Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him; it is "faith seeking understanding." I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.
Today's topic:
How should Christians balance their love of God and America?
Pastor Brady's thoughts:
Tomorrow America celebrates its (kind of) birthday, as July 4th marks the anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Happy Independence Day!
I love America, and feel so fortunate to have been born into this country and get to live here and enjoy the fruit of so much courage, labor, sacrifice, and innovative genius by so many people before me and around me. As a Christian and a pastor, I’m especially grateful for the religious liberty Americans enjoy to practice the faith of their choosing without fear of the real-deal oppression and persecution that exists in much of the world, and has throughout history. The freedom to proclaim the gospel and live out our discipleship of Christ publicly is a blessing we should take advantage of but shouldn’t take for granted.
As followers of Jesus committed to worship of the God of the Bible alone, we face the sometimes difficult challenge of balancing our exclusive allegiance to him with our love for our country and our desire to see it flourish. The idea of a nation such as America comprises at least three components: its principles, its power, and its people.
We see America’s principles laid out in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” etc. Of course, principles come from other places as well - and may potentially evolve over time - but perhaps as much as any formal country in history, America was founded and persists on ideas and ideals.
The official power to administer America’s laws and exercise its activity at home and abroad rests with our federal, state, and local governments. Our republic’s system(s) of representative democracy is complicated, complex, messy, frustrating, maddening…and probably the best that mankind has ever crafted.
And a country - our country - as much as anything, is perhaps best understood as the sum of its people. 330-some million Americans with a wide degree of racial, religious, political, lifestyle, worldview, and cultural diversity wake up every day and generally get along to such an outrageously successful extent that we’ve together created more abundance of prosperity, enterprise, and opportunity than any other people in any other place in any other time since God breathed life into the world.
We have plenty of problems - and plenty of things that concern me about our principles, power, and people - but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we are blessed to live in the very best place and time to be alive in all of human history. Life has never been easier, longer, healthier, safer, or more rich with possibilities for personal and professional (and ministry!) pursuits than it is for this generation of Americans. To borrow a line from the musical Hamilton - written about a very different generation of Americans - “How lucky we are to be alive right now!”
While American Christians are right to join in the celebration of our country and its many blessings, we are also right to ask ourselves: given our prosperity, given our liberty to worship freely, and - most of all - given our fealty to the King of Kings and not earthly leaders, what does faithfulness look like for us, here and now?
I think part of our response to that question should be to think and live in such a way that leaves no question where our ultimate gratitude is aimed and who our ultimate allegiance is to.
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1st Peter 2:11-12)
Christians are called to be “foreigners and exiles” in this world - meaning we know that this world is not our home; the world’s ways are not our ways. Because of Christ, we are strangers here; our home is in heaven. We see this especially in the battle language of this passage. It says sinful desires wage war against our souls. There’s a war on, and the battlefield is every single human heart.
Winning the battle means being like Christ, it means saying no to our sinful desires and saying no to the passions of the flesh, which we can summarize as seeking satisfaction in anything outside of God.
Sin is not just sexual promiscuity, misusing drugs or alcohol, or being greedy or gluttonous, it’s idolizing a political candidate or political victories, yearning for domination or revenge, participating in a cult of personality, harboring malicious feelings toward those who think or vote differently than you, hating or disdaining perceived enemies, and anything else that we give ourselves over to besides God.
That even includes despair over political losses. Not just sadness; sadness and disappointment are ok. But despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. And that doesn’t fly. Our hope is not in the temporary or the fleeting but in the eternal and permanent God of the universe who promises victory because Jesus died, rose, returned to heaven, and he’s gonna come back and take us with him.
American Christians do face threats from enemies of the faith in secular governments and from militant leaders of competing religions, but our biggest threat may be internal. The biggest threat to faithfulness - at least in our country today - may be believers who are apathetic spiritually and/or who misorder their political and cultural worldviews over their biblical worldviews.
Today, given the timing of the national holiday this week, I’m focused on the concerning conflation of American prominence with Christian success in the minds of many U.S. Christians.
