My Ancestry and the Bane of "Christian Nationalism," Part 2: "Christian" America as Indicative?

In my last post I looked at my ancestry―in particular, to my dad's Northern Irish immigrant family and, on my mom's side, to my 7th great grandfather Thomas Angell's association with Roger Williams in 17th century Rhode Island―to portray them as pointers to the problems associated with what today is generally referred to as "Christian Nationalism." On the one hand, insisting on the maintenance of a "Christian" state identity of whatever sort is often a proxy for a nationalism of another, transparently less laudatory sort, namely, ethnic nationalism. On the other hand, the wedding of church and state fails to afford citizens the right of freedom of conscience and, as Williams presciently observed, inexorably harms the church, turning it from a "garden" into a "wilderness" like the very world it was designed to transform.

"Christian Nationalism" is, to be sure, a somewhat slippery term with a range of possible manifestations. At one end of the scale there is garden variety "civil religion," with vaguely defined assumptions about American "values" and ceremonial nods to "God," for example, in public prayers and in the 1954 addition of "under God" after "one nation" in the Pledge of Allegiance. At the other end of the spectrum is the now passé hard line ideology of the late Rousas John Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen known as "Theonomy" which, as the name implies, advocates the adoption of the Old Testament Law (minus the "ceremonial" laws supposedly fulfilled in Christ), including its penalties for disobedience, by nation-states today.

A taxonomy of the various manifestations of such Christian Nationalisms is obviously beyond the purview of a blog post or short article. What I mean by the expression, "Christian Nationalism," has been nicely articulated by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry in their 2020 sociological study, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. In their words:

Simply put, Christian nationalism is a cultural framework―a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems―that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civil life. But the "Christianity" of Christian nationalism is of a particular sort … It is as ethnic and political as it is religious. Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively "Christian" (reflecting this fuller, more nuanced sense of the term) from top to bottom―in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values, and public policies―and it aims to keep it that way (p. 10).

America, on this understanding, is an explicitly "Christian" nation; consequently, government has the responsibility to privilege Christianity over other religions, or indeed irreligion, in the public sphere. Note that on such an understanding, the notion of America being a "Christian" nation has both historical ("indicative") and aspirational ("imperative") aspects. In this post, I will deal with the former of these. 

The idea that America is, and has always been, a "Christian" nation is, to be sure, simply  assumed naïvely in large swaths of popular Christianity. Indeed, in many an "evangelical" church, no one bats an idea at the presence of American and Christian flags displayed side by side. Nor are "patriotic" sermons or programs regularly frowned upon in services on the Sunday nearest to the Fourth of July. 

I wish I had a dime for every time I ever heard a Christian―usually after lamenting the "decline" of American morality―quote a single verse from one of the latest and most obscure of all Old Testament books, 2 Chronicles: 

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land (2 Chron 7:14). 

In more recent history, the same instincts that have led American Christians to apply this verse to America have, almost certainly as a result of their consciences feeling a twinge of guilt for supporting the irreligious, profane Donald Trump, led many of them preposterously to attribute a "Cyrus"-like role to Trump, referring to the Persian King Cyrus the Great who, in 538 BCE, decreed for Jewish exiles in Babylonia to return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem (Isaiah 44:28-45:13; Ezra 6:3-5; 2 Chronicles 36:23; Daniel 9:25). Most pertinently in this connection, Cyrus is referred to in Isaiah 40-55 both implicitly, as God's "servant" (41:2), and explicitly, as God's "shepherd" (Isa 44:28) and even as his "anointed" one (i.e., "Messiah!" [45:1]). Thus, Trump's apologists implied, God had analogically called this ungodly man to "deliver" America from its evil, liberal, secular "exile" and "bring America back" to the greatness―and indeed "Christian" character― that is both her birthright and her commission.

Such notions as these imply what may best be described as a covenantal view of America, a sort of religious aspect to the American "exceptionalism" so many like to claim for their country. Like Israel of old, God had in times past raised up America―by implication, white, Christian America, considering the continent was already populated―to be his special, anointed people to carry out his redemptive purposes for the world. Besides the breathtaking arrogance of such a point of view (akin to that of my British forebears in their imperialistic, halcyon days of old), one simple hermeneutical problem plagues it. And this problem is fatal. To put it simply: America's role cannot rightly be considered analogous to that of Israel in the Hebrew Bible. Let me be as clear as I can: from the perspective of the New Testament which these Christians ostensibly consider to be Holy Scripture, it is the church, consisting of Jews and Gentiles "justified" by faith in, and in union with, Christ, who now constitute the "Israel of God" (Galatians 6:16). The church, the beneficiaries of the promised blessings of the Abrahamic (Galatians 3; Romans 4) and New (Romans 2:25-29; 2 Corinthians 3) Covenants, are the covenant people of God in this, the "already" stage of the eschaton. Consequently, it is simply unacceptable and irresponsible to attribute such a lofty status to America, let alone to attribute the nation's vicissitudes to its perceived faithfulness or lack thereof to selective―and, I might add, self-servingly selective―moralistic standards. God's sovereign purposes simply cannot legitimately be divined in such a fashion.

