The Biggest Impediment to the Gospel in America is...

America

Dear Greg,

I was fortunate to preach on Pentecost (sermon starts around 41:35), and I brought up the question of what it means to love the people who are harming those in our community of care. Although you letter doesn’t answer that question, nor do I think it was meant to, I am grateful for it because, dammit, it challenged me to reflect seriously on tangible ways I might love “MAGAts” as I believe Jesus does.

You named something too often missing from our critiques of the church’s complicity in empire: Christ’s love is real even for the deceived, the cruel, the proudly lost. As I said in my earlier letter, MAGA is a Cult, this movement is dangerous precisely because of its “religious” nature, the way it deceptively parades around as a version of Christianity to which folks are just as dedicated as faithful Christians are to the Way of Jesus. But as you so graciously reminded me—and all of us—Jesus doesn’t just call cult members to repentance; he dies for them too. What am I willing to do for them?

So I write now not to argue against your letter, but to go deeper still. Because even if MAGA is a cult, and even if it captures many Christians, I want to make a larger claim: the biggest obstacle to being a faithful Christian in America is America.

Some balked at that when I posted it on social media. One said, “Nah… no more than the biggest obstacle for the early Christians was Rome.” Another replied, “But what is America but all of us?” Still another protested, “I think it’s still me—I’m the problem.” The most predictable answer was one word: “Evangelicals.”

Each of these reactions may be sincere. But they are wrong. Not just misinformed, wrong in the way Peter was when he told Jesus to avoid the cross. Not wrong as in mistaken, but wrong in the way the Satanic is often clothed in religious decency and self-defense. Let me say it plainly, these are the kinds of replies only Americans would give. And that is, itself, proof of the problem.

There are thousands of images like this used by American Christians of nearly every partisan political persuasion

No one living in Nazi Germany would have responded to Bonhoeffer’s criticisms by saying, “Well, I think the biggest problem is still me.” No one under Caesar would have told Paul, “I mean, Rome is just the people, right?” That kind of moral individualism, that allergic reaction to structural critique, is the fruit of the American gospel that is personal, privatized, and deliberately blunted.

And as for evangelicals being the problem? Sure, but why do you think evangelicalism in its current form exists? The American evangelical movement is not the cause, it is the consequence, of the church’s centuries-long affair with empire, whiteness, money, violence, and control. This “gospel” was not just distorted, it was discipled by America, and it still is.

Which is why I say again: the greatest obstacle to Christian faithfulness in America is America.

Not the continent. Not the people. Not even the original ideal (which itself is deeply flawed). I mean America as political theology, as myth, as an alternative discipler, as false eschatology. America promises what only God can, but in ways contrary to Jesus’ life and teaching: salvation through strength, freedom through domination, peace through security, belonging through borders, identity through consumption. (I confess to being especially guilty of the last one even though I try to live a simple life.)

No other modern nation so thoroughly fuses Christianity with state identity in such overt and covert ways, military might rather than martyrdom, and economic ideology contrary to the consistent teaching for most of church tradition. Yes, other empires co-opt religion, and Christianity has its own history of being part of numerous empires. However, no modern state has merged biblical language with national myth as effectively and persistently as the United States. We are not Rome reborn. We are Babylon with a Bible in her hand and a cross around her neck. That one seems awful familiar lately as people in power say and do evil and deceitful things while making a spectacle of their faith via publicized prayer gatherings at the Capitol and Pentagon, or those who literally wear a cross around their necks as they repeat lie after lie.

As you know “Babylon,” in scripture, is not merely a place. It is the name given to every empire that demands allegiance, assimilates the people of God, and tempts them to forget their exile. And if Babylon was a metaphor for Rome in the New Testament, then today it is a warning to us. When Revelation calls out Babylon, it is speaking of a place where kings fornicate with her, where the merchants weep when she falls, where she is clothed in purple and luxury and drunk on the blood of the saints (Revelation 18).

Sound familiar?

