I’ve unfriended or blocked a bunch of folks in the last few days. Crazy stuff. I don’t know about you, but I used to do everything I could to avoid unfriending or blocking anyone. Admittedly, however, it has gotten much easier—and much more frequent. I suppose that’s because I’ve finally shared a drink with and listened to the “me” who’s willing to do it without hesitation. He convinced me that there are certain conversation characteristics that are sort of begging to be blocked.
Let me tell you what he told me.
He told me that if you come to a post to lecture rather than converse, there’s a good chance you’ll get blocked. If you speak as though you alone possess all wisdom and the rest of us are merely students in your classroom, you’re probably going to get blocked. If you twist words, assign motives, or argue with the person you’re imagining rather than the one who is actually speaking, expect to get blocked.
If you mistake mockery for wit or cruelty for truth-telling, assume right away you could get blocked. If you derail every conversation into the same tired arguments, no matter the conversation’s nuances, there’s a chance you’re going to get blocked. If you cannot disagree without showing contempt, you’ll probably get blocked. If it’s obvious that you did not read in completeness what was written before replying, speaking only for myself, you’re definitely a candidate for getting blocked. Skimmers are the worst.
The last thing he said made a lot of sense. He told me that if you believe that access to someone’s words entitles you to their time, their attention, pestering access through private messaging, or response after well-crafted response to every demand you fire at them, you’re all but pleading to get blocked.
Wow. That makes sense.
In the end, I told him that none of these behaviors should surprise either of us. I’ve acknowledged countless times that writing for public consumption is a risky business. The moment you put words out in the open, you invite not only conversation, but distortion, bad faith, and the peculiar breed of person who’s more than willing to treat others like lessers—or like a customer service desk.
But then he came right back at me with something else worth considering. He told me that when these things happen, conversation is no longer conversation. It becomes noise. It becomes more about posturing and endless circular fights that produce nothing but irritation for the one posting, along with the good-faith readers who reply.
Again, wow. He’s right.
With that, I appreciate what the other “me” told me. I think he’s onto something here, and I intend to take it to heart, both in the giving and receiving of online content.
There are moments in my life when the world seems to divide itself into two kinds of time. There are times of noise. And by noise, I mean the ceaseless insistence that I give my attention to this or that thing. It feels like I live in that time most of my waking hours. But then there are times of silence. Those are moments for thinking. Well, maybe not just thinking. Maybe they’re more about paying attention to the right thing, and memory is one of attention-to-the-right-thing’s accessible wells.
Admittedly, these two kinds of time rarely coexist comfortably. One tends to drive out the other.
I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I most certainly didn’t watch the halftime show. The great machinery of American sports moved on without me a very long time ago. And the thing is, I do not feel poorer for it. What may be a national ritual for pretty much everyone else has never really been a ritual for me. Call me a fuddy duddy. That’s fine. There was a time when I followed this stuff. And I’m not judging anyone who does. I’m just saying that I don’t have the time required for proper devotion.
“But the quarterback is the youngest to ever go to the Super Bowl,” someone might say. That’s completely lost on me. “But Bad Bunny is the halftime show, and he just won like fifty Grammys or something.” Yawn. All I know about him is that he doesn’t sing in English, which means I couldn’t sing along if I wanted to. And then there’s the plain weirdness of a guy known for performing in women’s clothing. Yeah. No thanks.
And then there’s Charlie.
For Charlie, Jennifer and I watched the TPUSA halftime tribute. The performances were not what I would normally choose. Modern country is not my native tongue musically any more than the seemingly talentless, autotuned, largely digitally-created pop anthems of the stadium might be. But the songs were not the point. The point was where I began—the noise versus memory. I miss Charlie. I wanted to watch what TPUSA put together, if only for him.
When the videos and images of Charlie played at the end of the TPSUA halftime show, the weight of his absence landed pretty squarely on me again. I know I said audibly to Jennifer, “I can’t believe he’s gone.” Probably more than once. I haven’t watched any videos of Charlie since his death. I’ve avoided them. But then, suddenly, I was watching him in clips. In that moment, it was hard to just keep him safely in the category of someone I once knew but is now gone. There he was, moving and smiling and pointing. For me, that was a flashback to my times with him—laughing, talking, leaning forward in conversation about something he insisted that I know and remember. Again, as I always have to clarify, we were not besties. But he was legitimately a friend.
There was my friend. Ugh. Life is by no means an abstraction. It’s motion and voice and presence. And then, all of a sudden, it’s little more than memory.
I’ve never been a fan of Kid Rock. Not really. I struggle to see how he can sit in an interview, every other word from his mouth being the f-word, and then stand on stage and sing of Jesus. That doesn’t make sense to me. That said, fewer and fewer people actually do make sense to me. Most seem like they’re barely hanging on in faith, so I suppose Kid Rock needs some space, too. Still, the Gospel changes people. We’re not who we were before it found us. We want to be better. That said, it pays to keep in mind that the person bringing the message doesn’t empower the message. As Saint Paul made clear, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). We don’t save people. God does. And He does it by His Gospel.
I only mention Kid Rock because of the song he sang. “Til You Can’t,” hit pretty hard, not for its added theology, but for the deeply human reality it presented. Again, it’s all motion and voice and presence, until it’s only a memory. That’s how I was feeling about Charlie when I saw those videos and images.
Beyond these things, from what others are saying, the contrast between what I watched and what I didn’t watch was unquestionable. One performance, as usual, was built to be a worldly spectacle, teaching spectators how to worship pleasure. I believe the halftime show I watched was built, not just to compete with or protest this, but for remembrance. And not just to remember Charlie, even though that’s what I spent most of the time doing. It was an attempt to remember what makes America worthy of our concern—and perhaps even our active participation—enough to stir us to lift a finger to help.
Either way, whatever you took from whichever you watched, I’m pretty sure the world has probably moved on to other things already, as it always does. Still, I took something unforgettable from it. I was able to remember a life that had touched mine. And I was able to find thirty-five minutes of cultural rest as an American who just wants to “cut my grass, feed my dogs, wear my boots,” as Lee Brice sang, and not hear the world preach another sermon about how I’m irredeemable, backward, or somehow shame-worthy for thinking a man can’t be a woman, or for loving what America used to be. I suppose, unlike Super Bowls of the past, I walked away from this one feeling better, not worse—like maybe we still have a chance. The viewership numbers coming out certainly seem to suggest the possibility. It seems that as many as 22 million of us feel this way.
Maybe that’s the real story. Maybe Charlie’s legacy organization did what he’d have wanted it to do. Maybe millions of ordinary people experienced something more than a time of noisy spectacle. Maybe they experienced a time of memory. Maybe they were given a moment to ponder what’s good.
If that’s what happened, then perhaps the world hasn’t moved on quite as much as it thinks it has.
The only thing I have to share this morning is gratitude for the congregation I serve.
I’ll start by saying something that most who follow me already know. I despise Michigan’s climate. I despise the long gray months. Right about this time, rest assured, I’ve already lost all patience for the Michigan cold that seems to settle into my body, making it ache in far too many places. I just told Jennifer on Thursday morning that I despise the way winter in Michigan overstays its welcome, and that, for me, spring and summer feel more like rumors native Michiganders recall from ages past than experiences they actually have each year. Truly, if geography were the only factor for my presence here, I would have departed years ago for someplace warmer, brighter, and far less committed to seasonal suffering.
And yet, I will never leave. I say that knowing the paradoxical nature of the sentence, because I eventually will leave. You can count on it. But the thing is, even if I leave, I’ll never be gone. Not really. That’s because I love Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Hartland, Michigan—the congregation I’ve been blessed to serve since the very beginning of my pastoral ministry. I’ve been the pastor here for almost twenty years now. Even after I eventually retire and find a little place in Florida (or wherever Jen agrees to settle) with a few nearby palm trees adorning a no-big-deal pool, this will remain my real home—the penultimate gathering of a family I love so very much. And I do mean penultimate. It’s second only to heaven.
I could spend all morning telling you why I feel this way. And you know I could, too. You know I’m a wordy guy. Trust me when I say that twenty years of service in this place have not gone by unnoticed. It’s a very “real” community in every sense of the term. It’s by no means a bunch of folks gathered around a religious product designed to scratch their itching ears (1 Timothy 4:3). It’s a living body—Christ’s body—made of real people bound together by Word and Sacrament ministry, and standing beside one another in both a common need and a common confession.
It might sound strange at first, but I love that this is a congregation that knows how to struggle. Trust me when I say that we’ve endured some really tough times. And regardless of those who’ve since departed our humble confines, offering dire predictions on the way out door, this congregation remains, and continues to do so, having never forfeited its soul.
That said, I can promise you, there are stories in these pews that could humble even the most fearless. They’re stories of extreme betrayal and massive loss. But they’re also ones that sing a perpetual song of hopefulness—of fortitude, and of repentance and faith. They’re the kinds of tales that cost something very real but were sung anyway.
That’s because life together here at Our Savior has never been about the absence of pain. It’s about Christ and His ever-present mercy. When that’s the heart of a congregation, its pulse can only ever remain steady. It can only ever keep a confident tempo through both comfort and discomfort.
When I see this in real time—when I’m really paying attention—I realize I’m seeing real Christians, not performing what they believe, but living it. And they’re doing so sincerely, without getting duped by some disrupter’s false narrative. I’m surrounded by people who really are looking for and trusting what’s true—trusting that God is at work, even when it seems like the evidence for continuing with Him in the work is pretty thin.
In fact, just recently, I was reminded of how visible that faithfulness actually is. Our Savior was harshly criticized online several weeks ago for the way our security team diligently protects this place. Let the reader understand. We have a school. We do not take unexpected presences and questionable actions lightly. And we will do what’s necessary to protect the innocent among us. Add to that, even more recently, we endured more online venom for what we believe, teach, and confess concerning our funeral practices. A non-member family was somewhat peeved that we would not accommodate each and every detail they required. We will help however we can. However, Our Savior in Hartland is not a religious fast-food restaurant. You cannot stop in to order up a baptism, wedding, funeral, or whatever. Again, let the reader understand.
Indeed, the world’s viciously ignorant comments can sting on occasion, even when you expect them. Nevertheless, these moments are always extraordinarily clarifying for me, if only because they remind me of something important.
A congregation that takes both truth and responsibility seriously is bound to draw criticism from a world that finds them offensive or inconvenient. And far from discouraging me, the hateful comments only deepened my gratitude as the pastor of a congregation willing to be misunderstood and thoroughly misrepresented by the world rather than be found unfaithful to its Savior. This congregation knows that caving to the culture is never the better choice. Holding to faithfulness is always best, even when it means being insulted, or, perhaps worse, being painted unfairly before onlookers.
I suppose from another perspective, I love this congregation because it has taught me what pastoral ministry actually is. Yes, the seminary is good for this, too. Peter Scaer wrote a piece last week about the cruciality of seminary training. He’s right, it’s essential. But it’s here in the trenches that you learn what being a pastor is really all about. You learn it alongside God’s people in hospital rooms and at kitchen tables. I just experienced this with a friend on Thursday, a member of this congregation I truly adore. Even as we rejoiced together in Word and Sacrament, we sat and talked about anything and everything before she left for a medical appointment. That’s what family does.
I love this congregation because it has allowed me into these spaces, and in doing so, they’ve shown me what it means to stand in the stead and by the command of Christ more clearly than any book or classroom ever could.
From that vantage point, I could never see my job here as some sort of professional assignment from the seminary placement office. Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, my alma mater, did a wonderful job in this regard. I was taught to know these moments are so much more. This is where I’ve been called. I belong to this place. And in that belonging, I have found not only my vocation—what God had in store for me long before I ever knew what I wanted for myself—but also a deep and enduring gratitude for the people who “are” the place in which I eventually ended up. They remind me each and every day of the week why the Church, even when it’s fumbling through life in general, will always be one of God’s most gentle and enduring gifts to the world.
