Show Notes
In this powerful and sobering episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland reflects on the tragic assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and explores how the ideologies of Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel distort the way of Jesus.
While rejecting all forms of political violence, Derek uses this moment to examine the growing fusion of political power and religious language within American Christianity. He argues that Christian nationalism—like the prosperity gospel—offers a counterfeit version of the gospel that trades discipleship for dominance, humility for triumphalism, and the cross for control.
Derek outlines how Christian nationalism seeks to advance the kingdom of God through governmental action, while the prosperity gospel attempts to advance it through material success. Both, he contends, miss the heart of the gospel of King Jesus.
Conversation Themes
Lament and Clarity: Responding to political violence with grief, prayer, and a renewed commitment to peace.
What Is Christian Nationalism? Exploring definitions and distinctions between patriotism and nationalism.
The Turning Point USA Connection: How religious rhetoric and political activism blur the lines between church and state.
Five Shared Misconceptions: How Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel both misunderstand the nature of God’s kingdom.
Following Jesus in a Culture of Power: What it means to reject triumphalism and embrace cruciform discipleship.
Key Takeaways
Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel both mistake American values for Christian virtues—one exalting power, the other wealth.
Both misunderstand the purpose of the church, seeing it as a tool for influence rather than a community of witness.
Both redirect faith away from the triune God toward national or personal interests.
Both promise what Jesus never promised—national dominance or financial success.
Both trade discipleship for triumphalism, denying the weakness and humility of the cross.4
Books/articles mentioned in this episode:
What Is Christian Nationalism, Actually? by Glenn Packiam (Substack, October 9)
Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry
Jesus and the Powers by N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird
Jesus Changes Everything by Stanley Hauerwas
Read a written form of this episode here: https://www.missioalliance.org/how-christian-nationalism-and-the-prosperity-gospel-distort-the-way-of-jesus/
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Transcript
Welcome back.
To another episode of Peaceable and Kind.
I am your host, Derek Vreeland, and we are producing Christian content that is sowing seeds of peaceableness and kindness in our world.
And if you enjoy what we’re creating here, I would love for you to subscribe to Peaceable and Kind wherever you are listening to this podcast.
And leave a rating and review.
Those always help.
And I think this episode is going to be one that is filled with meaty content that I hope encourages you
Helps you.
And so if you like this episode or a previous episode, feel free to share that with other people.
It has been about two months since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and I feel like I can just now begin to talk about it.
And I really don’t want to talk about politically motivated violence, which I absolutely reject.
The murder of Charlie Kirk was senseless.
It was vile.
It was evil.
It was something for all of us to lament.
You know, as Christians, we have a social responsibility.
As Christians, we are called to be salt and to be light.
particularly in dark places.
And so it’s difficult to talk about a murder like what we saw back in September.
And for me, I try to be thoughtful and somewhat contemplative when major tragedies like this strike.
When I say contemplative, I mean I I don’t want to be reactionary.
When I was reading the news of Charlie Kirk’s murder,
I posted an Associated Press news article about what was happening.
I just posted with the thought, Lord have mercy.
And as I was thinking it through while it was happening, I that’s all I could think of is Lord have mercy.
And
In a post on social media, I know it was on Facebook because I had some interaction with people there.
I think I posted it in other places online, but I it said, Lord have mercy.
And then I said, people have mercy.
Like we need a different way of communicating in the public square about what we believe, about politics, about our faith.
I think the temperature in our political dialogue has been so ratcheted up
That I lament not only Kirk’s murder, but I do lament that things are just so hostile.
They’re so divisive
And so I didn’t want to record a podcast episode right after because I wanted to be patient
And I wanted to be prayerful.
I did have a few conversations at church.
I had a few online conversations with people I know in real life
And I learned that Charlie Kirk is an extremely polarizing figure.
There are people that loved him
and the work that he was doing, and there were other people who did not.
And so this episode is coming months later with some time to reflect.
