Culture War Christianity in American history

In this article, you might find our comments on our previously published articles about Culture War Christians

What Are The Culture Wars?

A History Of The Culture Wars

A Theology of Culture War Christianity

Beyond the Culture Wars

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Jared Stacy writes

What are the Culture Wars?

Think of “culture” as a way of life. It is the sum total of all values, beliefs, and practices making up a communal existence. When God commissions newly formed humanity in Genesis 1 to “fill the earth and subdue it”, he sets men and women into the world with a cultural mandate. His plan was for a human society, united under his rule in the world, ruling with him over the Cosmos as his vice-regents. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

Karl Marx saw how main religion tried to lure people in the ban of the church by false doctrines. It is because the majority of people did not take the time to read the Bible that so many religious groups were able to get people following their false doctrines.

Regularly, people were so prayed for by those doctrines of those churches that they no longer faced the real thing because they preferred to float on those ideas of those churches. It had become so bad that Marx also realised that for many, religion was like an ‘opium for the people’. In lots of Christian and Islamic denominations, their church leaders managed to have their followers, following and worshipping a wrong god and not following the real Christ. since his time still not much has been changed, and there are still lots of false teachers and false prophets around. Marx was disturbed by the knowledge that he saw so many people around him falling for those false human teachings and giving their money away to those churches when there were so many people around them suffering. Marx also noted few dared to question, let alone challenge, church doctrines.

It also bothered several thinkers in the 19th century that the church made no attempt to defend the majority of their churchgoers or parishioners, and did not stand up against the exploitation of parishioners. For far too many centuries, the Roman Catholic Church itself had done everything possible to trot out money from the poorer population.

The German revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist, Karl Marx and his closest collaborator, the German socialist philosopher Friedrich Engels’ answer to the ills of society was according to some, just the opposite of the utopian dreamers’ answers. Mainly this, because the ideas of utopists (like Mr. Ampe) seem for many too far-fetched and unreachable. Though Marx and Engels found enough people who, like them, believed that one could change the way people lived and could come to a better world with less inequality. They, too, went for a better world.

Since World War I the world has evolved incredibly on all levels. Politically it was a time of trying out several political systems, getting more than once in a lot of problems and crises. The Western world clinched at the industrialisation and experienced mixed economies floating between all kinds of political thoughts. Even as the western world became less religious and the church got less of a grip on its citizens, the rich continued to control everything and did everything they could to maintain their power.

For Jared Stacy we have come into a Culture War Christianity where elections are consistently framed He looks at legislation, movies, businesses, etc. as affecting the survival of Christianity itself. For him such

hyperbolic rhetoric is typical. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

For him it is clear that Christ should be at the centre of Christianity. But he also expects something for those who call themselves Christian. He writes

When Jesus prayed,

“on earth as it is on heaven”

he was indicating his expectation and desire that the culture of Heaven becomes the culture of Earth by way of his Church. But does Culture War Christianity, the sort launched in the ’70s, contradict the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom? {What Are The Culture Wars?}

So many people had looked forward to the 20th century, hoping that because of all the new inventions, brought forward by the Industrial Revolution, they would be able to create a world where everything would be much easier and giving them more time to relax. The century opened with great hope but also with some apprehension, for the new century marked the final approach to a new millennium. For many, humankind was entering upon an unprecedented era. The English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian H.G. Wells’s utopian studies, the aptly titled Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) and A Modern Utopia (1905), both captured and qualified this optimistic mood and gave expression to a common conviction that science and technology would transform the world in the century ahead.

Already before the seventies of the previous century there was something going wrong in the industrialised world. Even though many countries were allowed to offer independence back to their colonies, they continued to exploit people in their own countries. Even when churches wanted to present God in different ways over the years, people should know That God never changes. He will always be the same and keep to the same Plan He had already from the beginning of times.

The American pastor and current PhD candidate in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, Jared Stacy 
wants to call our attention to this basic theological ethic:

The work of God’s rule spreading throughout the world in individual lives and communities will never contradict who God is. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

We would have loved that, but reality shows something totally different. For centuries, the main Christian churches have chosen another path than the disciples of Christ. The majority of people preferred to keep to their heathen traditions and festivals and the Catholic and several Protestant churches followed them and made Jesus Christ (the Messiah) their god. As such, we must say there is a lot of contradiction in what people say God is. For many, He is not the God of Christ, Who is the God of Israel, but is a god who is part of a three-headed godship, the Trinity.

It is not just that difference of who God is and who Christ is that has brought division in the world of believers. The diversity of religious groups has also brought both confusion and discord. Coming closer to the 21st-century tension or strife resulting from a lack of agreement came to bring even more separation between the true followers of the Nazarene Jewish masterteacher Jeshua  ben Joseph (Jesus Christ) and the name-Christians who worship Jesus as their god and do not shy away from also worshipping all kinds of people they call saints, this while the One True God desires full recognition and worship.

