Hello my friends!

With the start of a new year and an election year at that, I wanted to take some time to think with you about some of the issues within American Christianity that will most likely become more amplified as we head towards November of 2024.

To do this, I wanted to look at a recent controversy surrounding a Satanic shrine put up in Iowa's state capitol building and what we can learn from how Christians reacted to this controversy moving forward.

But before we get into that, here are some resources that got me thinking this week.

Resources to Consider

-American democracy is cracking. These ideas could help repair it. I recently read this article by Dan Balz and I have to say it is one of the most clear, insightful, and helpful articles I have read this year. I am always trying to learn more about politics, how our country functions, and better ways to think about our current moment in time. This article not only gives insight to where we are right now, but gives really helpful suggestions on how we might fix the issues we are seeing. It is a long article, but very worth your time. It is from the Washington Post and might require your email to read it, but it's just for a free log in and you can delete your account at any time.

-Throughline Podcast: Dare to Dissent This episode from throughline was deeply moving. The team at throughline said this about this episode, "Sometimes, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can do is to stand up not against their enemies, but against their friends. As the United States heads into what will likely be another bitter and divided election year, there will be more and more pressure to stand with our in-groups rather than our consciences." I couldn't think of how fitting that description is for us Christians within American Christianity right now. The stories from history they share in this podcast will move you, encourage you, and hopefully galvanize you.

-To The Best Of Our Knowledge Podcast: Against Capitalism What led me to listen to this podcast episode is that I will often be called a "Marxist" or a "Communist" derogatorily by fellow Christians online. When this happened again recently, I thought, "you know, I don't think these words mean what they think they mean." But I didn't have a clear picture of what they actually mean. This podcast gives a clearer picture from what actual scholars think about Marxism. Yet I discovered something else while listening too. One of the guests on the episode suggests a reframing of some of the crises we are currently facing that still has me thinking. As with all the resources I recommend, it does not mean that I agree or endorse all the messages they advocate, but only that it helped to clarify my own perspective and gave me more to think about. I hope it does the same for you.

Okay, now onto today's content.

What The Recent Satanic Panic Says About American Christianity as we move into 2024

You may or may not have heard about the group from the Satanic Temple who applied for and was granted permission to display their holiday shrine in Iowa’s capitol building alongside an atheist display and a Christian nativity scene.

As you might imagine, this sparked a rather big controversy over the nature of religious freedom and free speech, especially among Christians who opposed the shrine.

For example, Iowa’s governor Kim Reynolds issued a statement calling the Satanic Temple’s display “absolutely objectionable” but suggested it was one a free society should allow to stand. She then called on all those of faith to pray alongside her and recognize the traditional display honoring Jesus’s birth also put up at the capitol.

Shortly after, on Twitter, Iowa Rep. Jon Dunwell, who is a Republican and a pastor, defended the right of the Satanic Temple to display their shrine as being in the spirit democratic exercise of religious freedom. I personally watched as he then got ruthlessly torn apart by people on social media, who not only attacked his character and his Christian faith, but started spreading posts telling people not to attend his church. You can read his first post about it here and scroll his page yourself.

Governor Ron DeSantis even seised on this issue in a recent Town Hall meeting with CNN, where he insinuated that the only reason that the Satanic Temple was given the status of a religion by the IRS was because it was during the Trump presidency in 2019.

Needless to say, this quickly became a potent, albeit temporary issue for many Christians in the political sphere. It not only resulted in a flurry on social media, but had real world implications as well.

All the backlash to the presence of this statue from Christians reached a tipping point when Michael Cassidy, a Christian and a military veteran, tore the Satanic Temple statue’s head off before surrendering to law enforcement to be booked with a count of criminal mischief.

In a statement to RepublicSentinel.com, a conservative news outlet, Cassidy said, “The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders [of the US] would have considered government sanction of satanic altars inside capitol buildings as protected by the first amendment.” He went on to say, “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged. My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”

The founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, hailed Cassidy as “Satan slayer." He also pledged $10,000 to Cassidy’s legal defense.

Here’s the sad twist though. All this outrage was exactly what the Satanic Temple was expecting.

If people would have taken the time to truly understand this issue, all they would have had to do is look up the Satanic Temple’s website where it clearly says they do not worship Satan nor do they even believe Satan exists. They don’t believe that anything supernatural exists. They don’t believe in witchcraft or magic. They are using religious satire to take a social and political stance.

Their main objective on their website is as follows: “The mission of the Satanic Temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits.”

According to the Satanic Temple’s Wikki page, the whole goal of the movement is to “utilize religious satire, theatrical ploys, humor, and legal action in their public campaigns to generate attention and prompt people to reevaluate fears and perceptions and to highlight religious hypocrisy and encroachment on religious freedom."

