Aren’t Christians really just conservatives that speak with a religious accent?
The more fruitful distinction is not between conservatives and liberals but between those who default to cultural values and those who scrutinize them by privileging God’s word. Being conservative—or liberal—is not the same as being Christian; each can suppress theological reasoning just as readily as the other. Christians must hold whatever political tradition they inhabit under the authority of Scripture and the doctrines of the church.
How can Christians respond to accusations about hating or devaluing women?
Some who accuse Christians of hating women are not looking to have a reasonable discussion; others genuinely want to understand how a pro-life position can take women’s situations seriously. Christians must distinguish between the two responses and engage accordingly—with clarity about when life begins alongside genuine compassion for women in difficult circumstances. The goal is faithful witness, not winning a rhetorical point.
How Does American Civil Religion Borrow from Christianity?
ACR leverages biblical imagery and Christian language — imago Dei, 2 Chronicles 7:14, Psalm 33:12, exodus typology — while emptying those references of their theological convictions; Christians can discern this move by asking five questions about whether any given reference orients attention to the Triune God or to the nation.
How does assimilation work as a rival discipleship that often feels like common sense?
Assimilation is the form of rival discipleship hardest to detect because it doesn't feel like a competing formation. It feels like sense itself. It shapes what seems reasonable, what seems normal, what seems like just how things are. A Christian who has been assimilated rarely experiences the assimilation as compromise.
How Does Cultural Masculinity Function as a Sacred-Social Order?
Cultural masculinity operates as a rival sacred-social order—complete with its own saints, rituals, and hierarchy of goods—that forms men below the level of conscious decision and competes with Christ for authority over how men understand themselves.
How might we respond when people say that Christians should just stay out of politics?
There is an important difference between keeping Christianity out of politics—which the Establishment Clause addresses—and keeping Christians out of politics, which no law requires. Christians who are citizens have as much right as anyone else to advocate for their convictions in a representative democracy. Staying out of politics is not a Christian obligation; faithful, theologically grounded participation is.
How Should Christians Respond to Immigration?
Christians respond to immigration first by discipling the church to love God and neighbor without partition, and only secondarily by speaking prophetically to governing authorities about the limits of their provisional jurisdiction. Immigration involves a complex array of factors, and Christians must hold neighbor-love alongside commitment to ordered political life without collapsing one into the other. The church’s primary calling is witness and formation, not policy advocacy.
How Should Christians Think about Agnosticism?
Christians should reject the agnostic premise that God is unknowable, because it mistakes the limits of human reason for the limits of divine self-revelation. Agnosticism holds that the supernatural is unknown, if not unknowable—but Christians are defined by the conviction that God has made himself known supremely in Jesus Christ. Adopting an agnostic framework, even in the course of defending the faith, concedes the wrong starting point.
How Should Christians Think about Christian Nationalism?
Christian nationalism fuses American civic identity with a particular Christian identity in pursuit of political dominion, making it theologically problematic on multiple grounds. It blurs the distinction between Church and state and substitutes coercive political power for the faithful witness Christ commanded. Christians should resist it not because political engagement is wrong but because Christian nationalism confuses the church’s mission with the state’s power.
How Should Christians Think About Voting?
Voting is a civil right, not a sacred duty—a political privilege Christians may exercise or decline to exercise, but never at the cost of the gospel's credibility; private voting is an act of citizenship, while public endorsements require greater care because they can bind the church's witness to a particular candidate or party.
If We Are Not Being Formed by Christ, Who or What Is Forming Us?
Formation is the structure of human life. The question isn't whether we are being formed but by what. A Christian who declines discipleship under Christ hasn't escaped formation. They have handed it over to whatever environment is currently most present in their lives.
Is America on a Mission from God?
Scripture affirms that God uses nations (Jeremiah 25:9; Isaiah 45:1; Genesis 15:12-16) but is notably silent about modern nations' specific redemptive roles; claiming America occupies a covenantal or uniquely divine mission confuses the calling of God's people—"a holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9)—with the calling of the United States.
What Do 1 Timothy 6:1 and Titus 2:5 Teach About Christian Public Conduct?
Both passages warn that Christians' conduct can cause God's name and teaching to be slandered, establishing the principle that faithful witness is shaped through everyday conduct—and that winning a political battle at the cost of the gospel's credibility is a trade Christians cannot afford to make.
What do we say when people claim that the United States is not a “Christian Nation”?
When people claim the United States is not a Christian nation, they are often using the word “Christian” in different ways—sometimes referring to the faith of its founders, or to biblical language in national discourse. When “Christian” is used in its proper theological sense—requiring Christ to be indispensable to what is described—the United States does not qualify as a political body. Christians should clarify what the term means before engaging the claim.
What if I don’t want to come off as judgemental?
There is a way for Christians to be genuinely judgmental—assuming a holier-than-thou posture that is both uncharitable and unpersuasive. But avoiding that posture does not mean avoiding discernment between good and evil, which Christians are called to exercise. The goal is to be both winsome and bold: offering a theological perspective on the world without contempt for the people being addressed.
What Is American Civil Religion?
American civil religion (ACR) is the public use of religious language, symbols, and ideas—God in inaugural addresses, “in God we trust,” national holidays—to give moral meaning to the American political project without lending credibility to any specific religious tradition; its apparent openness to faith masks a competitive relationship that subtly subordinates religion to the nation.
What Is Christian Nationalism?
Christian nationalism is the triumphalist ideology that—as sociologists Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry define it—“idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture,” seeking national dominion through political mechanisms rather than discipleship.
What Is Christian Resistance?
Christian resistance is the capacity to hold the shape of Christ’s image against forces that seek to reshape us, like a dam that holds back water without losing its structure. The world exerts real pressure on Christians, and resistance requires active, sustained engagement rather than passive avoidance. Remaining shaped by Christ—conformed to his image—is not automatic; it is the fruit of deliberate formation.