A nation-state’s prominence enhanced by its principles, power, and people may lead to Christian success (which is to say, productive sharing of the gospel), but a nation-state’s success isn’t the same as Christian success. Especially in America today, we can get these things confused. I think it’s important both for our own personal faithfulness and for evangelistic effectiveness that we avoid the temptation to care more about Christian nationalism than we do about Christianity.
As I like to do, let’s start with a definition:
Nationalism (among other things – some arguably benign, some arguably pernicious) is the idea that the national identity or its cultural self-understanding should be congruent with the state, and that the state exists not just to provide essential services but to foster and promote cultural identity (generally in superiority over and to the exclusion or at least minimization of other identities). In other words, a nationalistic worldview says the people are primarily products of their government. The people see themselves first as national citizens, and this identity permeates culture (positively and negatively).
Christian nationalism, then, gloms onto this definition and adds - for Christians - the desire for the nation-state’s identity to be “Christian,” as symbolized by public, faith-related displays (such as the 10 Commandments in state courthouses) and political rhetoric that positively references faith-adjacent ideas. This topic butts up against the idea of “cultural Christianity” I wrote about in this space awhile back.
From a Christian perspective, I see three primary problems with Christian nationalism: 1) it conflates the purpose of the church with social/state influence (meaning: it says that the state promoting the church would be good for the church), 2) it confuses the gospel message with mandated or official state action promoting values perceived to be “Christian,” and 3) it combines true Christian discipleship and political activism.
I believe it is spiritually, personally, culturally, and missionally damaging and even dangerous when we allow our national identity to supersede our more meaningful and lasting identity as adopted children of God, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it nearly always leads to divisive superiority rather than humility and service.
Christian nationalism preaches a gospel that says politics is more important than genuine religious adherence and practice, that the success of the faith is tethered to increasing political power and acceptance/alignment in the public square, and that America is uniquely blessed by God and is a global force not just for good but for divine providential activity. None of these is biblical.
Brad East is a professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. Here’s what he says about Christian nationalism:
“This reduction of Christ to a means of worldly gain is widespread and, lamentably, goes back to the time of the apostles (Phil. 1:15–18). It trades on Christ’s name for a merely political cause. It declares that Christ is Lord to be obeyed while sidelining his actual life and teachings. It dismisses the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23) as weak and ineffective while embracing the works of the flesh—enmity, strife, anger, dissension, licentiousness, and factionalism (vv.19–21)—as strategic assets.”
Let us not treat the savior of our souls as the means to worldly gains. Christianity is an identity movement, but it isn’t a political identity movement. The church doesn’t rally around race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, partisan, or national identities (Galatians 3:28). Our identity is redeemed sinners saved by the blood of Jesus and committed to making faithfulness to him the penetrating and overwhelming characteristic of our lives.
Our attitude and worldview should not be “I am this” or “I am that” but “I am his.”
Now, here’s what Christian nationalism isn’t: it isn’t voting and advocating for policies in ways we believe are consistent with our faith, it isn’t supporting politicians/laws we believe nudge us closer to “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it isn’t moderate feelings of patriotism.
Patriotism is the sentiment of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to a country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, political, or historical aspects.
Appreciation and gratitude for America isn’t wrong, and pride of place is natural and can contribute to good things: community action, charitable attitudes, etc. In my opinion, Christians can be patriots without being nationalists, and that’s what we should shoot for when it comes to participating in national holidays, thinking about politics, and worship.
Here are three quick tips for how to do this well:
1) Define personal faith narrowly: The social/public implications of Christianity may be broad and varied, but our faith itself is about justification (salvation) and sanctification (holiness).
2) Define the purpose of the church specifically: To know God and to make God known.
3) Remember that we are “foreigners and exiles” and that our hope is not in kings and kingdoms that pass away.
Christianity itself is certainly good for the nation - its principles, power, and people - but that doesn’t mean that Christian nationalism is good. Let us be a church that knows the difference.
I’m excited to celebrate Saturday with corndogs, fireworks, family, and friends in our Love20 community. As I do, I’ll pray thankfulness to God for America, and for the blessing of being an American. What a privilege! But this country is not my home or my hope, and for that, I am even more thankful.
SPECIAL NOTE: Theology Thursday is still on break until mid-August. This was just a one-off post. You're welcome!
TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
Today's topic:
How should Christians balance their love of God and America?