But I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for us as Christians to begin to take an approach
to talk about social issues, to talk about politics in a way that doesn’t promote
either the rhetorical violence, you know, the kind of angry talk back and forth, and certainly not
literal violence.
And I think that there is a way for us to do that.
And so on this episode, I don’t necessarily want to talk about political violence.
I addressed this in an earlier episode.
It was one of the first
10 episodes I did last year after the attempted assassination of President Trump.
I don’t want to rehash all I said in that episode on this one.
But you can go back and listen to that episode.
I I think I say some really good things about a Christian understanding of the nature of evil.
But on this episode, I want to talk a little bit about Christian nationalism and how it distorts the way of Jesus.
But first, let’s go back to
Kirk’s death.
It was a Wednesday in September, and I had just wrapped up work for the day in my home office, and I’d finished up my work and I had a a small group to lead that night.
And so I just kind of shut down my email and the things I was working on and just I went to the timeline on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
And there I read the news.
Conservative activists Charlie Kirk assassinated at Utah University.
That was the headline from the Associated Press
I’m a big fan of of the AP.
It’s primarily where I get my news.
I, for the last few years, have been trying to read my news and not watch my news.
either on cable news or or clips online.
The Associated Press has a good historical record, at least here in the U.
S.
, for being an original news reporting service.
That is somewhat unbiased.
I understand how bias works in news reporting.
You can’t be completely unbiased, but the Associated Press has a pretty good reputation.
And when I was reading the news, I honestly I was I was stunned.
I was shocked.
I was deeply grieved.
And I also have to admit that, and this is honest here, I did not know much about Charlie Kirk outside of his advocacy for conservative political agendas.
And so in the days and weeks after his death, I was asked by people that I know, people in my church, people that I had friendships with in the past.
And they were asking why at our church we did not address Kirk’s murder during our Sunday morning worship service.
And my answer was really complex, but one of the reasons is that I didn’t really know who Charlie
Kirk was.
He wasn’t a voice I listened to.
I mean, his video clips would pop into my algorithm from time to time, but I usually just scrolled right by.
I didn’t pay much attention to what Charlie Kirk was doing, but on the day of his murder, I was beginning to read about him and and learn a little bit about him.
And so
When I went to lead a small group that night, I led a prayer with our group there.
It was a prayer of lament for Kirk’s murder
And then that next Wednesday, because Charlie Kirk was was killed on a Wednesday.
I was reading this late in the afternoon
That next Wednesday during our noon prayer and communion service, I led another prayer of lament about
Not only Charlie Kirk, but just the divisiveness and the brokenness in our world regarding how we think through politics.
And so after that prayer service, this was, you know, a good week or so, I really began to spend time
trying to understand who Charlie Kirk was, and I also began to learn about the organization that he founded.
I learned that Charlie Kirk left behind a wife and kids.
His wife courageously forgave her husband’s killer at the memorial service.
I didn’t watch the whole memorial service
I did read about her public act of forgiving her husband’s killer.
But when I learned that he had a wife and and kids that he was leaving behind
I whispered right out loud, Lord, Lord have mercy.
And in the weeks that followed, I saw several people reflecting on Charlie Kirk’s social impact.
and heralding his death as one as a Christian martyr, which honestly surprised me because at the time of his death I didn’t even know Kirk claimed to be a Christian.
And this is again my ignorance.
I simply did not know.
But a very quick Google search, I’ve learned and found out that Charlie Kirk is indeed my Christian brother
And in not knowing much about him, but learning after his death, I don’t doubt that his Christian faith was sincere.
But if I’m honest with how we position his death as awful and tragic as it was, if we’re honest, Charlie Kirk didn’t die preaching the gospel.
He wasn’t an evangelist.
He wasn’t a missionary.
He was murdered, wrongfully murdered, while debating gun rights.
And so, as I worked to understand why so many saw Kirk as a Christian martyr, I looked with some depth into the organization he founded.
And here’s what I learned, Turning Point, USA, which I was aware of that organization.
Again, I did not know he was the founder.
I was aware of this organization.
