Hello my friends,

Today, I want to take a sober look at an issue that continues to influence our culture and the church. After the election results came back from across the country, I again painfully noticed anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and even racist commentary shape public discourse, even among some who claim to follow Jesus. I believe this stems from something we as followers of Jesus need to take deeply seriously and confront, especially in the days ahead. I hope you find what you read here helpful and beneficial.

Recommended Resources:

​-Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, by Soong-Chan Rah. I again want to recommend this important book. I am reading through it again and continue to be so deeply amazed at how timely and truthful it is today, even though it was published in 2015. It takes you on a profound journey of lament in the Bible, presenting the scriptures in such a profound way as well as our need for lament as followers of Jesus in America. If you end up starting this, let me know.

​-Sacred Rage With Ben Cremer. By Deconstructing Mamas. I sat down and had such a meaningful conversation with my friends Lizz and Esther, who are hosts of this podcast. Our conversation stretched from “What if I’m wrong?” to “How do we keep from passing our pain along?” We talked about retributive vs. restorative justice, how lament can heal our nervous systems, and why gentleness might just be the most radical form of resistance. I hope you find it as meaningful as I did.

​-The New Christian Right, Antisemitism & U.S. Democracy by Tom Gjelten. I was honored to be included in this article written by investigative journalist, Tom Gjlten. I hope you find his work as insightful and needed as I did.

​-The Church Better Start Taking Nazification Seriously by Russell Moore. As I was writing this newsletter this week, Russell Moore published this insightful article on a very similar topic. I encourage you to read it. It is a timely warning and call for the church, especially Evangelical Christianity, in our time.

​-Pope Leo offers his strongest criticism of Trump yet. In recent religious news, the Pope offered his strongest critique of the current administration regarding its handling of immigration and mistreatment of migrants. In several cases, clergy have been denied entry to serve their church members in detention centers, even Catholic priests have been denied the possibility of bringing their members the eucharist in detention, all of which is a violation of religious liberty. The Pope's words offer an example of how prominent Christian leaders need to use their position to stand up for the vulnerable.

When Hate Masquerades As Christianity.

There’s an ugly machine that turns real anxieties into a poisonous gospel. It takes genuine fears, like worries about safety, about providing for family, about cultural change, and it grinds them into a hardened political belief that looks very much like a religion. A belief that demands loyalty, explains the world in simple enemies-and-victors terms, and hands its adherents an easy scapegoat: “them.”

In our moment that “them” is people like immigrants and Muslims. And tragically, in too many corners of American Christianity, that scapegoating has been baptized into pious-sounding rhetoric.

This is painfully recent. On November 4, 2025, several Muslims won historic races across the country, for example, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral contest and Ghazala Hashmi’s win as Virginia’s lieutenant governor. Their victories were celebrated as historical milestones by many and were simultaneously met by a predictable eruption of social-media panic, conspiracies, racism, and anti-muslim rhetoric. The volume and vitriol of the accusations, that these public servants secretly were "jihadists" and intend to create “sharia law” or to overturn liberties, which are not supported by any evidence. They are political theater fueled by fear.

Ironically, some of the same voices who denounce Muslim elected officials as a “threat” cheer or ignore cozy relationships between powerful politicians and oil-rich or autocratic regimes that are majority-Muslim (this is a recurring pattern, not a one-off). That mismatch is worth naming not in a partisan sense but to expose an inconsistent moral calculus: fear of the religious “other” is treated as a greater danger than complicity with global power interests when it suits a political purpose. The double standard reveals where allegiance really lies.

The other clear double standard is Christians condemning an authoritarian interpretation of another religion like Islam being imposed on people through our government while seeming to cheer such practices on in their own religious group. The most ardent Christian Nationalists continue to advocate a theocratic worldview that has far too many parallels with the theocratic worldview of radical Islam. Like the exclusion of other believers who do not align with their hardline stance, pushes to legislate scripture and their interpretation of God's law in places of public education, exclusion of ethnic and religious minorities, and the subjugation of women. Christian nationalists openly advocate for rolling back women's rights, especially the right to vote, as they believe women in any position of authority erodes the fabric of our society. Here is one such video by a pastor posted in response to our recent election day. Yet such movements in Christianity here in America are not treated with nearly the concern as those in other religions despite having people who advocate such an ideology siting in the highest levels of our government.

So, in what follows, I want to try to navigate the various elements at play here with you in hopes of equipping us with both the knowledge and vocabulary to respond confidently in our conversations with others.

What is “sharia,” really and why do so many people use the term as a stand-in for “Islamic takeover”?