Pastor Brady's thoughts:
Tomorrow America celebrates its (kind of) birthday, as July 4th marks the anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Happy Independence Day!
I love America, and feel so fortunate to have been born into this country and get to live here and enjoy the fruit of so much courage, labor, sacrifice, and innovative genius by so many people before me and around me. As a Christian and a pastor, I’m especially grateful for the religious liberty Americans enjoy to practice the faith of their choosing without fear of the real-deal oppression and persecution that exists in much of the world, and has throughout history. The freedom to proclaim the gospel and live out our discipleship of Christ publicly is a blessing we should take advantage of but shouldn’t take for granted.
As followers of Jesus committed to worship of the God of the Bible alone, we face the sometimes difficult challenge of balancing our exclusive allegiance to him with our love for our country and our desire to see it flourish. The idea of a nation such as America comprises at least three components: its principles, its power, and its people.
We see America’s principles laid out in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” etc. Of course, principles come from other places as well - and may potentially evolve over time - but perhaps as much as any formal country in history, America was founded and persists on ideas and ideals.
The official power to administer America’s laws and exercise its activity at home and abroad rests with our federal, state, and local governments. Our republic’s system(s) of representative democracy is complicated, complex, messy, frustrating, maddening…and probably the best that mankind has ever crafted.
And a country - our country - as much as anything, is perhaps best understood as the sum of its people. 330-some million Americans with a wide degree of racial, religious, political, lifestyle, worldview, and cultural diversity wake up every day and generally get along to such an outrageously successful extent that we’ve together created more abundance of prosperity, enterprise, and opportunity than any other people in any other place in any other time since God breathed life into the world.
We have plenty of problems - and plenty of things that concern me about our principles, power, and people - but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we are blessed to live in the very best place and time to be alive in all of human history. Life has never been easier, longer, healthier, safer, or more rich with possibilities for personal and professional (and ministry!) pursuits than it is for this generation of Americans. To borrow a line from the musical Hamilton - written about a very different generation of Americans - “How lucky we are to be alive right now!”
While American Christians are right to join in the celebration of our country and its many blessings, we are also right to ask ourselves: given our prosperity, given our liberty to worship freely, and - most of all - given our fealty to the King of Kings and not earthly leaders, what does faithfulness look like for us, here and now?
I think part of our response to that question should be to think and live in such a way that leaves no question where our ultimate gratitude is aimed and who our ultimate allegiance is to.
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1st Peter 2:11-12)
Christians are called to be “foreigners and exiles” in this world - meaning we know that this world is not our home; the world’s ways are not our ways. Because of Christ, we are strangers here; our home is in heaven. We see this especially in the battle language of this passage. It says sinful desires wage war against our souls. There’s a war on, and the battlefield is every single human heart.
Winning the battle means being like Christ, it means saying no to our sinful desires and saying no to the passions of the flesh, which we can summarize as seeking satisfaction in anything outside of God.
Sin is not just sexual promiscuity, misusing drugs or alcohol, or being greedy or gluttonous, it’s idolizing a political candidate or political victories, yearning for domination or revenge, participating in a cult of personality, harboring malicious feelings toward those who think or vote differently than you, hating or disdaining perceived enemies, and anything else that we give ourselves over to besides God.
That even includes despair over political losses. Not just sadness; sadness and disappointment are ok. But despair is the complete loss or absence of hope. And that doesn’t fly. Our hope is not in the temporary or the fleeting but in the eternal and permanent God of the universe who promises victory because Jesus died, rose, returned to heaven, and he’s gonna come back and take us with him.
American Christians do face threats from enemies of the faith in secular governments and from militant leaders of competing religions, but our biggest threat may be internal. The biggest threat to faithfulness - at least in our country today - may be believers who are apathetic spiritually and/or who misorder their political and cultural worldviews over their biblical worldviews.
Today, given the timing of the national holiday this week, I’m focused on the concerning conflation of American prominence with Christian success in the minds of many U.S. Christians.
A nation-state’s prominence enhanced by its principles, power, and people may lead to Christian success (which is to say, productive sharing of the gospel), but a nation-state’s success isn’t the same as Christian success. Especially in America today, we can get these things confused. I think it’s important both for our own personal faithfulness and for evangelistic effectiveness that we avoid the temptation to care more about Christian nationalism than we do about Christianity.
