From the Pulpit: The Dangerous Allure of Christian Nationalism

If your God looks too much like your political party, Dean Randy Hollerith cautioned, then you’ve probably latched onto something that isn’t really God.

Preaching from Jesus’ famous question of “who do you say that I am?”, the Dean said the temptation to see Jesus as a political crusader is a dangerous one, and fundamentally misunderstands what Jesus came to do.

“We often warp the Christian faith when we see it primarily as a tool to achieve our political aspirations rather than as the answer to the brokenness of the human condition. Yes, what Jesus taught has immense political implications – he shows us what it means to be truly human – but politics wasn’t his answer.

His answer was and is self-sacrificing love – as the savior willing to suffer and die in order to restore to us a life worth living and a life worth giving away. Simply put, Jesus is not a culture-warrior, he is the redeemer of the whole world. Do his teachings have important ramifications for some of our cultural conflicts? Absolutely. But to try and pin Jesus down and box him into any kind of human political framework is to demean what we call the Good News.”