Christianity in America has long been suspiciously muscular. While Christ hangs naked, we clothe ourselves in certainty. While God becomes vulnerable, we worship invulnerability. While the Spirit moves across boundaries, we fortify them. This persistent inversion of divine revelation betrays something deeper than mere theological confusion—it reveals our collective flight from shame.

The theological mutations that now dominate American Christianity—from primitive biblicism to prosperity materialism, from binary apocalypticism to tribal ecclesiology—do not represent mere intellectual errors awaiting correction. They function as sophisticated emotional architectures designed to shield believers from the unbearable vulnerability that authentic faith demands. To understand these mutations, we must first understand shame.

The Genesis of Shame: Creation, Judgment, and the Original Child

The Genesis narrative provides our foundational understanding of shame. In the garden, the first humans live without shame despite their nakedness—a state of unself-conscious authenticity before their Creator (Genesis 2:25). Shame enters not as punishment but as consequence when they usurp the divine prerogative to judge "good and evil" (Genesis 3:5-7). This primordial scene reveals shame's dual nature: in reaching for the knowledge that belongs to God alone, humans distort the gift of shame into a burden.

Drawing on John Bradshaw's insights in "Healing the Shame That Binds You," yet viewing them through an Augustinian lens, we can recognize that shame, like all created gifts, exists in both ordered and disordered forms. Ordered shame—what we might call appropriate vulnerability or humility—acknowledges our creaturely limitations without despair. It allows God to remain the judge of what constitutes authentic humanity. Such ordered shame makes genuine encounter with divine grace possible by maintaining the proper relationship between Creator and creature.

Disordered shame emerges when we usurp God's role as judge, attempting to establish our own criteria for authentic humanity. Unable to bear the weight of this impossible task, we create what Bradshaw calls a "false self"—a persona that requires constant validation according to our usurped standards. We become, in Augustine's terms, "curved in upon ourselves" (incurvatus in se), establishing our own judgment as ultimate while living in constant fear of exposure.

The "original child"—our authentic self bearing God's image—becomes buried beneath these false constructions. Our disordered shame binds us to these fabrications, rendering us unable to recognize the divine image reflected in what we've rejected and hidden. God's judgment, far from being punitive, would actually liberate us by restoring the proper order where the Creator, not the creature, defines authentic humanity.

America's Theological Mutations as Judgment Usurpation

The theological mutations plaguing American Christianity represent sophisticated variations of this primordial judgment usurpation. Each provides a distinct mechanism for managing the disordered shame that results from claiming God's prerogative as judge:

Primitive biblicism usurps divine authority as scripture's interpreter, claiming unmediated access to biblical meaning without the vulnerability of interpretive humility. This isn't merely intellectual error but emotional necessity—the certainty shields believers from the shame of limitation, the anxiety of ambiguity. When one declares, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," one has effectively claimed God's judgment seat, determining which interpretations count as authentic while avoiding the shame of uncertainty.

Practical atheism usurps divine judgment by establishing human effectiveness criteria over faithful witness. This enables the strange performance where believers invoke Christ's name while systematically ignoring his example. This isn't mere hypocrisy—it's a sophisticated defense against the unbearable shame that would come from allowing God's judgment, rather than pragmatic outcomes, to determine authentic faithfulness.

Binary apocalypticism usurps divine judgment by creating simplified human categories of good and evil, friend and enemy. This Manichaean framework doesn't arise from careful eschatological reflection but from desperate need to locate shame entirely in the demonized other. By claiming the divine prerogative to separate wheat from tares (Matthew 13:24-30)—a separation Jesus explicitly reserves for the final judgment—believers shield themselves from the shame of moral complexity and the vulnerability of seeing themselves in the enemy.

Disordered nationalism constructs a collective false self against the shame of American moral failure, elevating national identity as criterion for God's approval. By sacralizing American history and identity, this mutation usurps God's judgment concerning what communities are blessed. The ritual invocation of "God Bless America" functions not as prayer but as declaration—a claim to divine judgment that shields believers from the shame that honest historical reckoning would trigger.

Prosperity materialism establishes material success as evidence of divine approval, usurping God's judgment concerning human value. By equating blessing with wealth, this mutation shields believers from the shame of economic vulnerability by creating an alternate judgment system where financial metrics replace faithfulness. The prosperity preacher declaring "God wants you to be rich" has usurped divine judgment, replacing cruciform values with market values.

Authoritarian spirituality transfers judgment authority to human leadership, shielding believers from the shame of autonomous moral responsibility. By creating unaccountable power structures claimed to represent divine authority, this mutation allows followers to surrender the burden of judgment to leaders who promise protection from shame through compliance. The demand for unquestioning obedience represents not faithful submission but abdication of the vulnerable task of moral discernment.

Tribal ecclesiology establishes group identity markers as criteria for authentic faith, usurping God's judgment concerning who belongs to the body of Christ. By creating rigid boundaries defined by cultural and political litmus tests, this mutation shields believers from the shame of potential rejection by controlling who can belong. The constant questioning of others' salvation based on partisan alignment reveals not theological precision but emotional insecurity.

Collectively, these mutations form not just a theological system but an emotional fortress. They shield believers from the vulnerability authentic faith requires by providing alternative judgment systems where human criteria replace divine judgment. The tragic irony is that in fleeing shame, these mutations actually bind us more tightly to it—for our disordered shame can only be healed when we surrender our role as judge.

Nietzschean Ressentiment and Political Theology

This framework illuminates why these theological mutations prove particularly susceptible to political manipulation. Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment—that toxic mixture of powerlessness, envy, and repressed vengeance that transforms into moral indignation—perfectly describes the emotional engine of politicized Christianity in America. In Nietzschean terms, Dominative Christianism represents a sophisticated "slave morality" that transforms perceived victimhood into moral superiority while simultaneously worshipping power.

The mutations provide religious justification for what is ultimately a secular emotion—the resentment of those who feel judged by changing cultural standards and who respond by creating alternative standards where they can claim superiority. The appeal of the shameless political leader becomes clear in this light. Those bound by disordered shame are naturally drawn to figures who appear unburdened by it—who never apologize, who project invulnerability, who claim divine mandate while violating divine example.

This explains why logical contradictions don't undermine the system—because the system's primary function is emotional regulation through judgment usurpation, not logical coherence. It explains why facts don't change minds—because presenting contradicting facts threatens the alternative judgment system that shields believers from shame. It explains why appeals to the Gospel fall on deaf ears—because the Gospel would require surrendering the very judgment prerogative that protects against vulnerability.

The Incarnation as Judgment Restoration

The tragic irony is that Christianity already contains the perfect antidote to shame, not in avoiding vulnerability but in embracing it. Samuel Wells helps us understand that Christ does not come with the merely instrumental purpose of delivering us from sin or conquering evil. Rather, as Karl Barth insists, God chooses "never-to-be-except-to-be-with" creation. The incarnation represents God's radical embrace of human vulnerability—not despite our shame but precisely because of it.

Fleming Rutledge, in "The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ," illuminates how the cross represents not simply Christ taking our place as the judged, but more profoundly, God actively reclaiming God's proper role as Judge. The divine exchange on the cross is not merely substitutionary but restorative—God reassumes the role of Judge that we in our false selves had seized. As Rutledge notes, evil arises when humans declare themselves judge, supplanting the Creator's role as judge of creation.

Christ's presence accomplishes what no instrumental intervention could—it restores the proper role of judgment to the Creator while liberating creatures from the impossible burden of self-judgment. By entering human experience fully, Christ demonstrates that God's judgment is not punitive but restorative, not condemning but liberating. The incarnation reveals a God who judges not to destroy but to restore the "original child" bearing the divine image.

On the cross, Christ experiences the ultimate shame—naked, rejected, publicly humiliated—not to validate our shame-avoidance strategies but to transform shame itself. The resurrection doesn't negate this vulnerability but transfigures it. The risen Christ still bears the wounds. The marks of shame become the marks of glory. The very things we flee—limitation, vulnerability, weakness—become in Christ the pathway to authentic life.

The Holy Spirit's work is precisely to restore shame to its creative purpose, enabling us to recognize that we are not the judge of what it means to be human after all. Only when we surrender that usurped role and allow God to be the judge of authentic humanity can we see our original self—the divine image beneath our false constructions. God does not eliminate evil with a magic spell because evil arises from our choice to be our own judge. Our healing comes through being drawn into divine embrace, where disordered shame yields to the ordered shame that acknowledges creaturely limitation while celebrating divine image.

Walter Wink's analysis in his Powers trilogy helps us understand how the "principalities and powers" sustain us in our false selves, systematically separating us from our original child created in God's image. These powers—institutional, cultural, and spiritual—must be "unmasked" before true transformation can occur.

The Powers That Promise to Cover Our Shame

What Wink's analysis makes painfully clear is that Dominative Christianism represents not a theological position but a powerful emotional covenant with what biblical language calls "the principalities and powers." The deal is devastatingly simple: these powers promise to shield us from our unbearable shame if we will only surrender our judgment to them.

This is why intellectual arguments prove so futile against Dominative Christianism—because no one develops a taste for red hats by reading policy papers. The movement offers something far more potent than ideas: it offers emotional sanctuary. When the political rally crowd chants together, when the congregation rallies around cultural grievances, when the prosperity preacher promises divine favor, what's being exchanged isn't ideas but emotional rescue. The content matters less than the promise: "Join us and you need never feel shame again."

The tragedy of American Christianity is that we've surrendered our birthright—the transformative vulnerability of authentic faith—for a mess of political pottage. We've traded the liberating judgment of a Creator who knows and loves us for the smothering judgment of principalities and powers who use and discard us. We've exchanged the holy shame that acknowledges creaturely limitation for the toxic shame that demands false perfection.

We might call this the Devil's bargain, but that would be too dignified. The principalities don't even deliver on their core promise; they merely redirect our shame toward enemies while intensifying its grip on our souls. The political zealot screaming about immigrants, the prosperity believer blaming the poor for their poverty, the apocalyptic warrior demonizing cultural enemies—all remain firmly in shame's grasp while believing themselves liberated.

The dark comedy of Dominative Christianism is that it preaches freedom while forging chains, celebrates strength while cultivating weakness, proclaims truth while requiring lies, and above all, promises shamelessness while deepening shame. Nietzsche would appreciate the irony: those most loudly proclaiming their will to power are precisely those most thoroughly in bondage to ressentiment.

The Pastoral Path Forward

If theological mutations function as judgment usurpation strategies, then addressing them requires more than intellectual correction. It demands creating contexts where believers can surrender the burden of judgment without unbearable vulnerability—what we might call communities of restored judgment.

Such communities would combine unflinching theological clarity with tender pastoral awareness. They would speak truth about the distortions of American Christianity without triggering the very shame reactions that make these distortions necessary. They would model vulnerable strength rather than invulnerability, creating spaces where believers could gradually surrender their usurped judgment role to the Creator who judges justly.

The liturgical practices of such communities would become powerful shame-transformation technologies. Confession would acknowledge sin without shame's paralysis by accepting divine rather than human judgment. Communion would celebrate difference without demanding conformity by acknowledging Christ rather than culture as the source of unity. Preaching would proclaim truth without using shame as motivator by pointing to divine rather than human criteria for authenticity.

The sacraments themselves would become visible enactments of judgment restored—the naked vulnerability of baptism where we are judged "beloved," the broken vulnerability of eucharist where we are judged "worthy of communion." These practices would gradually enable believers to surrender their false selves by revealing the divine image in what they've rejected and hidden.

America's Opportunity

The current crisis of American Christianity represents not just danger but opportunity—a chance to rediscover the vulnerability at the heart of authentic faith. The very shame that drives our theological mutations could, if surrendered rather than defended against, become the pathway to transformation.

Imagine churches where certainty is no longer necessary because divine judgment has replaced human judgment. Imagine political engagement where national sins can be acknowledged without threatening national identity because God rather than America defines our worth. Imagine theological discourse where complexity doesn't trigger binary thinking because divine mystery replaces human categorization. Imagine economic systems where vulnerability isn't equated with failure because divine values replace market values.

Such transformation would require us to abandon our theological certainties, our political alliances, our cultural power—all the judgments we've usurped to shield ourselves from shame. It would require us to embrace the vulnerability we've spent generations avoiding. But this is precisely what Christ did—embracing vulnerability to transform it. This is what the incarnation reveals—a God willing to risk everything, even divine dignity, to be with us in our shame.

As Samuel Wells so powerfully articulates in "Constructing an Incarnational Theology," God's means and purpose are identical—God chooses to be with us, not as instrumental solution to our problems but as the very expression of divine nature. This non-instrumental understanding of incarnation challenges the entire framework of American Christianity, which has largely reduced God to a solution provider rather than communion-maker.

The question facing American Christianity is not whether we have the correct theology but whether we have the courage to surrender our usurped judgment and accept divine judgment instead. The future of our faith depends not on winning the culture wars but on rediscovering the "original child" beneath our false constructions—the divine image our shame has hidden but Christ came to reveal.

This, ultimately, is the invitation of Christ—not to flee shame but to bring it to him, to discover in his wounds the healing of our own, to find in divine judgment the liberation our self-judgment could never provide. Such an invitation requires no theological genius to understand—only the courage to stand, in all our vulnerability, before the one who bore our shame that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Key Terms

Ordered Shame: The appropriate recognition of human limitation that maintains proper Creator-creature relationship. Full entry →

Judgment Usurpation: The human attempt to establish our own criteria for authentic humanity rather than accepting God's. Full entry →

Dominative Christianism: A theological system that transforms Christianity into a structure of cultural and political power. Full entry →

Works Cited

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics IV/1. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956.

Bradshaw, John. Healing the Shame That Binds You. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1988.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.

Wells, Samuel. Constructing an Incarnational Theology: A Christocentric View of God's Purpose. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Wink, Walter. Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

Wink, Walter. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.

Wink, Walter. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

Further Reading

Campbell, Douglas, Jon DePue, and Brian Zahnd. Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul's Gospel. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2024.

Hart, David Bentley. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Hauerwas, Stanley. With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001.

Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Williams, Rowan. On Christian Theology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

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💬 Join the conversation in the comments below. How have you experienced the tension between vulnerability and certainty in your own faith journey?

Introduction

In October 2024, just before the presidential election, prominent figures in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) stood before crowds of followers and declared the upcoming vote as "a critical moment of spiritual warfare where the forces of God defeat the forces of evil" in what they described as a battle against "satanic forces" for America's soul. This wasn't merely political rhetoric—it represented a profound theological framework that divides the world into absolute categories of good and evil, with political opponents portrayed not just as wrong, but as literally demonic.

This stark binary worldview exemplifies the third theological mutation of Dominative Christianism: Binary Apocalypticism. This mutation takes Christianity's beautifully nuanced "already but not yet" eschatology—a delicate theological ballet that has challenged the finest minds for two millennia—and transforms it into something more akin to a professional wrestling match, with clearly designated heroes and villains, and a predetermined outcome that somehow always favors those making the designations. It replaces the Christian's complex dance of moral clarity and eschatological humility with a rigid march toward final judgment—a judgment we've helpfully sorted out in advance, at least regarding who belongs on which side.

Like all the mutations we're exploring, Binary Apocalypticism distorts genuine theological concerns. The Christian faith indeed includes an apocalyptic dimension—a belief that history has direction and purpose, that evil will not have the final word, that God's justice will ultimately prevail. But Binary Apocalypticism commits the cardinal theological error of collapsing the "analogical interval" between divine and human judgment. It forgets the infinite qualitative distinction between God's perfect knowledge and our partial perspectives, between the City of God and the City of Man, claiming for itself a certainty about final things that belongs to God alone. It's rather like a toddler attempting to direct symphonic performances at Carnegie Hall—adorable in its ambition, but fundamentally confused about the limits of its expertise.

The Schmittian Revolution: Politics as Friend-Enemy Distinction

At the heart of Binary Apocalypticism lies what political philosopher Carl Schmitt identified as the essence of the political: the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, politics isn't primarily about governance or the common good, but about identifying who belongs to "us" and who constitutes "them"—the existential other against whom we define ourselves. It's politics reduced to its most primitive form: tribal affiliation writ large.

Richard Hooker confronted a similar binary framework in the 16th century, what I've called "Ramist realism" - a method that divided knowledge into opposing binaries and claimed to extract from Scripture "universal rules... discovered as refractions of the mind of God." Hooker recognized that such methods offered the seductive appeal of "marvelous quick dispatch," revealing "as much almost in three days, as if it dwell threescore years with them." The parallels to our contemporary apocalyptic frameworks are striking - both promise certainty without the messy work of discernment, both claim divine authority for human judgments, and both collapse the necessary distance between God's perfect knowledge and our partial perspectives.

Where Binary Apocalypticism sees clear categories of friend and enemy, Hooker saw "manifold secret exceptions" hidden within even the most seemingly straightforward rules. Against those who reduced Scripture to a catalog of absolute principles, Hooker insisted that "general rules, till their limits be fully known... are, by reason of the manifold secret exceptions which lie hidden in them, no other to the eye of man's understanding than cloudy mists cast before the eye of common sense." This insight applies perfectly to apocalyptic frameworks that cast political conflicts as cosmic battles between absolute good and absolute evil.

This framework has profound theological implications. When Christianity adopts this friend-enemy paradigm, it transforms Jesus's command to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) from the radical centerpiece of Christian ethics into a quaint moral afterthought—a lovely sentiment for greeting cards, perhaps, but hardly practical for the serious business of apocalyptic struggle. After all, if politics is fundamentally about defeating enemies rather than seeking reconciliation, then Christian political engagement becomes less about witnessing to God's reconciling love and more about ensuring victory for "our side."

Key Insight: Binary Apocalypticism doesn't merely predict the end times; it attempts to stage-manage them, casting ourselves as the righteous and our opponents as the forces of darkness—a theological version of reality television where we conveniently control both the script and the judging panel.

The consequences are readily apparent in our current moment. The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this approach, with its leaders framing political contests in explicitly spiritual warfare terms. One prominent NAR leader described a vice-presidential candidate as possessing a "Jezebel spirit"—a term laden with both theological and racial overtones that casts political opposition as literally demonic. This rhetoric transforms policy disagreements into cosmic battles, elections into Armageddon, and compromise into betrayal of divine purpose.

Political opponents aren't merely people with different policy preferences but "forces of darkness"—a phrase that manages to be simultaneously melodramatic and devoid of actual content. Elections aren't simply democratic exercises but "spiritual warfare"—as though the Holy Spirit were particularly invested in tax policy or zoning regulations. Compromise isn't prudent governance but "betrayal of absolute truth"—truth that coincidentally aligns perfectly with our preexisting political commitments. Complex policy disagreements become simplified battles between good and evil, with all the cosmic urgency that framework implies.

The irony of Binary Apocalypticism lies in its claim to biblical fidelity while abandoning the very hermeneutic Jesus himself employed. When presented with binary frameworks - "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (Matthew 22:17-22) "Should we stone this woman or not?" (John 8:1-11) - Jesus consistently refused the terms of the question, offering instead responses that transcended the false dichotomies presented to him. As Hooker might observe, those most eager to divide humanity into sheep and goats seem remarkably uninterested in the Shepherd's own resistance to binary categorization.

There's a certain comedic quality to apocalyptic certainty, rather like watching a child confidently explain quantum physics based on a half-remembered conversation with an older sibling. The gap between the confidence and the competence creates an irony that would be merely amusing if it weren't so consequential. As Hooker noted regarding his own apocalyptically-minded opponents, they speak with absolute certainty about matters where even "pillars" with "great and rare skill" acknowledge complexity and uncertainty. Perhaps apocalyptic certainty is less a sign of spiritual maturity than of theological adolescence - characterized by the peculiar combination of partial knowledge and absolute confidence that typically accompanies that developmental stage.

As Philip Gorski observes in his analysis of religious nationalism, apocalyptic thinking leads inevitably to "hubris" and "demonization." It seduces followers "into claiming to know things that no human being can possibly know" while transforming opponents into "physical embodiments of evil." This transformation of political opponents into cosmic enemies creates the conditions for justifying extraordinary measures—after all, when facing ultimate evil, ordinary ethical constraints might seem like dangerous naivete. The banal logic of apocalypse always seems to conclude that the end justifies the means—a principle notably absent from the teachings of Jesus.

The 1978 Inflection Point: When Everything Changed

This binary framework didn't emerge from nowhere, like Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus. Historical analysis reveals a crucial inflection point around 1978, when multiple disruptions converged to create profound cultural anxiety. This moment saw:

* Racial Restructuring: School integration moving from legal mandate to lived reality, challenging generational hierarchies

* Gender Reconfiguration: Shifting family patterns and women's increasing economic independence

* Technological Disruption: Microcomputer revolution beginning to transform information access

These simultaneous disruptions created what Sarah Churchwell has documented as "power anxiety"—a profound sense of uncertainty about established social hierarchies. This anxiety created fertile ground for apocalyptic frameworks that promised clarity and certainty amid disorienting change. Binary Apocalypticism offered a compelling response: a framework that simplified complexity into good versus evil, a narrative that identified clear heroes and villains, and a promise that "our side" would ultimately triumph. It's a bit like replacing the magnificent complexity of Bach's fugues with the percussive simplicity of a military march—less demanding intellectually but more immediately gratifying.

Binary Apocalypticism typically includes what Hooker recognized as appeals to a "golden era" - claims that "the first state of things was best, that in the prime of Christian religion faith was soundest, the scriptures of God were then best understood by all men, all parts of godliness did then most abound." This nostalgia functions ideologically, shutting down conversation by establishing boundaries on what questions can be asked and what answers are permissible.

