Hello, fellow wayfarers … How the new Christian nationalism is just another way of selling indulgences … Who put me in the place of my own ethics students, and where you can watch them do it … What the lies about Haitian immigrants have to do with Jesus of Nazareth … Why getting out of bed is a daunting task for a lot of people you know … A Keystone State Desert Island Bookshelf … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
The Uneasy Conscience of Christian Nationalism
This essay is a small part of the brand-new September/October issue of Christianity Today. Subscribe here to get all of those stories and ideas, and to join with us on the mission of taking them to the world.
Too many of us assume that Christian nationalism promises a road map to a New Jerusalem or a New Rome or a New Constantinople. That’s understandable, given the triumphal and martial rhetoric of would-be theocrats. But what if the actual road map is to none of those places?
What if the new Christian nationalism wants to take us not to the rebuilt shining city on a hill of Cotton Mather’s Massachusetts Bay Colony but just to double coupon night at the Bellagio in Las Vegas?
Journalist Jonathan V. Last noted years ago, when staying at a Vegas resort and casino, how momentarily moved he was by the hotel’s commitment to help their guests save the earth. Last noted the card on his bathroom sink asking guests to conserve water by using each towel multiple times. On the bedside table, he saw another card asking visitors to safeguard natural resources by opting not to have bed linens changed.
Then he looked out at the front of the hotel, where two massive fountains stood “spewing precious water into the arid, desert air.” That’s when, he wrote, “it struck me that the … concern for the environment might simply be an attempt to save on laundry costs.”
The stakes aren’t very high at one Vegas hotel, but it’s a deal that reveals an impulse in fallen human nature, in a way that’s a win for all the parties involved. The guests get to feel like they’re doing something virtuous, and the house gets to keep more of the chips. It’s a microcosm of what Martin Luther identified as the psychological game behind Johann Tetzel and others selling indulgences to medieval Christians.
Paying the money helped ease the consciences of those fearful of purgatory while at the same time helping to raise money for building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The indulgence hawkers could tell themselves they weren’t in the business of nonprofit fundraising or commercial real estate but in the mission of saving souls. And the indulgence buyers could reassure themselves with penance, which was, and is, much easier than repentance.
Tossing a coin is easier than carrying a cross. Actual contrition, confession, and surrender are intangible, internal, spiritual realities that require entrusting one’s forgiveness to the promise of an invisible God. Indulgences, on the other hand, come with receipts.
For Luther, the crisis of it all was not just that the church was corrupt but, more importantly, that the reassurance bought with this type of indulgence actually kept people from seeing what really can overcome sin and wipe away guilt—personal faith in Christ and him crucified.
“Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep,” Luther asserted in the 50th of his theses.
In our time, the indulgences are more akin to a hotel’s green initiative than to the construction of St. Peter’s. The new Christian nationalism—like the withered old state churches of Europe and the secularized old social gospels of mainline Protestantism—defines Christianity in terms of reforming external structures rather than of regenerating internal psyches.
Unlike the older theological liberalisms, though, Christian nationalists seek solidarity not in the actual mitigating of human suffering but in the mostly symbolic boundary markers of taking the right amount of theatrical umbrage at culture war outrages, at having the right kind of enemies, at “owning the libs.”
The uneasy conscience of Christian nationalism pretends that our problem is the opposite of what Jesus told us: that by calling ourselves an orchard we can bring fruit from diseased trees (Matt. 7:15–20), that by controlling what is on the outside of us we can renew what is inside (Matt. 12:33–37).
This message is popular in all times; prosperity gospels and fertility religions always are. An extrinsic religion enables people to claim Christianity without following Christ and enables powerless, prayerless, porn-addicted culture warriors to convince themselves that they are goose-stepping to heaven. By assuaging our guilt with our political choices, we can convince ourselves that what we find in our new Bethel is Jacob’s ladder to heaven when it is really just Jeroboam’s calf of gold (1 Kings 12:25–31).
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Philip Yancey, a longtime columnist here at CT, along with other Christians, met with the disillusioned Communists of the regime, including the propogandists at the Kremlin newspaper Pravda. The Bolshevik experiment, of course, had subordinated personal ethics, much less personal faith, to the collective cause—to the supposed “worker’s paradise” of the future, which would justify every lie told, every dissident exiled, every life extinguished along the way.
What Yancey found most poignant was not just that Soviet communism had failed, but the particular way it failed. As he mused:
Humans dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good, wrote T. S. Eliot, who saw many of his friends embrace the dream of Marxism. “But the man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be.” What we were hearing from Soviet leaders, and the KGB, and now Pravda, was that the Soviet Union ended up with the worst of both: a society far from perfect, and a people who had forgotten how to be good.
We should not pretend that we could not see the same thing with a lifeless, politicized dystopian Christian nationalism as we saw with a hollowed-out Soviet empire. What a tragic end it would be to wind up with a society as debauched as ever and a people who have forgotten how to be saved.
The way forward is what it’s always been. As Luther said in his Heidelberg Disputation, “The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. The theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.” Sometimes that means nailing a word or two to the castle door. Sometimes that might mean letting goods and kindred go. The whole of the Christian life is about repentance. That repentance must be about the renewing of our minds and the renovation of our hearts, not just the laundering of consciences that are no longer bound to the Word of God.
Now, as always, every day is Reformation Day.
I Don’t Believe in Karma, But You Can Watch Me Get My Comeuppance
Back in the day, a few of you readers were in one of my ethics finals at Southern Seminary. Most students would tell me what year they were there by the topic of the final exam: “I was in the Robo-Frankenstein baby class,” etc. The rule for the ethics final was that I would present a scenario the students did not know in advance. I would complicate the scenario at each step of the question, making the question complex enough until I did not know the answer. That was because I wanted to see how prepared the students were—not to parrot off the “right” answer—but to actually wrestle in real time with a hard problem.