Essentially, the Satanic Temple is using satanic symbols to get noticed for worthwhile causes, because they know “satan” will get attention, especially by Christian hardliners, which will bring awareness to the issues they are advocating, such as the encroachment on religious freedom. And you know what? It worked. It’s sad how easily it works actually. All they had to do was to legally put up an inanimate statue in a capital building and let the predictable happen.

So, we can’t miss what happened here. The statue was put up by people who don’t even believe in anything supernatural to show how those who do believe in the supernatural are misusing their beliefs in harmful ways towards others, like encroaching on the religious freedom of others.

Imagine not wanting the government to infringe on your freedoms as a Christian while simultaneously working to have the government infringe on the freedoms of others in the name of Christianity and refusing to see this as a contradiction.

The saddest part to me about all of this is how easily Christians fell right into the Satanic Temple’s tactic. They knew they could count on Christians not looking deeply into the issue they are upset about. They knew they could count on Christians letting their passion get the best of them. They knew they could count on Christians, who constantly claim to be fighting for their own religious freedom, to refusing to allow religions they don’t agree with to be freely expressed.

As this was all happening, I could’t help but make the connection with Jesus’ parable most often called “The Good Samaritan,” where Jesus painted the religious outsider as the hero. A Samaritan, who was considered objectionable and unclean by the religious authorities of the day. Yet, the Samaritan was the only one who stopped to help the injured man on the side of the road, all while those who were considered the religious heroes, the priest and the levite, walked on the other side, avoiding the hurt man altogether.

Not only was Jesus pointing out religious hypocrisy with this parable, but he was making the point that if God’s own people won’t do what God has asked, namely showing compassion to the hurt and most vulnerable, God will find someone who will. Even among those who we consider “outsiders” and “unclean.”

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​The Central Issue.

For me, this outrage by Christians towards religious satire is a micro-reflection of a central issue within American Christianity right now: a lack of self awareness.

So much of what we see happening on the grand stage of American Christianity is a preoccupation with what it believes to be be the “sin” of our culture and what seems to be a conscious denial that there are any “sins” that American Christianity needs to confront within itself. This results in a pervasive lack of self awareness that seems to shape so much of the Christian approach to political issues, from abortion, to immigration, to gun violence, and climate change.

I believe this lack of self awareness stems from two myths that are deeply believed by many Christians. 1. That America is a Christian nation and so Christianity has exclusive rights over how it should be governed. 2. Christianity is being actively persecuted in our country.

These two myths create a kind of Christianity that justifies pursuing political power by any means necessary and is always ready to go to war with anything that it sees as a threat. While this kind of Christianity is a minority, it is a minority that has secured for itself a huge level of political power, from the Supreme Court to the Speaker of the House, and many other positions of authority in our country.

This results in the kind of outrage we saw against the Satanic Temple’s shrine. Without actually looking into the issue to understand what was going on, Christians treated it as a threat to our religion and a sign of the continued decline of our culture, one that needed to be defeated by any means necessary. They acted as if the “religion” the Satanic Temple represented poses the greatest threat to our country.

As I watched these events unfold and the responses by many Christians condemning the statue, I found myself asking, have they forgotten that a crowed filled with Christians carrying crosses, Bibles, and flags stormed our nation’s capitol building on January 6th 2020 because they believed the lie that the presidential election was stolen?

Have they not seen how many Christians are pushing to legislate the most punitive and legalistic interpretations of the Bible into our nation’s laws?

Have they not seen how many times Christians have pushed to post the Ten Commandments not only in government buildings and courtrooms, but also public schools?

Have they not seen how many Christians who hold certain theological beliefs about women and reproduction have pushed their religious views even into the Supreme Court?

Yet, our outrage as Christians is directed against a single, inanimate statue in a government building?

The sad reality is, the Satanic Temple revealed an ongoing serious lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy within American Christianity.

Satanism isn’t the religion we need to be concerned about. Satanists didn’t storm our nation’s capitol. Satanists are not trying to get their scriptures legislated. Hardline politicians are not vying for the “Satanist vote,” they are vying for the “Christian vote,” and using more and more authoritarian positions about immigration, healthcare, and religious freedom to do so. In fact, Christianity seems to be the only religion many politicians care to take about in a country as religiously diverse as ours.

Trump even said that if elected as president again, he would institute a strict religious test for those who want to become citizens. That people will be banned if they don’t like “our religion.” The religion he was referring to wasn’t satanism, it was Christianity.