We have the impression that the blog writer who also writes for platforms like NPR, the BBC, Current, and For the Church, does not see (or does not know) the multiple camps in Christendom. He only mentions two of them. He writes

To speak generally, mischaracterizations come from two camps. Let’s call one group “conscientious objectors” and the other, “vocal advocates”.

Some accuse conscientious objectors to the Culture Wars of believing that Christianity should have no influence in the public square. They slander these conscientious objectors as faithless & godless, or misrepresent them as conspiratorially hypocritical, secretly harboring a progressive political agenda.

On the other end of the spectrum, some conscientious objectors accuse vocal advocates of conflating Christianity with cultural power. This often leads them to slander vocal advocates as compromising sell-outs, or mischaracterize their advocacy & well-connected influence as grounded in an inherently complicit conservative agenda. No doubt, I believe there are instances of legitimate criticisms from boths sides in Christian spaces. But polarity abounds. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

For him the polarizing gap between vocal advocates and conscientious objectors reveals a vast “no man’s land” in American evangelicalism. This is why he believes his series has pastoral and personal implications for all of us.

Because either you or someone you know is wandering the no man’s land as a refugee from the Culture Wars. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

Many American evangelicals are proud that they (so-called) keep to The 10 Commandments, though all of them already sin against the first commandment, not keeping to The Only One True God, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah of hosts, the God above all gods.

David Hansen correctly says

“The majority of Americans will tell any pollster that they believe in the Ten Commandments. But only a small percentage of those people could even recite the Ten Commandment; and even a smaller percentage have any genuine interest in following them.” {The 10 Commandments in American Culture}

Lots of North Americans should seriously think about their religion and their faith. About that faith Stacy says there is a danger.

On a day of hope, we need a fresh reminder of the danger inherent in an embrace of Christian faith. {The Danger of Faith}

He points out the trap many Americans have fallen into.

It is American consumer Christianity that invites us to “make Jesus Lord of our lives”. This pitch makes Christ a commodity, leaving us—the consumer—with control. The resurrection and ascension is a coronation that happens apart from our consumer choice & control. {The Danger of Faith}

1909 painting The Worship of Mammon, the god of material wealth, by Evelyn De Morgan

The great part of the US population, as well as in other developed countries, is that believers have deviated from Biblical truth as well as become wedded to matter and thus actually honour the god Mammon. Several denominations in the United States make clever use of asking people for money all the time, pretending that they will then have a better life. It has also become so ingrained in people that one can only be successful if one has acquired a lot of money. Consequently, many do everything possible to be as rich as possible (on the material plane) while completely neglecting spiritual wealth. Many have forgotten that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Stacy writes

It is hard to deny today that for many, the supposed downfall of America is synonymous with the collapse of Christianity. Jesus confronts this idolatry with his Kingdom. {The Danger of Faith}

Lots of Americans are even not aware of how they participate in idolatry, which they prove by continually clinging to pagan festivals such as Candlemas, Easter, Halloween and Christmas, to name only the main ones, and to cling to money and material gain.

He reigns over a Kingdom that cannot be shaken through the rising and falling empires of this world. {The Danger of Faith}

And throughout history, many kingships or kingdoms and principalities as well as republics have risen and fallen. Never before has man succeeded in creating a nation or empire in which everyone was comfortable and where justice was done to everyone. Several Christians, in imitation of Christ, have tried to make people understand how best to live in unity with fellow human beings, plants and animals.

The 1963 March on Washington participants and leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, as mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s.

When we look at the German culture struggle of the 1870’s (kulturkampf) it’s clear that the American Civil Rights movement was a “Culture War” too. King’s commitment to non-violence laid a distinct Christian foundation for the Civil Rights movement. But white evangelicals of the time either distanced themselves from King, or denounced the Civil Rights movement entirely, with calls to “just preach the gospel.”  {A History Of The Culture Wars}

writes Stacy.

But not many white Americans were really willing to go to preach what was really written in the gospel. They prefer just to take some phrases out of context to repeat them so that people come to believe them.

