Why the 'Believers Churches' Have Not Been Able to Stop Our Descent into Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity

But The Story Is Not Over Yet

Note: A slightly longer version of this talk was presented on Friday night, 19 September, at a conference in Hamburg, Germany called the Entscheidungschristentum (“Decision Christianity”) Conference. The title in the German program was: “Believers Churches als Auslaufmodell ? - Eine amerikanische Perspektive,” which translates as “Believers Churches as an Obsolete Model? An American Perspective.”

INTRODUCTION

Greetings and thanks for the invitation. It has been a great week visiting the Baptist universities in Oldenburg, Elstal and now here to this historic event.

This is a talk which will have seven movements.

I. My account of the tradition we are talking about.

II. How this tradition has interacted with US culture over four centuries

III. The specifically political/civil implications of the Believers Church tradition in the US.

Thus far, my account will be largely positive. But then.

IV. Deteriorations in Believers Church life since the 1960s

V. Current negative consequences

VI. A look at the relative strengths of the Catholic response using the example of immigration.

VII. Some thoughts about where we go from here.

I. THE BELIEVERS CHURCH TRADITION

Earlier this year the Anabaptist “Leader” magazine asked me to participate in the celebration of the 500^th anniversary of the movement by offering an analysis of Anabaptist distinctives. I believe that statement is a good place to start. It is my understanding that it is this tradition whose birth we are celebrating. I see in the program that it is given several different names and undoubtedly these carry delineated differences more meaningful to specialists than to me: Believers Churches, Volkskirchen, Freikirchen, Kirchenbewegung und Entscheidungskirchen. I hope that the hallmarks of the tradition that I will name here are recognizable as more or less accurate for the entire tradition.

Believers Churches focus on the historical Jesus as the center of Christianity. We pay close attention to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, teachings, and behaviors, and believers seek to model their behavior after his. This contrasts sharply with versions of Christianity which attend only to the salvific significance of Jesus’ death or on doctrinal statements that offer little attention to Jesus’ life and teachings.

Believers Churches focus on obedience to Jesus Christ as Lord. We have taught that to be a Christian is, fundamentally, not just to believe Jesus to be the Son of God and Savior of souls, or other points of doctrine, but also the Lord of the believer, the church, and the world. We have understood baptism not as a ritual or as a ticket to religious community or heavenly eternity but instead as a vow of wholehearted commitment and a pledge of obedient service.

Believers Churches believe that the Church is called to be a disciplined community of Christ-followers. If baptism marks entry into a community of people distinctively committed to obeying Christ as Lord, then this sets the Church apart as a sub-community within the human family. We are not like everyone else, because we have made distinctive commitments to Jesus Christ, whom we believe to be Lord and have committed to obey.

If this theological conviction is real, and this baptismal commitment is genuine, then the Church must be a community with expectations, a community that looks different from other communities. It must be a community that trains itself in the Way of Jesus and finds constructive ways both to establish boundaries of community practice and to help committed members live within those boundaries.

Believers Churches share a wide range of moral commitments with all other orthodox Christians. But distinctive Believers Church moral commitments such as peacemaking, economic simplicity, and service to the vulnerable are grounded in the life and teachings of Jesus, in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and in the identity of the Church. It is true, in my view, that Believers Churches focus on such practices as seeking justice, making peace, living simply, and serving humans in need in a manner distinctively more intense than many other Christian communions, broadly speaking.

These commitments don’t come from nowhere. They come from our historic focus on the “Way of Jesus,” our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, and the ethos and commitment of our churches. As these distinctives are grounded in Jesus and his Way; as they are not mere preferences or idiosyncrasies; they will not likely be sustained if our focus on Jesus, and the rest of our distinctive way of believing and belonging, is not sustained.

Believers Churches believe in the Reign (kingdom) of God not just as a future eschatological hope but as an inbreaking reality visible in the life of the Church itself. This belief helps to fire Believers Churches with moral passion, as life is viewed not just as a vale of tears (or theatre of pleasure) but instead as a context for living into and living out the Reign of God each day.