Against such thinking, Hooker insisted that "Are we bound while the world standeth to put nothing in practice but only that which was the very first?" He recognized that "Our end ought always to be the same, our ways and means thereunto not so." This insight challenges apocalyptic frameworks that seek to restore an imagined past rather than faithfully responding to present realities. The Christian calling is not to restore Eden but to anticipate the New Jerusalem - not regression to an idealized past but participation in God's creative future.

The historical connection between binary frameworks and racial exclusion is particularly significant. Churchwell documents how "America First" rhetoric had explicit connections to the KKK and white nationalism, demonstrating how binaries often function to reinforce racial hierarchies. This historical entanglement should give pause to Christians who uncritically embrace binary political frameworks while claiming to transcend racial divisions. The genealogy of our theological frameworks matters; ideas have histories, and those histories often reveal uncomfortable truths about their present functions.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this historical trajectory, emerging in the late 1990s but gaining significant political influence in the 21st century. NAR promotes what scholars call "dominion theology"—the belief that Christians should take control of government, media, education, business, arts and entertainment, religion, and family (the "seven mountains" of influence) to transform society according to their interpretation of Christian values. This framework divides the world into those aligned with God's purposes and those opposing them, creating a stark binary that justifies extraordinary political measures in the name of spiritual warfare. The movement's rhetoric around "taking dominion" and engaging in "spiritual warfare" against "demonic forces" in politics embodies the apocalyptic binary thinking that characterizes this theological mutation.

Beyond Justification: God's True Purpose

Douglas Campbell's recent work "Beyond Justification" provides crucial insight into the theological roots of Binary Apocalypticism. The problem runs deeper than specific misreadings of Scripture; it stems from what Campbell calls "justification theory"—a framework that fundamentally misconstrues God's purpose, rather like mistaking the magnificent architecture of a cathedral for an elaborate system of plumbing repairs. In this view, God's primary concern becomes our moral failure, with Christ serving essentially as the solution to a problem—the divine equivalent of a cosmic handyman called in to fix our leaky salvation.

Yet as Campbell reminds us, this framework captures only about 10% of Paul's writings, while the remaining 90% proclaims a different message entirely. In Paul's actual gospel, God isn't merely responding to human sin but enacting a purpose that would have unfolded regardless—to be with us in covenantal relationship rather than contractual transaction. "While we were announcing a conditional gospel, God loved us unconditionally. The repair of the gospel is to simply lay hold of what has been the good news from the beginning."

Binary Apocalypticism flows naturally from justification theory because when salvation becomes conditional upon correct belief, humanity is easily divided into saved and unsaved, friends and enemies. This binary framework enables Dominative Christianism's apocalyptic worldview that divides the political landscape into good and evil, rather like sorting laundry into light and dark—except with eternal consequences.

The alternative—a participatory understanding of divine purpose—emphasizes:

* Divine purpose as communion rather than merely problem-solving

* Reconciliation rather than division as God's fundamental intention

* Evil and sin as obstacles to God's purpose, not its motivation

* Resurrection rather than mere atonement as the center of Christian hope

This participatory framework fundamentally challenges binary thinking by emphasizing God's universal reconciling work in Christ rather than division and judgment. It replaces the friend-enemy distinction with a vision of humanity united in Christ while still journeying toward full redemption. It's rather like the difference between viewing marriage as a contractual arrangement to avoid loneliness and viewing it as a covenantal relationship that fulfills our deepest nature as beings made for communion.

Special Equity: A Theological Alternative to Binary Thinking

Richard Hooker's concept of "special equity" provides a powerful theological alternative to Binary Apocalypticism. Where binary thinking reduces complex reality to friend-enemy distinctions, special equity attends carefully to the particularity of each situation. Hooker defined this approach as the "patient endurance of objectionable difference" that seeks justice in specific circumstances rather than mechanically applying universal rules.

"Not without singular wisdom therefore it hath been provided," Hooker wrote, "that as the ordinary course of common affairs is disposed of by general laws, so likewise men's rarer incident necessities and utilities should be with special equity considered." This wisdom recognizes that good laws are necessarily expressed in general language, but their application requires attention to "material circumstances" that abstract principles might miss.

This approach doesn't abandon moral clarity or theological conviction. Rather, it grounds them in the rich particularity of human experience rather than abstract categories. It recognizes, with Augustine, that we are bound together in a "society of souls" whose differences are not obstacles to overcome but gifts to be received. Special equity seeks the good the natural law intends by attending to the complex reality of concrete situations rather than imposing pre-determined binary judgments.

In our polarized age, this approach offers a way forward that maintains both moral conviction and humble recognition of our limited perspective. It replaces the friend-enemy distinction with what John Bowlin calls "the patient endurance of objectionable difference" - not out of moral indifference but out of commitment to the common good. It's rather like the difference between playing a complex jazz composition and striking a single, insistent note - one requires careful attention to context and relationship, while the other requires merely the ability to make noise.

Being With: God's Incarnational Purpose

Samuel Wells' incarnational theology of "being with" provides another powerful antidote to Binary Apocalypticism. He challenges the conventional understanding that Jesus came primarily to solve the problem of sin—a notion that reduces the glory of incarnation to a rather pedestrian exercise in cosmic problem-solving, as though the eternal Word became flesh merely to perform some metaphysical maintenance. Instead, Wells proposes that the incarnation was always God's purpose—not merely a response to human failure. In his most recent work, Wells "articulates a truly Christocentric theology in which God's means and God's ends are identical," arguing that centering human deficit rather than divine abundance has long been unsatisfactory.

Wells' framework of "being with" includes eight dimensions: presence, attention, mystery, delight, participation, partnership, enjoyment, and glory. Each dimension reveals how God's fundamental purpose is communion rather than correction or condemnation. Reflecting on Jesus' example, Wells notes that Jesus "spent a week in Jerusalem working for us, three years in Galilee working with us, and 30 years in Nazareth being with us. If God spent 90% of the incarnation being with, why should we be different?" One might say that God appears considerably less obsessed with productivity metrics than many of our churches.

This understanding transforms our approach to those we might consider "enemies." Instead of opposition, we're called to presence—showing up in the messy reality of human difference. Instead of condemnation, we're called to attention—actually seeing the other rather than merely the category we've assigned them. Instead of certainty, we're called to mystery—acknowledging the depths of others that exceed our understanding. Instead of severity, we're called to delight—finding joy in the beauty of others created in God's image. Binary Apocalypticism, with its rigid categories and cosmic urgency, has no place for these practices of "being with." It prioritizes division over communion, certainty over mystery, working against over being with—rather like preferring the sterile clarity of a prison yard to the creative chaos of a family dinner.

The incarnation reveals that God's primary purpose isn't judgment but presence. This insight dramatically reframes how we understand theological concepts like "end times" and "final judgment." If God's purpose is communion rather than condemnation, then the culmination of history isn't the sorting of humanity into opposing camps but the fullness of divine-human communion—what the Scriptures call "the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:9). It's less a final exam and more a wedding feast. (Though perhaps I'm biased, having always preferred feasts to exams.)

The Beauty of Theological Complexity

Binary thinking fails not only morally but aesthetically. It reduces the wondrous complexity of divine-human relationship to a crude dualism that neither illuminates scripture nor satisfies the soul. The Christian tradition offers a far more beautiful account through what David Bentley Hart calls "analogical metaphysics"—understanding reality as neither univocally identical with God nor equivocally disconnected from God, but analogically related to God through the divine attributes reflected in creation.

This analogical understanding finds expression in what Richard Hooker would recognize as dialectical rather than divisive thinking. Where Binary Apocalypticism proceeds by dividing reality into opposing categories, dialectic moves toward "mediating synthesis" - not merely splitting differences but elevating discourse to a new level that "inherits the strengths of predecessor/competitor theories and practices while overcoming their weaknesses." It's the difference between a debate where the goal is to win and a conversation where the goal is to understand - a distinction I fear is increasingly lost in our apocalyptic age.

Dialectical thinking reflects a world understood as dynamic rather than static, as open to God's continuing creative acts rather than fixed in predetermined patterns. As David Congden reflects on Karl Barth’s insights, "election is 'new every morning'" - God meets us always in our irreducible particularity, not through abstract universal principles. This means there are no timeless absolutes upon which to ground our ethics, "no original created human nature to which we can point," but only the concrete reality of Christ himself, "the contingent event that is universally significant in that it includes all other people and events within its singular reality."

This analogical understanding recognizes that all truth participates in Truth itself—that partial glimpses of beauty, goodness, and justice appear even among those with whom we profoundly disagree. Binary apocalypticism can't accommodate this aesthetic complexity; it requires stark oppositions and absolute divisions where Christian tradition has typically recognized subtle gradations and partial apprehensions.

Perhaps the most powerful counter to Binary Apocalypticism is Hooker's recognition of the "beautiful variety of things" and the "manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude of those ways, whereby his Church upon earth is guided from age to age." Where Binary Apocalypticism demands uniformity and certainty, Hooker saw diversity as reflecting divine creativity. The "manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude" he celebrated stands in stark contrast to the monotonous certainty of apocalyptic frameworks.

This aesthetic critique is not merely superficial but goes to the heart of how we understand God's relationship with creation. A God who delights in "beautiful variety" and "harmonious dissimilitude" seems unlikely to be impressed by rigid frameworks that reduce complex reality to simplistic categories. There's something deeply unimaginative about Binary Apocalypticism - a failure not just of ethics but of theological imagination. It lacks the creative capacity to envision reconciliation beyond victory, community beyond uniformity, truth beyond certainty. In the end, Binary Apocalypticism fails not because it's too radical but because it's not nearly radical enough - too constrained by the world's friend-enemy distinctions to imagine the revolutionary communion toward which all creation moves.

The result is a theological framework devoid of beauty—and as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, without beauty, goodness loses its attractiveness and truth loses its persuasiveness. Put simply, binary apocalypticism isn't just wrong; it's ugly. It lacks the harmonious integration of diversity that characterizes truly beautiful things. It prefers the monotonous uniformity of ideological certainty to the symphonic complexity of theological wisdom.

The analogical interval—that space of both similarity and difference between Creator and creation—is precisely where genuine theological thinking happens. Binary apocalypticism collapses this interval into either univocal identification (where our judgments are identical with God's) or equivocal separation (where our enemies are wholly other than ourselves). Both moves destroy the analogical relationship that makes theological thinking possible at all.