The forty odd years from this origin point until today witnessed the end of the Cold War and an insurrection at the US Capitol. Between these bookends, Culture War Christianity made itself known & felt in American society through movements. (See, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne; Stan Gall, Borderlines: Reflections on Sex, War, and the Church; Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals; Tim Gloege, Guaranteed Pure; historical treatments on these movements) {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Stacy reminds his readers:

The arguments and relationships in the antebellum South were transported via Lost Cause theology 100 years into the future, seen in white evangelical responses to the Civil Rights Movement. But these leaders could not ignore the impact of King’s kulturkampf. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

He assures his readers that

Culture War Christianity started after the Civil Rights Movement, not before. It borrows the playbook of the CRM. Ironically, it thrives on a sort of “persecuted minority” mindset, borrowed from the Civil Rights movement, but not actually indicative of the communal experience in its main constituents: white evangelicals. A minority mindset is a prominent characteristic of God’s people in the Scriptures. However, this mindset is not characteristic of evangelical experience in the United States. Race relations and evangelical’s historic participation in the moral establishment offer two historical keys that present a necessary critique of modern Culture War Christianity. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

He believes it is impossible to understand the history behind Culture War Christianity apart from race relations in the United States. So, we begin where we left off, with this statement:

The Culture Wars began when white American evangelicals took the activist playbook from the very Civil Rights leaders they opposed, to advance a moral agenda they could support.

…

Some were overtly political, like the Moral Majority or Christian Coalition. Others would serve the notion of family values, yet retain political influence, like Focus on the Family or Promise Keepers. Local churches and expansive media (books, radio, television) formed the local grassroots communities made these movements possible.

While this all may seem quite familiar, especially if you inhabited spaces within white American Christianity during the last 40 years, a history of the Culture Wars would be best served by going back 2 centuries to look at the phrase “Culture War” itself. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

In his blog he then goes back to the 19th century, across the Atlantic Ocean where the Germans provide us with a glimpse into a framework upstream to both the Civil Rights Movement and “Culture War Christianity” at a time when a new world order was being born. In that era, he recognises the central position of the Catholic Church, facing new threats to its grasp on power.

From the political power of the nation- state to the intellectual frameworks of liberalism and Darwinism, the winds were shifting. In response, the Church produced a flurry of theological statements and denouncements meant to stem the tide of ideas that threatened its hold on the Old World Order. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Portrait of Pope Pius IX circa 1864

The Holy See under Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1864, brought an appendix to the Quanta cura encyclical, with a syllabus where the church wanted to have the people see that it was with the times and recognised 80 of the

“principal errors of our times.”

As the errors listed had already been condemned in allocutions, encyclicals, and other apostolic letters, the Syllabus said nothing new and so could not be contested. Its importance lay in the fact that it published to the world what had previously been preached in the main only to the bishops, and that it made general what had been previously specific denunciations concerned with particular events. Perhaps the most famous article, the 80th, stigmatising as an error the view that

“the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself to and agree with progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation,”

sought its authority in the pope’s refusal, in Jamdudum Cernimus, to have any dealings with the new Italian kingdom. On both scores, the Syllabus undermined the liberal Catholics’ position, for it destroyed their following among intellectuals and placed their program out of court.

The Church denounced religious liberty, the nation-state, and other consequences stemming from the “threat of liberalism.” {A History Of The Culture Wars}

For some time there had been bumbling or difficulty in having a good relationship with the Catholic Church. More thinkers also came to speak out about the huge profits the Church was making on the backs of the faithful. Increasingly, there was also the idea of going back to the basics of Christ’s teachings where simplicity was preached and people were taught how to stand up for and care for each other. In the gospel, Jesus set a good example of how not only Christians should live, but actually every human being.

In the 1870’s, the German people, specifically within the Kingdom of Prussia, found themselves in conflict with the Catholic Church over their own Reformation roots and a rapidly secularizing order. This conflict had ramifications for both the Church and the separated German states. As a result of this conflict swirling around the German peoples, individual German States united along highly Protestant lines under Otto Von Bismark of Prussia. (See, Helmut Walser Smith, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History) This period of conflict and change was given a name: Kulturkampf, or “Culture Struggle”. This German kulturkampf shows us how struggles between competing visions for human existence are sparked by complex reactions between religion, politics, and power. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

It is the clash between people of the common people, as well as philosophers and political thinkers, with the church, that caused very animated conversations in several places in the German Empire about faith, church, and the way we as human beings should choose to arrive at a better world.

After World War II several American religious groups tried to have the power over the American people. They tried to convince them that they were the sole church which preached the truth. Some even went so far to tell the people they were chosen by God and that their church is the only one that can bring them in heaven. For those churches, it is certain that one can only be accepted by God if one follows their rules. Of course, such a saying is absurd, but a large majority of Americans follow that false statement. In the life of faith, it is also certain that no particular church by Jesus was ever designated as the only one to follow.