Sharia (from the Arabic šarīʿah) is best understood, in the broadest terms, as a historically variegated set of religious principles, legal traditions, and moral teachings that guide Muslims’ lives. It is interpreted differently across cultures, communities, and legal contexts. For most Muslims in pluralistic democracies, sharia is a private religious ethic (about prayer, charity, fasting, family life), not a blueprint for authoritarian theocratic rule. The shrill claim that an American mayor or state official will “impose sharia” is a rhetorical and often racialized weapon, not a substantive policy critique and it’s a claim that ignores the diversity and moderation of Muslim civic life. Ironically, when this claim comes from self proclaimed Christian Nationalists in pluralistic democracies, it is a confession of how they see their own religion, as authoritarian theocratic rule, then projecting that onto another religious group in their own country. (For a straightforward explainer of sharia and how it functions in context, see Britannica’s overview.)

The data show what Muslims in our country already experience a rise in discrimination and suspicion tied to international events and domestic political rhetoric. Surveys collected in recent years document growing public concern about discrimination aimed at Muslim Americans and higher levels of anti-Muslim sentiment in certain pockets of the population. These are not abstract numbers; they translate into real-world hostility toward neighbors, colleagues, and elected officials, like I named earlier.

While terrible evils have been and continue to be carried out through authoritarian interpretations of religion in the world, including Islam, history shows numerous examples, like Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain, 711 to 1492) where for centuries Córdoba, Seville, and other cities were centers of learning where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived, worked, and produced major advances in science, medicine, philosophy, and literature. That conviviality was not perfect, but it was real and historically important.

Conversely, the Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem in 1099, which was controlled by a Muslim majority at the time, and where Muslims, Christians, and Jews were living in relative harmony, included a documented utter massacre of civilians; including other Christians they saw as “heretics.”

The point being, measuring an entire religious group in our country by their extremists and past atrocities, and then scapegoating our Muslim neighbors based on that perspective is intellectually dishonest and leads to mistreatment and discrimination, especially when we Christians would object if our entire religion was reduced to the inquisitions, genocide of indigenous Americans, the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism, or white Christian nationalism and then we were treated as if that is who we were too.

"Do to others as you would have them do to you." -Jesus

Why am I writing this as a pastor? Because something in parts of Christian life has lost its moral bearings. I do not mean to indict ordinary people who worry about their families, who want safe communities, or who want honest conversations about cultural change, immigration, or public policy. Those are legitimate. But elsewhere, in the overlap of certain political operatives, media ecosystems, and movements that dress exclusion as “faithful patriotism” and bigotry as "Christian conviction," legitimate concern is being weaponized. That weaponization repackages fear as virtue and invites Christians to practice cruelty in God’s name, all while dismissing the truth.

America's Unrepentant Sin

So, with a desire to move away from this weaponization, we must name one of the most dominate root causes of this moral corruption: white nationalist and supremacist theologies, which have long percolated in American religious life and that often wears the label “Christian.”

One such example is the "Christian Identity" ideology, which explicitly reinterprets scripture to claim that white Europeans are the only full heirs of biblical Israel and casts Jews a 'Satan's seed" and people of color as "beasts of the field." Its ideas are not some odd footnote either, they’ve fed twentieth and twenty-first-century violence.

Henry Ford for example, the famed industrialist, helped lay the popularize much of this antisemitic thought. His personal secretary, Ernest G. Liebold, a member of the Christian Identity movement, published “The International Jew,” a series of writings so vile and conspiratorial that after it became an international best seller, Adolf Hitler cited Ford as one of his greatest inspirations. Hitler kept Ford’s portrait in his office and called him a “great friend.”

Timothy McVeigh, who was also influenced by this ideology, planned his attack on a federal building in Oklahoma for April 19, 1995, to coincide with the scheduled execution of a Christian Identity member named Richard Snell as well as the second anniversary of the Waco siege and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. This ideology still appears in fringe movements that seek to fold religion into racialized political power.

Watchdogs like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have documented Christian Identity’s history, ideas, and harms. White supremacy continues to be a sin we are unwilling to fully reckon with collectively both in our country and in the church and we can't repent from something we won't acknowledge exists.

Twisting Scripture for Empire

One of the most disturbing expressions of white Christian nationalism in recent months is the new Department of Homeland Security recruitment campaign for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The campaign borrows directly from neo-Nazi propaganda, blending medieval knight imagery, militarized nationalism, and even Scripture to promote government enforcement.

One post by the DHS features armored knights walking through mist with the caption: “Defend your hearth and home.” The language and visuals echo classic white nationalist rhetoric. Nazi propaganda often glorified their soldiers as “holy warriors” or “defenders of blood and soil.” The call to “defend the Fatherland” and “preserve purity” was wrapped in imagery of swords, shields, and divine duty. The DHS post is hauntingly similar, but now it’s being broadcast by an agency of the United States government.