The irony cannot be thicker here. Christians were outraged towards the Satanic Temple’s shrine while Christian Nationalism openly accepts Satan’s temptation that he offered to Jesus, to have power over earthly kingdoms (Matt 4:8-9).

I wanted to write on this topic today because we are on the heels of what is very likely going to be one the most contentious election years our country has ever seen. What breaks my heart so much as I look towards 2024 is how so little of the Christian political engagement we hear about looks anything like Jesus.

So much of it looks like pursuing punitive measures against those who don’t believe the way a particular brand Christians do and vengeance against anyone who even looks like their enemy. All while claiming to follow Jesus, who would rather die for his enemies than conquer them.

When Christians are acting in such ways, Satan doesn’t really need to do anything.

So what do we do?

When I write on topics like this, people will interpret my words as if I am advocating that Christians shouldn’t vote their conscious or be politically active. If you have followed me for awhile, you know that this couldn’t be further from the truth. You know that I believe Christians should engage in our political life, for our political life impacts all of us, especially the most vulnerable.

What I am asking for, what my heart is breaking for, especially in 2024 and beyond, is for Christians to vote and engage politically with genuine self-awareness, compassion, and humility, rather than outrage, vengeance, and fear.

I am asking for us Christians to vote and engage politically out of love for others, especially for the poor and the most vulnerable, no matter if they believe the same way we do or not, rather than selfishly prioritizing our own interests and demands for religious conformity.

I am asking for all of us Christians to see how voting to legislate a particular moralism while neglecting or even opposing measures that will help feed the hungry, house the homeless, and provide healthcare to those who need it, are not only destroying lives, but it is actively destroying our collective reputation as Christians in our culture.

The most pressing issue for Christians in the United States isn’t being persecuted for our faith. Rather, it is those who are using our faith as a tool to control and even persecute others. Until we Christians can collectively reckon with this reality, we have no hope of reclaiming any integrity.
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If our definition of religious freedom only applies to us Christians, then we don't believe in religious freedom. We believe in religious control. The only government that can guarantee religious freedom is a government free from religious control, including Christianity.
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Jesus laying down his life out of love for the world rather than using all cosmic and political power to force the world to obey him is the eternal critique of any kind of Christianity that seeks to secure power in order to force others to conform to its will.
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For the sake of the nation, for the sake of the gospel of Jesus, for the sake of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed, we Christians must become vocal opponents of theocracy, especially in the year ahead.

My hope for American Christianity in 2024 is that there is a proactive, peaceful resistance of love against the minority who are co-opting Christianity for the sake of their own authoritarian agenda.

My hope for American Christianity in 2024 is that Christians would become the most informed and wise people regarding the urgent issues of our time. That there would be a revival of compassion, generosity, humility, and deeper awareness in Christian political engagement. That our culture wouldn’t see us Christians reacting with misguided outrage over issues we claim to care about, but rather, our culture would see us proactively moving towards loving the very people on the frontlines of the issues we claim to so convicted about.

My hope for American Christianity in 2024 is that there would be an overwhelming desire to see collective and urgent measures being taken to care for God’s creation in all the ways we can, rather than mistreating, abusing, and consuming creation as if it has no impact on the most vulnerable and is somehow of little value to God.

In the most simplest of terms, my hope for American Christianity in 2024 is that it our world sees us prioritizing the needs of others rather than just ourselves, just like Jesus did for the entire world (Philippians 2). I truly believe we can make this happen.

After all, wouldn’t this be the greatest way to confront any actual work of Satan in the world?

American Christianity doesn't need more political power. It needs more Jesus.

Here is a short list of questions we Christians need to be better about asking ourselves regarding our beliefs as we head into 2024:

What ways might I be wrong?

How might the passion of my convictions regarding an issue be causing me to ignore errors about my convictions themselves?

Do my convictions about social issues reflect the complexity of those social issues or are they just one dimensional, absolute, “either/or” categories?

Have I ever actually talked with people on the frontlines of the issues I claim to have strong convictions about?

How might the practice of my beliefs be harming others or harming myself?

How do my beliefs cause me to treat others, especially those with whom I disagree? Do I treat them with cruelty or compassion?

Do I love my beliefs more than I ever actually love people?

If Jesus showed up right now, would he be allowed to change my mind about certain things? Even just a little? Or is my mind so fixed that not even Jesus could change it?

I have found these questions (and others) helpful in preventing me from turning my beliefs into an idol, or worse, a weapon against others. Jesus didn’t call us to love our beliefs as ourselves. Jesus called us to love our neighbors as ourselves. If our beliefs prevent us from loving others well, that is when we know our beliefs need to change.

Now I'd like to hear from you.

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I truly appreciate all of you and hope you and yours have a blessed start to the new year,

Ben

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