By studying German kulturkampf, we can begin to see the American Culture War’s false claim to exclusivity and authority by claiming itself to be the sole representative and defender of orthodox Christianity. When we realize this — that American Culture War Christianity is not the single defender of the faith —  it trains us to adopt a healthy critical filter every time a Christian leader describes the “very survival of Christianity at stake” as a smoke screen for unChristian agreements with power. On the other hand, conscientious objectors to Culture War Christianity would do well to consider how “culture struggle” might be a positive expression of Christian faith. There is space to consider positive “culture struggle”. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

King’s kulturkampf was rooted in Christian principles, and sought to dismantle the injustices of racial segregation, subjugation and discrimination within America. With the upcoming of the more conservative Christians, and/or conservative evangelicals, the position between coloured people worsened again and nationalism and (far) right-wing ideas came to the forefront in the States, the same way they did in the 1930s in Europe. Thus, from Europe, we could see the very dangerous development of right-wing rule and the glorification of such despots as Donald Trump, who is a danger to the world.

What would come to define and shape Culture War Christianity in 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s in the US is not at all what King and several serious preachers had in mind. The growing conservatism by the Americans brought forward people who are against equality and who find the white man is the pure race. Even Billy Graham came to criticise segregation but also denounced the non-violent demonstrations as contributing to further violence.

Others denounced calls for desegregation entirely. Back in 1960, Bob Jones Sr. took harder lines at Christians supporting an end to segregation by referring to them as “religious infidels”. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Several pastors of mega-churches, especially in white neighbourhoods, succeeded in shifting all the faults of the system onto the backs of the blacks and refugees who just’ came and invaded America’, without the government doing enough to stop them. One would think the religious leaders would have their moral reasoning to flow from a theological calculus, but it (for sure) did not come from Biblical teaching.

Stacy writes

Charles Ivory’s masterful Proslavery Christianity examines the white evangelical relationship with black evangelicals before the Civil War. He looks at how these interactions between white and black Christians, slave and free, actually came to shape the white evangelical theological defense of slavery. If we want to understand the Culture War Christianity of Falwell, and other white evangelicals, we need to examine their response to the Civil Rights Movement. I believe their response has its source in the theological calculus of white evangelicals in the antebellum South. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Ivory writes it was not uncommon for white and black evangelicals to worship within the same church. Indeed, the revival of the late 18th century did not discriminate on the basis of cultural background. But the theological conflict in evangelical churches pre-Civil War centered around conversion. Namely, does Christian conversion necessitate manumission? Today, Christians would argue chattel slavery is indefensible regardless of a slave’s conversion to Christianity. Humanity is not property. However, the historical context of the time made the question of conversion and manumission the frontline theological conflict regarding chattel slavery within evangelical churches. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

In West Europe the people had gone already through that process, knowing that slavery was something one could not accept in a civilised society. On this, several speakers came to draw attention to a system to bring more equality among all people. The road to socialism and communism was thus promoted by several enthusiasts.

Culture War Christianity has long since ossified into the de facto expression of faith for many white American evangelicals.

But those white American Christians have come to love themselves more than someone else and consider themselves as the only ones worthy to govern America. They do not have an eye at all for the indigenous people, because they consider themselves as the rightful founders and owners of America.

For 200 years, white evangelicalism has been an insider. No where has the minority mindset been more pervasive in our modern conception of Culture War Christianity than rhetoric. Phrases like “drain the swamp”, “make America great again”, and “take back America for God” in evangelical politics go right next to “that’s too political” and “just preach the gospel” in evangelical churches. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

We can wonder from who those evangelicals have to take back ‘their country’! Those evangelicals seem not to have any idea what the ‘founders’ of America had in mind and why they wanted religion and government separated.

While separation of church and state was federally enshrined in the Constitution, it did not play out in those strict terms in state and local governments. This changed in the early 20th century, when the Scopes trial, New Deal politics, and internal theological warring between fundamentalists and modernists left a vacuum in American society that evangelicalism used to fill in common culture. Neo-evangelicals like Billy Graham emerged in this vacuum. But for the long of American history, Christians have not only been influential, but privileged.

How can a privileged majority come to see itself as a minority? Culture War Christianity accomplishes this in part by dressing itself in the Biblical and theological concept of a remnant. A faithful few of God’s people who remain loyal to God and his ways in a foreign, godless land. But this theological adaptation does not line up with the historical participation of white evangelicals in the moral establishment of the United States. Yet, the drums of Culture War for white American Christians implied a greater enemy beyond its borders. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Though the big problem of those Tea Party and conservative or fundamentalist evangelicals is that they are not at all remaining “loyal to God and his ways in a foreign, godless land” they even have betrayed God and His son on several levels. They have created some three-headed god (or three-une being) and political leaders such as Trump as their gods, and consider their American flag as their religious symbol ^{even a Christian symbol}. For sure they can not belong to the faithful few of God’s people, because they do not believe in the Only One True God and because they do not act like People of God. They themselves are part of that ‘dark world’ the Bible is talking about. And now in those times that darkness and of gloominess can be seen everywhere, they also do everything to create division and spread hate, instead of spreading the love of Christ and his great message of a world full of peace. Those evangelicals with other name Christians have made it a sport to make fun of, blacken and curse true Christians. They do everything possible to get people away from those true worshippers of God. They also have some sort of paranoia and consider all people from abroad as dangerous suspects. They fear those coming from outside America would destroy their freedom.

