Dreams of American Christendom: White Evangelicals’ Political Pursuit of a Christian Order without Christ
Abstract
:1. White Evangelicalism’s Christian Nationalism Problem
2. The Promise of American Christendom: Past and Present
3. Threat of Disorder
3.1. Middle Ages
3.2. Twentieth Century
3.3. Twenty-First Century
4. Shifting Theology to Save America
At this time, Falwell’s evangelical premillennialist dispensationalist theology disinclines him toward political organizing for social change (Baker 2021, p. 34). This apolitical posture coincides with the essential evangelical belief that all people need transformation, but that true transformation requires spiritual conversion (Noll et al. 2019, p. 6). This evangelical tenet is given even more of a socio-political dimension through premillennialist dispensationalism’s pessimistic stance on society—the sentiment being that Christians should not spend time trying to fix something that is already lost and that will eventually be swept away (Georgianna 1989, p. 5). Given the fallenness of people and, in turn, society and the need to be “born again” in order for change to occur, any attempt to transform the socio-political world through human effort is pointless (Baker 2021, p. 35). Thus, the true duty of the evangelical Christian is not to organize toward political action, but to spread the Good News of the Gospel. The call is to evangelize (Baker 2021, p. 36).Nowhere are we commissioned to reform the externals. We are not told to wage wars against bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, murderers, prostitutes, racketeers, prejudiced persons or institutions, or any other existing evil as such. Our ministry is not reformation but transformation. The gospel does not clean up the outside but rather regenerates the inside…. We pay our taxes, cast our votes as a responsibility of citizenship, obey the laws of the land, and other things demanded of us by the society in which we live. But, at the same time, we are cognizant that our only purpose on this earth is to know Christ and to make Him known. Believing the Bible as I do, I find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ, and begin doing anything else—including fighting communism, or participating in civil rights reforms. As a God-called preacher, I find there is no time left after I give the proper time and attention to winning people to Christ. Preachers are not called to be politicians but to be soul winners.
In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country…. It’s such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally—to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor—can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that’s the earthly kingdom, I’m about the heavenly kingdom and I’m here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.
5. Pursing American Christendom without Christ
6. Conclusions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | Tracing the contours of who fits within the category of “evangelical” is notoriously tricky due to a complicated history and decentralized polity (Merritt 2015). The most capacious description comes from David Bebbington, who defines evangelicals by their high regard for the Bible; their belief in the atoning and salvific nature of Christ’s death on the cross; their conviction that all people need to undergo conversion in order to be changed; and their belief in the “dedication of all believers, especially the laity, to lives of service for God, especially in sharing the Christian message and taking that message far and near” (Noll et al. 2019, p. 6). |
2 | While postmodernity is often understood as characterized by a rejection of institutional authority and metanarratives, many theorists nonetheless recognize the way in which the local community is still ruled by its own essential narratives or “language game” that help determine the normative meanings, practices, and values of the community (Lyotard 1984, pp. xxiv, 60). Jean-François Lyotard describes Wittgensteinian “language games” as essential for society to exist insofar as they are key to establishing social bonds. Instead of hegemonic rules and meanings that govern the whole of society, postmodernity is composed of a multiplicity of communities oriented according to “a multiplicity of finite meta-arguments” or “little narrative[s]” that define the rules and meanings governing each community. Lyotard claims that these local rules and meanings of the communities in which we find ourselves function to “supplant permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family, and international domains, as well as in political affairs”. These “finite meta-narratives” are “the quintessential form of imaginative intervention”, thereby predisposing people to see and engage the world in certain ways (Lyotard 1984, pp. 15, 66). Basically, the rules and meanings established by our core communities have the ability to shape our sense of the world and, thereby, challenge the institutional perspectives dominant during the Modern Period. Narrative theologians like Stanley Hauerwas apply this idea to Christianity, suggesting that the church’s account of the story of God articulated in the biblical text is a kind of finite meta-narrative for Christians (Hauerwas 1985, pp. 181–85). Understood in this light, the Bible may very well inform evangelicals’ worldview and sense of responsibility vis-à-vis politics. |
