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A About a year ago, my friend David French and I were speaking to a group of young members of Congress on Capitol Hill when a young man, a Republican and an evangelical Christian, asked us why we were critical of what’s happening on the right now.
“With all the hostility toward Christians from secularism and progressive ideology,” he asked, “why not hit the left instead of the right?” »
Very often you’ll hear this kind of complaint from so-called evangelical Christians, often in response to a conversation-generating book, like Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s. Jesus and John Wayne or Tim Alberta’s new work The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. These objections are often framed in terms of maintaining “the unity of the Church,” typically portraying evangelicals who oppose Christian nationalism or white identity politics as traitors, with an unspoken subtext: “The First rule of the Born-Again Club is that we don’t talk about the Born-Again Club.
Sometimes this criticism will extend to the series of scandals emerging from American evangelical Christianity, sometimes with the argument that evangelicals “attacking our own side” on such issues will only make unbelievers hate us more and Christians to trust their leaders less. .
This argument is akin to the “No Enemies on the Left” policy of some sectors of mid-century American progressivism toward the Soviet Union and communist totalitarianism. One might whisper that Joseph Stalin is horrible, but saying so publicly would only make a case for authoritarian anti-communists. One might acknowledge that figures like Alger Hiss appear to be KGB assets, but one could never tell. After all, with McCarthyism at a fever pitch and riddled with false accusations about communist infiltrators, why acknowledge that there might be any?
The strategy makes sense in Darwinian terms if a group – whether a union, a political party or a church – is a tribal unit that has evolved to gather around the fire, whatever he arrives, for fear of sabre-toothed tigers. in the dark. And yet, even if we accepted this postulate, the strategy does not hold water. This is particularly true in the context of an avowed commitment to Christian orthodoxy.
First of all, the talking points are self-refuting. If Christians who criticize other Christians – especially in front of unbelievers – are wrongly attacking the unity of the Church and should instead be talking primarily about “all the good things we do”, then why is it not wrong for Christians to criticize Christians who to criticize Christians? At the basis of this argument is the very type of deconstructionist moral relativism that we have been taught to reject.
But more importantly, the “just punch to the left” argument is, at best, a revelation of a misunderstanding of the text of the Bible itself and, at worst, a disavowal of the authority of the Bible. Moreover, such an argument reveals an agreement with the enemies of the Christian Church: the Church is just another partisan tribe.
Which is worse in Scripture: the pagan idols of the nations around Israel or the golden calves that Jeroboam placed in Bethel and Dan? Throughout Scripture, God denounces and ridicules the false gods of the nations, but almost always to warn His own people not to do the same.
Jeroboam’s golden calves, like Aaron’s golden calf before him, are not only false; they are also blasphemous. Jeroboam, the king of Israel, used God’s name to carry out a political agenda – preventing people from going to Judah to worship there – as if he was speaking with the authority of God (1 Kings 12: 25-33). The Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures denounces this in the harshest terms: “And this was sin unto the house of Jeroboam, so that it was cut off and destroyed from the face of the earth” (1 Kings 13: 34, ESV).
Jeroboam’s action is perfectly rational in purely political terms. After all, every nation in the world was united around its gods, around its worship. This is why treaties, alliances, and intermarriage almost always included the importation of someone else’s gods.
This is all bad enough, but it was much worse because God really exists, because he really spoke. Jeroboam was not just sinning personally, nor was he merely leading a community into sin. He led God’s covenant people to idolatry telling them it was worship of God.
This is why the apostle Paul wrote that the hypocrisies of his own people were even worse than the lowest rebellion of the pagans. Of those who are to teach the nations as “a light to those in darkness,” who then commit the very sins they denounce, Paul wrote: “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom. 2:19, 24).
Theologically, Jesus had much more in common with the scribes and Pharisees than with the tax collectors or even the Sadducees. His harshest denunciations, however, were directed at the Pharisees. For what? It is precisely because these religious leaders “sit in the place of Moses” (Matt. 23:2). As Jesus’ brother later wrote, those who claim the educational authority of the Church “will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).
In the grand scheme of world politics, what matters more: an entire empire given over to sexual and cultural immorality and the worship of an entire pantheon of false gods – or a small gathering of Christians in an ignorant port city the misbehavior of its own members. ? The apostle Paul wrote that this was the last solution.
In fact, he wrote that he was not telling people to dissociate themselves from unbelievers, even the most fornicating, fraudulent, and idolatrous ones. “For what have I to do with judging strangers? Is it not those who are within the Church that you must judge? God judges those who are outside” (1 Cor. 5:12-13, ESV).
With all the persecution the Church faces, why didn’t Paul just “smite the Gentiles”? It’s not because he takes the church less more seriously than he did the world but because he took it more seriously. The Church is, Jesus tells him, the body of Christ himself.
When a generation is more enamored with voter values summits than vacation Bible schools, the arguments of the prophets who denounced “the enemy” and reassured God’s people seem plausible.
Telling Israel, “Behold, the vessels of the house of the Lord will soon be brought back from Babylon” (Jer. 27:16, ESV) may look like building unity among the people. After all, isn’t that how we maintain confidence: by focusing on the “good things” and telling ourselves that everything is about to get better? Jeremiah, however, said that was a lie. And when he did, they said he was betraying his own people – that he was siding with the Babylonians (vv. 16-22).
Hananiah would have seemed a more faithful “evangelical” than Jeremiah. He smote Nebuchadnezzar and comforted those on “our side.” And God said through Jeremiah, “Listen, Hananiah! The LORD has not sent you, and yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies” (Jer. 28:15). In fact, Jeremiah says, Hananiah’s “unity” was “a rebellion against the Lord” (v. 16).
Even on an infinitely less serious level than politics, for those of us who actually care about conservatism, the equation of “conservatism” with authoritarian demagoguery or sexual predation is actually the greatest possible victory for left. This leaves the country without principled conservatism and leaves an entire generation equating conservatism with white nationalism, unconstitutional illiberalism, or base misogyny. This makes progressivism, in many people’s minds, the only perceived alternative to madness or cruelty.
Maybe it doesn’t matter much – unless conservative principles are truly TRUE. Even more so, the theological and moral credibility from within evangelical Christianity – from the Church that claims to be (imperfectly) the “light of the world,” offering a word “thus saith the Lord” in an age of deconstructed authority. and a call to repentance and faith in an age of relativized morality – is of crucial importance. Evangelical Christianity can only offer the world what it has not renounced.
Baal, Artemis and Odin will always be better tribal mascots than him and Christ crucified. “Punch the other side” is still better advice for hackers and experts than “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” ever will be. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” will always sound more like bad news than good news to a faction that wants to win. This is obviously the case – unless there really is a heaven, really a hell, really a gospel, really a God.
The gospel does not come with a gag. The moment we believe is the moment we gave up words, You must be born again.
Russell Moore is the editor-in-chief of Christianity today and directs its public theology project.