I love Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Hartland, Michigan. I love the people. I love being called their pastor. I love the work, even though, as I already said, it can get choppy. And I suppose by choppy, I mean personally challenging, too, even to the point of mental and emotional fracture. But again, I’m with family. That can happen in a family. Still, I can promise you that I love this place and the work the Lord entrusted to me here. He put me squarely in the middle of people who confess Christ—who show up when it would be easier to stay home, who know the seriousness of engaging with the surrounding world, and who keep praying and trusting through it all.
There is a kind of demonstrated holiness in that persistence, one that shows the ordinary rhythm of the Christian life.
That’s Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan. That’s my church. Well, not my church. She’s the Lord’s church. And I’m blessed to be a part of it. And as I said at the beginning, no matter where I exist physically, Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan, will always be my home. It will always be my family.
I suppose that’s my simplest confession this morning. Indeed, when it comes to the weather, I’d much rather live anywhere else but Michigan. And yet, I thank God for placing me here. This is where He wants me, and that’s more than enough for me to want to be here, too.
And if I may add one final word, especially for my fellow pastors who might read what I’ve written here. Feel free to say this kind of thing out loud to your own people on occasion. Don’t assume they already know it. Don’t wait for anniversaries or crises or your eventual retirement sermon. Tell them you love them right now. Tell them you’re grateful. Tell them what it means not only to be the one called to serve them, but what it means to stand alongside them in the same need for Word and Sacrament. Tell them you appreciate all the little moments that’ll never be remembered in detail just as much as the ones that’ll make your monthly newsletter’s front page. Certainly, it’s the pastor’s job to tell the people in his care that Christ loves them—and what a privilege it is! But it’s also a pretty great thing to tell them how much you love them, too. I’m guessing it probably matters more than most realize.
I shared something yesterday about Christian Nationalism. It was an attempt to describe what it actually is, rather than what some would prefer it to be. I stand by what I wrote because it was, essentially, a comparison that boiled the premise down to its mineral elements.
It did not take long, however, for the predictable distortions to appear. I’ve seen plenty more today. That, in itself, is revealing. It is a perpetual reminder that American Christendom has a longstanding weakness. It has the strange tendency to allow the surrounding culture to define the terms of its beliefs. Of course, the result is almost always misrepresentation that immediately becomes an assumed standard. In this case, it seems the world was allowed to frame the argument before the Christians really even knew what they were talking about.
Admittedly, when the Church engages the world, this tension is inevitable. The world does not approach the Church as a neutral observer. It reshapes and deliberately misrepresents what it sees. That is simply the nature of the relationship. The world isn’t hoping for the success of godliness. It wants its demise.
In this particular case, the world has placed Christian Nationalism beneath its own assumption. The assumption is that racism is an inherent characteristic of Christian Nationalism. But again, that assumption is imposed rather than demonstrated. It’s a stigma applied from the outside, and then treated as if it were part of the thing itself.
Again, I repeat, my brief explanation of Christian Nationalism stands, especially my reply to one post that it’s morally incoherent to defend Christianity as the highest or most humane moral ethic for governance while at the same time attempting to justify racism in any form. That’s because, even as an ethic for governance, Christianity cannot be apart from itself as some civilizational artifact. It’s an unbroken schematic that makes unalterable claims. One of its claims concerns the nature of the human person. All have fallen short of the glory of God. None is lesser or greater than another. All need a Savior. Christ is that Savior, and He gives life to all who believe in Him, regardless of tribe or nation. Racism stands in direct contradiction to this basic affirmation of Christianity.
But since it has already been brought up pretty much everywhere, there’s something Christians should probably be talking about, if only to secure the term’s proper definition. There are the Nick Fuenteses and the Corey Mahlers of the world. Everything has its fringe. And the fringe elements are rarely hard to explain. In this case, I’ll simply say that guys like Mahler and Fuentes have gained followings in part because they speak into a very real sense of dislocation, particularly among young white men. That concern shouldn’t be set aside lightly. But no one should assume that the racist result is built on moral credibility. The fact that a listener is wounded doesn’t mean that the diagnosis being offered to him is good, or that the remedy is even remotely Christian.
I think part of what we are witnessing is a failure of catechesis to meet with a genuine cultural disorder. I wrote in a reply yesterday that “many young men have been catechized for years to see themselves as the problem. They’ve been told by so many that they carry inherited guilt. And the only acceptable reconciliation so far has been that they apologize for existing, and that they confess their own Christian traditions as uniquely toxic. Eventually, some of them snap in the opposite direction. When every moral narrative tells you to hate yourself, the temptation is to find one that tells you to justify yourself at any cost, even if that narrative is crude, racialized, or overtly unchristian.”
Writing this, I was thinking of how almost every straight white man/husband in most commercials is a dunce. Conversely, wives are shown as having to endure their idiocy. Even further, all other races and creeds are framed with elegance and respect. This is just a sample among countless, all cultivating self-contempt among white men. And worst of all, it does this without any possibility of parole. There’s no escape. Ever. When relief is nowhere to be found in a cultural framework, it makes sense that some men would devolve into despair or defiance.
But here’s what Fuentes and Mahler get wrong, especially when they try to apply their racist views to Christianity. The Christian Faith isn’t designed to terminate in shame. It’s aimed toward forgiveness, restoration, and ultimately, a community—the body of Christ.
Now, lest we pile on these two alone, don’t forget that CRT and DEI do the same corrosive things, just from the other side. The problem isn’t even with calling out injustice or drawing attention to historical wrongs. There’s plenty of that in every nation’s history to go around. And that’s not something that the Christian ethic misses. The problem is that things like CRT and DEI redefine the person in the same way that godless Marxism does purposely. It categorizes in terms of group identity and inherited moral status, ultimately assigning guilt collectively rather than personally. When that happens, even if repentance were possible (which it isn’t in Marxism), it would be meaningless. That’s because forgiveness has already been replaced with perpetual reckoning, and reconciliation becomes impossible because the categories themselves are considered unalterable.
So, on one hand, one set of ideals is telling young men that they are permanently and inherently unforgivable because they are white and Christian. The other tells them that their resentment is a justifiable response to people who are doing what they’re doing because they’re somehow racially inferior. One condemns incessantly without mercy. The other vindicates an ungodly response. But neither offers a path back to a shared human community.
