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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I've thought recently on this topic and I'll approach your comment from a different perspective than others. If we truly believe Jesus is God and man we can look to his life in the gospels and see how he lived his life. He never set up a national state or created an enduring political edifice, which if we believe he is omnipotent would have been within his power to do so. This is strengthened by viewing the Old Testament through the lenses of salvation history. God offered a holy kingdom and wholly enmeshed religious political state, and it did not save humanity. Jesus' message, and those of his followers soon after him, was a message that was not constrained by political, ethnic or 'national' boundaries. He instead founded a church.

My thought is 'Christian Nationalism' as an idea mixes the christian idea that should be universal with something that is more parochial-nationalism and does a disservice to the Christian message. It is a current response to the loss of prestige and political power of organized religion. Instead I think Christians should focus on living lives of holiness and raising families that follow the Christian message. Let us be judged by our fruits, let them know us by our joy.

The most reactionary explanation of this, of course, is that Christianity was an original form of what we call progressivism or liberalism, and that some resistance to the use of power and hierarchy are a common theme. The many historical Christian states, by this standard, simply didn't follow Jesus's teachings as they were intended, because ideas and religions co-evolve with power. And the thing that claimed to be the Church ended up having quite a lot of political power and wealth anyway.