This belief raises our expectations of the Church – and lowers our expectations of the world. We are able not to fall prey to excessive worldly-political hopes or loyalties because we know that no earthly ruler or kingdom is the kingdom of God. We do not look for salvation from the government or its leaders. We do not identify any earthly nation as a Christian nation.

While some strands of the Believers Church tradition have been separatist and disengaged from worldly politics, all have understood that faithful church communities bearing witness to Christ’s way exude a public witness that, unless it is hidden under a basket, speaks constructively to the world. Also, to the extent that Believers Churches have been congregationally governed and embraced various democratic practices, they have become a kind of school of democracy, quite distinct from more hierarchical church traditions. And, especially in recent Believers Church thinking, most of us have understood that loyalty to Christ and love of neighbor requires various forms of public witness and social-political action.

This is my list: this tradition we celebrate this weekend has for 500 years focused on the whole Gospel witness to Jesus, to whom we have committed our lives as Lord; gathered in voluntary, disciplined congregations to pursue this Way together; lived morally serious lives with some distinctive commitments such as peacemaking, simplicity, and service; sought to live into the inbreaking Reign of God and indeed to be a sign of it, and have loved their neighbors not just inside but outside the church, which has often taken the form of public witness and social-political action.

This is a grand tradition, or family of traditions, a crucial part of the Christian family offering a distinctive and invaluable witness.

II. THE BELIEVERS CHURCH TRADITION IN THE USA

The United States proved to be a uniquely hospitable context for the Believers Churches. The settlement of colonial North America was certainly undertaken by powers, such as England and France, which had establishmentarian, non-Believers Church visions. But even if one considers only the English settlers, there were competing Anglican and Calvinist visions. Add to that the French and their predominantly Catholic but also Huguenot settlers, and the Germans, some of whom were Catholic and others Lutheran. Now mix in the many dissenter and reformist traditions that came our way, including the Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, Mennonites, Methodists, and so many others.

By the time of our revolution and constitution writing in the late 18^th century, the combination of competing non-Believers Church/establishmentarian visions, together with the potpourri of Believers Church adherents, created the conditions for a religious settlement uniquely well-suited for the thriving of Believers Churches. The United States of America would not establish any religion, but neither would it hinder the free exercise of religion.

These two principles were enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The United States would not fund religion, but neither would it prevent religious communities of all types from funding themselves. The United States was not born either with an interest in protecting an established national religion nor in dismantling it – consider France’s counterexample. A secular state, serving a religiously diverse people, taking a posture of benevolent neutrality towards specific religious expressions – this was our vision.

To the extent that churches managed to be effective in attracting adherents, building congregations, and spreading their influence, they were free to do so in the free religious marketplace. This had the perhaps unsurprising but certainly salutary result that Believers Churches – and many others – did quite well.

This was visible to the brilliant French observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, when he wrote in 1835: “Religious institutions have remained wholly distinct from political institutions, so that former laws have been easily changed whilst former belief has remained unshaken. Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America.” This arrangement has not been seriously challenged in American history for nearly 250 years – until, perhaps, now. But that gets ahead of the story.

For centuries, Baptists were among those in the Believers Church tradition who celebrated what used to be described as a free church in a free state. We believed in political democracy, in the US constitutional order, and, most fiercely perhaps, in freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and religious disestablishment. We advocated similar arrangements wherever constitutions were being written.

III. POLITICAL/CIVIL IMPLICATIONS IN THE USA

As we all know, some branches of the Believers Church tradition have emphasized disengagement from civil government for various reasons. Beginning there, we can still acknowledge that even that particular Anabaptist vision was always aware that Christians are always bearing Christian witness in how we live and how we treat our neighbors when we encounter them. We could always and rightly claim that in living quiet, godly, law-abiding lives, raising our families in a loving and disciplined fashion, being honest in business, and in all other ways contributing to the common good, we could be described as meeting or even exceeding our civic obligations.

