Loser Theology

I’m not gonna name names, but you’ve seen and heard statements like:

“Empire permeates American Christianity.”

“We need to de-colonize Western Christianity.”

“Western Civilization is White Supremacist and needs to be burned to the ground.”

“The Way of Jesus is not political or coercive.”

“Christian Nationalism is not the Way of Jesus.”

The entire disagreement — the one currently tearing through your feed wearing forty different costumes — can almost be reduced to two sentences.

The Anabaptist instinct: The Church transforms society primarily by embodying an alternative kingdom that refuses Caesar’s methods.

The Augustinian instinct: The Church is an alternative city, yes — but Christians remain responsible for the temporal city, and should order whatever authority they possess toward justice, peace, and the common good.

That’s it. That’s the fight. Everything else — the Christian Nationalism panic pieces, the exvangelical podcasts, the guys with wheat field profile pictures quoting Hauerwas at senators, the Black Liberation theologians pretending to be moderates while celebrating A bLAcK wOmAn iS oN tHE sUpReMe CoUrT1 — is downstream of those two sentences, and almost nobody in the fight can state the other side’s sentence accurately, which is how you know it’s a real theological disagreement and not merely a branding dispute.

And here’s the irony worth exploiting, the one that should be printed on a card and handed to every participant before they’re allowed to post: both traditions distrust power. Completely. This is not a fight between people who think power is dangerous and people who think power is neat. Watch: