A Resolution To Resist
State Sanctioned Christianity Is Here
This past week, Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK) introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives criticizing and condemning the Bishop Budde. The text reads,
The text is haunted by Christendom, sounding more like the Diet of Worms and its censure of Martin Luther as a heretic and enemy of the state in 1521 than anything else.
This resolution is State-sanctioned orthodoxy.
Nazi interference in the German churches took similar lines. They censured and critiqued sermons. They ostracized and barred Jews from church life. In the words of German pastor Ernst Käsemann looking back on those early days of the Third Reich,
The deportation of Jews, the persecution of communists, socialists, and travelers, and also of radical Christians, were naïvely or resignedly accepted as conditions accompanying the birth of a new epoch, though the inhumanity of the system clearly came to light along with it.
These dark possibilities are emerging, again.
The question confronting “Christian nationalism” has always been: which Christianity? (For some excellent analysis on how its particular brand of orthodoxy is concentrated in the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, read this piece from Dr.
)The question confronting Christians alert to this reality is, how do we dissent as disciples of Jesus Christ? I see two dimensions, both worth of our attention: the myth of the nation and a renewal of theology.
Both dimensions reflect the shape of Christian nationalism in America right now. It justifies itself by a mythologized history and a theological ideology.
Both of these were on full display in a Fox News op-ed alongside the Resolution, where Rep. Brecheen explained his own reaction to the prayer service.
Brecheen trots out a “myth of the nation” which unites Christian nationalists over ideas of “Christian America” as an inheritance, as justification to install evangelical Christianity in America by coercion. Brecheen appeals to this myth as his first move:
Many know of the faith of our Founders and the biblical influence on our nation. Even as recently as the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Congress declared "In God we Trust" our nation’s motto and added "one Nation under God" to our Pledge of Allegiance.
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth recognized the danger of this myth in his own time, during the rise of the Third Reich. Then as now, national myths served as a second source of revelation for nationalist Christians, “thus revealing” in Barth’s words, “they believe in another god.”
The question confronting Christians alert to this reality is, how do we dissent as disciples of Jesus Christ?
To dissent from the “myth of the nation” as Christians involves the recognition that American history is always being contested and edited and revised. (See, January 6. Also, Reconstruction) But the theological point here stands, too. The myth of the nation is not to be treated on par with God’s revelation.
Now, there’s theological ideology. A good example of this is Brecheen trotting out a laundry list of proof-texts as “criticism” of the Bishop.
By ignoring biblical teachings that God made humans distinctly male and female (Genesis 1:27), that we must go to someone in private before accosting them in public (Matthew 18:15-17), and that we must obey the law of the land (Romans 13:1-3), Budde ignored biblical truth.
Setting aside the obvious question of whether Brecheen followed his own interpretation of Matthew 18 and spoke to the Bishop about his criticism in private, we need to recognize the limits and failure of Christian principles and proof texts.
The Scriptures are not the sum total of moral precepts. They do not offer a neat moral system of Christian principles. But thinking of the Bible this way sets us all up to claim our set of principles are “biblical” and theirs? Not.
You can trot out all the (Chapter Verse) you want. Claiming something is “biblical” does not make it so, any more than Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. And evangelicalism, with its tribes, its non-denominational networks, lacks any sort of recourse to resolve these theological questions—so it’s little wonder that an evangelicalism unmoored from Christian community seeks to resolve theological questions through the wielding of raw political power.
The Scriptures aren’t a depository of principles. It bears witness to a story of God’s dealings with and commanding to humanity. But the story as a bounded whole has been shattered. And so, Christian nationalists govern by wielding its fragments as shibboleths that sanction its power or shards that protect it from dissent.
We cannot meet proof-texts with counter-texts, and principles with counter-principles. That would only duplicate the arbitrary nature of the problem. Who gets to say which is more valid, more authoritative for Christian life, than the other? Well I know for one thing, it’s certainly not the House of Representatives. To claim something is “biblical” demands conversation in Christian community.
But Brecheen saves his moves substantive criticism for immigration. He writes,
“In her sermon, Budde cited a Bible verse commonly used in left-wing arguments, that “We are to be merciful to the stranger.” To understand this verse, we must understand the word stranger in its full meaning, as taken from the original Hebrew language. This particular Hebrew word is specifically used to describe a foreigner who fully submits to the customs and culture of their country of refuge. Illegal aliens are not submitting to the laws of the land—they’re defying them.”
All of this is incredibly arbitrary. And technical. Imagine standing before Jesus and saying, “technically Lord, we didn’t feed these immigrants because they didn’t assimilate like our selective (but obviously authoritative) reading of the Scriptures clearly states!”
“Who gets to say which is more valid, more authoritative for Christian life, than the other? Well I know for one thing, it’s certainly not the House of Representatives. To claim something is “biblical” demands conversation in Christian community.”
How curious that everything Rep. Brecheen calls “biblical” can be summed up by seemingly obscure technical details from an OT passage. My knowledge of Hebrew is sparse. But when it comes to Brecheen’s criticism, I will ask why start in the Torah?
How strange that he does not begin or deal seriously with Jesus’ teaching on the Good Samaritan. If he had, he’d notice (at least I hope he would) that the Good Samaritan was actually provoked by a similar technical, self-justifying question.
Jesus’ interrogator led with a technicality, “and who is my neighbor?” But Jesus told a story that posed a different orienting question, one far more unsettling, “who proved to be the neighbor?” The material provisions offered by the Samaritan to the left-for-dead Jew in Jesus’ story totally upended the social imagination of God’s people. In doing this, Jesus both retrieved and renewed God’s command which had become calcified by human hands. He renews “care for the foreigner” — no longer coded by “natural” and “cultural” inclusion, but expanded to charge God’s people with material responsibility to common humanity in the sight of God.
This exegetical criticism is meant to support a more essential point: resolutions in the House of Representatives do not and cannot resolve theological questions. Our elected leaders have no business commenting, let along adjudicating through raw resolutions, the content of a sermon.
Of course, there’s a flaw in the framework anyway— the binary of what is “biblical” versus what is “political” speaks to an elementary theological grammar that needs renewing and revising. And I recognize this thinking. It’s the same damned* line of reasoning trotted out in white evangelical churches in the wake of police brutality and racism. (I talk about logic and ideas being damned, never people)
All theology is political. To say, “we don’t talk politics is here” is a political statement, one made in service of the status quo. To talk about the difference between “biblical” and “political” is to trade in sloganeering and distortion. This calls for Christian responsibility, for a renewal of theology, and a Christian community with courage.
When the State involves itself in these questions by censure and resolutions it threatens (by coercion) the religious freedom of all. For Christians with eyes to see the threats of this interference, we need to consider that in these times our prayers for clarity should grow into prayers for courage. We need to reckon with theological resistance in our churches, alongside our common activisms with our fellow citizens.
Amen
Thank you for your analysis of this issue, which is critical to our understanding of what's happening in this administration and in Congress. It is very distressing, and leaves me wondering what I can do to complain. Contact my Congressmen, or send an email or call this legislator who came up with this ridiculous resoultion? I would love to meet you & Stevie for coffee!