There are times when we are called to move beyond what we have commonly held as a belief about ourselves, a friendship, an institution we have always believed in or even our very lives. They are exciting times, because they are evidence of something new being created and I sincerely believe we, in the Church, are in the midst of a new creation story together.
A friend recently shared a lengthy article by Bill McKibben from The New Yorker called, “A Christian’s Thoughts on Christian Nationalism, and like I told her I had every intention of reading the first and last paragraphs, skimming for whatever caught my eye, and then moving on. But, alas, this article kept me riveted and before I knew it I was all IN.
The question the writer raises is what can be made of the phrase, “Christian Nationalism,” that seems to have caught legitimacy in the eyes of the public square if not even raised or questioned in our own Christian institutions and networks. He takes the reader through a fascinating history of Methodism in the early 20th century when it was the largest domination in the US and its commitment to so called “social justice.” ALL Justice is necessarily social because it is inherently relational.
Mr. McKibben attempts to connect the dots to what came before—from President Theodore Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower to our current reality. He describes a massive shift in which Christianity was understood in their times to today as a salvation for all to a kind of personal and individualized salvation for some.
The bottom line is that the Christianity in Christian Nationalism is not Christian as the early church in Antioch would have known it. Christian which means “Christ-like” and is a reference to Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ or the Anointed One of God. So for me, there is only one question to ask: “Is there any Jesus in it?” Do the actions that follow the words—whatever they are—demonstrate compassion, mercy, justice, love, inclusion? You get the idea.
Quoting the Scripture does not mean living the spiritual essence of the words quoted. And learning to live into the words quoted require a change in consciousness of what we are aware of and understand as Real and True; Ultimate Reality—a Mystery of which we can only partially know in this present moment.
It seems to me that Christianity in America is undergoing its own evolution. Even in its early Methodism days of social justice, there were still substantial numbers of the society left out—most notably people of color and the indigenous of the land. As late as 1964 when Dr. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” as a response to mainline Christian pastors, it was apparent that Christianity was still struggling against being true to its founding and earliest heritage.
Whenever I hear anyone profess to be a Christian Nationalist today, I often wonder how much of Germany, Nazism, the Holocaust, and the Lutheran Church do they know; or if they have ever even heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
Mr. McKibben has hope that we are living in a “teachable moment” for the Christian Church in America. I agree. The learning is assured, when we begin to BE STILL and KNOW….
We are being re-created. All things are being made new. That is my hope. It’s time for Resurrection—even for the Church!
Alleluia! Christ (within you) is RISEN! The LORD is risen indeed, Alleluia!
With Love,
Freda Marie+