Other versions of the Believers Church tradition, including the version of Baptist church life into which I was initiated in the late 1970s, did believe in the legitimacy and sometimes even the obligation of a more direct involvement in civil and political life. We were taught active citizenship, including paying close attention to civic affairs, community life and public policy. We were taught to make our voices heard on matters of moral significance, voting, protesting, running for office, and otherwise serving actively in civic affairs, doing so within the parameters and as an expression of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

This vision ran across the entire political spectrum from left to right in Baptist life. Left-leaning Baptists might press for racial integration and economic justice while right-leaning ones might emphasize limiting divorce and abortion rights, but all did so with confidence that this was a legitimate expression of faithfulness to Jesus.

I argued in my book Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies that Baptists and other Believers Churches made a number of specific contributions to the development and the health of US democracy. This included our advocacy of democracy, the rule of law, and limited government, our fierce arguments on behalf of religious liberty and other civil and political rights for all, our allergenic reaction to hierarchicalism and authoritarianism, our religiously rooted egalitarianism in which everyone is made in God’s image and potential kin in Christ, and our voluntary formation of covenanted communities in which peers in Christ -- and under his lordship -- learned the humble practice of local congregational democracy.

On that latter point, political philosopher Michael Walzer has written, “Congregational life was surely a training for self-government and democratic participation.” Believers Church congregations have been laboratories for democracy. Once people have tasted the empowerment and dignity that comes from having a say in decisions that affect them, they do not take well to dictators and authoritarians.

I certainly must say here that any constructive and happy thing one can say about Believers Churches in the US and their contribution to equality, justice, and democracy must be held in tension with the tortured history of white supremacism and the constant violation of these principles by self-identified Christians through slavery and the racial terrorism and segregation that followed the Civil War.

But I must then hasten to add that resistance to these moral contradictions was felt, articulated, and acted upon, primarily by Black Americans usually deeply shaped by their own Christian faith and grounded in their own congregations, and by their small numbers of white allies, grounded in a dissident, somewhat less compromised version of Christianity.

If you would permit me a bit of nostalgia for a moment, I want to close this section by simply taking you back to the version of “the story we are living in” that I was taught by my teachers at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-1980s. I think especially of my primary mentor and dear friend and co-author, the late Glen Stassen, known to some of you.

That story was this: the USA was a stable democracy that was in the process of overcoming the terrible flaws of our founding and of the segregationist/racist heritage that the Civil Rights movement had worked so hard, and made so much progress, in redressing. The Baptist tradition could claim the Baptist pastor Martin Luther King Jr with pride, as well as the many other Baptists and Believers Church Christians who during the heat of the civil rights battle had donated to this work, voted for it, marched and waved placards and agitated, and sometimes paid a serious price in doing so. Baptists and other Christians were expressing the lordship of Christ and the love of neighbor in working not only for civil rights and racial desegregation but also in relation to other causes, notably peacemaking on nuclear weapons and Vietnam, environmental issues, women’s rights, and economic justice.

Baptists and other believers enjoyed the liberty to express our faith and our advocacy in public without hindrance – though we needed to make our arguments in a way that respected the religious and moral diversity of the US public -- and we enjoyed enough influence with our own people and in the country that we could sometimes even win specific arguments and policy fights. This work was often led by Christian ethicists and pastors, like what I felt called to be, and it was some of the most rewarding work imaginable in this good yet broken world, created and loved by God.

IV. DETERIORATIONS IN (BELIEVERS) CHURCH LIFE SINCE THE 1960s

Well, that was the good news. Now I will offer an account of deteriorations in the Believers Church situation in the US over the last few generations. Most of what I will say applies far more broadly than to the Believers Churches.

We can begin with the overall weakening of church attendance, church membership, and church loyalty since the 1960s. While the decline of overall US Christian participation has advanced unevenly, with the ‘mainline Protestant’ churches declining first, and the ‘evangelical’ churches declining more recently, the overall picture is one of decline. In 1963, 90% of the US population identified as Christian; today it is 62%. Roughly half of the US population identified as mainline Protestant in 1963; today it is 11%.

We all know that churches that are declining in membership develop predictable challenges. It becomes harder to meet the annual budget, increasing anxiety among everyone and making paid church leaders more cautious. The loyalty of the members to the church cannot be trusted, and the sense that every similar church is a competitor in a declining market reduces collaboration among churches and, again, increases the anxiety level in each congregation.