Other recruitment posts have taken this even further. One Instagram reel uses the verse “Here am I, send me” (Isaiah 6:8), a text about answering God’s call to bring truth and restoration to a broken world, and turns it into a militarized slogan for immigration enforcement. Another post twists Proverbs 28:1, which says “the righteous are bold as a lion” into a battle cry for immigration enforcement. What was once a proverb about moral courage in the pursuit of justice is here turned into a call to arms.

Christians must be clear about what this is: the co-opting of sacred language to serve the purposes of state power, especially towards people of color. Scripture is being weaponized--literally--to baptize violence, xenophobia, racism, nationalism, and fear.

The apostle John warns the church, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Isaiah declares, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). When holy words are used to sanctify cruelty, when verses about calling and righteousness are wrapped in armor and smoke, it is a sign not of divine mission but of spiritual corruption.

What makes this particularly dangerous is that many Christians may not recognize the manipulation. It looks familiar. It feels patriotic. It invokes the Bible. But the gospel it proclaims is not the gospel of Jesus. Jesus did not say, “Defend your hearth and home”; he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He did not tell his followers to arm themselves for battle but to “put away the sword.” He did not recruit enforcers of empire but called tax collectors, zealots, and fishermen into a movement of mercy. And he certainly didn't say to demonize the stranger, but to welcome them as if we were welcoming him.

When ordinary Christians find anti-muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric acceptable, and when the state begins to use Christian imagery to recruit for agencies that enforce policies that have terrorized people, separated families, detained asylum seekers, and contributed to deaths in custody, it should set off alarm bells in every church.

This is not a minor matter of “optics.” It is a theological and moral crisis. The image of God is being conscripted into the service of empire and of cruelty.

To remain silent in the face of this is to risk complicity. The longer we allow this fusion of nationalism, white supremacy, and Christianity to go unchallenged, the more our faith will be co-opted by the very forces Jesus opposed: domination, violence, and fear.

The church must reclaim the name of Christ from those who twist it for power. We must call our brothers and sisters to discernment, courage, and repentance. Because if we do not, the gospel we hand to the next generation will bear no resemblance to the one that offers salvation and redemption.

How Did We Get Here?

I get asked this question all the time and I think the process of how we got here among ordinary people is both predictable and tragic:

• A real desire is held: to preserve life, ensure safe borders, protect children, keep communities secure, uphold the law, etc. Those impulses are good, but only when shaped by love.

• Demagogues and opportunists find those anxieties and begin to stoke them, replacing nuance with narrative: “They’re taking your jobs,” “they’re bringing crime,” “they’re trying to change your country.” Facts are inconvenient, so spin and fear-substitutes are easier and more profitable.

• An isolated media ecology, social bubbles, and confirmation-biased algorithms mean that a fearful person rarely sees corrective evidence. They hear the same claims repeated until the story “feels true.” Facts then no longer matter as much as belonging to a community that is unfortunately united by fear.

• The fear hardens into an ideology: a closed system that explains the world by enemies, prescribes moral certainty, and makes empathy a moral failing. Once that happens, even the presence of obvious cruelty in the service of these policies is rationalized, because loyalty to the ideology that envisions a battle against an enemy that is unfathomably evil now functions like religious devotion.

This is where pastoral care and prophetic witness converge. We must say three things clearly and tenderly in conversations with loved ones who have been pulled into this orbit.

1. I hear your fears. Many of the people who end up supporting exclusionary politics are motivated by legitimate anxieties about family, security, and dignity, which may have been ignored. Scripture invites us to listen: Jesus sat with those who worried about day-to-day survival and named God’s care for the sparrows and lilies (Matt. 6). Listening disarms grievance.
2. Being afraid does not justify cruelty. The gospel holds a sharper standard. Jesus taught care for the stranger, the widow, the hungry; he rebuked religious systems that dehumanized others (see Matthew 25; Luke 10). Love of neighbor requires that we evaluate policies by their effects on human beings not by how they bolster our particular religious group as supreme.
3. Facts matter. When political actors weaponize misinformation, when they manufacture fear, the faithful must resist. That means learning, challenging false narratives, and being willing to lose social approval in order to hold to truth and kindness.

Theological Repentance

Christian faith must return again and again to a simple, costly claim: the Word became flesh (John 1). God chose human embodiment vulnerability, neighborliness, mortality, as the way truth is revealed. If truth comes embodied, then our politics must be governed by love for the person before us, not by abstract ideologies that allow us to demonize them from a distance. The incarnation means our public ethics start by asking, “Who is made in God’s image here?” not “How does this person help me win?”