And so as I uh dug deeper, I learned that Turning Point USA has a pretty clear mission.
And that is, it serves to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government
I had heard of Turning Point USA.
I’d read reviews about their rallies, which were a fusion of political fervor and religious zeal.
which really is is not my deal.
I’m not not really interested in that.
But Turning Point USA in their mission statement
is pretty consistent with the very limited knowledge I had of Kirk before his death.
He worked as a right-wing political activist.
Focused on college campuses where he would openly debate students on issues related to politics, social justice, and religion.
And so if we look at turning point USA, I think we can state what is obvious, right?
This organization is not the same as like
the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Right?
Billy Graham, probably the most well-known Christian evangelist of the 20th century.
And the Billy Graham Association, you know, after Billy Graham’s death, has shifted somewhat, but that’s an organization that was founded and still today exists to proclaim the gospel of Jesus.
On the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website, there’s still a line in their mission statement to proclaim
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to all we can by every effective means available.
And an organization like that is a clear
Stated Christian purpose.
So that’s different to me than an organization that exists to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.
And I’m not saying one’s better than the other.
I’m just saying these are different organizations.
And in my research, I did discover that Turning Point USA has an initiative called TPUSA Faith.
Which, according to the website, works to equip the church to stand for biblical truth, combat cultural compromises, and inspire a return to foundational Christian values.
That’s the stated purpose of Turning Point USA Faith, TP USA Faith.
Now, that equipping that they do includes online courses.
And I kind of scrolled through their list of courses, and some of those courses have titles like Politics, Easy as Pie
Faith in the public square.
Who is the king in America?
Should Christians be involved in politics
as well as other online courses that describe freedom from pornography, Christian apologetics, and marriage.
So in my estimation, Turning Point USA is a political activist organization which does have a faith initiative.
So there is some intermingling between political ideology and Christian faith.
But the stated purpose of TPUSA faith
Especially that phrase to return to foundational Christian values and the emphasis on political activism made it clear to me that this organization, as well as its founder,
exhibits tendencies towards Christian nationalism, which for me is not in harmony with the gospel or the mission of the church
Now, I know for some people, their political opinions and their faith are so intertwined that they can’t separate out the two.
For me, though, I do separate out the two, and I hope that my political opinions are formed by my faith, but I recognize that they are two different things.
And again, I don’t doubt the authenticity of Kirk’s Christian faith, but the blending together of right-wing politics and Christian faith.
It’s probably why I didn’t know much about him until his untimely death.
So I want to spend a little bit of time on this episode talking about Christian nationalism.
Now, I don’t take that to be a pejorative.
In describing Christian nationalism online, I did have a friend reach out to me and say, well, we don’t
We don’t need labels.
You can be a patriot and a Christian at the same time.
And I took that as a little bit of a rebuke, but for me, I don’t I don’t see the phrase Christian nationalism to be a
pejorative, I don’t see it as an insult, and I don’t equate Christian nationalism with patriotism.
I see those as as separate ideas.
For me, patriotism is a love for one’s political nation.
And so you can love the nation that you’re a part of and still love God and
Love your neighbor as yourself and want to follow in the ways of Jesus, but your love for country has to be a subordinate kind of love
Jesus did not teach us that the highest love we exhibit is a love for the nation in which we’re born.
Our highest love.
is a love for God and a love for neighbor.
Now, some people who are Christian nationalists would say, yes, my love for neighbor causes me to be involved in a certain political ideology.
But Jesus never taught that.
Jesus didn’t say the way that you love your neighbor is by
challenging the empire or the government to change things.
So in that sense, these are two different things
But let’s talk a little bit about Christian nationalism.
Aren’t the problem in discussing that topic is that there is not one exact definition among political scientists and
religion experts on exactly what Christian nationalism is, but most would define it as some mixture of a form of Christian faith with a certain political ideology.
And Christian nationalism in the U.
S.
, that’s normally a right-wing ideology, but Christian nationalism can also exist with the commingling of Christian faith with a left-wing political ideology.
ideology.