The Psychological Mechanism: Identity Through Opposition

Paul Kahn's analysis of political theology illuminates how binary frameworks generate meaning and identity. Binary Apocalypticism doesn't merely provide a worldview; it offers adherents a secure identity forged through opposition to enemies. This process works through four interconnected mechanisms:

* Identity Through Opposition: Creating stable identity through contrast with enemies—rather like defining yourself primarily as "not a Yankees fan" rather than by any positive commitments

* Meaning Through Conflict: Generating purpose and significance through struggle—as though our lives only matter insofar as we're engaged in cosmic battle

* Evil Projection: Unifying "our side" by projecting evil onto external others—allowing us to maintain a pristine self-image by locating all darkness elsewhere

* Sacrificial Mobilization: Motivating sacrifice through narratives of existential threat—because nothing motivates quite like apocalyptic emergency

These mechanisms explain the peculiar persistence of apocalyptic thinking despite repeatedly failed predictions. The function of Binary Apocalypticism isn't primarily predictive but identity-forming. It tells adherents who they are by telling them who they're against, providing psychological security amid disorienting social change. As Blaise Pascal might observe, it fills the God-shaped void in our hearts with the considerably less satisfying but more immediately available alternative of enemy-contempt.

This understanding helps explain why attempts to correct apocalyptic predictions with facts often fail. The appeal isn't primarily intellectual but existential. Binary Apocalypticism offers a secure identity and a meaningful narrative when both seem increasingly elusive. It's rather like treating existential anxiety with apocalyptic Red Bull energy drinks—providing an immediate sense of purpose but typically resulting in a crash, followed by the need for increasingly potent formulations.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this identity-forming function, with its rhetoric of "prayer warrior networks" and "spiritual battle" providing adherents a clear identity and purpose. What scholars describe as a "religio-political movement" creates meaning by positioning followers as God's agents in a cosmic battle to "take dominion" over cultural and political institutions. This frame promises significance, security, and clarity in an increasingly complex world—psychological benefits that help explain the movement's growing influence despite its theological contradictions with historic Christianity.

The Ecosystem: Information Closed Loops

Binary Apocalypticism never operates in isolation, like some rugged individualist of theological error. It creates and requires what we might call "epistemic bunkers"—closed information ecosystems that reinforce binary worldviews while excluding contrary evidence. We see this in:

* Media platforms that present political opponents as fundamentally evil rather than merely misguided—rather like episode descriptions for particularly melodramatic soap operas

* Church communities that treat political alignment as a test of Christian authenticity—turning communion into a partisan membership card

* Social networks segregated by political viewpoint that prevent meaningful encounter with difference—creating digital ghettoes of self-congratulation

* Online environments where the most extreme expressions of binary thinking receive the most engagement—rewarding rhetorical pyrotechnics over thoughtful engagement

These closed ecosystems create what philosopher Charles Taylor calls "mutual fragilization"—when isolated communities increasingly view competing perspectives not merely as wrong but as existentially threatening. This dynamic transforms political disagreement from democratic debate into perceived spiritual warfare. The result isn't civic discourse but mutual incomprehension across hardening boundaries—a theological Tower of Babel where we speak increasingly distinct languages while imagining ourselves perfectly clear.

The jazz band metaphor illuminates what's lost in this binary framework. Where true Christian community might resemble a jazz ensemble—diverse instruments creating harmony through responsive listening—Binary Apocalypticism creates a rigid marching band, demanding conformity to a single militant rhythm. The rich complexity of improvisation gives way to the reductive simplicity of combat. The question is whether we're called to march in formation or to make music together—and the biblical images of heavenly worship suggest the latter.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this ecosystem development through what researchers describe as "prayer warrior networks" in all fifty states and around the world, creating parallel information structures that reinforce binary apocalyptic frameworks. By positioning adherents as spiritual warriors engaged in cosmic battle against demonic forces in politics, business, and culture, these networks create closed epistemological communities where skepticism toward the movement's claims is itself evidence of demonic influence—a perfect epistemic trap that resists correction.

The Alternative: Eschatological Realism

Christianity need not choose between moral clarity and humble patience. The theological tradition offers robust alternatives to Binary Apocalypticism, alternatives that unite the true, the good, and the beautiful rather than sacrificing any for partisan advantage:

Hospitality as Theological Practice

Luke Bretherton's concept of hospitality offers a theological framework for encountering difference without either erasing it (liberalism) or treating it as an absolute barrier (nationalism). Hospitality "hallows bare life" by recognizing the irreducible worth of the other without requiring their assimilation. It creates "tent-like places" for meaningful encounter across difference while maintaining distinctive identities.

This approach doesn't abandon truth claims or moral clarity. Rather, it practices truth through relationship rather than imposition. It makes space for the other while maintaining faithful witness. It recognizes difference without making it ultimate. It's less like building walls to keep others out and more like setting a table where all can be fed—which happens to align rather nicely with Jesus's preferred social activity.

Tolerance as Moral Virtue

John Bowlin's understanding of tolerance challenges the assumption that tolerance means moral weakness. True tolerance isn't indifference but "the patient endurance of objectionable difference" rooted in commitment to justice and the common good. It requires moral conviction rather than abandoning it.

Bowlin distinguishes between tolerance (a natural virtue related to justice) and forbearance (a specifically Christian virtue related to love). Where tolerance patiently endures objectionable differences for the sake of justice, forbearance does so for the sake of love, mirroring Christ's endurance of sin for the sake of reconciliation. There's nothing weak about this patience; it requires considerably more strength than the immediate gratification of righteous condemnation.

Eschatological Patience

Perhaps most fundamentally, Christian tradition offers eschatological patience—maintaining hope in God's ultimate redemption while accepting present ambiguity. This patience:

* Distinguishes between penultimate political concerns and ultimate theological concerns—avoiding the idolatry of treating politics as final

* Recognizes the partial and provisional nature of all human political projects—neither demonizing nor deifying our political arrangements

* Maintains moral clarity without claiming divine certainty about final judgments—acknowledging that we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12)

* Practices enemy love as central Christian discipline rather than optional extra—recognizing that if Jesus meant what he said about loving enemies (Matthew 5:44), our political engagements might require significant reconfiguration

This eschatological patience doesn't abandon moral judgment or political engagement. It engages precisely because it believes God's redemptive purpose encompasses all creation, including political life. But it engages without the triumphalism that characterizes Binary Apocalypticism, recognizing that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood" (Ephesians 6:12) but against powers and principalities that distort all human systems, including our own. It's less like storming the barricades of enemy territory and more like tending a garden amid the ruins—a garden that prefigures the renewed creation toward which all history moves.

Conclusion

Binary Apocalypticism offers a tempting simplicity in complex times. Like all the mutations we're examining, it addresses legitimate needs—for moral clarity, cosmic meaning, and secure identity. But it addresses these needs by collapsing distinctions that Christian theology insists on maintaining—between divine and human judgment, between enemy and evil, between righteous anger and self-righteous certainty. It's rather like addressing hunger by consuming not bread but stones—a solution that satisfies immediate cravings while providing no actual nourishment.

The alternative isn't moral relativism or political disengagement. It's a more faithful witness that maintains both the "already" of moral clarity and the "not yet" of eschatological humility. It's a politics shaped by cruciform love rather than the friend-enemy distinction. It's a witness that speaks truth to power while recognizing our own complicity in systems of domination. It's a bit like the difference between a teenager's black-and-white certainties and a parent's more nuanced wisdom—not less committed to truth, but more aware of truth's complexity.

In practical terms, this means:

* Maintaining moral clarity without demonizing opponents—recognizing the image of God even in those with whom we profoundly disagree

* Pursuing justice without claiming perfect righteousness—acknowledging our own partial vision and mixed motives

* Speaking truth without claiming infallibility—holding our convictions with both confidence and humility

* Building communities of witness that transcend political binaries—prefiguring the reconciliation toward which all history moves

* Practicing reconciliation as central to Christian witness—not as an optional extra but as the heart of the gospel

As we navigate polarized times, Christians need not choose between prophetic critique and humble patience. The cruciform pattern of Jesus offers a different way—neither the binary certainty of apocalypticism nor the moral confusion of relativism, but the difficult, beautiful path of truth spoken in love, of justice pursued with mercy, of communities that witness to God's reconciling purpose for all creation. It's a path that requires both courage and humility, both conviction and openness—a narrow way that leads to life precisely because it refuses the broad highways of ideological certainty that lead only to mutual destruction.

In the end, perhaps the most damning critique of Binary Apocalypticism is aesthetic: it's simply too boring. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is infinitely more creative, more surprising, and more delightful than our binary categories can accommodate. The final triumph of divine love will almost certainly confound all our expectations and transcend all our categories. And in that surprise—that divine joke that upends all our certainties while fulfilling our deepest hopes—we might finally learn to laugh at ourselves, to hold our judgments lightly, and to trust the One whose judgments alone are true, good, and beautiful.

Key Terms

Binary Apocalypticism: Divides the world into absolute categories of good and evil, friends and enemies, creating a framework where political opponents become cosmic enemies. Full entry →

Participatory Freedom: Understanding freedom as capacity for love and non-domination rather than absence of constraint, grounding political engagement in cruciform love rather than friend-enemy distinction. Full entry →

Being With: A theological framework that understands God's purpose as communion rather than merely problem-solving, emphasizing presence, attention, mystery, and delight as divine attributes revealed in Christ. Full entry →

Special Equity: Hooker's concept of attending to the particularity of each situation rather than mechanically applying universal rules, seeking justice in specific circumstances rather than enforcing abstract principles. Full entry →

Related Content

* Sermon: Mark 4:35-41 (Jesus Calms the Storm) →

* Lexicon: Binary Apocalypticism →

Notes

[1] Philip Gorski, American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (Princeton University Press, 2017), 224.

[2] Sarah Churchwell, Behold, America: The Entangled History of "America First" and "the American Dream" (Basic Books, 2018), 128-134.

[3] Douglas Campbell and Jon DePue, Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul's Gospel (Cascade Books, 2024), 16.

[4] Samuel Wells, Constructing an Incarnational Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 42.

[5] Paul Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Columbia University Press, 2011), 156-159.

[6] Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Ashgate, 2006), 121-127.

[7] John Bowlin, Tolerance Among the Virtues (Princeton University Press, 2016), 45-52.

[8] David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003), 124-151.

[9] Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V.9.2-3.

[10] David Congden, "Creatio Continue Ex Electione: A Post-Barthian Revision of the Doctrine of Creatio Ex Nihilo," Koinonia XXII, (2010), 49.

Picture this scene from Mark's Gospel: Three terrified disciples on a mountain, watching their teacher transformed before their eyes, glowing with unearthly radiance while conversing with Moses and Elijah—figures from centuries past who suddenly appear in brilliant splendor. Peter, in that profoundly human way of responding to divine mystery with mundane practicality, suggests building three commemorative shelters. Then a cloud envelops them (because apparently transfiguration wasn't dramatic enough), and a voice thunders: "This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" (Mark 9:7)

And they are, as Mark carefully notes, "terrified." (Mark 9:6)

Not mildly concerned. Not reverently awed. Terrified. This wasn't the pleasant warmth of a worship service or the gentle affirmation of a prayer meeting. This was pure, primal fear—the kind that arises when finite creatures encounter the infinite, when human categories collapse before divine reality. This was what Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans—the overwhelming mystery that simultaneously attracts and repels, that draws us close while making us acutely aware of our radical otherness.