Stacy remarks

the drums of Culture War for white American Christians implied a greater enemy beyond its borders. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

and also see what happened under the influence of certain political figures.

The Culture Wars of white American evangelicalism was not the reaction of the minority against the majority, but the majority against a imagined majority. It is hard to avoid this conclusion given overwhelming support for President Trump. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Stacy continues writing

In the place of Jesus’ active reign today, we find American Christians given to other reigning power structures: nationalism, racism, misogyny, and bigotry. They are discipled by political—not resurrection—power. This is partly the reason why Culture War Christians took greater issue with Kaepernick’s supposed desecration of the flag than they might with his concerns over police brutality against image bearers. They operate in a power structure other than the Kingdom of Jesus. {A Theology of Culture War Christianity}

Stacys wonders

What if Culture War Christianity long ago bowed the knee to a nationalist, secular conservatism? One with its law & order politics, reticence on issues of race, and idolatry of country? {Beyond the Culture Wars}

Ans says that he has argued this in his series.

Long before white evangelicals told MLK to “just preach the gospel”, there has always been a Christianity domesticated by, and deployed in defense of, the status quo in this country. Frederick Douglass called it before any of us. And in this sort of Christianity, “make disciples” has too often been code for “make people like us” not “make us like Jesus”. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

There lies one of the biggest problems in American Christendom. The majority of Americans does not take time enough to seriously study the Scriptures. For most of them the Bible also only means the New Testament. Lots of those evangelicals also do not understand what that sacrificial offering of Jesus, letting himself be nailed at the stake, means. For them it is very difficult to grasp how a man of flesh and blood could give himself as a lamb for whitewashing the sins of many.

Some of those white evangelicals living in the United States of America are convinced they are the only ones who can  Make America Great Again and build up the most correct state. They forget how so many people before them have tried already to construct an ideal state. They should know it shall only happen under Jesus Christ that we shall be able to live in a perfect world.

Let us also not forget Niebuhr’s saying,

“any good worth doing takes more than one lifetime.”

According to Jared Stacy

This should give us pause before we entertain pragmatism to bring about change in our lifetime. It was Jesus who said,

“what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?”

This should give us pause as we count the cost of pragmatism to reveal the Kingdom of God. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

He ends his article series by saying

After all, the cross is not a symbol of cultural superiority for white America, but of surrender and sacrifice in the Kingdom of God. We must measure our motivations by the Cross, and our methods. Take it from me. A millennial. The generation who was born in and shaped by the ‘Jesus & John Wayne evangelicalism” in its prime. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

And recognises the problem

Culture War Christianity allows you to have a Christian worldview and reject the Cross.   {Beyond the Culture Wars}

By which he hopefully means: rejecting the ransom offering of that Jewish Nazarene master teacher, Jeshua ben Josef, or Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

It substitutes other, more pragmatic means to really get things done. But in the Kingdom of Jesus the only strategy available for implementing a Christian worldview is the Cross.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

We have to do away with the false teaching in Christendom and have to go back to the Biblical teachings and keep to them, adhering to Biblical Truth and not human doctrine.

We should recognise the danger of that growing conservative evangelism.

For all it’s posturing about the morality of America, Culture War Christianity has stopped its ear to calls for ethnic & economic justice. Has tied its hands in response to sexual scandal and abuse in its ranks. Yet expresses incredulity when the world fails to take its sexual ethic seriously. Culture War Christianity can only provide more entrenchment, more combat, and more pragmatism. But crucified Christianity is growing the world over, and—as it has always done— turning the world upside down.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

Writing from Scotland, the author of the mentioned articles, wants to suggest a simple but humble invitation to venture into the wilderness as an act of faithfulness. For him,

the wilderness meant stepping out of the American pastorate, and out of America. This was my move made in faith. An attempt to combat the rise of cynicism in my own spirit, channeling it into meaningful, faithful action.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

From Moses, to Elijah, to Christ. Perhaps the wilderness is the place for those disenchanted and disillusioned, those disowned and disinherited from Culture War Christianity, to begin to see the Cross not as a symbol storming the US Capitol, but again as a place where our power grabs go to die. And where there is death to our ability to bring about change, God brings resurrection that changes everything.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

The Austrian philosopher and Roman Catholic priest known for his radical polemics arguing that the benefits of many modern technologies and social arrangements were illusory and that, still further, such developments undermined humans’ self-sufficiency, freedom, and dignity, Ivan Illich illumines what it is to be in the world, but not of it — just like Jesus.