But again, the mineral definition of Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with any of this. For those in the Confessional Lutheran sphere keeping score, the following is my working definition. It’s my wording, yes. But it’s not necessarily my definition. It’s a summary of what emerged very early in Christian thought.
In short, Christian Nationalism, in its most basic sense, is the belief that a nation is best governed according to the moral ethic of Christianity, recognizing that public life is never morally neutral and that the Christian moral tradition has uniquely upheld human dignity, ordered liberty, and the common good without requiring the Church to rule the state or imposing a theocracy.
That’s it. You’ll see there’s no theory of race. There’s no call to justify resentment. There’s none of that. Because none of it belongs.
And so, I suppose the tragedy in all this is that some very loud voices at the extremes, for whatever reason, continue trying their hardest to make it nearly impossible to understand what Christian Nationalism is. Personally, after listening to Reverend David Ramirez discuss the issue on “The Gottestdienst Crowd,” I prefer where he lands. He’s no slouch concerning its deepest history, and so, he proves he understands it. And he should be commended for it. That said, so many in Christian, namely Lutheran, circles continue to define Christian Nationalism by its worst caricatures, while at the same time, the fringes insist on supplying those caricatures in abundance. Between those two things, clarity is lost, and what could be a fruitful discussion about something real collapses into arguments about things that have nothing to do with the premise itself.
If by Christian Nationalism you actually mean dominionism—the belief that the Church should seize the machinery of the state because only Christians are called by God to rule in the civil sphere—then yes, you’re right. Christian Nationalism is bad, and it should be resisted. History proves this.
But if by Christian Nationalism you mean an ideology fixed on the premise that the best ethic for governing is the Christian one—because it is already more than proven by the moral architecture of Western civilization its better concern for human dignity, true equality before the law, the sanctity of life, religious and civil liberty—then no, Christian Nationalism is not the problem. In your unfortunate grappling with bad definitions, you are the problem.
By opposing Christian Nationalism, you think you’re opposing theocratic rule. At least that’s what people standing against Christian Nationalism want their listeners and readers to believe. Certainly sounds virtuous. It sounds like concern for preserving pluralism. E pluribus unum, and all that. But it’s actually selective secularism, which is soft tyranny, just with better branding.
I explained this in a roundabout way during my Sunday morning adult Bible study this past weekend. I don’t remember how (because we were talking about something else entirely), but the discussion drifted into America’s founding documents. I explained that the kind of opposition described above doesn’t actually remove moral authority from public life. It merely replaces the moral tradition at the heart of the documents with another, all while pretending to be neutral. The inevitable result is always to baptize its own ideology as better while treating the Christian claim as dangerous to pluralism. For them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness get shackled if the Christian ethic is the truest heart of America’s founding. It means a man claiming to be a woman is unacceptable. It means traditional marriage—the foundation of family—remains the real building block of society. It means killing babies in the womb is to be despised rather than heralded as a right. Quite simply, it means a person cannot be or do anything they want without consequence, if only because there is a very real morality behind life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In the end, genuine Christian Nationalism is the defense of a sacred inheritance that makes life better, not worse. To oppose it is to oppose people who refuse to apologize for their nation’s foundations, people like me who will not stand idly by as America is scrubbed clean of Christian moral influence.
So, in short, America needs more Christian Nationalism, not less. You’ll certainly read as much in my new book from Fidelis Publishing, Christ Before Caesar: Faithful Public Witness in an Age of Retreat.
It’s becoming harder to pretend that things out there aren’t coming apart at the seams. I mean, people are no longer joking about civil war. Some commentators and podcasters have already jumped ahead to predicting how such a war would end. Of course, the media continues doing its part to up the ante.
CNN admitted last week that it adjusted Alex Pretti’s image to make him look more attractive in order to stir sympathy for his death. CNN also had to backtrack after leaving out that Pretti had initiated a violent interaction with ICE a week earlier, resulting in broken ribs. In other words, federal agents already knew Pretti. They knew he was dangerous. And so, when he leaned into the officers that day, when he pushed into them, when he spit on them as they tried to get away from him and into their vehicles (as the videos show), and when he ultimately died in the scuffle, which was unfortunate—but it was no surprise to the agents that he was carrying a loaded weapon with two additional magazines. But the thing is, CNN knew all this stuff, too. And yet, they reported everything but these details. And CNN’s original narrative is still out there, gaining traction. All wars have their martyrs.
Other media outlets carried the “ICE is detaining children” headline as far as they could before eventually retracting it. And yet, it turns out the child in the widely circulated image had been abandoned by his illegal father, and his mother refused to claim him. Rather than simply sending the child back into the world alone—a world in which kids like him are almost always trafficked—he was kept in federal custody. He wasn’t locked in a cage. He was being protected, which is most certainly the government’s job when it comes to little ones left to a world of wolves. But again, the thing is, the news outlets knew this, and yet they elected to foster a completely different narrative, stoking embers and adding kindling to an already blue-hot climate. Add to this the irony of a progressive left that would butcher children in the womb while weeping over a child rescued from the wolves, but only because the rescuer wore an ICE uniform rather than an abortionist’s surgical gown.
And so, again, “civil war” is a term showing up in my feed more than I’d prefer. But what should any of us expect? So many are actively laboring to make the climate perfect for one.
Having said all this, civil war is not necessarily my chief concern. Yes, what’s happening culturally and politically is troubling. Still, I’m thinking ecclesially. I’m wondering if American Christianity would even survive such a thing, especially a conflict in which Christianity is a primary target for the opposition. The progressive left is already doing everything it can to snuff the faith (John 15:18-19). What would happen if that side were to win an armed conflict? I guess I’m just wondering out loud if anything in the modern faith is still fixed enough to be confessed in a way that would survive through such an event.
For the record, this weekly message goes out in various forms to about 7,000 folks worldwide. I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive map of global Christianity, and so, I don’t necessarily know the liturgical practices of most of the churches and people who may be reading this. But I do know my own church. And I know what kind of Christianity formed it.
Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with which we maintain fellowship, is creedal in nature. Creedal Christianity did not emerge from comfort. It was forged under pressure. It survived being surrounded by hostile empires, wars, internal heresies, and, most importantly, competing visions of who Jesus was allowed to be. Creedal Christianity is a faith maintained by precise statements—what we believe and what we don’t, why we do what we do, why we’re distinctly different from the world around us. Regardless of what the more fashionable Christian influencers may have told you, these things are not relics of an overly philosophical age. They are the Church’s collective memory, crystallized at the very points in history where the fires were hottest, where the culture was hell-bent on consuming and assimilating us, and where losing our identity would have meant losing Christ altogether.
While studying the Church’s creeds with the kids in confirmation over the years, I’ve often told them that confessional statements like the ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds) are very important guardrails that protect our inheritance. What I mean is that by these confessional statements, the Church was essentially saying to the world, “We heard what you’ve said about Jesus, and we’re banning that interpretation from our midst forever.” They didn’t do that because the Church is allergic to questions, but because some interpretations—some answers to very important questions about God—can kill the faith (Galatians 1:6-9). The creeds exist precisely because the Church learned, often through blood, that not every version of Jesus is compatible with the Gospel.
For example, Arius, a bishop in Alexandria, came along offering a Jesus who was inspirational but not eternal. He insisted that Jesus was not God from eternity, but rather the first and greatest of God’s created beings. To be exalted, yes. But by no means divine in the sense that He is of the same substance as the Father. In reply, the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) gave birth to the Nicene Creed, which said, essentially, “Um, no. He is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made….”
This response was not a modern branding exercise. It certainly didn’t come from thin air. It came from God’s Word (John 1:1-3, Colossians 2:9, and countless others). It was an important clarification made to preserve the one true faith that saves. I mean, what’s the point of confessing faith in Jesus—even being willing to die for Him—if the Jesus you confess is false? Creeds are in place precisely for this reason—to preserve a right confession of faith (1 John 2:22-23).
Even better, creedal Christianity never just remained on paper. Creedal Christianity was always ritualized Christianity. What the Church confessed with her mouth, she inevitably enacted with her body. I should pause here for a moment and admit that resistance to rites and ceremonies has always struck me as weird. Enacting what we believe is natural. We already do this instinctively in ordinary life. When people love one another, they don’t merely say it. They demonstrate it. They show up, they make vows, they give gifts, they mark anniversaries. When a nation believes in its sovereignty, it doesn’t just write a constitution, and then that’s it. It raises flags, sings anthems, swears oaths, and builds monuments that enshrine it. Belief naturally seeks embodiment. It inevitably embraces postures and practices that make the invisible visible. In the same way, the rites and ceremonies that emerged were the Church’s way of training the faithful to live inside the truth they confessed, week after week, year after year. It was a very natural way for the body and mind to remain in stride with what the heart confessed to be true (James 2:17).
When this kind of synchronization happens, the Christian faith becomes incredibly resistant to drift. Without them, almost anything can influence direction.
I suppose the thrust of my concern is that this is precisely what much of contemporary church culture has abandoned. Mainstream American Christendom seems to thrive on elasticity—on keeping Jesus just vague enough not to offend anyone and flexible enough to serve every demographic.
The irony in this is that it’s meant to promote growth. And yet, the American Church has been in free fall for decades. This free-floating, syrupy, confessionless, “deeds not creeds” landscape has not resulted in growth. It has resulted in massive erosion. But that’s what happens when your Jesus is more life coach than the eternal Son of God who comes again in glory to judge both the living and the dead (Acts 17:31).
Interestingly, even as creedal Christianity isn’t so much about growth as it is continuity, the early Church did grow—and quite rapidly. Why? Could it be because it refused what American Christianity is all too eager to embrace? The early Church did not survive persecution by becoming more appealing to Roman tastes. It survived by becoming more precise—more dogmatic, more confessional, and in my humble opinion, more liturgical. By its faith, life, and practices, it told the surrounding empires in no uncertain terms, in effect, “We will not adjust Christ to fit your world. You will have to adjust your world to Christ.”
Creedal Christianity can speak this way because it’s anchored in otherworldly things. It is, therefore, by design, capable of surviving this world’s storms. It doesn’t roll over when the challenges come. It can and does remain fixed in place even as everything else tries to pull it apart.
I know I’ve already gone on long enough. I’m guessing the skimmers left five minutes ago. For those who stayed to the end, I suppose I’ll circle back to where I started.
I’ll just say, again, that civil war is not my chief concern. Empires rise and fall. Cultures always burn themselves out eventually. Still, the real danger is not whether America fractures entirely. I’m just wondering if the American Church still possesses a faith sturdy enough to remain standing through it.
I don’t have this concern for creedal Christianity. It’ll survive. History has already more than proven that when and where the pressure mounted, a Church built on crisp confession remained immovable. Our Savior in Hartland is an heir to this hope-filled reality, and so, we enjoy that future. This is true because Christ did not promise His Church an easy path, but He did promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the fixed Gospel confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16-18). That’s a creedal statement, and where such confessions remain, so does the Church and the Lord who preserves her.
Things are messy out there. I just read some news that, for me, is the grossest kind of all.
I just learned that Rev. Michael Mohr, the Central Illinois District President of the LCMS, has been arrested by federal agents on allegations involving the production of child pornography. At this stage, the facts are still coming out, and, of course, allegations are not convictions. Due process will occur. I have no doubt. The courts will do their work.
Still, an allegation like this, true or untrue, is profoundly dreadful. All I can say is that there are some sins that strike at the very heart of trust itself. And this, my friends, is one of them. If you’ve read my new novel, then you’ll know my darker senses in this regard. In other words, when it comes to anyone hurting the vulnerable while wearing a disguise of righteousness… well… “there’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.” The character Rev. Daniel Michaels is a conjured cry for someone to do something, anything… please.