Scripture gives an unambiguous test: love of neighbor (Mark 12:28–31) and the way one treats “the least of these” (Matt. 25). When political choices or rhetoric dehumanize immigrants, refugees, or Muslim neighbors, they are theological and moral errors. The God revealed in Jesus is close to the poor, hospitable to the foreigner, and radically opposed to religious systems that justify cruelty. Those of us who claim to worship that God must do likewise.

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​What Faithful Christians Can Practically Do Now

Fear thrives in confusion, and confusion thrives when Christians stay quiet, uninformed, or unwilling to look beyond partisan echo chambers. If we do not respond faithfully, others will fill the silence with false gospels of fear and power.

Here are some ways faithful Christians can respond now — with wisdom, courage, and love.

• Learn the facts (and share them kindly).

Ignorance fuels fear. Take time to read accessible explainers about Islam and Sharia (from sources like Britannica, Pew Research Center, and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) Learn what Sharia actually means in Muslim communities — a diverse body of spiritual and ethical guidance, not a political plot for domination. When misinformation spreads in your circles — whether it’s lies about “Sharia law,” the demonization of Muslim officials, or patriotic-sounding recruitment posts from high levels of government quoting Scripture, correct it with sources, not sneers. As Proverbs says, “The one who gives an honest answer gives a kiss on the lips” (Prov. 24:26). Truth spoken kindly is an act of love.

• Build relationships across difference.

The antidote to fear is proximity. Invite Muslim neighbors or coworkers into genuine conversation. Break bread together. Attend an open house at a mosque. Listen before you judge. Fear cannot survive friendship. Love dismantles the machinery of suspicion.

• Call out bad faith in your circles.

When Christian leaders or influencers twist faith into a weapon of exclusion, name it clearly. When government agencies co-opt Scripture to sanctify state power, call it what it is: idolatry.​
The prophets did not stay silent when rulers used God’s name to justify oppression. Neither can we. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). If Christians fail to challenge these distortions, we allow the gospel to be rewritten in the language of empire.

• Protect democratic pluralism.

Religious freedom in America is not just for Christians. It is a sacred civic trust meant to safeguard all faiths, including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and those of no faith at all. History shows that once state power merges with religion, it quickly turns inward, persecuting not only other faiths but even other Christians under the banner of “orthodoxy.” A government quoting Scripture while promoting fear should alarm us all. Protecting pluralism is not a betrayal of faith, it is an act of neighbor love.

• Defend the vulnerable first.

If your political instincts are rooted in a genuine desire to protect children, families, and human flourishing, hold to that motive. But ensure your advocacy actually helps people: policies that guarantee food security, humane immigration practices, access to healthcare, and protections for the poor. Fear-based policies often promise safety while inflicting cruelty. The kingdom Jesus described in Luke 6 blesses the poor and fills the hungry, it does not criminalize their desperation.

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​A Pastoral Final Word

To my Christian siblings who are tempted by fear: repentance is a life long posture, one of humility that continually returns us to the incarnate truth of Christ. Repentance looks like listening more than shouting, serving more than fearing, and loving more than excluding. It looks like seeing the image of God in the neighbor we were taught to fear.

To those who have been wounded by Islamophobia, white supremacy, or the misuse of faith: we see you. You are our neighbor, our fellow image-bearer, and our sibling in the shared work of building a just and peaceful world. When the church has used its voice as a sword instead of a balm, we have betrayed the gospel we claim to preach. We confess that failure and ask your forgiveness.

A Prayer:

Lord Jesus, Prince of Peace,
teach us to recognize your face in those we fear.
Deliver us from the idols of nationalism and power.
Loosen our grip on certainty and give us the courage to love.
Let your church be known not for its anger but for its mercy,
not for its might but for its compassion,
until every weapon forged in your name is turned again into a tool for peace.
Amen.

Now I'd like to hear from you! Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them. New 30 Day Devotional: I recently wrote a 30 day devotional in hopes to provide a companion for people seeking to follow Jesus in our world today. You can read more about it here: $20.00 Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires: 30 Days of reclaiming the hope, compassion, and justice of Jesus. Today, our world can often feel overwhelmed by darkness, division, and despair. I created this 30-day devotional to... Read more Get it now! ​ Ways to support: If you'd like to support this project, you can do so through one-time-gift of any amount you feel is right. You can also subscribe through a $5/mo, $15/mo, or $25/mo. Several others have also asked for a recurring gift option that is different from the ones offered here, like this one. If you'd like me to set up a different option for you, please just send me an email with the word "support" in the subject line. As always, I really want to thank all of you for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every single week. I'm thankful for the ways we are building this together and hope it creates a lasting, positive change in our world along the way! I sincerely appreciate you all, Ben Remember, you can now view this and all previous newsletters as well as invite friends to join through this link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.

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