So it doesn’t have to be right only, but that’s what we’re seeing here in the United States.
Recently my friend Glenn Paccium published an excellent article on his Substack.
He published this on October 9th, and it was entitled, What is Christian Nationalism Actually?
And what Glenn does is that he starts with the work of Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry in developing five categories in which we can talk about Christian nationalism.
Because that term gets applied to different groups, but Glenn does a good job in his article showing that Christian nationalism
is only one way of speaking about faith and politics.
There’s actually a spectrum.
This is what I loved about Glenn’s article.
That Christian nationalism is problematic, but it’s on one side of the spectrum.
The other side of the spectrum would be Christian patriotism.
So I highly recommend that you you check out his article.
He is working, though, with the book by Whitehead and Perry, this 2020 book, Taking America Back for God.
Christian nationalism in the United States.
And it has solid data on the growth of Christian nationalism in the U.
S.
and also how it differs.
From Orthodox Christianity.
So that’s a good resource if you want to do more reading in this area.
But the the spectrum that Glenn creates is really, really helpful
But on one end of that spectrum is his definition of Christian nationalism that he developed from Whitehead and Perry’s work.
And it is the belief that the Christian God is responsible for America’s history, is central to America’s identity, and is invested in America’s destiny.
And I think that’s a pretty good accurate description of the core beliefs of Christian nationalists.
They believe America was founded.
By the Christian God, and therefore Christian ideals must be predominant in American culture
And I don’t subscribe to that.
That is not my understanding of American history, but I do believe that’s an accurate definition of the belief system.
of Christian nationalism.
However, what Glenn’s definition does not address is the actions of Christian nationalists.
I gotta jump into this podcast episode to let you know I have a new book that’s out.
Incarnation.
8 lessons on how God meets us is available now.
Go order it.
Link is in the show notes.
I was doing a little bit more research on trying to get an accurate academic
definition of Christian nationalism.
And I came across Corwin Smith, who is the Senior Research Fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids.
And Smith defines Christian nationalism as seeking to privilege the Christian faith within American social and political life
Through governmental action.
And that last little phrase there is what I think is really important to understanding what Christian nationalism is.
That it is an attempt to elevate Christian values and Christian ideals through governmental action
So those who subscribe to Christian nationalism seek to bring glory to God.
They have a religious motivation.
But that religious motivation causes them to advocate for Christian ideals and quote unquote biblical truth.
Which is a very confusing statement for me.
People use that phrase all the time, biblical truth.
But the Bible, remember, is not one book.
It’s a collection of 66 books.
The Bible has a lot of different things to say on different topics, but there is for Christian nationalists a religious impulse that motivates them.
to promote ideals, biblical truth, by means of legislation, political lobbying, campaigning, and seeking to win culture wars on behalf of Jesus.
through governmental action.
Now, as far as I’m concerned, Christians living in a modern nation state
with a Republican form of government, are free to vote according to their consciences and advocate for whatever forms of legislation they feel aligns with their understanding of Christian faith.
I’m really not here to advise people politically.
As a Christian pastor, as an author, I’m much more interested in developing people’s faith
than influencing how they vote.
I think Christians have complete freedom, particularly in a liberal democracy like the United States.
Vote according to your conscience.
I have very little to say about that.
But Christian nationalism as a form of partisan political activism has nothing in my mind to do with the gospel of King Jesus.
Seeking to proclaim the kingdom of God through the force of government is a complete misunderstanding of the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus
Intie Wright and Mike Bird in their book Jesus and the Powers, another book that I highly recommend
Of course, it’s N.T. Wright, who is my theological mentor and hero.
Uh Wright and Byrd have uh uh written some other things together.
I I love Mike Byrd.
He’s an
uh Anglican in Australia and a keen New Testament theologian.
But they write in their book Jesus and the Powers that Christian nationalism
leads to a superficial Christianity rather than to sincere faith and deep discipleship.