But beyond the emotional response, it must be said plainly that the Church exists to protect and serve the vulnerable, not to exploit them, not to engage in their destruction. And so, when accusations like this surface, especially involving a man entrusted with spiritual oversight, the scandal is way more than institutional. It is so incredibly pastoral. It runs a blade through real people. And perhaps worst of all, it shakes the confidence of ordinary Christians who assume, rightly, that their pastors are safe—that they do in fact stand in the stead and by the command of Christ for their good, not their harm. Things like this can make that wobbly for many.
With this in mind, let there be no question among LCMS leadership concerning the path forward. For one, God’s Word does not permit the Church to respond with public relations language. There is no managing the optics of evil. There is only truth, repentance, and ultimately, justice (Ephesians 5:11, Proverbs 28:13). If these allegations are proven, then the man must be removed, disciplined, and held fully accountable under both Church and civil authority (1 Corinthians 5:11-13, 1 Timothy 5:19-20, Romans 13:1-14). The Church does not exist to shield predators. We turn on the lights. We expose darkness with the light of truth, calling things what they are, regardless of the worldly consequences (John 3:20-21).
For those watching from the sidelines with broken hearts, this isn’t a moment for panic. It’s a moment calling for sober-mindedness. People will prop up their excuses for staying away from the Church because of things like this. And yet, Christianity doesn’t collapse when a leader falls. It never has. That’s because the Christian Faith rests on Jesus, not on people. That said, let’s be very clear. God’s Word does demand that leaders in the Church be judged more strictly, not less (James 3:1, Hebrews 13:17). In a practical sense, the higher the office, the more severe the breach. Let the reader understand. If the allegations are true, there is no spin that’ll make this better. There is no framing that’ll make this “understandably regrettable,” as some will be inclined to say from a position of sensitivity. If the charges are true, this is, quite simply, wickedness. And wickedness must be named as such and then thoroughly punished (Romans 12:9).
Thoroughly.
On the other hand, if innocence is proven, then we must serve and protect in ways that shield an unjustly accused man from an unforgiving world (Isaiah 50:8-9). The Church cannot leave him to suffer alone.
But until and after any of these things are known with certainty, we follow the way of truth, and we petition our God to have mercy on us all.
*Update: The formal charges are found at the link below.
Unsurprisingly, what I wrote about last Sunday played out similarly this past week when protestors stormed a church in Minneapolis, demanding that the Christians within embrace their obnoxious crusade against ICE. And when they didn’t, they were shouted down and shamed. Like rainbow armbands in sports—an ideological symbol being imposed in this or that form, all with the threat of punishment if refused—the demands placed on the Christians in that church followed the exact same pattern.
I hope New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is watching this stuff. These two scenarios—the athletes refusing to comply and the Christians in Minneapolis doing the same—while different on the surface, reveal the same underlying dynamic. The shunning common to both betrays collectivism’s innermost spirit. Mamdani did say he intended to replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Well, we’re watching historic Marxist collectivism being paraded in real time.
Essentially, forcing anyone under threat of punishment to submit to ideologies and their symbols is a distinctly Marxist, and therefore a readily socialist, impulse. Mamdani is an avowed socialist. He believes that the “warmth of collectivism” is the subordination of the individual conscience to the demands of the collective, and it must be enforced not by persuasion but by institutional pressure. Marxist warmth, in practice, always comes with enforcement, because collectivism only works when dissent is treated as a problem to be punished.
Taking this a step further, what I’m really thinking about right now is the symbols themselves. What’s the harm in wearing a rainbow patch on your jersey? What’s the trouble with a church’s pastor raising a fist alongside protestors to stem trouble? What’s the trouble with driving a company car with a BLM or an ICE-out sticker on its bumper?
Well, for starters, the first thing I’ll say is that every movement in history revealed its true ambitions not first through laws, but through symbols. In that sense, symbols are rarely neutral. You know as well as I do that they train the eye and discipline the conscience. Symbols have a way of testing allegiance long before force is ever required. That’s why armbands, flags, and gestures matter, even before they are compulsory. They are never just a thing.
Since I’ve already sort of wandered near to what I was concerned about last Sunday, you’ll remember that rainbow armbands, jerseys, and other such things have been forced into soccer, basketball, volleyball, football, and so many other sports. When I say forced, I mean it. They’re always framed as harmless signs of “tolerance.” And yet, the countless stories of athlete after athlete being shunned or punished for refusing to wear one expose the deeper truth. Tolerance, by definition, allows dissent. But what we’ve witnessed is enforcement against dissent. Participation is no longer optional. If a person refuses, he or she becomes an example of moral failure and must be shamed accordingly. The only way forward for such a reprobate is total annihilation in the form of cancellation.
History teaches us to pay attention when ideological movements do this—especially when they migrate from persuasion to enforced uniformity. The comparison to past regimes is uncomfortable, but symbols worn on the arm (or, thinking back to COVID, maybe on one’s face) have long functioned as tools of social sorting. Everyone is identifiable. The ones wearing the symbols of compliance are safe. The ones without it are suspect. Again, the purpose is not merely expression but visibility.
But I think it gets even worse still.
I’ve long thought that the LGBTQ, Inc. movement’s use of a flag was bad news. The same goes for the BLM flag. This is true because flags never really originated as tools of personal expression. They were militaristic. They began as tribal identifiers—markers of people, allegiance, and territorial claim. They were carried by nations and armies not just to establish sovereignty, but often to impose that sovereignty’s will on others. Historically, when a flag was raised where another flag once flew, it signaled conquest—one culture replacing another, one authority displacing a rival. When I saw that Minnesota had changed its state flag, making it eerily similar to Somalia’s flag a few years ago, I wondered about displacement. When I started to hear about the billions in fraud orchestrated by the Somali community, to which the Minnesota government largely turned a blind eye, the flag’s redesign made a little more sense. It was a quiet announcement of who’s now in charge in the state.
Of course, in the modern age, flags have been repurposed for everything from corporations to clubs, but that does not erase their original meaning. A flag still signals a collective identity that believes its vision and mission, good or bad, must be announced and then carried into the world, and maybe in ways that will assure it finds a footing as the governing one. Even General Motors would love to see its flag being flown at a Ford building.