Now consider how we speak of religious experience today:

* "God told me to vote for Senator So-and-So"

* "The Holy Spirit confirmed that my identity group represents authentic divine concern"

* "Jesus clearly endorses our specific political platform"

Something profound has been lost in translation. The divine mystery that made Peter babble incoherently and left the disciples speechless has been reduced to a kind of supernatural polling service, validating our predetermined positions and affirming our existing commitments.

When Divine Presence Becomes Political Property

Here's what authentic religious experience looks like in scripture:

* Moses encounters the burning bush and must remove his sandals, overwhelmed by holy ground (Exodus 3:1-6)

* Isaiah sees the Lord "high and lifted up" and cries out in recognition of his unworthiness (Isaiah 6:1-5)

* The disciples witness the transfigured Christ and lose all coherent speech (Mark 9:2-6)

Notice the pattern? Divine encounters consistently produce:

* Recognition of radical inadequacy before transcendent reality

* Simultaneous attraction and fear that defies rationalization

* Transformation beyond human planning or control

* Redirection toward previously unimagined purposes

Nowhere in scripture does God appear to affirm political platforms, validate identity categories, or endorse cultural preferences. Instead, divine presence consistently disrupts human agendas, transcends political divisions, and reorients human desire toward divine purposes that exceed partisan imagination.

The Collapse of Transcendence: How God Becomes Our Political Mascot

Modern American Christianity has accomplished something remarkable—perhaps even unprecedented in religious history. We've managed to reduce the Creator of the universe to a mascot for our political teams, transforming divine transcendence into a kind of supernatural endorsement service for cultural warfare.

David Bentley Hart describes this collapse with devastating precision: "The analogical interval between God and creatures is what makes possible both genuine divine transcendence and authentic divine immanence. When this interval collapses into univocal identity of being, God becomes either a being among beings (and thus not God) or an absence that leaves the world to its own devices."¹

Let me translate that from theologian to everyday English: When we forget that God exists on a fundamentally different plane than creation, we inevitably turn God into either a bigger version of ourselves or a meaningless abstraction. Either way, we lose authentic divine encounter.

Gods of Legitimation: The Quest for Ultimate Authority

What's particularly fascinating is how our society keeps searching for sources of ultimate authority, even as traditional religious frameworks recede from public life. As political philosopher Ivan Krastev observes, "Science was as important for the modern state as God was for the monarchical states of the past. The legitimacy of the state was coming from science."¹³

This insight reveals a pattern: human communities consistently seek transcendent sources of legitimacy. When traditional religious authority wanes, scientific authority often takes its place—not merely as practical guidance but as a source of ultimate validation. The COVID pandemic revealed the limitations of this arrangement, as Krastev notes: "Science functions because scientists disagree with each other... science—even though it was successful... delegitimized the state by the very way it works: through disagreement and constantly-changing hypotheses."¹³

The result? A society increasingly skeptical of all sources of transcendent authority, whether religious or scientific. This vacuum of trusted authority creates fertile ground for both political mutations we'll explore.

Dominative Christianism: Divine Power as Political Control

In Dominative Christianism, divine presence mutates into a display of power—the spiritual equivalent of revving motorcycle engines at traffic lights. God becomes the ultimate enforcer for nationalist dreams, the cosmic guarantor of American exceptionalism. Consider how this mutation transforms religious practice:

Worship services increasingly resemble political rallies, complete with nationalist symbols and partisan rhetoric. The cross transforms from a symbol of self-sacrificial love into a weapon for cultural dominance. Prayer shifts from vulnerable dialogue with the divine to declarations of spiritual warfare against political opponents. The eucharist—that profound mystery of divine presence—becomes a boundary marker between political allies and enemies.

As Timothy Cunningham observes in his analysis of Christian nationalism: "Christian nationalists often interpret patriotic texts in ways that sacralize American identity, much as they approach sacred scripture." The divine mystery that should expand our vision becomes confined to national boundaries, serving political agendas rather than transcending them.

This represents what Charles Taylor calls "excarnation"—the disembodiment of spiritual reality into abstract principles.³ Rather than encountering the living God who transcends our categories, worshippers experience a domesticated deity who confirms their political convictions.

What's particularly intriguing about the Trump-era expression of this tendency is its profound shift away from American exceptionalism itself. As Krastev notes: "Trump was the last one to say that American exceptionalism is not America's strength—it's America's vulnerability... America is the victim of its exceptionalism. America is the victim of its idealism. America is the victim of the American Dream."¹³

This creates a strange paradox: a religious nationalism that increasingly defines itself against traditional American ideals rather than through them. The result is what Yascha Mounk characterizes as a movement where "the least based thing is to have a kind of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington naïve view of American ideals."¹⁴ The sacred story no longer points toward fulfilling America's promise, but toward rejecting the very idea that America has a universal promise to fulfill.

Providential Identitarianism: Divine Presence as Therapeutic Validation

Providential Identitarianism commits the same fundamental error from the opposite direction. Here, God becomes the cosmic therapist who exists primarily to validate our feelings and affirm our chosen identities. Divine presence gets reduced to whatever makes us feel comfortable and confirmed in our existing commitments.

This mutation manifests in parallel distortions:

* Emotional comfort becomes equated with divine presence—if it feels affirming, it must be of God

* Personal validation becomes the primary mode of spiritual experience

* Prophetic challenge that might disturb our sensibilities gets eliminated

* The God who wounds in order to heal becomes the therapist who only soothes

As Christian Smith notes in his research on American religious life: "The therapeutic model transforms God from the transcendent Lord who calls us to transformation into the cosmic therapist who validates our existing desires."⁶ The divine otherness that should expand our horizons instead becomes a mirror reflecting our own preferences.

This pattern parallels what Krastev identifies as a fundamental shift in state legitimation: "The classical trusted state of the 1930s in America under Roosevelt—or of the 1950s and 60s in Europe—was based on the idea that it responded to and took care of human needs. But today, it must take care of human desires."¹³ The state can no longer merely provide universal necessities; it must validate individual uniqueness.

The result? A theology that mirrors this consumerist logic: "I want the state to treat me as a very specific personality—but the state, in order to be fair, must treat me like everybody else. We're no longer ready to live with that."¹³ Similarly, the God of Providential Identitarianism must validate everyone's unique identity while somehow maintaining universality—an impossible theological demand that inevitably collapses into incoherence.

The Shared Metaphysical Disaster: Flattening the Infinite

Despite their political opposition, both mutations share a common metaphysical framework—what philosophers call "univocity." This technical term describes the assumption that God exists on the same ontological plane as everything else, just bigger and better. It's like thinking the Pacific Ocean is merely a very large bathtub, missing the qualitative difference that makes it an ocean rather than just big bath water.

Stanley Hauerwas captures this problem with characteristic clarity: "The God of Christian faith is not a 'meaning' that we can control through our theological systems or political projects. Rather, this God is the disruptive presence who continually calls into question our attempts to secure our own existence through our religiosity."⁶

Both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism fail precisely because they try to harness divine power for their predetermined projects. They share what Hauerwas calls "the desperate need to have a god that underwrites our causes rather than a God who judges them."

This shared framework produces characteristic distortions across the political spectrum:

* Divine action becomes reduced to natural causation, whether political power or social progress

* Mystery gets eliminated in favor of ideological certainty

* Revelation collapses into confirmation of existing beliefs

* Grace transforms from gift into technique for achieving partisan goals

Digital Idolatry: When the Algorithm Becomes Divine

Social media accelerates these mutations by transforming religious experience into commodified content. Marshall McLuhan's insight that "the medium is the message" helps explain how digital mediation fundamentally alters religious encounter:

Algorithmic curation creates echo chambers where we encounter only views that reinforce existing commitments. Instant feedback loops reward performative spirituality designed for maximum engagement rather than genuine encounter. Disembodied interaction enables ideological extremism by removing the moderating influence of face-to-face community. Visual dominance replaces contemplative depth, reducing religious experience to shareable moments.

Byung-Chul Han calls this "the digital swarm"—isolated individuals who experience pseudo-community through technological mediation.¹⁰ Religious experience becomes content to be consumed rather than mystery to be encountered. God's voice gets filtered through our carefully curated feeds, speaking only what we already want to hear.

This algorithmic curation parallels what Krastev identifies as a fundamental challenge of modern democracy: "Suddenly, you're being asked to have opinions about things you've never experienced and cannot experience. And this created a kind of trust–mistrust game. As a result, democracy became the management of mistrust."¹³ Similarly, algorithmic religion asks us to have confident positions on divine matters far beyond our experience, substituting digital certainty for lived encounter.

Recovering the Analogical Interval: A Path Beyond Political Idolatry

The way forward requires recovering what classical theology calls the "analogical interval"—the metaphysical space that enables genuine relationship between Creator and creation precisely by maintaining their fundamental difference.

Hauerwas helps us understand why this matters for contemporary discipleship: "To be a disciple is to learn to be dispossessed, to be freed from the presumption that we can secure our lives against God's lordship through our theological systems or political arrangements."¹¹ The analogical interval teaches us that God is not simply a bigger version of what we already know, but the One who transforms our knowing itself.

This recovery begins with several crucial recognitions:

First, we must acknowledge divine transcendence not as distance but as the condition for genuine intimacy. Just as human relationships require distinct persons to achieve true communion, divine-human relationship requires the analogical difference that enables authentic encounter without collapse into identity.

Second, we must embrace mystery without surrendering clarity. The God who reveals is the same God who remains hidden. This isn't contradiction but the necessary structure of infinite-finite relationship. We can know truly without knowing exhaustively.

Third, we must cultivate patience before divine hiddenness. As Samuel Wells wisely notes: "The Church does not make things happen; it invites people to allow things to happen to them—to have their feet washed, to realize they are hungry, to find food in unlikely forms, to be transformed and consumed."² The compulsion to manufacture religious experience through political validation or therapeutic affirmation betrays a refusal to wait upon God's self-revelation in God's own time and manner.

Finally, we must resist premature closure of theological questions. The divine mystery invites ongoing exploration rather than ideological certainty. Authentic faith remains open to being surprised by grace.

Liturgical Resistance: Practices Beyond Political Capture

Recovery requires liturgical practices that resist ideological capture and create space for authentic divine encounter. These aren't techniques for manufacturing religious experience but disciplines that open us to transformative presence:

Eucharistic celebration transcends political division by gathering diverse people around Christ's table. Here, we don't merely remember but participate in divine self-giving that refuses partisan categories. The bread broken and shared becomes a sign of unity that precedes and exceeds political alignment.

Contemplative prayer embraces divine mystery rather than seeking to control divine power. In silence, we learn to wait upon God's initiative rather than projecting our agendas onto divine reality. This creates what Sarah Coakley calls "practices of un-mastery"—spiritual disciplines that open us to divine transformation rather than confirming our existing commitments.¹²

Scriptural meditation allows texts to challenge our preconceptions rather than confirming our biases. Rather than mining scripture for proof-texts, we allow sacred words to interrogate our assumptions, expose our limitations, and redirect our desires toward divine purposes that exceed partisan imagination.

Corporate confession acknowledges shared brokenness rather than projecting evil onto others. Here we recognize that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, preventing the demonization of political opponents that characterizes both mutations.

Prophetic Presence: Neither Red Nor Blue but Kingdom-Shaped

Authentic religious experience enables prophetic witness that transcends partisan alignment. Like the Hebrew prophets who challenged both royal power and popular religion, contemporary prophetic presence refuses conscription into ideological armies while maintaining fierce commitment to divine justice.

The prophetic voice emerges from genuine encounter with divine presence that refuses domestication. It speaks truth to all forms of power, whether political or religious, conservative or progressive. It maintains critical distance from all ideologies while embracing solidarity with the marginalized regardless of political categorization. Most importantly, it witnesses to transcendent hope that cannot be reduced to any political program or social movement.

Willie James Jennings captures this dynamic: "When the nation becomes the primary site of divine revelation, the church loses its capacity to witness against national idolatry. The prophetic voice is silenced by the siren song of civil religion."⁴ True prophetic witness recovers this capacity by grounding itself in divine otherness rather than partisan identity.

The Comedy of Divine Freedom: God Who Refuses to Be Contained

Here's the profound irony that both mutations fail to grasp: The God we've been trying to recruit for our culture wars refuses to stay in the boxes we build. While Dominative Christianism seeks a deity who blesses nationalist dreams and Providential Identitarianism desires a God who validates progressive credentials, the actual divine presence keeps showing up in unexpected places—among the poor and marginalized, within communities that defy political categorization, through encounters that transform rather than confirm.

The divine comedy plays out when our carefully constructed religious systems encounter the living God who transcends them all. It's like watching someone try to capture the ocean in a fishbowl—the categories we construct for divine presence consistently prove inadequate to the reality we encounter.

This isn't merely theological abstraction. Consider how often scripture shows God working through unexpected people: Gentile widows rather than Israelite priests (1 Kings 17:8-24), tax collectors rather than Pharisees (Luke 18:9-14), crucified criminals rather than religious authorities (Luke 23:39-43). The divine pattern consistently subverts our expectations of where and how God appears.

Transfiguration Revisited: The Model of Authentic Encounter

Returning to the Transfiguration narrative, we see how authentic divine encounter resists both mutations we've examined. The disciples experience overwhelming presence that disrupts their agendas rather than confirming them. They encounter mystery that exceeds their comprehension rather than validating their understanding. They receive a command to listen rather than speak, to be transformed rather than to transform. Most significantly, their experience precedes understanding rather than confirming preexisting categories.

The voice from the cloud—"This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!" (Mark 9:7)—redirects attention from human projects to divine revelation. It doesn't endorse their political preferences or validate their social identities. Instead, it invites participation in divine life that transcends all partisan divisions. This divine word reveals a presence that transforms rather than affirms, challenges rather than comforts, and calls beyond rather than confirms.

Conclusion: Beyond Political Idolatry

Recovery of authentic religious experience requires a profound shift in how we approach divine presence. We must allow the God of biblical revelation to interrupt our ideological certainties, whether they lean right or left. Only then can we experience the God who is truly Other yet intimately present—the God who transforms rather than merely affirms, who calls us beyond ourselves rather than confirming our existing commitments.

This God cannot be reduced to a weapon in our culture wars or a validator of our identities. This God remains free, sovereign, and loving—inviting us into relationship that transforms rather than possession that controls. The prophet Hosea captures this divine freedom: "I am God and not a human being, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath." (Hosea 11:9) The God who refuses political domestication remains the God of transforming love.

The path forward isn't about finding better ways to enlist God in our causes. It's about recovering the capacity for authentic divine encounter that transforms our causes themselves. As we allow divine presence to disrupt our partisan certainties and challenge our tribal loyalties, we may discover that the God we've been trying to recruit has been seeking to transform us all along.

The voice from the cloud still speaks: "This is my Son. Listen to him!"

Perhaps our most faithful response is neither to explain nor to translate but simply to obey: to listen, to be transformed, and to follow wherever divine presence leads—even when it disrupts our carefully maintained political categories and theological systems.

Key Terms

Dominative Christianism: A theological mutation that transforms Christianity from a faith centered on cruciform love into a system for exercising social and political control. Full entry →

Providential Identitarianism: A theological mutation that secularizes reformed protestant frameworks while maintaining structural logic through identity-based categories. Full entry →

Analogical Interval: The metaphysical space between Creator and creation that enables genuine relationship without collapsing difference. Full entry →(Coming Soon)

Univocity: The modern metaphysical assumption that being is predicated in the same way of God and creatures. Full entry →(Coming soon)

Participatory Presence: Understanding divine presence as participation in divine life rather than possession of divine power. Full entry →(Coming soon)

Related Content

* Monday: Introduction to Dominative Christianism (Part 1) →

* Monday: The Trinitarian Foundation of Christian Identity →

* Wednesday: B******t: Truth as Foundation →

* Thursday: Four Migrations, Four Worlds →

Notes

[1] David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 127.[2] Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), 26.[3] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 554.[4] Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 289.[5] Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 246.[6] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 44.[7] Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 121.[8] Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 198.[9] Stanley Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), 157.[10] Byung-Chul Han, In the Swarm: Digital Prospects, trans. Erik Butler (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 12.[11] Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 259.[12] Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), xv.[13] Ivan Krastev, interviewed by Yascha Mounk, "Ivan Krastev on American Decline," The Good Fight podcast, Persuasion, April 23, 2025.[14] Yascha Mounk, conversation with Ivan Krastev, "Ivan Krastev on American Decline," The Good Fight podcast, Persuasion, April 23, 2025.

Based on Mark 4:35-41 (Jesus Calms the Storm)

My dear friends in Christ,

"Peace! Be still!" These words of Jesus echo across the centuries to us today, in a time when many of us feel tossed about by storms of anxiety, division, and uncertainty. In today's gospel, we find the disciples crossing the Sea of Galilee when a sudden storm threatens to overwhelm their boat. Jesus, asleep in the stern, is awakened by his terrified disciples, who cry out, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"

How familiar that cry sounds to many of us today. "Do you not care that we are perishing?" As markets tumble, as retirement accounts shrink, as policies driven by fear rather than compassion take shape, many among us feel exactly as those disciples did – tossed about by forces beyond our control, wondering if anyone cares about our well-being.

The Storm Around Us

Let's be honest with one another. We are living through a frightening time. Many of you have shared your anxieties with me – worries about economic security as markets react to proposed tariffs, concerns about the erosion of democratic norms, fears about what the future holds for your children and grandchildren. These fears are real, and I would never dismiss them.

But notice something crucial in our gospel story: Jesus doesn't rebuke the disciples for being in the storm. Storms happen. Jesus doesn't blame them for their boat taking on water. That's what happens in storms. Instead, he questions their fear: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"

Fear vs. Faith

This isn't a condemnation but an invitation – an invitation to a different way of being in the storm. Jesus doesn't promise his followers they'll never face storms. In fact, it was Jesus himself who directed them to "go across to the other side" – to cross boundaries, to move from familiar territory into the unknown. And when storms arose during that crossing, he didn't abandon them.

The forces that create fear in our society today are real. Economic uncertainty, political division, the erosion of shared values – these are like waves battering our collective boat. But Jesus's question echoes to us today: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"

This isn't a glib dismissal of our concerns. It's a profound invitation to a different way of being in the storm – not controlled by fear, but anchored in the presence of the One who commands even the wind and the sea.

Finding Our Navigational Fix

When I served on submarines, we would periodically come to "periscope depth" to get what we called a "navigational fix" – checking our position against fixed points of reference. In times of societal storm, we too need to come to periscope depth and check our position against fixed points of reference.

What are those fixed points? Jesus provides them: "You have heard it was said... but I say to you..." Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Blessed are the peacemakers. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me. Turn the other cheek. These teachings aren't conditional. They don't change with political winds or economic indicators.

When we find ourselves caught in storms of fear – fear about markets, fear about politics, fear about the future – we need to get a navigational fix from these fixed points of Jesus's teaching. And let's be honest: many who claim the name Christian today have drifted far off course, using faith to justify policies and attitudes that bear little resemblance to the way of Jesus.

Being With, Not Doing To

Here I want to speak with particular love and concern to those who find their faith aligned with political movements that promote fear of the other, that prioritize power over service, that seek dominance rather than justice. I understand the anxieties that drive these alignments – worries about cultural change, economic uncertainty, loss of familiar traditions.

But Jesus never calls us to respond to our anxieties by seeking dominance over others. He never endorses using power to protect ourselves at others' expense. Instead, he shows us through his incarnation that God's way is not doing things to others or even for others, but being with others in loving solidarity.

When Jesus calms the storm, he doesn't do so from the safety of the shore. He's in the boat with the disciples, experiencing the same battering waves, the same howling winds. This is our model – not retreating to safety while others suffer, not imposing our will on others from a position of power, but being with those who suffer, standing alongside the vulnerable, even when it means facing the storm ourselves.

The Courage to Cross Boundaries

Notice that this whole episode begins with Jesus saying, "Let us go across to the other side." Jesus was constantly compelling his disciples to cross boundaries – geographical boundaries, social boundaries, religious boundaries. He sent them from familiar Jewish territory into Gentile lands, from places of cultural comfort to regions deemed unclean.

Today, Jesus continues to call us to cross boundaries – to move beyond our comfort zones, to encounter those different from ourselves, to build bridges rather than walls. This crossing requires courage, especially in times when powerful voices encourage us to retreat into tribal enclaves of sameness and safety.

Here I want to speak directly to those who have aligned their faith with movements that demonize immigrants, that view religious or ethnic differences as threats, that seek to maintain cultural dominance rather than embrace diversity. I understand the fear of change, the anxiety about losing what feels familiar and safe. But Jesus consistently calls his followers not to safety but to courage – the courage to cross boundaries, to welcome strangers, to expand rather than contract our circle of concern.

"Take Heart, It Is I; Do Not Be Afraid"

In another storm story from the gospels, Jesus walks on water toward his frightened disciples, calling out, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." This is his message to us today – not that the storms aren't real, not that the waves aren't high, but that he is present with us in the midst of them.

When financial markets tumble, when political rhetoric grows hateful, when the future seems uncertain – "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

When we're tempted to secure our own safety at others' expense, when we're drawn to leaders who promise protection through domination – "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

The antidote to fear is not certainty or security but presence – the presence of the One who travels in our boat, who experiences our storms, who sometimes seems to be sleeping but is never absent.

