It is easy to repeat “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” It is difficult to choose the balance point in a highly manipulated political system. Ritualistic voting comes with periodic and extremist
manipulation.
"There are few evangelical Christians who have gotten as much media coverage or criticism in the last decade as Russell Moore. He previously served as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the policy wing of the Southern Baptist
Convention, and became a prominent evangelical voice opposing a Trump presidency.
...
In your book, you discuss how increasing secularization isn’t going to end the culture wars. In fact, you say it may heighten them. Why do you think that?
I was in a session several years ago in which a researcher had done a survey about religious people’s reactions to immigrants and refugees. And she was stunned to find that the more active evangelistic work a church did, the more welcoming they were to
refugees in their communities. I was not surprised at all, because evangelism presupposes the possibility of conversation and persuasion. And not the coercion of raw power.
When churches have given up on evangelism, this means they’ve given up on actually engaging with and loving their neighbors. That’s bad news for everybody. You end up in a situation where these warring groups in American life are seeking some kind of
total victory, where somebody is the final, ultimate winner and somebody is the final, ultimate loser. That ratchets up the stakes of culture wars dramatically.
Your book delves into Christian nationalism as a component of the evangelical movement. How would you define Christian nationalism? And how has it affected evangelicalism in the United States?
Christian nationalism is the use of Christian symbols or teachings in order to prop up a nation-state or an ethnic identity. It’s dangerous for the nation because it’s fundamentally anti-democratic. Christian nationalism takes a political claim and
seeks to make it ultimate. It says: If a person disagrees with me, that person is disagreeing with God. No democratic nation can survive that, which is why the founders of this country built in all kinds of protections from it.
Christian nationalism is also dangerous for the witness of the church, because Christian nationalism is fundamentally, at its core, anti-evangelical. If what the Gospel means is for people to come before God, person by person, not nation by nation or
village by village or tribe by tribe, then Christian nationalism is heretical.
Christian nationalism assumes outward conformity enforced by social or political power. It transforms the way that we see reality with the assumption that the really important things are political and cultural, as opposed to personal and spiritual and
theological.
It’s been hard for me to evaluate how widespread this is. Anecdotally, I know a lot of Christians, including a lot of evangelicals, and they would not be considered Christian nationalists. So I often wonder: Is this fringe?
It is affecting almost every sector of American Christianity in varying ways. It’s similar to the Prosperity Gospel of the last generation. Most American Christians wouldn’t identify themselves as Prosperity Gospel adherents. Yet many of them were
adopting key pieces of that understanding of the world.
Studies have shown the way that Christian language is being used in Europe and in other places to prop up populist authoritarian movements. You can see this in the way that survey data show how white evangelicals in America are becoming much friendlier
to outright authoritarianism — as seen in the Jan. 6 insurrection. I don’t think that it is merely fringe at all.
We can’t talk about the rise of Christian nationalism without bringing up Donald Trump. You said that he was morally unfit to be president and received intense backlash — even from Trump himself. Were you surprised by the severe criticism from
certain Christians for your denunciation of Trump?
It didn’t surprise me that there would be overwhelming buy-in once Trump became the Republican nominee. One of the things I was worried about is that people would say: I’m not supporting him, I’m just voting for him because I think the alternative
is worse. I feared, at the time, that the way that American politics works right now is inherently totalizing, so there would not be people after Trump was elected who would, for instance, support him on some judicial appointments and oppose him on a
Muslim ban or whatever the issue is. And I think that has proved to be the case. Trump has transformed evangelicalism far more than evangelism has influenced Trump.
I was surprised by the aftermath of the “Access Hollywood” tape. When the “Access Hollywood” tape was released, I was saying to people around me: “Don’t say ‘I told you so.’ We need to have empathy for Trump-supporting evangelicals who
are really hurting at this revelation.” But what ended up happening is that white evangelicals made peace with “Access Hollywood,” if anything, quicker than the rest of America did.
I received a castigating email from a sweet Christian lady who had taught me Sunday school when I was a kid. And none of it argued: “You’re wrong about Trump’s moral character.” The argument was: “Get real. This is what we have to have in order
to fight the enemy.” That was surprising to me. And disorienting.
In your book, you tell a story about how an evangelical person said to their pastor: “We’ve tried to turn the other cheek. It doesn’t work. We have to fight now.” Why do certain evangelicals feel so embattled now?
Some of it is a response to legitimate fears. There are many people in American life who assume that religion itself is oppressive and should be done away with. And there is a general sense of crisis and decline in American life, and it’s translated
into religious terms. In many cases, I would not disagree with the diagnosis about some of the things that are wrong. What I would disagree with is the sense of futility and giving up on what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy.
I would also point to the decline in personal evangelism. When you have people who are trained to share the Gospel with their neighbors, they have an understanding from the very beginning that people in my community aren’t my enemies, they’re my
mission field. This changes the way that you see people.
When that starts to diminish, there’s a lack of confidence and a frantic looking about for whatever tool is at hand. Ideological zealotry becomes the tool at hand.
I mentioned in the book about how many pastors talk about referencing Jesus’ call to “turn the other cheek,” only to have blowback from people in their congregation because they say that that doesn’t work in times like these. The assumption is
that we’re in a hostile culture as opposed to a neutral culture — as though the Sermon on the Mount is delivered in Mayberry, not ancient Rome. And the assumption also shows a lack of confidence in the means that God has given us to advance the
church through proclamation and demonstration."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/30/opinion/state-of-evangelical-america.html
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