to tell me about sort of your first impression and thoughts about Christianity in America. Like, where do you see it going? What do you think? How do we respond to all of this
DDM [32:35] in relation specifically to Christian nationalism? I think for your average Christian the boundaries have Not only become so blurred if you think about the ocean line, where the ocean is coming up onto the shore, the ocean has come so far up onto the shore now, where most people, they’re just seeing the water, which is Christian nationalism. They’re not able to actually, I think, see Christianity clearly anymore because it has been literally overtaken. And you know, for many Christians, this is not, you know, even necessarily some right-wing ideology. It is so crept into the mainstream narratives of Christians that I think in America it is very hard to disentangle the 2 anymore because they’ve become so woven together.
DDM [33:31] We’d almost have to, if you think of a cloth that’s been woven, you’d actually have to go back and start unpicking it and let it unravel. And I wonder if in some ways maybe that’s why the gospel calls us to love our enemies. Because who are our current enemies? And often those that we term our enemies ironically hold the missing pieces for us. And I think in some ways, if we’re wanting to dismantle Christian nationalism, it may end up happening as we begin to start listening to voices and dialoguing with people who have traditionally been called our enemies.
MET [34:18] Now, we have to be honest. This episode is carefully timed. We’ve had an idea to do an episode on this topic for weeks, but this seemed like the ideal and important time to address this particular topic? And the reason I say that is because in the last week or so, we have seen Christian nationalism go to war with the Episcopal Church. We’re going to devote a set of time to the National Prayer Service and the Sin of Empathy narrative in the future, but right now a few things need to be said. Christian nationalism is the opposite of the teachings of Christ.
MET [35:00] It eschews love, mercy, grace, and peace. It is a philosophy of bigotry, judgment, hate, and militarism. So when a bishop of the Episcopalian Church asked American leaders who were highly invested in Christian nationalism, or at least had ridden that wave into office, you saw a clash of philosophies. The Episcopalian Church endeavors, though it does not always succeed, to stay true to the word of Jesus. Christian nationalism is an abomination of it. So when Christian nationalists were faced with Christianity in a church, no less, The Nationalists became hostile. That is not Christ-like. That is not what the faith asks of us.
MET [35:54] That is not biblical. So look around you and ask questions of your faith and your church. If your church is ready to go to war over a call for mercy, you need to think about your church. So we will leave you with these questions. Does your faith challenge you to work for mercy or judgment? Do you believe God calls you to love or to ostracize? How do you recognize Christ’s message in the midst of false teachings? And how can you work to combat the harmful narrative that Christ came to condemn the world, not to save it?
MET [36:42] Thank you for listening to The Priest and the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast at priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org slash donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [37:11] Music by Audionautix.com
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