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The obsession evangelicals have with power, authority and domination is a Capitalism thing, not a Kingdom of God thing.
American Christianity has been corrupted, and it's leading believers towards extremism, violence & blood-lust.
You can advertise it as "victory" or "taking the country back for Jesus", but it's still authoritarianism and it's still a fake, false Gospel.
We have syncretized Christianity with Capitalism.
We have changed the Gospel to make it fit cultural norms that are informed by Capitalist norms that have become usual in Western society.
A key principle of Capitalism is "winning".
Success is measured by profit, fame & power.
This has made so many of us - yes, even the most devout, the Jesus worshippers - develop a mindset of the dominator model, or the power-over model, or the win/lose, zero-sum mentality.
Like fish that can't see water, it's just become part of our collective psyche.
It has affected the church, because we all live in a culture of normalized Capitalism.
This has led to errors of thinking, such as:
- authority and power hierarchies
- bigger is better
- power & wealth are signs of God's favour & blessing
- you measure the growth of the Kingdom by numbers
We've all done it, because we all live in it, saturated by it all the time. So when the church starts imitating the practices of advertising, marketing & corporate capitalism, it's not that much of a shock.
There's been voices of dissent and warning along the way, but often those prophetic voices are quenched & shunned, because we're caught up in a heady experience that LOOKS like "success" and FEELS like "blessing".
There's been many good things in evangelicalism Christianity over the past 50 years.
But there have also been errors, mission creep, where we have gotten off track.
It's led to some serious problems, such as:
- prosperity doctrine, financial corruption & grift
- purity culture & hyper morality (legalism)
- patriarchy & gender hierarchy, which has resulted in oppression for women
- rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by church leaders
- magical thinking & a susceptibility to disinformation & conspiracy theories (Y2K, Qanon, Covid disinformation, election denialism climate change denial etc )
- militarism, aggression & gun idolatry
- authoritarianism, anti-democracy sentiment
- personality cults like Trump, MAGA & big name preachers, "influencers" & mega churches
- Christian Nationalism
This amounts to a false Gospel.
We have promoted an individualistic faith where we teach people to repent of personal sins & wrong-doing, and accept Christ as their "personal saviour".
But whenever there is a call to collective repentance & systemic change, "to drive a spoke into the wheel of injustice" as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, all too often, the knee-jerk response is, "That's woke!" or "Are you a Communist?" or "Socialism is bad!".
People are leaving the church not because they are rejecting Jesus, but because they're going to seek Him.
I will warn the Christian church now:
If you weaponize the 'Frankenstein' of authoritarianism to attain political power now, in a misguided attempt to harness that power to 'build the Kingdom' or 'save our country' - as a substitute and a counterfeit for the saving grace of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel ... the day will come when that power, no matter how heady, will back-fire, and turn back on you.
This is what Hinduist, Islamist, Buddhist & Communist extremists found out the hard way.
Do not imagine that Christianity will be exempt from this painful lesson.
No. We are not entitled to cultural and political supremacy, because we think we are right.
We know that repentance sows the seeds of revival.
But all too often, we the church, the body of Christ, don't want to repent of collective sins or systemic error.
Is it too late?
Can the church repair?
No, it's never too late because God is faithful, even if/when we've got it wrong. And he always has a remnant.
But I hope & pray we can, as a church, repent of the political hi-jacking & corruption of the evangelical church that we've allowed, and the false Gospel we've been in thrall to. We have hurt a lot of people - we've got to admit that.
But the mercy and grace of God is huge - if only we can change our minds, admit we got off track, repent, make amends, and return to the Lord.
The new wine-skins await.