Conclusion: Called to Courage

My friends, we are called to courage in these troubled times – not the false courage that puffs itself up through domination or protects itself through exclusion, but the true courage that comes from knowing we are not alone in the storm.

We are called to be people of courage who stand against dehumanizing policies and rhetoric, who refuse to sacrifice the vulnerable for our own security, who insist on seeing the image of God in every human being regardless of nationality, religion, or politics.

We are called to be people of courage who, even as markets fluctuate and politics divide, maintain our navigational fix on Jesus's teachings about love, justice, mercy, and peacemaking.

We are called to be people of courage who, when we hear the frightened cry "Do you not care that we are perishing?", respond not with indifference or self-protection but with the same loving presence that Jesus offers us.

In the days ahead, as we face whatever storms may come, may we remember that we do not face them alone. The One who commanded the wind and the waves travels in our boat. The One who crossed boundaries to bring healing and hope walks alongside us. The One who chose vulnerability over dominance continues to show us the way of courage over fear.

May we have ears to hear when he says to us, as he said to those wind-whipped waves: "Peace! Be still!"

Amen.

"Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?"

What looks like a simple tax question was actually a perfectly crafted political trap. Imagine religious leaders so desperate to discredit Jesus that they'd bring together groups that normally hate each other – just to set up an impossible question."

The Pharisees and Herodians were religious and political opponents who rarely agreed on anything. Yet, they united against Jesus to create a no-win scenario. If Jesus said, 'Pay taxes,' he'd alienate the Jewish resistance. If he said, 'Don't pay,' he'd be accused of sedition against Rome.

This wasn't just a question. It was a binary choice designed to force Jesus into an impossible corner – exactly how our current political discourse operates.

Jesus refuses to play by their binary rules. When asked about paying taxes, he doesn't choose sides. Instead, he reframes the entire conversation.

"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.”

This isn't tax policy. This is a profound statement about true allegiance.

Dominative Christianism often reduces the passage to a simplistic endorsement of patriotic duty. 'Pay your taxes, be a good citizen' becomes a way to sacralize a particular national identity.

When nationalism meets faith, we risk missing the subversive heart of Jesus's response—how he challenges the entire premise of earthly authority.

On the other hand, Providential Identitarianism wants to read the passage as a sophisticated act of political resistance. Jesus becomes a clever strategist, outmaneuvering imperial power.

But this misses the deeper theological truth. Jesus isn't primarily a political strategist – he's revealing something profound about human identity.

Notice how Jesus first asks to see the coin. His questioners have it – he doesn't. He's already exposing their complicity with the very system they're critiquing.

The coin bears Caesar's image. But humans? We bear God's image. This isn't about taxes. This is about ultimate allegiance.

Both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism trap us in binary thinking that betrays Jesus's teaching.

Truth isn't about:

* Picking the right political side

* Maintaining the current power structure

* Overthrowing the current power structure.

Truth is about recognizing whose image we truly bear.

A coin. An image. A profound question. When religious leaders tried to trap Jesus, he didn't choose sides. He revealed a deeper reality.

The coin belongs to Caesar. But you? You belong to God. Our ultimate allegiance isn't to political tribes or ideological camps. It's to the one who created us in divine image.

Whose image are you bearing today?

During my morning reflection today, one verse from Psalm 119:1-8 particularly resonated with me: "I will give thanks to you with a heart that does right as I learn your righteous rules" (v. 7). The poet highlights the challenge and necessity of integrating our emotions with reason. It's a learning process. We don't simply decide to "walk in the Lord's Instruction" and immediately know how to do it or possess the willpower to stay on that path. Instead, we build that strength over time, much like an athlete who trains her muscles through repetitive sets of lifting increasing weights.

In this process, God teaches our emotions to respond to life's stimuli as individuals who love what God loves. We desire God's desires and learn to act according to that unified intent. It’s a will to love rather than a will to power—one that inspires us to create rather than dominate. The guiding principle that directs our path is an attitude of gratitude. When we turn our hearts toward God with genuine thanks, the mists of confusion clear, our minds realign, and we adjust our course to "walk in the Lord's Instruction" (v. 1).

Through years of addressing God and being addressed by God in this way, we learn how to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, ultimately becoming more fully human.

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Welcome to the final part of my series on the Communism/Socialism/Marxism Dog Whistle. My claim is that the sounding of the Dog Whistle is immoral because we historically used it to sustain wealthy male domination over women and the poor.

In a previous video, I explained how dog whistles work by covertly saying that we must hide from the light of day because it cannot be said aloud and subverts our values.

I’ve explained how civic republicanism presumes we invest as a society in the infrastructure, insurance, and insulation necessary to ensure we are all expressively equal politically so that all citizens can look at each eye-to-eye without fear that the other takes away our basic liberties.

And I’ve explained how to know when we legitimately describe something as communist/socialist/Marxist.

In this final video, I will finally turn to my thesis. I want to persuade you that those who use the communist/socialist/Marxist label as a political dog whistle act immorally and subvert our republic when they do so.

Let’s begin by remembering how we have used that dog whistle in our history.

Before and after the Civil War, Lincoln’s Republican reformers advocated for expanded citizenship rights for non-Anglo males and Anglo females.

They focused on rights such as voting, property ownership, marriage, and work across cultural boundaries.

They also pushed for public investments in infrastructure like roads, schools, and hospitals accessible to non-Anglos. This battle involved the rights of white women and formerly enslaved males. It also involved Tejanos in Texas and Californios and Asians in California.

From sea to sea, wealthy Anglo males fiercely opposed these reforms, fearing a dilution of their cultural dominance if States extended voting rights to non-Anglos and females. They predicted that expanding suffrage would increase taxes to build infrastructure in areas inhabited by people experiencing poverty.

They objected because:

(1) it would be unfair, as they owned most of the nation’s property and would pay a disproportionate share of the needed taxes.

(2) They also saw it as wealth redistribution, with the poor and middle class benefiting more from the improved infrastructure than the wealthy. Of course, the rich already cared for the wealthy’s infrastructure, insurance, and insulation needs.

To maintain their power, they fiercely opposed the passing and enforcement of the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights to previously enslaved men.

They also enacted laws to prevent or hinder non-Anglo voting, impacting groups such as formerly enslaved individuals, el Norte, and Native Americans who preceded Anglos in settling in California and the Southwest, Latino immigrants in Florida, and Chinese immigrants on the West Coast.

Anglo-male voters established unequal treatment under the law for 70 to 100 years. White women got the vote in 1920. Asians were allowed to become citizens in 1945.

We finally empowered all women and the non-Anglos oppressed by Jim Crow to vote when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965, a hundred years after the war that ended legal enslavement practices.

The key point to note is the propaganda used to justify excluding and suppressing non-Anglo and female citizens. The winning strategy arose in the 1870s as part of efforts to resist our First Reconstruction.

Wealthy former Confederates opposed the idea of granting voting rights to women and Black males by comparing them to the communards, who were supporters of the Paris Commune of 1871. The communes were French socialists who briefly took over Paris in response to the suffering caused by the Franco-Prussian War.

Wealthy male landowners aimed to create fear among Anglo citizens that non-Anglo and female enfranchisement would lead to a violent socialist takeover of the United States. They generated that fear by labeling Black and female suffrage supporters as communards.

This deployment of the Communist/Socialist dog whistle justified Jim Crow laws.

The Communist/socialist refrain was so successful that it spawned the rise of the KKK, its first terror campaign, and the suppression of voters through the implementation of Jim Crow laws. Affluent Anglo males defended our actions as necessary to safeguard the American Way, arguing that taxes for public improvements constituted unjust wealth redistribution.

During the Jim Crow era, wealthy Anglo males continued to use exclusion and violence against voters who supported the rollback of Jim Crow laws or taxes that mainly helped America’s poor. We justified it with the constant use of this Communism/Socialism/Marxism dog whistle.

One lasting impact of this era is that it ingrained in Anglo culture the belief that maintaining minority rule through the suppression of non-Anglo voting and wealth creation is in line with good citizenship and the protection of the American Way

Labeling Black and women suffragists as communists became a highly effective political strategy.

It led to a coded language that always conveys the same message.

We are to see anyone labeled as a communist, socialist, or Marxist as a threat to the American Way, which good citizens should resist. If not, a socialist takeover will occur, leading to the permanent loss of the American Way. We have to stop them to maintain our minority rule. That’s the message the dog whistle encodes.

Defining one’s opponent a communist, Marxist, or socialist – whether true or untrue – became a tried and true way to redefine them as America’s public enemy number one.

In our history, this is the standard way Anglo politicians and their wealthy patrons – a minority of our population – have resisted reforms aimed at improving the lot of the poor and disenfranchised. They fiercely resist policies that (1) dilute Anglo power by fully enfranchising non-Anglos and women or (2) provide infrastructure, insurance, and insulation to protect people experiencing poverty from domination.

Empowering all citizens to vote neither abolishes private property nor establishes government control of the means of production. Nor do policies aimed at ensuring all citizens are free from domination due to insufficient “infrastructure, insurance, and insulation.” On the contrary, they strengthen civic republicanism by widening the range of citizens participating in its responsibilities and fruits.

The communism/socialism/Marxism dog whistle was and is nonsense. But it’s highly effective nonsense.

It’s how the Anglo majority rolled back our First Reconstruction and imposed Jim Crow and its cousins to oppress non-Anglos for more than 70 years after the Civil War.

It’s how the wealthy resisted the demands of the labor movement before and after both World Wars, how the Anglo majority resisted the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s, and how it resists efforts to address the massive wealth inequality that threatens our democracy today.

Suppose you are a politician whose patrons enjoy asymmetric power in our society. How do you resist efforts to give women the vote? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to give the former enslaved the vote? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to give wage-earners the right to unionize so the wealthy elites do not dominate them? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to build equal-quality schools, roads, and hospitals for low-income people? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to eliminate discrimination in the workplace based on race and gender? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to regulate toxic pollution practices that disproportionately impact the only land affordable to people with low incomes? You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle.

How do you resist efforts to eliminate structures of domination so that all citizens share equal freedom and look into each other’s eyes as equals in the 21st century? You know the answer. You sound the Communism/Socialist/Marxism dog whistle. It’s the same old playbook.

For all citizens to be free, we must be expressively egalitarian in ensuring sufficient infrastructure, insurance, and insulation to flourish. That’s not Marx. That’s Aristotle and James Madison—paraphrased—describing what’s necessary for a civic republic to thrive.

So, suppose we’re serious about preserving our civic republic for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. In that case, we need to stop responding to and repeating dog whistles—especially this evil one—and start responding to our responsibility to make all citizens free in the most robust sense.

Let’s do it together!

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Let’s talk about dog whistles. Why? If we respond to them, we’ve forgotten who we are. We are less than ourselves. I will explain what I mean by that below. Let’s get started.

My dog’s name is Sadie. After my wife, she’s my best friend. You likely get that because you may also have deep bonds with your pets.