And I 100% agree
In the end, Christian nationalism benefits the nation at the expense of the Christian
It weakens the church and dulls our edge to be a prophetic witness.
to the very counterintuitive ways of Jesus.
When you mix together a political ideology and Christian faith, what you end up with is a political ideology.
Or simply put, when you mix partisan politics with Christian faith, politics wins and the Christian faith gets weakened
Wright and Byrd continue in Jesus and the Powers with this great summation of a critique of Christian nationalism, which I find so helpful.
They go on to Wright.
Christian nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross.
It pursues a victory without mercy.
It acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love.
We must remember that Jesus refused those who wanted to make him king by force.
just as much as he refused to become king by calling upon twelve legions of angels.
Now I want to continue with a quote, but I gotta pause right there.
That’s really good writing.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God not by amassing an army and not by
Trying to change the governmental systems.
Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God through his death.
through his suffering, through his giving of his life.
Jesus didn’t die killing his enemies.
Jesus died because he refused to kill his enemies.
Anyway, Wright and Byrd continue.
They write, Jesus needs no army, arms, or armored cavalry.
to bring about the kingdom of God.
As such, we should resist Christian nationalism as giving a Christian facade
to nakedly political, ethnocentric, and impious ventures.
That’s a mouthful.
But I I agree a hundred percent
The vision of the kingdom of God that I read and hear about from Christian nationalism
does not match the proclamation of the kingdom of God I see in the Gospels
And one thing I find interesting is that the problems I have with Christian nationalism are the same problems I have with the prosperity gospel.
Now, I would imagine most people have a better working definition of the prosperity gospel than they do Christian nationalism.
The prosperity gospel, which has sadly infected the world, grew up here in America.
And I’m a graduate of Oral Roberts University.
And sadly, if we look historically, Oral Roberts was one of the pioneers of what has become a false gospel, the prosperity gospel.
Now I can say much more about Orl Roberts and his history, but as I have read what Oral Roberts was writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
He was defining prosperity as God giving us enough financial resources to take care of our needs.
And extra to share with others.
So I think that the prosperity gospel as it is known today is not at all what Oral Roberts was teaching, but let’s set that aside.
For most people, we understand the prosperity gospel is this idea that Jesus died upon the cross so that we could become financially wealthy.
And again, people may argue with that definition, but globally, we have seen that message.
The emphasis within the prosperity gospel
Regarding the death of Jesus, the mission of the church, the gospel itself, is so that we can become financially wealthy
And I don’t think I have to really convince you that that does not match the gospel proclaimed in the New Testament at all.
Prosperity Gospel is a
complete twisting and perversion of the one true gospel.
And I should also say this that
I do not deny that some people who subscribe to Christian nationalism are sincere Christians, and those that
believe in prosperity gospel.
I think there are good Christian people who have been persuaded by the errors of the prosperity gospel.
So I’m not here to judge
the faith or the relationship with God that either Christian nationalists hold or that
prosperity gospel adherence hold on to.
In other words, I think you can you can mistakenly believe in Christian nationalism or the prosperity gospel and still be a true Christian
with real pure motivations.
But what I have found is that when I begin to critique things like Christian nationalism or the prosperity gospel, some people get upset.
Because that false teaching, or those false teachings, Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel, get so tied to a person’s identity
that to begin to critique these wrong ideas about who God is and how God works in the world is to critique the person.
And so I don’t want you to take any of these critiques personal.
When I’m critiquing these things, I’m critiquing wrong ideas, not critiquing people as individuals.
because I think both of them are a false and misrepresentation of the gospel of King Jesus.
And I think we need to reject both Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel.
What I find interesting is that these two false ideas share a lot in common.
I mean, both of them are problematic.
Uh but they share a lot in common in how they undermine true faith.
And so it might seem strange that I’m lumping together these two ideas in the same theological neighborhood.
Right?
Because one is draped in a flag, that’s Christian nationalism, and the other, the prosperity gospel, is draped in designer suits.
Nevertheless, if we look beneath the surface, we find the same theological misconceptions that warp the faith once delivered to the saints
And I have been able to identify at least five misconceptions that both Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel share.
