Fighting for Jesus?

On Resisting the Lust for Violence

I’m working on a piece right now for an outlet (we’ll see if it gets accepted) on people who would be likely to criticize Jesus for being too weak. If that sounds bizarre, it is, but it’s real. I spent a chunk of the morning reviewing comments on the Twittersphere that led me to this conclusion, and ended up reading an article written by an aspiring Christian nationalist in Boulder. It’s conference talk, adapted for print, and so tends toward rambling, but says stuff like this:

“We must recover a martial spirit of victory or death. We must embrace the conflict of a world that wars against the Creator. And to that, we must reject egalitarianism, which flies under the guise of feminism most prominently, and reject the vice of tolerance. We must embrace God’s design for the world. God’s world is built hierarchically. And it is built to flourish where wickedness is not tolerated, and righteousness abounds.

In a world of hierarchy, there will be conflict. There are tribes and factions, some stronger and some weaker. God’s Word maps onto reality and describes how to navigate these waters. However, the utopian egalitarian vision of the world in which everyone is equal in any and every respect also produces conflict. But because it is not reality-based but a fantasy, Christians are often at a loss as to how to navigate the conflict because the Bible assumes hierarchy, not egalitarianism…. We accept the rules of the enemy and wonder why we fail. In the worst cases, the Bible becomes a manipulative cudgel to suppress the actual conflicts we need to have. Now, instead of making war against Satan and his demons, we are called to monger peace, avoid conflict at all costs, play nice, and never offend anyone. What man would be drawn to such a religion?”

He’s not an outlier. Several Christian nationalists who write articles and have relatively large followings on social media promote versions of this conflict-shaped Christianity. “Jesus is King,” they argue, “and we must be prepared to fight for him.”

If this sounds like the religion of extremists, you wouldn’t be wrong. But these guys haven’t joined militias yet. Most of them are pastors or politicians or terminally online (doing who knows what vocationally). They tout the benefit of physical training and health—sometimes in “preparation” for whatever comes next. They snap pictures of their homesteads and post photos of their deadlift sessions with the bros. But they are culture warriors, waging war via words and memes. These angry young men are unlikely to pick up a gun and start shooting any time soon.

Then again, the agitators rarely are the ones on the front line. The nice thing about being an influencer, an author of revolutionary ideas, is that you get to stir up the masses without getting your hands dirty. I’m not terribly concerned that the Christian nationalists who write books and screeds will attempt something directly. I am concerned that in constantly warning their followers to see that “open war is upon us” and employing rhetoric about “ruthlessly punishing” their enemies, their more insecure and less established readership may be radicalized to reckless action.

Christian nationalism is far more than trying to get Jesus back into society. Its current iteration inherently relies on authoritarian leadership structures for its implementation. In an increasingly secularized world, you don’t get a Christian state via democracy. It’s a losing strategy. To realize this vision, you must access and redistribute power via other means.

Well, this turned into a bit of a downer of a post.

So let me try to clarify. I’m not anxious. From where I stand, American democracy is too robust, and the American people too willing to resist anyone infringing on their rights for the world the Christian nationalists imagine to be realized. It’s a project ultimately doomed to fail. I don’t think you should be anxious either.

The church is regularly threatened by corrupting forces from within. And we have a responsibility to oppose those corruptions when they show up in our spheres. Christian nationalism is one of those corruptions. And my hope in writing about it is to give you a bit more information to recognize it when you see it.

Because if we don’t, then these seeds will continue to be planted, and others will bear the fruit of violence and heartbreaking hatred. But that’s not the way of Jesus. And the more we can stand up and say so, the more the church might be strengthened and made whole.