Recently I happened into a conversation with some church laypeople as another meeting concluded. The conversation drifted into how to respond to White Christian nationalism as White mainline Christians. “Give me some weapons,” one woman said. She explained that conversations with neighbors or family felt like a battle, and she needed some arrows in her quiver. I bristled at the image but remembered that Paul uses the whole armor of God as a metaphor for facing the devil (Eph. 6), including the devil of Rome, itself an instance of political and religious nationalism. And even as I bristled, I had to take seriously that people in my jurisdiction’s care feel that they are on the front lines of a battle.
One front in that battle is the Christian nationalism fueling the current presidential administration’s agenda. Administration officials invoke scripture and theology to justify their claims, policies, and beliefs.
But the people I was talking to admitted that they struggle to cite chapter and verse or to comment accurately upon epochs of Christian or American history. Afterward, I drove home in frustration, admitting to myself that we mainline Protestants have done a poor job teaching biblical literacy, our Reformation claim to fame.