3 | Mike Johnson, along with a number of other prominent evangelical Republicans, including Doug Mastriano, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert, belong to the New Apostolic Reform movement (NAR), an extreme form of Christian nationalism that seeks the dissolution of the separation between church and state in order to bring the so-called “Seven Mountains” of human society—government, family, religion, education, media, as well as arts and entertainment—under the dominion of conservative Christian values (Rosenberg 2024; Onishi 2024). |
4 | According to Ronald Balmer, when White evangelicals do end up changing their tune on abortion, it is not due to a sudden religious conviction about the value of life, but out of a desire to support social conservatives who oppose the end of racial segregation (Balmer 2022). |
5 | By the mid-twentieth century, the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation had taken hold (Edwards 2015). |
6 | One strange example of the contagion of disorderliness can be found in the medieval treatment of menstruating woman. Menstruation is considered at this time to be the consequence of Eve’s Edenic disobedience and spiritual corruption, and contact with menstrual blood thought to cause spiritual corruption as well as leprosy and physical deformity (Wong 2021, pp. 45–46). The same can be said of the presence of Jews and Moors within Medieval Christian society (Wong 2021, pp. 47–48). They, like the menstruating women, threaten spiritual contamination and corruption. |
7 | Beginning with the association of Christianity and White Western identity during the Colonial Period, this connection is reinforced to the point of its entrenchment in the American social imaginary through the so-called race sciences of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. |
8 | Thomas Nast’s Harper Weekly (18 February 1871) political cartoon, entitled “Chinese Question”, depicts a downcast Chinese immigrant protected by Lady Liberty from an angry mob. This scene is set against the backdrop of anti-Chinese posters declaring that the Chinese are virtueless, immoral, and barbaric; that they have taken American jobs; and that they are ardent idolaters (Nast 1871). |
9 | According to a 2023 survey conducted by the Brookings Institute, 66% of those who sympathize with Christian nationalism and 81% of those who identify as Christian nationalists believe that immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background” (PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey 2023, p. 18). |
10 | The centrality of White identity in America’s history has been well documented. While there are a number of prominent scholars writing on whiteness, one notable contribution comes from Cheryl Harris, who offers an excellent treatment of the political and legal role of whiteness in the United States (Harris 1993). |
11 | Jerry Falwell Sr. describes this kind of deep engagement in his autobiography. Following his political conversion, he writes, “I began to urge my fellow Christians to get involved in the political process. I encouraged them to study the issues, to support qualified candidates who stood for the renewal of morality and good sense in the land, or to run for office themselves. I pushed for Christians to use their churches to register voters. I dared Christians to go door-to-door getting out the vote, making the issues known, campaigning precinct-by-precinct for the candidates of their choice and using their cars and buses to get voters to the polls” (Falwell 1997, p. 368). |
12 | As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus is the natural incarnation of God’s divine economy (Wong 2021, pp. 104–6). Just as Father, Son, and Spirit are ordered in such a way that they are always with and for one another and, in turn, with and for all of creation, so too is Jesus constituted by this same ordering reality. |
13 | One must note at this point that looking to the Biblical account of the life of Jesus Christ does not preclude differences in interpretation. However, Christ’s teachings offer a weight to certain social issues, and his life provides a model for how human beings might embody the divine oikonomia as one who is with and for others. |
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Wong, J.W.-F. Dreams of American Christendom: White Evangelicals’ Political Pursuit of a Christian Order without Christ. Religions 2024, 15, 1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091050
Wong JW-F. Dreams of American Christendom: White Evangelicals’ Political Pursuit of a Christian Order without Christ. Religions. 2024; 15(9):1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091050
Chicago/Turabian StyleWong, Jessica Wai-Fong. 2024. "Dreams of American Christendom: White Evangelicals’ Political Pursuit of a Christian Order without Christ" Religions 15, no. 9: 1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091050