As soon as the exams would be handed out, I would always hear several voices muttering, “Oh man…” as they read through the question. I don’t believe in karma, but I did get put in my students’ place this week, and you can watch it on television on Friday.
Last week, I stepped onto a stage in front of a live audience in New York City to have a fight—and I didn’t know who else would be there or the topic of our wrangling. PBS filmed the first episode of Deadlock. We weren’t allowed to know the other guests or the topic ahead of time, because the genius of the show is that it is on the spot, with no pre-thought-out talking points or debate strategies. Instead, we role-played a scenario that the moderator brilliantly complicated step by step.
I’m not allowed to give any spoilers. I can’t even tell you who introduces the show and kicks everything off. But I can tell you the scenario would be riveting all on its own, as a film or a novel, much less with this group of people—from a former White House chief of staff and a former secretary of homeland security to a 60 Minutes correspondent to political activists of the right and of the left to this Christian theologian.
It’s on PBS this Friday, September 20, at 9 p.m. ET. Check your local station for specific details. It will also simultaneously stream on the PBS app and on the PBS YouTube channel.
Your Haitian Neighbors Are Not Eating Your Cats and Dogs
Last weekend I wrote an essay for The Atlantic on the lies spread about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. I wrote:
When we are willing to see children terrorized rather than stop telling lies about their families, we should step back, forget about our dogs and cats for a moment, and ask who abducted our consciences. That’s especially true for those of us who, like me, claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who told us that on the Day of Judgment, “people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Mt 12:36).
The Bible’s Book of James tells us, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness” (Jas 3:5). The Bible goes on to say that the words we use for other people are not just rhetoric to be deployed against our would-be opponents. The words themselves reveal the moral state of our soul. Of our capacity for words, James wrote: “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (Jas 3:8–10).
To sing praise songs in a church service while trafficking in the bearing of false witness against people who fled for their lives, who are seeking to rebuild a life for their children after crushing poverty and persecution, is more than just cognitive dissonance. It’s modeling the devil himself, whom Jesus called “the father of lies” (Jn 8:44). That’s especially true when the lies harm another person. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,” the apostle John wrote, “and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 Jn 3:15).
You can read the whole thing here.
How to Get Out of Bed
On the podcast this week, I talked to writer/thinker Alan Noble about issues like the crisis of high levels of anxiety and depression all around us today, how to navigate or help someone else navigate mental health struggles, why boys and young men seem to be in trouble, and where the church should fit in all of it. You can listen to it here.
Desert Island Bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Lisa Houp from Blandon, Pennsylvania, who writes: “Thank you for all you do to help us through these difficult times, Dr. Moore! My husband and I appreciate your writing and your podcast more than you could know!”
Here’s Lisa’s list:
- The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis: How could I go to a desert island and not want to visit Narnia again and again?
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: I’ve read this book at least 20 times and it is my favorite book aside from the Bible. The storytelling and word craft is nothing short of beautiful. I’ve learned from Atticus Finch how to talk to and treat children and that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
- The York series by Laura Ruby: This is a three-book series that I’ve read through a few times. I picked up the first book at my local library because I liked the cover and I’m so glad I did. It’s classified as “juvenile fiction,” but don’t let that dissuade you! The story grabs you from the outset and the characters are a hoot!
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Every time I read about the “Terrible Awful” I literally laugh out loud. And who doesn’t need to be reminded that “there is so much you don’t know about a person. … We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”
- The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins: I love these books! Fighting for survival, yes, but also fighting for family and freedom and friends and love.
- At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon: Such a sweet, gentle, slow-paced set of books. And where I learned the “prayer that never fails.”
- All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot: A British country vet telling hilarious, heart-felt stories about his colleagues and patients. I would want to bring all of Herriot’s books with me!
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles: Such a wonderful way to immerse yourself in Russian culture, food, and society. All without leaving the Metropol Hotel!
- The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling: Definitely bringing all seven books. This is my favorite book series by far. Every time I finish the seventh book, I’m tempted to pick up the first and start all over again. The world building, characters, themes, humor, struggle—it’s all there and it’s wonderful.
- The Treasury of David by Charles Spurgeon: Before marriage and kids, I took a deep dive into the Psalms and read slowly through all three volumes. It was a rich and rewarding experience and I almost wish I could go to a desert island just so I can do it again.
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books by J. R. R. Tolkien: What can I say that hasn’t been said? Middle-earth calls to me often, and I never regret rereading these amazing books. I remember my first time reading them after I graduated college (many moons ago) and feeling like I was saying good-bye to dear friends as I finished the last page.
Thank you, Lisa!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Christopher Reid, ed., The Letters of Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
- April Lindner and Ryan Wilson, eds., Contemporary Catholic Poetry: An Anthology (Paraclete)
- Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays (Grove)
- Bethany Ober Mannon, I Grew Up in the Church: How American Evangelical Women Tell Their Stories (Baylor University)
- Patrick McDonnell, The Super Hero’s Journey (Abrams)
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Ask a Question or Say Hello
The Russell Moore Show podcast includes a section where we grapple with the questions you might have about life, the gospel, relationships, work, the church, spirituality, the future, a moral dilemma you’re facing, or whatever. You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. I’ll never use your name—unless you tell me to—and will come up with a groan-inducing pun of a pseudonym for you.
And, of course, I would love to hear from you about anything. Send me an email at questions@russellmoore.com if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, if there are other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello.
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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