Church members, aware that churchgoing is optional and that there is more supply than demand, can shift toward a consumer mindset and develop a weaker loyalty especially to churches that demand things of them that they might find uncomfortable.

When church survival is at stake, church leaders are often busy all the time working on survival strategies rather than being able to cast a moral vision.

When churches close, as they now often do, the overall church sector weakens, one church at a time. Churches as a vibrant voice in society, a significant part of civil society, able to shape the ethos of the society or at least of their own people, decline both in reality and perception.

If we take as normative the idea that Believers Churches were/are based on a lordship of Christ/discipleship vision, which does not ask what message will please people or build consumer loyalty, but instead what message is faithful to the way of Jesus, then the decline of such churches means the decline of a rigorous discipleship vision as a factor in American culture and politics. To the extent that ‘religion’ or ‘Christianity’ is visible and functioning in American culture and politics, it is a different version of such than what the Believers Churches once promoted.

This is my way into the next deteriorating factor I want to describe. It can be named in two ways: one way is to call it left/right polarization. The other is to call it the decline of way-of-Jesus Christianity and the rise, first, of right-wing US evangelicalism, and now authoritarian reactionary “Christianity.”

Probably most of you know the story of polarization in US Protestantism. It goes back for at least a hundred years, beginning with the fundamentalist-modernist controversy which set the parameters of US Protestantism for decades. The fundamentalists wanted to protect premodern doctrinal commitments from biblical criticism and Darwinian science. The modernists were seeking some kind of integration or accommodation. It was a fierce fight.

Also, and this is often overlooked, the modernist side adopted the Social Gospel and wove it into the ethos of what became the mainline Protestant denominations. This vision helped motivate political reform efforts from the Progressive movement to the Depression-era New Deal all the way to the 1960s Civil Rights movement.

In his very fine 2020 book The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors, sociologist John Compton shows that what mattered about the mainline was not just ideas but institutions and infrastructure. The highwater mark of progressive liberal politics in the US was also the highwater mark of mainline Protestantism – from the 1910s through the early 1960s. That mainline Protestant world once had the capacity to generate massive organizing and infrastructure local and national to muscle change through our government, from child labor laws to old-age pensions to the Civil Rights Act.

When the new evangelicals organized in the 1940s and 1950s, though they all emerged from the fundamentalist side, they wanted to shoot the gap between fundamentalism and liberalism with a robust middle way that eventually became known as evangelicalism. (I tell this story in my book After Evangelicalism.) These pioneers, like Carl Henry and Billy Graham and many less well-known, had great success in building a brand, an infrastructure, and a power base. They attracted dissenters from the conservative side of the mainline and over decades enticed many fundamentalists and their institutions to rebrand as evangelical.

The fundamentalist/modernist binary had already superseded the older denominational distinctives within Protestantism, and the evangelical movement intentionally did the same. Methodists vs. Anglicans vs. Lutherans vs. Baptists vs. Pentecostals vs. Congregationalists mattered a whole lot less within the grand modern binary. With the rise of the new evangelical movement, most everyone was sorted along evangelical/mainline lines. The distinctions were purportedly theological, but I am among those who have argued that they were at least as much if not mainly political/cultural.

Compton argues that the rise of white US evangelicalism into a major force in US culture that took off mainly in the 1960s and thereafter was substantially fueled by the demand for an alternative place for white US Christians to go if they no longer wanted to be challenged by their mainline pastors on issues like economic justice or racial desegregation or the Vietnam War. Essentially, his argument is that evangelicals poached frustrated white mainliners who wanted more conservative politics or the veneer of an apolitical stance from their churches.

When fundamentalist and evangelical leaders, mainly big-church pastors but also TV personalities and activists, came together to develop an explicitly political strategy in the late 1970s, building an alliance with Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party, the politics that had been the majority view all along in both fundamentalist and evangelical circles came right out into the open. Increasingly, to be Republican was to be Christian was to be evangelical. This partnership changed both the Republican Party and the religious leaders and communities who moved into what became not a marriage of convenience but eventually an identity fusion.