Jared Stacy offers his words as a simple reflection in the conclusion to his series:

It is astonishing what the devil says: I have all power, it has been given to me, and I am the one to hand it on — submit, and it is yours. Jesus of course does not submit…Not for a moment, however, does Jesus contradict the devil. He does not question that the devil holds all power, nor that this power has been given to him, nor that he, the devil, gives it to whom he pleases. This is a point which is easily overlooked. By his silence Jesus recognizes power that is established as “devil” and defines Himself as The Powerless. He who cannot accept this view on power cannot look at establishments through the spectacle of the Gospel. This is what clergy and churches often have difficulty doing. They are so strongly motivated by the image of church as a “helping institution” that they are constantly motivated to hold power, share in it or, at least, influence it.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

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Please also do find to read

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3. My faith and hope
4. Utopian dreams
5. Are Christianity and Capitalism Compatible?
6. The Upbringing of Ideas and the Extrapolation of Capitalism
7. A famous individual by the name of Jesus of Nazareth
8. 19th and 20th Century Shifts in bourgeoisie
9. All that is solid still melts into air.
10. Intellectual servility a curse of mankind
11. The New Imperialist Structure
12. Is Christianity a Greedy Religion?
13. Should church members question preachers about the doctrine that is not in the Holy Bible?
14. A History Of The Culture Wars
15. Unhappy people in empty churches
16. Gradual decline by American Christians
17. Christians are increasingly mixing and matching their faith in unexpected ways
18. Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #1
19. The decline of religion in the US continues unabated
20. Liberation, salvation and the Latin American voice entering the Vatican
21. Eyes on pages and messages on social media
22. Troubles testing your faith and giving you patience and good prospects
23. The Most Appropriate teacher and Scoffers in our contemporary age
24. Social media for Trumpists and changing nature of warfare
25. Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
26. False teachers and false prophets still around
27. The Field is the World #4 Many who leave the church
28. Unhappy people in empty churches (Our World)
29. Hardships for choosing to follow the real Christ
30. Church indeed critical in faith development
31. Crises of Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic Money
32. International Proletariat
33. The killing of capitalism
34. The Principles of Communism – Friedrich Engels
35. Ability
36. Ability (part 2)
37. Ability (part 3) Thoughts around Ability
38. Ability (part 4) Thought about the ability to have ability
39. Ability (part 5) Thought about the abilities to be under God’s Spirit
40. To whom do we want to be enslaved
41. Compromise and accomodation
42. A Living Faith #3 Faith put into action
43. Not saying Jeshua is God
44. The 17th annual White Privilege Conference a militantly Christophobic conference held in Philadelphia
45. Faith, storms and actions to be taken
46. Christ’s ethical teaching
47. Obeying God rather than man & A Time to Act
48. Entering 2022 still Aiming for a society without exploitation or oppression
49. News that’s fit to print
50. Beyond the Culture Wars
51. January 6: A Failed Apocalypse
52. Hope For, But Not In, Evangelicalism
53. Presbyterians and Reformed Christians, membership and active involvement is part of a congregation’s DNA
54. The Guardian’s view on the world 1st week of June

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20. Postalgia / Prostalgia – Is this as Good as it Gets?
21. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
22. Cultural Amnesia
23. The Future of Governance
24. False American Dream
25. Thinking Critically about Marxism, Socialism and Communism (All in fewer than 1000 words!)
26. The Missing Faith Dimension of the Capitalism vs. Socialism Debate
27. A Broken system
28. Psychological Warfare
29. Humanities Retribution
30. Walk The Path
31. Reform or Revolution? A Debate (I)
32. Reform or Revolution? A Debate (II)
33. Editorial: what is humane socialism?
34. The virtues of good, enlightened, accountable elitism
35. The Radical Left Needs to Call into Question Existing Social Institutions at Every Opportunity, Part Four
36. End of capitalism as we know it
37. The Future is History
38. The true believer
39. Research Resources: Communism in America
40. “A Spectre is Haunting Europe…”
41. Finding the Ideal, Perfect Community
42. So You Think Capitalism Is Evil
43. Capitalism: The Ultimate Empowerment
44. Capitalism: Misunderstood
45. On the Current Conjuncture
46. The discipled political church
47. Veneration (Gilbert and Gilbert)
48. Christianity and Idealism (Van Til)
49. Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine (Heiser)
50. A Field Guide on False Teaching
51. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
52. Evangelical: Leave It or Love It?
53. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
54. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – An Interview
55. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
56. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”
57. Warped Christianity
58. The 10 Commandments in American Culture
59. Communist Infiltration, What Did Bella Dodd REALLY Know – YouTube
60. German priest contradicts pope and backs pornography as sexual ‘relief’ for celibates | Catholic News Agency
61. Sports Star to Be Jailed 10 Months for ‘Transphobic’ Message
62. What is at stake in the buffer zone debate? | Isabel Vaughan-Spruce | The Critic Magazine
63. Win for Christian ministry after judge refuses to strike out discrimination case – Christian Concern
64. Watch the body language in this heated exchange yesterday between Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Chinese Emperor Xi 👀 | Not the Bee
65. Episode 21 – Stella(r) (Hypo)Creasy and the Gov Crackdown on Free Speech – YouTube
66. Senate advances same-sex marriage bill amid religious freedom concerns – Catholic World Report
67. America/Brazl – After 50 years, the mission of Cimi is still “to defend with courage and prophecy the cause of the indigenous peoples” – Agenzia Fides
68. The Christian Father -Conferences of the Men’s Group – YouTube