But what if it suddenly became a cultural expectation that Ford must fly GM’s flag? That would be extremely telling.
When a group’s flag moves from voluntary display to institutional expectation—on school walls, corporate labels, in movie and TV scripts, on government buildings and athletic uniforms, or wherever and whatever—it stops functioning as a gesture of tolerance and becomes an advancing army’s sovereign demand for submission instead. I spoke in terms of war in last week’s note. Indeed, when what I described starts happening, you know a very real conflict is underway. It’s no longer a debate, but instead, warfare is underway, and territories are being taken. The occupying nation now marks its seized lands. In these territories, dissent can only be treated as resistance.
I think this is a crucial distinction often obscured in public debate. And so, again, I think one of the best forms of resistance is to refuse to display the LGBTQ Inc. flag, which more and more people are choosing to do, especially among the youth—most assuredly among young men. In one sense, I think that’s happening because common sense is making somewhat of a comeback. On the other hand, “Not the Bee,” the Babylon Bee’s source for non-satirical news, reported a study suggesting Americans are pretty much sick of the LGBTQ, Inc. agenda. America has grown tired of the stuff being shoved down our throats day in and day out. The study noted that most Americans seem to have realized it was never about “live and let live.” It was always about something more. One line in the article stood out. It said, “[Young people] have been told they are ‘bigots’ if they believe [unnatural sexual relations are not okay] … but even if they tried not to be ‘bigots,’ they were told they were bigots anyway…” Maybe another way to think of this is to say, as I already did, that common sense is making a comeback. Common sense knows that a person can affirm human dignity while also rejecting ideological compulsion. The former is humane. The latter is totalitarian and dehumanizing.
From another perspective, I should return to that “live and let live” thought. It sure seems most ideologies seeking dominance began by insisting they merely wanted to be left alone, when that’s not at all what they really wanted. The eventual enforcement of their imposed symbols made it clear.
And so, I suppose the question before us is no longer about tolerance and treating people with respect. The question is whether any movement, however well-intentioned it claims to be, has the right to force individuals and institutions to accept its ideology publicly. The Minneapolis church and the shunned athletes sure seem to suggest that this question is no longer theoretical but is already being answered in practice. The moment you are required to display allegiance before you’re allowed to belong, you are no longer living in a free society. You are living under occupation.
This weekend’s forecast is shaping up to be one for the record books. The temperatures are, right now, in the negatives, and we’ll remain in this state-sized walk-in freezer well into next week. That’s not an inviting thought. And some people wonder why I long for Florida. I was just joking with Jennifer about how the sky is an unobstructed blue today, adding that even the clouds have finally given up and gone south to the coast. The kind of cold we get here in Michigan makes a guy like me question every decision that requires opening the front door, let alone climbing into a car and driving just about anywhere.
That said, Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland has never once in its 71 years canceled a scheduled worship service. In my 27 years in this place, I’ve seen some pretty dreadful weather, resulting in attendance challenges in worship. During the snowpocalypse back in 2014 (at least, I think that was the year), there were a few services with only four or five of us in a nave that seats 500. Still, the doors were open, the lights were on, the heat was cranked, and the pulpit, lectern, and altar were occupied. Indeed, where two or three are gathered, the Lord said.
You should know that the anti-cancelation precedent was set long before me. And to the credit of Pastor Pies senior and Pastor Pies junior, it came well before heated garages, remote starters, and online everything. When I was called as the congregation’s pastor, I committed to maintaining the standard. It is a good practice. Nothing will get in the way of worship, so long as I’m here. Not even protestors (wink-wink).
Of course, this instinct is far older than Our Savior in Hartland. For two thousand years, Christians somehow managed to fill houses of worship in every imaginable climate, condition, and challenge. That’s because God’s people gather in His house, just as He mandates. And so, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work for faith, the Christians first instinct isn’t to ask, “What’s the minimum requirement for faithfulness?” We want to go. And we’re bothered when we can’t.
With that in mind, it is entirely understandable that church members, for one reason or another, may not always be able to make it to worship. When it comes to what we’re enduring right now, for the elderly, if they have no one to help them through the wintry mess, it may mean risking a slip-and-fall. For families with young children, it may mean battling the latest seasonal illness rampaging through the house. For those who serve in the civil sphere, it may mean being on duty precisely when the rest of us are free to gather. These are all real situations, not excuses.
But once again, we should also be honest about the cultural air we breathe. We live in an age that trains people to look for reasons not to show up—reasons to stay home, opt out, postpone, or substitute convenience for commitment. What once required devoted sacrifice is now measured against the comforts we might lose if we go. Over time, this forms some really bad habits that feel justified, and maybe even, in some cases, virtuous. COVID was an example. People felt they were being godly by mandating barriers between God and His people, even suggesting that those who stayed home from worship were the better, more loving Christians. What nonsense.
Now, before I stray from my original thought this frigid Friday afternoon, just know that faithfulness remains possible, even when there are genuine challenges that can keep us away—and this is precisely why the earlier point matters. The real danger is not necessarily that people sometimes cannot come. It’s that, over time, they forget how to be Christians who are genuinely bothered when they can’t come. They learn to see attendance as negligible.
So, how do we fight this forgetfulness?
Well, I say, when you cannot be here, have a plan for being faithful right where you are. For the LCMS Lutherans reading this, that doesn’t necessarily require online streaming. If you have your hymnal, you have pretty much everything you need. For example, just grab your Lutheran Service Book, gather the family in the living room—sickos and all—and open up to page 219, the Office of Matins. If your child attends our school, then I can promise they already know the service by heart. Even the preschoolers can sing through it, leading the way. And what joy it will be! It is a wonderful service just oozing with God’s Word. And that’s the point—to be fed, to receive the Word, to pray, to give thanks to God for His abundant mercies. What’s more, if you’re not participating in online giving, you can still set aside this week’s offering and place it in the plate next week, along with next week’s offering. In every way possible, let the absence be exactly what it is: temporary. Let it be a momentary disruption, not a new pattern.