The title of my talk asks whether the Believers Church is an auslaufmodell – the closest English equivalent phrase appears to be “obsolete or outdated model.” I didn’t come up with the phrase but at this point in my talk it does make sense. Because, sadly, the left/right polarization in American politics and religion and Christianity – developing from the early 20^th century, accelerating since the 1960s, dominating our landscape today -- has all but swept away every older distinction.

Believers Churches were once contrasted with state churches or national churches, free churches with unfree churches, decision churches with infant Baptism churches, discipleship churches with cultural churches. Now we have culture-wars left-leaning (blue) churches and culture-wars right-leaning (red) churches and churches that are paralyzed because they are “purple” – that is, neither ‘red’ nor ‘blue’. In this maelstrom of polarization, whether churches baptize babies or report to bishops often seems simply immaterial.

Take the Baptist churches of the US as an example. Before the fundamentalist/modernist fight they were already divided into several denominations based on old controversies. The most fateful of these was the Southern Baptist Convention vs. the northern Baptists in their split over slavery in 1845. That original (neo-)Confederate Baptist Christian vision – thought long dead – has now arguably resurfaced since the right-wing takeover of the denomination in the 1980s.

Anyone working in the US setting knows that the SBC is a major headquarters of the evangelical and now mainly Trumpist right wing in the US right now, while the Black Baptist denominations tend to lean left politically (not always, and not on every issue), the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches are divided but lean center-left, the Alliance of Baptists is pure left, and on it goes.

It certainly seems clear that when churchgoing Family A moves into Town X in the US right now, the fact that they have been Baptists matters far, far less in their church search than what political brand of Baptist they are. Today, very few Democratic-leaning Baptists would even consider joining an SBC church, and the opposite also applies. It certainly makes one wonder what Believers Churches now believe, or if the category has any meaning.

And now let me close the loop on this section by describing the even more alarming development of the last ten years. It is sometimes called white Christian nationalism. If you have read my book on democracy, you will know that I find this phrase imprecise. I instead used the phrase authoritarian reactionary Christianity to describe what is happening on the political right not just in the US but several other countries. I fear that my description has been confirmed by events. The US government is increasingly under personalist authoritarian rule in pursuit primarily of a culturally reactionary agenda, with barely any area of society exempt from the president’s pursuit of power. The main nationalist dimensions have been visible in the administration’s tariff policies and occasional fever-dreams of taking other countries’ territories.

Political authoritarianism and a visceral posture of negative reaction to modernity (including moral pluralism, gender egalitarianism, and multi-racial inclusivism) do not need to be tethered to religion, and especially to actual religious communities with actual practicing believers. But they are often lathered in Christian rhetoric to become a “Christian” (sometimes provocatively called “Christianist”) cause.

It is clear that some of the “Christianity” that has fallen for authoritarian reactionary politics is very thinly connected to Christian practice or affiliation. This means that the concern about secularization must now apply not just to fading mainline churches but also to what is happening on the right. Secularization can mean erosion of belief in God. It can mean the decline of religious participation in real churches. But sometimes it also means the ideological conquest of the husks of Christians and their churches by an alien ideology that has nothing to do with Jesus.

V. CONSEQUENCES VISIBLE IN OUR MOMENT

Imagine a situation in which an authoritarian government led by numerous figures flaunting a certain malformed version of Christianity consolidates its grip on a country and begins executing policies both harmful and anti-democratic.

What one would want from the Believers Churches in such a situation would be something like the picture I described in the first movement of this talk. One would hope for a Jesus-centered, well-discipled, reign-of-God focused, obedient church full of people who know the difference between the way of Jesus and seductive “christianisms.”

One would want pastors who know what is going on, how to read the signs of the times, who preach boldly, whose people trust and listen to them, who set standards, who make demands based on obvious teachings of Jesus, and who help keep their people unseduced – indeed, who prepare their people for resistance where resistance is called for.

There is some of this in the US Believers Church (and other church) settings, for sure. But there is not enough. I think we are seeing some of the built-in vulnerabilities of the Believers Church tradition.

The focus on the authority of scripture can be subverted as seducers override scripture while claiming to be biblical.

