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I was more than a little taken aback when I read the article in AXIOS, a widely read Left-leaning news organization, yesterday.
What was once the voice of a few marginalized atheists has now clawed its way into the mainstream conversation in the country.
Specifically, it is the conversation about whether biblical Christians should try or even believe they should try to influence the culture.
And if Christians are patriotic, they're suspect. And labeled.
Be informed, not misled.
Efforts to silence biblical Christians
AXIOS begins with this statement: "About two-thirds of Americans reject or are skeptical about Christian nationalism despite its rising influence that's shaping education, immigration, and health care policies, a new survey finds."
They continue, "Why it matters: Some Republicans are openly expressing Christian nationalist views, which have ranged from calls for more religion in public schools to book bans and even suggestions that democracy should die."
"This once-fringe ideology," they say, "has become prevalent in some deeply red states at a time when the nation overall is increasingly diverse and less religious."
So, where are they getting their information? The "poll" they are quoting is the data from what AXIOS calls "the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute's American Values Atlas."
PRRI is a religious Left-leaning organization. They are partisan.
"It was published days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should receive legal protections as 'unborn life,'" AXIOS says — "and cited Christianity in its reasoning."
First, two-thirds of Americans do not reject nor are they skeptical of "Christian Nationalism"---which is patriotism, not necessarily "nationalism." People are skeptical and reject the image the Left is creating to undermine biblical influence in our culture; the people the Leftists are now calling" Christian Nationalists."
They are using the actions of a few who claim to be Christian while not following the Commands of Jesus to be "Salt and Light" in our world to represent the whole of evangelical Christians to mislead the public.
At least some of the voices that are shouting and fingers that are pointing at biblical Christians labeling us as something different from what we are, are doing so to create a political schism among biblical believers.
This is an all-out effort to label, marginalize, and vilify biblical Christians who are patriotic Americans and love and serve the God of the Bible.
AXIOS also says this:
What they're saying: "It's really a claim for an ethno-religious state, and so there's nothing democratic about that worldview," Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells AXIOS.Between the lines: Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity's dominance in most aspects of life in the United States.
They say:
- Many Christian nationalists believe the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation.
- Many also believe U.S. laws should be based on Christian values and that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
Jones said some Christian nationalists view political foes as evil or demonic rather than as fellow citizens with different opinions and see them as needing to be conquered.
They are not only redefining biblical Christianity; they are redefining patriotism. And labeling those who seek to live by biblical Truth and happen to love our country as a threat to democracy.
I've been in the ministry my entire life, including being a state director for the National Associations of Evangelicals. I have served on the board of the 50 million-plus member organization. I've only seen very, very few people in evangelical circles who would fit the label that AXIOS and PRRI are attaching to biblical believers---evangelicals.
They are taking isolated statements and comments and building a case around them that they say represents a substantial portion of the 50 to 70 million evangelicals in America.
As far as Christians wanting to infuse Christian values and principles into our institutions--- we absolutely do. Trying to create a theocracy? No.
Our Founders used biblical teaching and principles as the foundations of this nation. Only an uninformed fool thinks otherwise. The records of our Founding speak for themselves.
We are living with the results of the Leftist policies today. The culture of our finest cities has become a cesspool while our borders have been thrown open to the world. We now have millions of illegals living among us, many of whom are criminals and killers.
And the Left speaks of "progress."
Don't be misled by this effort.
Takeaway
Yesterday Laura Hollis published the following in Townhall.
First, the implicit assumption is that the sort of Christians who are inoffensive and unthreatening are those who do not expect American society or government to reflect their values. This is -- to say the very least -- hypocritical coming from those on the political and cultural Left who demand that American culture and government reflect theirs.
Secondly, the epithet "Christian nationalist" will not remain confined to what are currently being called "extreme" viewpoints among Christians. The Left will do what it always does: (1) coin a new term; (2) gin up public hysteria about its definition, and then; (3) having created widespread negative consensus around the term, expand its application to encompass many more people. We have already seen this done with "racist" and "white supremacist," which at one point referred only to Nazi skinheads and others who literally espoused the genetic supremacy of people who trace their origin to northern Europe, but then got stretched out and mashed up into terms like "white privilege" and "systemic racism," which somehow apply to just about anyone (including conservative Black people) the Left wants to smear.