Babylon is the place where faithfulness becomes difficult because faithlessness is normal, or perhaps more precisely, a show is made of faith which makes it difficult for many to distinguish following Jesus and allegiance to an empire and even the worship of Mammon. In this ‘reality,’ radical discipleship is considered extremism. In America, Christian faithfulness is hard not because of persecution but because of comfort. Whether they knew it or not I think the Zac Brown Band said it best,

I thank God for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly, let it ring
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives
So we don't have to sacrifice
All the things we love

Like our chicken fried
And cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up

When Americans talk about freedom and those who die (and notably kill) for it, they are primarily talking about freedom to consume, about being comfortable at any cost to those beyond America’s borders, and many within them.

The problem is not that the gospel is rejected, but that it is fused then often replaced with the false gospel of America. That’s why the most dangerous false teaching in our time isn’t atheism, secularism, or even Trumpism, it’s Christianity draped in red, white, and blue. Now this is not to make light of the differences between what it happening with this particular administration and those that came before, as no president that I know of has so blatantly sought the power of a dictator, and not a benevolent one.

Still, it is bigger than that, it is a crucified Christ recruited into capitalist ambitions and military swagger, something that far predates this administration or any in my lifetime. It’s churches that worship God on Sunday and the Constitution on Monday. It’s the assumption, unstated but deeply held, that God bless America is a prayer of exclusivity rather than a plea for mercy.

To paraphrase Stanley Hauerwas, the problem with the church in America isn’t persecution, it is that it is ignored in the sense that it is not seen as a threat to the empire. It looks like the chaplaincy of the empire, and therefore blends into the social fabric without shaping it more into a witness to God’s now and coming kingdom but instead letting those who claim that kingdom to be formed by the society.

Frederick Douglass knew this. In one of the most searing passages ever written about this country, he wrote, “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.” He didn’t reject Christ, he rejected a Christ made in America’s image, American Christianity, as opposed to Christianity in America, rejects the imago Dei in the “other.” Douglass rejected that Christianity, and we should too.

So yes, Jesus loves “MAGAts,” (a term I know that neither of us especially like). But Jesus also weeps over Jerusalem. And Jesus also turns over tables. And Jesus also warns that not everyone who cries, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom.

You and I agree on the danger of the cult. But I want us to see that the cult is not fringe, it is fruit. The roots go far deeper. The obstacle isn’t just Trumpism or white evangelicalism or even Christian nationalism. The obstacle is the soil that grew all of them and still dares to call itself “One Nation Under God.” That soil needs to be tilled and new seeds planted, but one wonders if it has simply become too toxic to bear good fruit. Of course, I believe Jesus redeems all things, including literal and figurative soil, so I continue to have hope even as my pessimism is ever present. I may have said it before, but I believe hope is for pessimists, but unfortunately, America has too many optimists, those who believe in the powers and principalities to bring substantive and just change rather than in Christlike love, friendship, and vulnerability.

We live in Babylon, Greg, which is of course why we chose the name of this Substack, but I believe that I truly am in a far more problematic Babylon currently because at least where you are, it really takes faith to be a Christian. America as Babylon is a place that trains us not to suffer for the truth but to adjust it for the sake of comfort. Perhaps this is why so many folks seem to completely lack the capacity for cognitive dissonance, because it is uncomfortable, and so they avoid deep thinking, and instead just go along with the zeitgeist (yes the German there has other symbolism right now as well). Again, for the sake of comfort this American Christianity fears weakness more than sin, because so often sin is comforting while weakness and vulnerability rarely are. American Christianity preaches peace while arming to the teeth, and teaches us that enemies are to be killed, not loved.

To live as faithful Christians in Babylon is to live like Daniel, refusing the king’s food. To sing like the exiles in Psalm 137—How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? To say with John in Revelation: Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her sins.

Jesus loves “MAGAts,” yes. And Jesus calls all of us in Babylon to come out. Because no matter how long we’ve lived here, no matter how much we’ve benefited from her riches, no matter how many of our neighbors have bowed the knee, we belong to another kingdom.

And that kingdom has no flag but the banner of the crucified Lamb.

Your Friend and Fellow Exile

Justin