There is no trans-congregational authority – no bishop -- who can blow the whistle on ideology masquerading as theology.

There is no body of teaching developed and refined over centuries, in calmer times, that might constitute a social teaching tradition. To the extent that generations of scholars and pastors have produced valuable texts, these texts are known mainly to academics and do not carry any ecclesial authority.

Congregational autonomy and congregational rule mean that the local church pastors who preach Authoritarian Reactionary Christianity cannot be checked by any higher authority. Alternatively, the goodhearted pastors who see their flocks being seduced by, say, xenophobia, have no hierarchy that can protect them if they feel the need to challenge unhappy trends from the pulpit. Many pastors have lost their jobs in recent years in the US over precisely this.

On the left, the problems are different. There is not likely to be seduction or lack of clarity about what is wrong with a right-wing authoritarian government. Indeed, on the Christian left, there is plenty of agita, misery, fear, anger, and protest. A goodly number of churches ring with cries of dissent and calls for resistance on a weekly basis. But their audiences are relatively small, their influence limited, and the script old – and often biblically thin. In other words, soundings of progressive protest have been standard fare in left-leaning US churches for over fifty years.

I cannot tell you how many times I have been invited into these spaces where my message is eagerly awaited. This is blue Christian America. It’s not nothing. You can give a lot of speeches and sermons and podcasts there. But these churches are not strong enough, united enough, or organized enough to constitute a major source of resistance.

VI. CONTRAST EXAMPLE: CATHOLIC CHURCH ON IMMIGRATION

I want to offer a perhaps surprising contrast example in relation to the US Catholic Church. As of 2020, there were between 60 and 70 million US Catholics, making up over 20% of the US population, gathered in 20,000 congregations, with 40% of Catholics being Latino/as. Six of the nine US Supreme Court judges are Catholic, five of them on the conservative side, one on the liberal side. The Vice-President is an aggressively conservative Catholic convert who might very well become the next president. For the first time, a US-born person has become Pope.

The Catholic Church in the US is at least 2.5 times as big as the (ideologically divided) Believers Church population, twice as big as the mainline Protestants overall, and much more influential.

In contrast to what I said about the Believers Churches, the Catholic Church does have a hierarchical, episcopal authority structure which can keep local parish priests in line and also protect those who might need protecting. It has a body of teaching that carries official authority – it can be found in the Creed, the catechism, papal statements, and the social teaching documents. It has a national organizational structure that spreads across the country and has real influence, mainly centered in the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Of course, that structure is tied to a larger global church structure representing two billion Catholics.

The issue of immigration makes for a good case study for a brief review. Probably no issue has been more visible for this administration. You have seen the headlines and you know the various initiatives underway or that have already been attempted. Raids by masked agents, families broken up, flights of detainees without due process to third countries, the celebration of cruelty and intimidation. Dehumanizing right-wing rhetoric has softened us up and made us susceptible to these cruelties. And today there are more sophisticated efforts by ideologues to (re)define America in ethno-nationalist terms, a vision that what makes an American is how long your people have been here.

Again, big chunks of America are all in with this, and woe betide the lonely pastor in many Protestant churches who challenges it with a sermon on all humans being made in the image of God and worthy of dignity and basic human rights (Gen 1:27-28).

But the local Catholic cleric in places like Texas, Arizona, or Georgia who offers any statements or policies related to immigration will be expected by his superiors to do so from within the framework of a very well-established teaching tradition that indeed emphasizes human dignity, the image of God, the sacred worth of all, the only-relative status of national borders, the need for humane treatment of detained immigrants, the rights of refugees, and the need to protect the vulnerable and families.

A great place for US immigration officials to find thousands of undocumented immigrants would be in Catholic churches on Sunday morning. Early in its new term, the Trump Administration officially rolled back previous protections from raids for “sensitive locations” such as churches and schools. That means that church services could in principle be targeted.

But the bishops individually and collectively have denounced the possibility of raids at churches and schools. The USCCB has flagged threats to religious liberty and risks to staff and clients, and the head of the USCCB’s committee on migration has publicly urged a shift toward more just and merciful immigration policies and argued for protection of congregational spaces.