January 6: A Failed Apocalypse

The attack on the house of democracy has shown the world how far Americans have drifted away from the gospel and have made their faith more a political game.

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Preceding

Francis Fukuyama and ‘The End of History?’

Deal of the century or roadmap to apartheid?

The one that exploded the great American story that lay beneath it

The Trump clan declares itself a Kennedy-like dynasty

So-called own sacred values under threat

U.S.A. Investment in a demagogue

Dear Mr. President

Religion and the essence of devotion

Facts: Why they matter and how to check them

Evangelicals: For The Love Of Trump

Evangelicals & Seduction

Death to the GOP! Or not.

Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response Book Review

A History Of The Culture Wars

A Theology of Culture War Christianity

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Additional reading

1. Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
2. The clean sweeper of the whole caboodle
3. The American clouds of Anti-Semitism
4. Trump has been buffetted by accusations of misconduct (Our World)
5. Trump has been buffetted by accusations of misconduct (Some View on the World)
6. Fearmongering succeeded and got the bugaboo a victory (Our World)
7. Fearmongering succeeded and got the bugaboo a victory (some View on the World)
8. American Christianity no longer resembles its Founder
9. God Isn’t a Republican
10. A new decade, To open the eyes to get a right view
11. Voted against their system (Our World)
12. Voted against their system (Some View on the World)
13. Incidents of hate have become commonplace in the U.S.A. anno 2017 (Our World)
14. Incidents of hate have become commonplace in the U.S.A. anno 2017 (Some View on the World)
15. A Progressive Call to Arms
16. Added commentary to the posting A Progressive Call to Arms
17. Christian fundamentalists feeding Into the Toxic Partisanship and driving countries into the Dark Ages… #1
18. Christian fundamentalists feeding Into the Toxic Partisanship and driving countries into the Dark Ages… #2
19. According to Pew Most White Evangelicals Don’t Think COVID-19 is a Medical Crisis
20. What Steve Bannon really wants
21. Trump going over the top bringing a blasphemous act
22. Trump Dragging the Jews and Israel into the scrum, using both as one more weapon in his racist rants.
23. Stress-test for democracy #1 Storming of the Capitol in Washington
24. Stress-test for democracy #2 A coup d’etat with bloodshed
25. Trump is proven wrong by the judge
26. Right-wing fundamentalist Christians to dictate the U.S.A.
27. The death knell of an Empire
28. Donald Trump requesting to block investigations about the insurrection
29. The Moral Character of Public Officials: Remembering January 6
30. Looking at 2021 in a nutshell
31. 2021 in review #1 the most startling point
32. One year ago people who said they love America stormed the Capitol
33. One year ago a sacred place was attacked
34. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”
35. Fascinating times to the Bible reader
36. Signs of the times – “The US, Israel and the Golan Heights”

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Where is Ray Epps?

Related

1. Interpreting | 2021 United States Capitol Attack
2. This is a Time When Silence is Betrayal
3. Panel draws bead on Trump legal team
4. One Year After January 6th, is the Next Civil War Already Underway?
5. Opinion: A Year Later, Evangelical Subsect Still Using Christianity as Guise for Jan. 6 Insurrection
6. Lucas: Biden’s dagger all sound and fury signifying nothing
7. Big White Lies
8. What Is Seditious Conspiracy? Rare, But Now Part of Jan. 6
9. January Musings
10. A Date Which Will Live In Infamy
11. January 6, 2021…The Day Democracy Died…With “Greatness”…
12. How hatred and racism triggered Jan. 6 riots
13. Big Little Lies: The Capitol Insurrection, Rage Rooms and Miss Piggy –  … Americans deal with dual realities all the time; it’s connecting them that’s rare and often painful.
14. The January 6th ‘Insurrection’
15. Extremist groups continue to ‘metastasize and recruit’ after Capitol attack, study finds
16. McCarthy calls Jan. 6 committee request ‘abuse of power’
17. Interpreting | 2021 United States Capitol Attack
18. Glendora man pleads guilty to Capitol insurrection charge
19. Capitol Rioter Said January 6 Was ‘Modern Day Boston Massacre’
20. 3 Florida Men Arrested in Connection With Capitol Riot
21. Supreme Court allows release of Trump January 6th documents
22. Deniers!!!
23. Bird to Byrd
24. When Truth Doesn’t Matter 1/14/22
25. seditious conspiracy and excess electors
26. January 6 committee wants to talk to House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy
27. Bookworm Beat 1/14/22 — the “January 6 is our Groundhog Day” illustrated edition
28. MLK: The Drum Major Instinct
29. Oath Keepers and founder planned Jan. 6 for weeks, documents show
30. Women From Mass. and NH Charged in Capitol Riot
31. January 6 Committee Subpoenas Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, others
32. I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
33. The Supreme Court Just Denied Trump’s Request Regarding Jan. 6 Records
34. U.S. Supreme Court blocks Trump’s bid to keep Jan. 6 documents from Congress
35. Supreme Court rejects Trump’s bid to shield records from Jan. 6 committee