I guess what I’m saying is that faith, by its very nature, has a goal. It longs to be with Jesus more, not less. And so, when a legitimate reason keeps it away, it abides in God’s promises nonetheless, all the while longing to return to the place where Christ has elected to administer His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation through the verbal and visible Word—His wonderful Means of Grace!
I know it’s going to be really cold on Sunday. Still, I hope that if you’re going to venture out for anything this weekend, it’ll be to join your Christian family in worship.
This past Thursday morning, since our school was closed due to the snow, leaving both the church and school offices vacant for most of the morning, I sat in my office and did a little reading. I found myself chewing on a few stories about professional athletes in various parts of the world who’ve refused to wear team-sponsored rainbow armbands, jerseys, and such before, during, or after competition. The articles mentioned situations going back to 2018. Some of the athletes named gave no particular reason for refusing. Others insisted that competition should be about the sport, not political ideologies. Several noted religious objections.
Interestingly, one hundred percent of the Christians who refused, no matter the country, were reprimanded by their teams and ultimately labeled as bigots by activist organizations. The Muslims who refused, however, experienced no such reaction. In particular, two relatively recent stories stood out.
Back in 2024, Sam Morsy, the captain of Ipswich Town, a professional soccer team in England, refused to wear a rainbow armband. He cited Islam’s prohibition. Team leadership supported his position. LGBTQ Inc. did not push back. In that same year, Noussair Mazraoui, a player for Manchester United, refused to wear a team jacket specifically designed to show support for the LGBTQ community. Like Morsy, he cited Islam’s prohibition. The club ultimately scrapped the jackets entirely, so no one on the team had to wear one. Again, the usual suspects were relatively quiet in reply.
I suppose the first thing I’m inclined to say to the athletes who refused to comply is, “Bravo.” I say this regardless of their reasons. What they did required courage, if only because they gambled their own futures based on principle. Still, the obvious remains. Why were the Muslims able to escape public shaming, and the Christians were not? How is it that the Muslim players suffered very little harm to their careers, while the Christian athletes took significant hits?
Interesting, isn’t it, because what unfolded in most cases seemed to be a selective application of moral pressure. If you were a Christian, you were attacked. If you were a Muslim, you were left alone.
I don’t know about you, but the disparity exposes something altogether troubling to me. What appears to be being enforced is not some sort of universal moral standard, but it’s more of a power calculus. Christian beliefs are manhandled. Muslim beliefs, by contrast, are probed with gentleness. I doubt it’s because of some newfound respect for religion. It’s because of something else entirely.
At a minimum, it’s the fear of being considered Islamophobic. At most, it’s risk management. It’s an unspoken acknowledgement of the potential for violent extremism. I can only imagine what would happen if a crowd of LGBTQ activists went screeching through one of the more balkanized Muslim neighborhoods in London, calling out the religious community as shameful and unloving. You can get away with such things in Christian communities. But that’s because Christians don’t have a history of driving trucks through gatherings or blowing themselves up in the middle of crowds. And so, to demonize Christian athletes for their religious apprehensions but not the Muslim athletes has an air of risk management.
The irony in all of this, of course, is that such selective outrage undermines the very claims of diversity and tolerance and acceptance and fairness and inclusion and all the other buzz words that LGBTQ Inc. claims it desires. And yet, if conscience is only respected when it belongs to some and not others, then the movement isn’t being honest about its real agenda.
What all of this suggests—uncomfortably, but plainly—is that Christianity itself is the real target. But why? Because, in the end, as my friend Charlie Kirk so often insisted, the issue is not necessarily cultural or political but spiritual. In principle, there’s no need for LGBTQ Inc. to attack Islam. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Seen through that lens, the pattern starts to make a little more sense.
In any war, effort is always concentrated where the real enemy exists. You don’t waste resources battering positions that want the same things you do. You certainly don’t provoke like-minded forces that are stronger than you for fear they might fire back. You focus instead on the fronts that can open into the lands you want to conquer. Christianity occupies that space.
That’s why Christian conviction draws the real fire. It really is the last major moral framework in the West that openly challenges the reigning cultural orthodoxy while refusing to play by its rules of power and intimidation. And perhaps what makes it so appetizing is that Christianity has no doctrine that encourages or glorifies violence, insisting that by killing others, the divine is pleased enough to reward the killer.
That said, violence is sometimes thrust upon Christians. When it is, we have every right to self-defense, which could lead to a persecutor’s messy end. Still, we do not seek it out. We do not believe God rewards us when we kill others. We live as Saint Paul insisted: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18). Knowing this about us marks us as relatively low risk but potentially high reward. And so, from there, the assumption is that once the Christian front collapses, the rest of the cultural terrain will fall into line on its own. Beyond that, what replaces Christianity is almost beside the point. Who cares, so long as Christ and His followers are crushed. That’s a spiritual agenda, more so than anything else.
But here’s the thing. The Lord wondered rhetorically, “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). And yet, even as the Church might not grow but shrink, Christ promised that the Gospel would never be conquered, and the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). Christianity will stand to the End of Days. Those promises reframe everything. They remind us that the pressures being applied right now are by no means new, nor are they unexpected. The Bible has not hidden from believers that faithfulness would be costly, that allegiance to Christ would eventually put us at odds with whatever spirit happens to rule the present age. That said, what is new is the packaging. Right now, it seems the ruling spirit looks like activists jackbooting to the tune of tolerance and inclusion while finding every conceivable way to justify Christian exclusion and moral coercion.
Nevertheless, whatever the persecution—regardless of its form or the generation in which it’s being exacted—none of it changes the Christian trajectory. The Christian response is not panic or retreat. It’s certainly not bitterness or rage. It’s courage—quiet, steady, and unyielding courage—rooted in the confidence that Christ will have the last word, whether the persecuting crowd approves of that word or not.
Faithfulness has never meant safety. But it has always meant trust. Empowered by the Holy Spirit for such trust, we can go into any challenge with the otherworldly capability to confess Christ clearly and without hatred. What’s more, we can do this without fear because we know to whom we belong, and that He is worth the cost—or as the sign in front of our church here in Hartland reads at this very moment: “Christ is worth more than what you fear losing because of Him.”
Cruciform Stuff 