Let’s start with the obvious. Sadie is a canine, and I’m a sapiens. Scholars say canines and sapiens have evolved together for over 15,000 years. We have a synergistic relationship. But we can’t get confused about our roles for the relationship to be coherent. She must remain a canine, and I must stay a sapiens.

Sadie can outrun, outsleep, outsmell, and out-hear me. She can also think critically and collaborate to solve problems.

Sadie is the most intelligent and loving canine in canine history.

I have only two advantages over Sadie. I can sweat, and she can’t, which means I can run a marathon without stopping to cool down, but she can’t.

Like her, I am a critical thinker. But my brain enables me to imagine and manage relationships at a scale far more significant than my pack or family.

Indeed, I can collaborate with people I’ve never met to create solutions all sapiens face.

That capacity to think critically and work collaboratively at a large scale makes me a sapiens. Mature sapiens are in a reconciled relationship with all creatures, always striving to love their neighbor as themselves and imagining how to flourish at scale.

If I forget that and instead act like a dog, both Sadie and I get confused. I debase myself by acting less than human. Flourishing depends on our acting according to our kind.

Sadie’s so bright she can make associations and then react to things she sees later. For example, if I give her a piece of meat every time I ring a bell, I can ring that bell in the future, and she’ll begin to salivate.

Or, if she sees me getting on a particular shirt that she knows I run in, she’ll immediately run and block the door because she knows that means I’m about to go running. She’ll insist that I take her with me. That’s called a Pavlovian response.

Which brings me to dog whistles.

A dog whistle works the same way. I can sound a dog whistle, and Sadie can hear that frequency and respond to it as if it were my voice. I can whistle in specific ways and cause her to react according to how I’ve trained her. Again, that’s a Pavlovian response.

The interesting thing about dog whistles is that other sapiens don’t hear them. The sound is too high a frequency, so it’s not audible to sapiens. But canines listen to them. Sadie hears the dog whistle and has the inside knowledge that enables her to decode the sounds and respond as I want her to.

Because Sadie and I are in a pack leader/pack member relationship – I’m her master – I could control Sadie completely with dog whistles. That’s a normal relationship between Sadie and me.

But if I tried to command you with a dog whistle, I’d debase both of us. Ours is not naturally a master/slave relationship. Commanding you with a dog whistle is not appropriate to our kind. We are equal in our human dignity. Flourishing depends on both of us acting according to our kind.

Which brings me to the use of dog whistles in our politics.

The concept of political dog whistles

In politics, a dog whistle is a phrase or statement that appears benign or ordinary to most people but carries a concealed, often contentious or harmful, meaning intended for a specific audience, potentially causing harm if not critically examined.

It is a way to communicate secretly with a particular group without drawing attention from others. A speaker uses this technique to appeal to views or beliefs that would be considered unacceptable or offensive if openly expressed.

Dog whistles are commonly used in politics and are not necessarily destructive.

They become destructive when their covert messages cloak the subversion of American values from their intended audience, triggering reflexive responses without awareness of being manipulated.

So, what’s a dog whistle? A dog whistle is a covert appeal to an unhealthy set of political attitudes that have to be disguised because they undermine accepted American values.

Dog whistles are a form of covert politics

Those politics typically involve three tactics:

* A subtly disguised message, appealing to views that cannot withstand the light of day.

* If called out: a denial of violating core values

* If called out, it attacks those who call out the dog whistle, often accusing them of playing the victim.

Examples of political dog whistles

Politicians on the Left sometimes use dog whistles to command performances of disdain and condescension toward groups.

Left-Wing Dog Whistles

For example, Hillary Clinton famously used the dog whistle, “Flyover country,” to signal that the opinions of those in America’s heartland should be dismissed because they reflect less enlightenment than those of citizens who live along the East or West Coast.

“Rural” is often used in the same way. More subtly, declaring that a candidate “voted for the ‘90s crime bill” that resulted in massive incarceration rates for Blacks is a way of signaling that someone is racist without actually saying so.

Right-Wing Dog Whistles

Politicians on the Right have since the 1870s used the communist/socialist/Marxist trifecta to name someone as America’s enemy, to create a false association of proposed social welfare policies with communism or socialism, and to command that patriotic Americans rally in opposition to defend the American Way. I will unpack that more in a future post.

Similarly, mentions of George Soros, the Rothschilds, or “globalist” or “globalism” are right-wing dog whistles that invoke centuries-old anti-semitic tropes about rich, usually Jewish, men conspiring to control the world’s finances.

Dog whistles ask us to stop being sapiens and start acting like canines. They debase our politics and cause us to be less than we are called to be. What’s the solution?

Let’s consider how dog whistles operate.

The role of dog whistles in political manipulation

Understanding the mechanics of dog whistles is crucial.

They demand that we shut down our critical thinking and embrace Machiavellian claims.

They demand we abandon our collaborative imagining and regard others as enemies to hate rather than neighbors to love.

They demand that we regard the one holding the whistle as our master rather than our equal.

They demand we overlook the evidence that a charlatan sees us as his dog.

We act like dogs rather than humans when we respond to dog whistles. We are not dogs. We ought not to respond to whistles.

Let’s flourish together by acting according to our kind.

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We’ve talked a lot about healthy and disordered nationalisms, but today, let’s talk about the American civil religion. Why? It’s the nationalism American children are taught, the means through which we embed our American identity in our citizens. We need to discuss it because there’s solid evidence that the American civil religion is at the heart of our divisions today.

E Pluribus Unum, Our Civic Canon, & Civic Virtue

Since 1873, just after our Civil War, we have had a law that requires us to print our national motto, E pluribus unum, on all our coinage. It’s also on the dollar bill. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. E pluribus unum names our aspiration to become a people united in constructing a common life based on specific shared values and commitments. Ideas and leaders who divide us work against this grand aspiration. Out of many, one.

If you comprehend that American aspiration, you can understand the American civil religion. It’s the peoplehood story we share as we strive to construct an American identity that aims to achieve a neighborly unity nourished by our diversity.

That peoplehood story – or nationalism – is our way of conveying the transcendent values that matter most to that aspiration. I call it a story, but it’s something we convey not just with words but with practices like saying the Pledge of Allegiance, singing our national anthem, including prayers for our country in worship, preserving monuments and memorials in our midst, celebrating birthdays of American heroes, and through rituals like our 4th of July and Thanksgiving celebrations.

The American civil religion remembers heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It draws upon a civic canon—an American Bible if you will—that includes identity-shaping documents such as the Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, FDR’s Four Freedoms, and MLK’s “I Got a Dream” speech.

Collectively, our civil religion fuels a shared American dream of becoming a free people who govern ourselves for the common good. That common good ethic includes our shared commitment to protect those whose political and economic insecurity is denoted by the biblical metaphor of the widow, orphan, and resident alien from arbitrary power.

It calls us to embody the belief that all are equal in our essential human dignity.

It teaches that all Americans are called to sacrifice so that our neighbors might flourish.

Our American civil religion also teaches us the importance of humility, recognizing human frailty and sinfulness. It teaches us to respect democratic institutions as essential but insufficient protections of our liberty and freedom and, therefore, regards civic virtue as the ultimate means of ensuring the common good.

So, above all, our American civil religion is about cultivating that civic virtue that must be cherished if we are ever to embody E pluribus unum -out of many, one.

The American civil religion is supposed to unite us but too often divides us.

That ought not to be surprising at one level because all healthy and disordered nationalisms are curated at home and in our communities, and they compete in the public square for influence. I call them peoplehood stories to highlight that they evolve as they compete, come into contact with competing perspectives, and adapt to events and changes in our lives.

So, no static and monolithic American peoplehood story encapsulates our values and commitments. There have always been many.

Some people older than me nostalgically recall when we all seemed to be on the same page regarding our American identity. However, that homogeneity is a romantic myth, an illusion created by segregation’s walls. America has always been a work in progress.

While there may have been a relatively common American civil religion in the post-WW2 era, today, we can identify two strands, distinct from Christian nationalism and radical secularism. They teach competing accounts of America, generate different worldviews, and emphasize different values and commitments.

Political scientists call these the priestly and prophetic strands of the American civil religion. Sometimes, they promote two mutually exclusive narratives. The “priestly” strand defends America’s status quo, deeds, and structures, most often justifying the status quo by celebrating American exceptionalism themes. In contrast, the “prophetic” discourse contrasts America’s deeds and structures with its ideals and calls for reform.

To understand how these differences play out, consider that the two strands of civil religion generate different responses to the following questions: (1) Should school kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school each day? (2) Is “in God We Trust” out of place on the dollar bill? (3) True or False: Burning the American flag is wrong because it is sacred.” (4)” Freedom must be for everyone to be the ‘land of the free.’(5) “We must make amends for our country’s original sins.”

Two important takeaways from this survey of American civil religion:

(1) We agree more than we disagree.

Though the two strands diverge in how they answer those questions, they agree more than they disagree on the American values and commitments they proclaim.

They agree that what ultimately binds us together is our commitment to live under the rule of law rather than our passions. All citizens should be bound by the same law, regardless of gender, skin hue, creed, or national origin.

They agree that our goal is to create a society where we govern ourselves for the common good, not just for one segment of our people. This distinguishes both forms of American civil religion from Christian nationalism, which, as the oxymoron it is, imagines a society governed by and for the benefit of an Anglo-Protestant segment of our people.

It’s important to remember that both strands of the American civil religion vastly outnumber those who advocate Christian nationalism.

(2) The two strands can divide more than unite us

Our two major political parties have tried to co-opt the strands, raising the existential stakes for us. The priestly strand permeates Republican politics, while the prophetic strand is entrenched among Democratic partisans. Why is that important to know?

Historically, faith communities have been a significant source of our identity and belongingness. But as participation in faith communities has waned, identification as a Republican or Democrat has displaced religious identities, and belongingness to our political party has replaced the belongingness that once came through participation in a faith community.

Faithfulness to our party is now how many meet our existential need for belongingness. That changes radically what’s at stake when a political leader insists we embrace blatant falsehoods or attitudes that contradict the transcendent values of American civil religion.

It’s now a matter of being cast out of the community that fulfills our hunger for belongingness. That’s a recipe for an identity crisis. You perform your identity as an American through participation in that political community, but that community now requires claims and behaviors contradicting your values and commitments.

What do you do? To preserve their sense of belongingness, many will perform extraordinary feats of mental gymnastics to rationalize outrageous lies or behaviors. They choose to be willfully blind to the contradiction.

But returning to the higher ground is hard once you debase yourself like that. It takes extraordinary courage to risk your sense of belongingness to stand up for truth and America’s highest values. But, as our American civil religion reminds us, that’s what American heroes do.

If that describes you, I pray you’ll choose to be an ordinary hero and return to the higher ground where you belong.

Now that we know that the vast majority of Americans share some strand of the American civil religion, we will turn in our next video to understanding a clear and present danger to both the Church and State: Christian Nationalism. Godspeed.