Jared Stacy

January 6th was a theological event. Just a month before, the Jericho March rallies in DC featured nationalist prayers. They declared God’s will was to reinstate Donald Trump. At the insurrection a month later, the Cross & signs of “Jesus Saves” joined the mob up the Capitol steps. 

January 6th was more than a failed political coup. It was a failed theological apocalypse. Treated this way, we come to an inevitable conclusion: this god lost. He lost because Donald Trump was not President on January 7th. We should never stop asking “what happened?” Even when some want to forget it. For those who keep asking, we need to perform a theological autopsy of this failed apocalypse.

Some speak of healing from January 6th politically or culturally. We have political committees doing important work. But healing from January 6th is impossible without addressing the failed theology at the heart of the violence. 

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Beyond the Culture Wars

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Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

This is the final article in a series reflecting on American Culture Wars & Christianity. Here are parts one, two, and three.

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Culture War Christianity must end. Christians should be the ones to end it. Like Moses, whose first attempt to bring about change left an Egyptian dead in the sand, so Culture Warring Christianity tends to create chaos and call it ‘change’.

Calling for the end of Culture War Christianity is not a call to stop working for change. But, I admit, it does sound a bit idealist. How do you end the culture wars anyway? Do we leave society for monastic communities? That is an option. Do we embrace with resignation a Christianity domesticated by secular idealogy? That is the fear of many. And, acting on that fear, many seek to defend Christianity.

But, what if the Christianity some aim to defend has already been…

View original post 1,064 more words

A Theology of Culture War Christianity

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Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

Kaepernick took a knee, Trump took a photo op. These moments are seared in the collective American consciousness. And both moments are unavoidably religious. Each deals with sacred symbols: a flag, a book of faith. Both surface theological questions. Who or what do we worship? How should we live in this world?

The irony of violence, and the theology inherent in a Christianity that welcomes the photo-op and decries taking a knee, demands not only our attention but a response.The very man who called Kaepernick and other NFL players “sons of b******” for kneeling was the same leader touting the Bible in a photo-op that required the violent tear gassing of protestors.

Imagining a way forward will be next week’s conclusion. This week, by examining the theology inherent in the anthem protests and the St. John’s Church photo-op, we can see the unique theological shape of Culture War Christianity…

View original post 2,138 more words

A History Of The Culture Wars

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Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

Culture War Christianity has long since ossified into the de facto expression of faith for many white American evangelicals. In Part One of this series (which you can find here) we introduced the American Culture Wars. As a whole, this series examines the historical & theological shape of Culture War Christianity in comparison to Jesus’ Kingdom through the lenses of these two camps, conscientious objectors and vocal advocates. We concluded last week with a descriptor: Culture War Christianity tends to make enemies, not love them.

This week, our second part examines the historical orgins of the Culture Wars. If you’re pressed for time, I present a TL;DR that takes 2 minutes, and you can return to read the article at your leisure…

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read Summary)

The key to understanding modern Culture War Christianity is the history of American race relations and Christianity. This article locates the birth…

View original post 4,720 more words

What Are The Culture Wars?

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Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

The next four articles form a series to engage this question. We’ll examine the history & theology of “Culture War Christianity”. My goal is to locate the Culture Wars in American history, but also describe the shape of these Culture Wars so we can examine how they relate to the shape of Jesus’ Kingdom.

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What are the Culture Wars? Think of “culture” as a way of life. It is the sum total of all values, beliefs, and practices making up a communal existence. When God commissions newly formed humanity in Genesis 1 to “fill the earth and subdue it”, he sets men and women into the world with a cultural mandate. His plan was for a human society, united under his rule in the world, ruling with him over the Cosmos as his vice-regents.

With a technical and theological definition of “culture”, we can now imagine a “culture war” as…

View original post 842 more words