And churches, it seems, have not so far been raided during worship services. There have been a tiny handful of arrests in church parking lots, a few of them Catholic. Fear of arrest has led to reduced church attendance in some places. In Southern California, where immigrant enforcement has been the most intense, some dioceses have suspended mandatory church attendance due to fear of arrests. (That’s quite an exception to Catholic norms.) But the “target-rich environment” of weekend church services has thus far not been attackedby this government.

It certainly seems likely that the collective voice and power of the massive US Catholic Church — and, it must be added, several other religious groups offering clear statements and even lawsuits on this matter — has, so far at least, had the effect of setting a significant boundary on the draconian immigration enforcement policies of this government.

VII. FINAL THOUGHTS

Let me conclude with a few final comments.

At one level, what is at stake today – what is always at stake – is the faithfulness of Christian people to the way of Jesus. Faithful witness is preached but mainly lived. It has to do with the total way of life of Christian people and the actions of churches. A strength of the Believers Church tradition has been rigorous emphasis on discipleship fidelity and obedience to Jesus, and a heritage of preparedness to pay a price, the cost of discipleship.

Protecting faithful discipleship is the daily and weekly project of the believer and all real churches. It is a hard enough challenge in the best of times, because we are all beset by temptation and sin is a reality. It is an even harder challenge when alien ideologies proclaiming their ‘christianism’ attempt to seduce us. On this battle, the Believers Church paradigm is certainly NOT an auslaufmodell. It is of essential significance.

In the US, the seduction process is well apace. And so is the effort to leverage the actual and potential power of the US government to intimidate or coerce churches, parachurch organizations and believers into subordination to that alien ideology.

One priceless inheritance of our constitutional order – deeply influenced by the Believers Church tradition --is that our pastors are not state employees and are therefore not susceptible to employment pressure. However, over the decades the US has become entangled with congregations through offering grants to churches for various projects of public value, such as housing, addiction recovery, and emergency relief services. The government is also the organization that provides tax-exempt status for religious bodies such as denominations and congregations. These powers could be leveraged to pressure churches if a government so chose.

In a recent letter from the General Counsel of the United Church of Christ to denominational leaders, quoted by Diana Butler Bass in her Substack post of 7 August, the GC reported that the federal government had notified her that churches that receive grants under the Nonprofit Security Grant Program are now required to cooperate with immigration officials, to not engage in or promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and to not participate in boycotts related to Israel.

Essentially, this means that this government’s retrograde policy agenda must now be complied with by any church that receives government funds under at least this one grant program. There are many other US Government grants and certainly there will be similar conditions demanded. Don’t miss it: The power of the federal purse is being leveraged to attempt to seduce/intimidate churches into potentially compromising their values to keep getting government money.

Butler Bass pointed out that the three issues flagged in this government communique to the United Church of Christ leadership connect to “concerns long at the center of mainline Protestant and social justice Catholic agendas – care for and protection of immigrants, racial and gender equality, and justice for the Palestinian people.” The policy appears targeted at separating the left side of the Christian community in the US either from its values or government money. If congregations have become dependent on government grants for their survival, this could be a very difficult choice indeed. It is a wicked clever move, fully reflecting not just the authoritarianism of this government but its cunning.

Of course, the only answer is for churches to say you can keep your money, we will keep doing what we believe faithfulness to Jesus requires. That is the answer that must come from all the churches, of whatever tradition, Believers Church or not, who have not already been seduced by this ideology stalking the land and embodied in our current government.

And that is my final point. We used to hope for something like global Christian unity on doctrinal matters. It will never happen. In the US today, we cannot hope for Christian unity on doctrinal matters or anything else.

But we can hope for something better than a predictable left/right binary. We can perhaps hope that the best resources of each unique church tradition can be drawn upon to build a working majority of churches and Christians who know what is at stake in the current political crisis in the US. This would be a communion of saints, a fellowship of Christ’s people from dozens of ecclesial communities, who choose fidelity to Jesus Christ against authoritarian reactionary Christianity and resist the excesses of the current United States government.