Number one, both have mistaken American values for Christian virtues.
One is distorted by power, the other is distorted by wealth.
One misappropriates God’s kingdom, the other misappropriates God’s blessing.
Christian nationalism baptizes the American ethos of superiority.
Imagining that God’s purposes are uniquely tethered to one single nation’s flourishing on a global stage.
And it simply is not true.
The kingdom of God began to be announced before America, and the kingdom of God will continue after America.
Now, the prosperity gospel it baptizes the American dream of upward mobility
Imagining that God’s favor, that God’s blessing, is measured by material wealth.
And nothing could be further than the truth.
I do believe that God wants to lift up the poor from their poverty.
I do believe that God wants to
care for us so we don’t have to worry about what we’re eating, what we’re wearing.
God’s going to provide for us.
But the idea that God’s blessing equals material wealth,
So that if you are not wealthy, you are not blessed is an absolute mistake.
It’s mistaking American values for Christian virtues.
Number two, both misunderstand the purpose of the church.
One sees the church as a voting block, the other sees the church as the seedbed of wealth.
And this is where I think Orl Roberts comes into play with his teaching on seed faith.
Oral Roberts taught that if you want to
trust God for some kind of miracle.
For example, if you’re praying that God heals you of cancer.
that you can plant a seed of faith and expect a miracle.
And in one sense, there is something to that
But the way that was carried on in prosperity gospel circles is that if you want any kind of miracle, your seed of faith means a financial donation to
a church or Christian organization or televangelist.
Something that we have all come to see as abhorrent and not the way of Jesus
But for Christian nationalism, they see the church, the congregation, as a voting block to motivate.
And so both Christian nationalism and the Prosperity Gospel fail to see that the Sermon on the Mount
in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 not only contains the Jesus way of of relationships and social interaction,
But the Sermon on the Mount plants seeds for an alternative community, a people, that is the church, who are governed by an alternative politic.
The Sermon on the Mount is in one sense a political manifesto.
Jesus is showing us and the world this is how we are to live together in the polis, in the city.
It is a a politic.
According to Stanley Hauerwas, in his book Jesus Changes Everything, he writes, The church therefore must be a paradigmatic community.
In the hope of providing some indication of what the world can be, but is not
The church is to be an alternative community, an alternative to the vision of national dominance.
as proclaimed by Christian nationalists, and different than the materialistic Americanism of greed and acquisition.
We are
to be something other, something different.
And so Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel both reverse this truth
Instead of following Jesus into something other than the world, they end up turning the church into a sanitized version of the world.
The church’s calling is not to make America great or to make believers rich.
Rather, the church is called to proclaim the gospel and make disciples of the Jesus way.
Number three, both redirect Christian faith from the triune God to the interests of another
One seeks national interests.
The other seeks personal interests.
In Christian nationalism
The language and imagery of the Christian faith is conscripted for the sake of political power.
It replaces the kingdom of God with the kingdom of a modern nation state
and assumes that national identity and divine activity are one in the same.
And this is a mistake
God does not need to work through governmental systems for the kingdom of God to come.
Equally, we can look at the prosperity gospel, and in that ideology, faith is reduced to a investment strategy.
It treats God as a cosmic vending machine who dispenses blessing for those who deposit the right amount of faith in money.
And both of these movements redirect the gaze of worship away from the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
towards lesser gods, whether that is the flag or the dollar or the almighty individual
The true gospel draws our attention to King Jesus above all of that
Number four, both promise what Jesus never promised.
One promises national dominance, and the other promises financial success
And you can search the scriptures, you can search the gospels, and you will not find Jesus or the church promising national dominance or financial success.
Christian nationalism imagines that if the right people are in power, if we can just elect the right people, then God’s purposes and plans will be done.
The prosperity gospel imagines that if you have enough faith, then your bank account and your body will always prosper.
When Jesus invited his followers to take up their cross, he was not offering that as a slogan for political rallies or fundraising campaigns.