As I like to do, let’s start with a definition:
Nationalism (among other things – some arguably benign, some arguably pernicious) is the idea that the national identity or its cultural self-understanding should be congruent with the state, and that the state exists not just to provide essential services but to foster and promote cultural identity (generally in superiority over and to the exclusion or at least minimization of other identities). In other words, a nationalistic worldview says the people are primarily products of their government. The people see themselves first as national citizens, and this identity permeates culture (positively and negatively).
Christian nationalism, then, gloms onto this definition and adds - for Christians - the desire for the nation-state’s identity to be “Christian,” as symbolized by public, faith-related displays (such as the 10 Commandments in state courthouses) and political rhetoric that positively references faith-adjacent ideas. This topic butts up against the idea of “cultural Christianity” I wrote about in this space awhile back.
From a Christian perspective, I see three primary problems with Christian nationalism: 1) it conflates the purpose of the church with social/state influence (meaning: it says that the state promoting the church would be good for the church), 2) it confuses the gospel message with mandated or official state action promoting values perceived to be “Christian,” and 3) it combines true Christian discipleship and political activism.
I believe it is spiritually, personally, culturally, and missionally damaging and even dangerous when we allow our national identity to supersede our more meaningful and lasting identity as adopted children of God, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it nearly always leads to divisive superiority rather than humility and service.
Christian nationalism preaches a gospel that says politics is more important than genuine religious adherence and practice, that the success of the faith is tethered to increasing political power and acceptance/alignment in the public square, and that America is uniquely blessed by God and is a global force not just for good but for divine providential activity. None of these is biblical.
Brad East is a professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. Here’s what he says about Christian nationalism:
“This reduction of Christ to a means of worldly gain is widespread and, lamentably, goes back to the time of the apostles (Phil. 1:15–18). It trades on Christ’s name for a merely political cause. It declares that Christ is Lord to be obeyed while sidelining his actual life and teachings. It dismisses the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23) as weak and ineffective while embracing the works of the flesh—enmity, strife, anger, dissension, licentiousness, and factionalism (vv.19–21)—as strategic assets.”
Let us not treat the savior of our souls as the means to worldly gains. Christianity is an identity movement, but it isn’t a political identity movement. The church doesn’t rally around race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, partisan, or national identities (Galatians 3:28). Our identity is redeemed sinners saved by the blood of Jesus and committed to making faithfulness to him the penetrating and overwhelming characteristic of our lives.
Our attitude and worldview should not be “I am this” or “I am that” but “I am his.”
Now, here’s what Christian nationalism isn’t: it isn’t voting and advocating for policies in ways we believe are consistent with our faith, it isn’t supporting politicians/laws we believe nudge us closer to “on earth as it is in heaven,” and it isn’t moderate feelings of patriotism.
Patriotism is the sentiment of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to a country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, political, or historical aspects.
Appreciation and gratitude for America isn’t wrong, and pride of place is natural and can contribute to good things: community action, charitable attitudes, etc. In my opinion, Christians can be patriots without being nationalists, and that’s what we should shoot for when it comes to participating in national holidays, thinking about politics, and worship.
Here are three quick tips for how to do this well:
1) Define personal faith narrowly: The social/public implications of Christianity may be broad and varied, but our faith itself is about justification (salvation) and sanctification (holiness).
2) Define the purpose of the church specifically: To know God and to make God known.
3) Remember that we are “foreigners and exiles” and that our hope is not in kings and kingdoms that pass away.
Christianity itself is certainly good for the nation - its principles, power, and people - but that doesn’t mean that Christian nationalism is good. Let us be a church that knows the difference.
I’m excited to celebrate Saturday with corndogs, fireworks, family, and friends in our Love20 community. As I do, I’ll pray thankfulness to God for America, and for the blessing of being an American. What a privilege! But this country is not my home or my hope, and for that, I am even more thankful.
SPECIAL NOTE: Theology Thursday is still on break until mid-August. This was just a one-off post. You're welcome!
