I Wish I Were a Lily Pad
In times like this, I wish I were a Lily pad. Lily pads don’t make stuff up. They know nothing of nations, politics, or religion. Nothing about the reckless ambition of the “Seven Mountain Mandate” or the New Apostolic Reformation to turn the USA into a Christian nation.
There are no mountains or mandates here on the wetland pond. No illusions of grandeur. No deceit. No presumption of superiority. No striving for dominion over the cattails, Trumpeter Swans, red-wing blackbirds, muskrats, and beavers.
Aesthetic appreciation and science tell me that the Lily pads are in trouble. Monet painted water lilies a century before toxic run-off from the fields began to poison the lilies and the ponds themselves. The wetland pond by the A-frame cabin is smaller and shallower than it was six years ago. I wonder how long before it’s gone.
No Greatness without Goodness
The intersection of religion and politics is my thing; it’s the place where I live. So is history. American presidents, generals, and diplomats have attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville two sentences about America’s “genius and power” and its goodness and greatness.
Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. — attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.
If Tocqueville were visiting America in 2024, he would find his second sentence has already happened. As for the first sentence? Instead of churches and pulpits that were “the secret of [America’s] genius and power,” Tocqueville might find himself in churches where the only thing left is the toxic myth of religious and national exceptionalism. He would find pulpits aflame with the fire of the Seven Mountain Mandate — the road map to Christian dominion over the seven mountains of American life: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government. The theology is Dominionism. Its politics are nationalist. The combination is toxic.
Anxiety and fear are linked, but they are not the same.
To be mortal is to be anxious. Anxiety looks for a foothold, i.e, a secure footing that will not change, crumble, or allow your feet to slip. During the Third Reich, National Socialism turned anxiety into fear. The targets of fear and hate were specific. Jews, Gypsies, “homosexuals,” etc. became the ‘deviants’ whose elimination was necessary for restoring a pure Aryan race and culture. Conformity, obedience, nationalism, and racial supremacy left no room for nonconformists, critics, dissenters, and deviants. This video tells the story of Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s radio rebuke of Adolf Hitler’s radio address two days before.
Toxic Greatness
The German Church did not dissent. It saw no problem genuflecting on Sundays while saluting Hitler seven days a week. Except for the small “Confessing Church” movement and its “Declaration of Barmen,” Christians across Germany showed no sign of cognitive dissonance in professing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior while practicing obedience to Hitler and German nationalism. Jews were Christ killers, Gypsies were weird, and “homosexuals” were ‘vermin’. The Church joined the movement to “make Deutschland great again.”
When, after the end of WWII, Albert Einstein spoke respectfully of the Church, he was not speaking of the churches that bent the knee to German nationalism. He was speaking of the Confessing Church of Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller.
“Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I am forced to confess that what I once despised. I now praise unreservedly.“
Two Roads Diverging
The American Church of 2024 is divided between those Tocqueville, Niemöller, Bonhoeffer, and Einstein might find reason to praise, and the churches that would make them weep.
Two roads diverge again this year. If we take the road of the Seven Mountain Mandate, we will look back on the road not taken with more than a sigh.
Gordon C. Stewart, Presbyterian Minister, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017 Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, Oct. 23, 2024.
Views from the Edge 