He was describing a way of dying to self, dying to ambition, dying to every worldly definition of success.
The cross is not a metaphor for power or wealth.
Jesus’ death on the cross is the undoing of power.
the undoing of the idolatry of wealth and money.
Jesus, through his death
Resurrection and ascension is promising eternal life, that is, the life of the age to come
But it’s a life that is found in first dying to self, dying to one’s ambition and agenda.
The gospel is not an advertisement for control or comfort.
The gospel is the announcement that Jesus is king.
And then one more final similarity.
Both Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel trade discipleship for triumphalism.
One desires the defeat of political enemies, the other desires to deny the reality of suffering.
One of the reasons I stand opposed to Christian nationalism is because it thrives on an us versus them antagonism.
Those who are advocating Christian nationalism, they know we are the good guys.
And anyone who opposes
The things we stand for, they are the bad guys, they are the enemies, and we must defeat them
It really does view people with different views on politics and religion as enemies to defeat instead of neighbors to love.
It sees the role of the church as conquering culture.
We have to take the culture back for God
rather than bearing witness to the love of God within culture.
Now the prosperity gospel
Denies the cost of following Jesus altogether.
It treats suffering as a sign of failure, as if the cross were something to be avoided rather than embraced.
Both movements resist weakness, humility, and meekness
Both of these movements, they see humility as a liability and not what it is in truth, a Christian virtue.
The church is not built on a foundation of winning and acquiring.
It is built on loving one another, especially loving our enemies.
So Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel promise greatness, whether through political dominance or through wealth
Some kind of greatness without humility.
And if you cast aside humility, you are now casting aside the way of Jesus
Both of these movements mistake self-determination for discipleship and success for sanctification.
Sanctification is a process of becoming holy, of becoming more separate from the world, becoming other than the world, and becoming more like Jesus
Jesus crucified, becoming more like Jesus who stripped off his outer garment, wrapped himself in a towel, and washed the feet of his disciples
Jesus taught us that the first shall be last.
It’s the last who shall be first, and that the greatest among you is the servant of all.
Jesus defines greatness not through political dominance and winning culture wars or acquiring wealth and possessions.
Jesus defines greatness in terms of humility.
And so I think we have to reject both Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel
And I see that the gospel of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus invites us to the following rejections
Reject the idea that God’s kingdom depends on who holds political office.
Reject the idea that God’s favor can be measured by your level of comfort.
reject the idea that following Jesus will make you powerful, prosperous, and popular.
Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel are opposed to the kingdom of God.
Because God’s kingdom is the way of the Beatitudes, the way of the Spirit, the way of the fruit of the Holy Spirit
One way that you can see the error in both of these movements is ask yourself: do you see the fruit, the produce of the Holy Spirit?
Do you see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control
If you don’t, then maybe you need to rethink your alignment with either of those movements.
Because God’s kingdom is ultimately the way of self-giving love.
To follow Jesus in this way is not to retreat from public life or ignore issues of injustice
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t participate in the political system in some way, whether through voting or advocating for issues you think are important locally or
or nationwide.
What I’m saying is that to engage in those things as a follower of Jesus and a citizen of God’s kingdom is to engage in them differently.
not as those grasping for control and subjugating enemies, but engaging in those things as a way that bears witness to the crucified
and risen king.
In other words, what I’m saying is let’s follow Jesus and let’s reject both Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel.
Well, if you have made it with me to the end of this episode, thank you for hanging out with me.
This
was a podcast episode that was weeks and weeks in the making.
Perhaps this is why it’s the longest episode I’ve recorded.
But I think these are important topics to consider.
I believe that the church in the United States is being threatened and undermined subtly by these two movements, Christian nationalism and the prosperity gospel.
I believe that they are true poisons in the well.
And so consider these things.
If you want to talk further, I am more than happy to turn this monologue into a dialogue.
You can reach out to me on social media.
Social media.
All the links to my social media accounts are in the show notes.
Send me a direct message.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Well, this is a long episode, and this is all I have to say for today.
In peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.