TO KNOW GOD AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to office@minierchristian.org and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
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Categories
Archive
2026
January
Teaching Tuesday: In His Image - Genesis 1:1-2:3Theology Thursday: The Christlike CreedTeaching Tuesday: Right Relationship - Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25Theology Thursday: Stop Reading the NewsTeaching Tuesday: The Fall - Genesis 3Theology Thursday: Is eternal conscious torment biblical? Teaching Tuesday: First Family Feud - Genesis 4Theology Thursday: Praying for the persecuted church
February
Teaching Tuesday: First Family Feud - Genesis 4 CopyTheology Thursday: Does James 2:24 contradict justification by faith?Teaching Tuesday: The Promise - Genesis 9:8-17Theology Thursday: Her desire will be for her husband?Theology Thursday: What's the deal with speaking in tongues?Theology Thursday: Buffet 5
March
April
Theology Thursday: Why do Christians oppose abortion?Theology Thursday: What's this about revival?Theology Thursday: Would you consider coming back to church?Theology Thursday: How should Christians think about gambling?Theology Thursday: What’s the difference between “conservative” and “progressive” theology?
May
2025
January
Theology Thursday: What is the purpose of Scripture?Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - God's BlessingTheology Thursday: Son of God, Son of ManTeaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Knowing GodTheology Thursday: Buffet 2Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Alive in ChristTheology Thursday: Murder is wrong, but...Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Unity in ChristTheology Thursday: God and "Natural" Disasters
February
Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Church MembershipTheology Thursday: Evil and SufferingTeaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Experiencing God's LoveTheology Thursday: God Is Into the Details (Exodus 25-30)Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Church GrowthTheology Thursday: About those Jesus adsTeaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Christian Living
March
Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Christ-centered RelationshipsTheology Thursday: Where We Come FromTeaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Spiritual ConflictTheology Thursday: In essentials, unity...and so onTeaching Tuesday: Dying Breaths - Forsaken?Theology Thursday: Christians Only, but Not the Only ChristiansTheology Thursday: Where Scripture speaks...
April
Theology Thursday: No Creed but ChristTeaching Tuesday: Dying Breaths - Mission AccomplishedTheology Thursday: MCC Member ExpectationsTeaching Tuesday: Dying Breaths - Hosanna to the Humble KingTheology Thursday: This is our homecomingTeaching Tuesday: Easter 2025 - The Ragman Theology Thursday: Are all sins the same?Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - "Come, follow me."
May
Theology Thursday: The state of the churchTeaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - PrayerTeaching Tuesday: ScriptureTheology Thursday: What's wrong with health and wealth?Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - SolitudeTheology Thursday: What's the point of the Old Testament?Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - FastingTheology Thursday: Idols of the Heart
June
Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - ServiceTheology Thursday: Why did the Jews reject Jesus?Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - GenerosityTheology Thursday: Christians have to give...do we have to tithe?Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - SabbathTheology Thursday: Buffet 3Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - CommunityTheology Thursday: Can everyone understand scripture?
July
Teaching Tuesday: Beyond Belief - WitnessTheology Thursday: 5 QuestionsTeaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - JosephTheology Thursday: Who/what were the Nephilim?Teaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Moses and the burning bushTheology Thursday: The oldest Christian church?Teaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Joshua, Rahab, and JerichoTheology Thursday: Mike Humphries' TestimonyTeaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Noami, Ruth, and BoazTheology Thursday: Church Membership - What, Why, Who
August
Teaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - David and GoliathTheology Thursday: The Biblical Support for Church MembershipTeaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Elijah and BaalTheology Thursday: Church Discipline and ExcommunicationTeaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Jonah and the Big FishTheology Thursday: MCC's Membership PolicyTeaching Tuesday: Bible Stories - Daniel and the Lions' DenTheology Thursday: Buffet 4
September
Theology Thursday: 14 (so far) Principles for Bible StudyTeaching Tuesday: Walking in Wisdom - Proverbs - The Beginning of WisdomTheology Thursday: What Are Elders For?Teaching Tuesday: Walking in Wisdom - Proverbs - Wisdom for the Straight, Safe PathTheology Thursday: How Should Elders Lead?Teaching Tuesday: Walking in Wisdom - Proverbs - Wisdom for UnderstandingTheology Thursday: Who Should Elders Be?Teaching Tuesday: Walking in Wisdom - Proverbs - Wisdom for Dads