It is, as I said, unacceptable and irresponsible to do so. It is also, as even a cursory reflection on our history attests, simply unhistorical. Indeed, as I have often opined, the misconception that America is, and has always been, a Christian nation can only be maintained via a naïve amalgamation or conflation of the 17th century New England Puritans and the Founding Fathers of 1776 and 1787. To be sure, the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts viewed their settlement in Calvinist terms as an outpost of God's Kingdom in a hostile, perishing world, and thus fused, as it were, the civic aspects of the colony with those of the church (it was his dissent concerning this very fusion that forced Roger Williams to flee Salem for greener pastures south in Rhode Island). Indeed, John Winthrop, in his famous lecture, "Model of Christian Charity", delivered on 21 March 1630 in Southampton before he and his group of Massachusetts Bay Colonists embarked on the Arbella for Boston, evoked Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:14-16) in referring to their settlement as a "city upon a hill," an image used to great effect by more recent leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan (who famously added the adjective "shining" to the phrase) to burnish the nation's already-robust civil religion.

No doubt many Christians in the latter half of the 18th century would have agreed that Christianity, understood in orthodox terms, should inform the social and civic order. But such was not the dominant viewpoint of most of the Founders of the nation (see especially Messiah University historian John Fea's Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?). To be sure, there are those who, based on what I consider the use of selective evidence (and a dollop of wishful thinking), argue otherwise (e.g., George Fox University's Mark David Hall, Westminster Seminary President Peter Lillback, and a host of lesser lights like David Barton and Eric Metaxas). And, to be sure, among the Founders there were some who could be fairly described as orthodox, and even "evangelical" Protestants (e.g., the Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, Patrick Henry, John Jay). Others, however, were nothing of the sort. John Adams, though raised Congregational, evolved (devolved?) to Unitarianism. Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were rationalists who denied the deity of Christ and comfortably fit within the Enlightenment Deism of the period. Meanwhile, in his 1794 work, The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine wrote: 

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any other church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Others were reticent to express their beliefs in much detail. George Washington, for example, was an Anglican, who served for more than a decade in the vestry of his church in Virginia. Nevertheless, he was not a communicant; indeed, he was once rebuked by the Rector of St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia for getting up and leaving the service before Holy Communion was celebrated. Washington likewise rarely mentioned Christ in his writings, normally referring to God in the same terms (e.g., "Providence") popular among the Deists of the day. Similarly, James Madison was raised as an Anglican, but wrote little of his personal beliefs.

What is important, however, was Madison's clear view on religious freedom, based, as he saw it, on Martin Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms. At the Virginia Convention of 1776, he authored the Virginia Declaration of Human Rights, which stated, in words that could have been written by Roger Williams himself, that "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” In 1785, while still serving in the legislature, he authored a petition entitled "Memorial and Remonstrance", in which he provided 15 arguments against state support of churches. This standpoint, of course, reached its most famous expression in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, drafted by Madison and adopted by Congress on 15 December 1791, which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Famously, Thomas Jefferson, in his 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists, utilized the expression, "wall of separation between Church & State," to express what he thought the amendment implied, religion being the sole province of one's conscience. Even before this amendment was ratified and religious liberty thereby codified, this ideal of religious liberty was expressed by none other than President George Washington in his 1790 Letter to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. Even more explicit was the Treaty of Tripoli, signed on 4 November 1796. Article 11 of the treaty reads thus: 

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Needless to say, there have been multiple efforts to blunt the impact of this evidence (by, e.g., the aforementioned David Barton and Rick Scarborough). None have been successful in swaying the vast body of scholarly opinion, however, and for good reason. Any attempt to dictate or privilege certain religious beliefs runs counter to the clear language of the various documents, not to mention the example provided by the Founders themselves. Religious belief and praxis must be subject to the dictates of one's conscience, not the strong arm of the State or the peer pressure of any majority or plurality of the citizenry. Such is crystal clear. And, as Roger Williams warned, and recent events in America have demonstrated quite clearly, the attempt to do so is disadvantageous, not only to the state, but―and especially so―to the church as well.

That still doesn't answer the question of how Christians should work to promote their faith and its ethical implications in the public realm. That will be my focus in the next post.

My Ancestry and the Bane of "Christian Nationalism," Part 1

One hundred years ago today, my grandmother Sarah, my Uncle Willie, and Aunts Maria and Isabell arrived at Ellis Island on the SS Carmania from Liverpool to join my grandfather John, who had emigrated the previous year from Stranocum, County Antrim, in (Northern) Ireland to work for the Carpenter family in Montchanin, Delaware, outside of Wilmington. My dad, John, was born 9 months and 4 days later.  

The SS Carmania (photo: Priestley & Sons Ltd. Egremont)

My grandparents, John and Sarah (Holmes) McGahey, on their wedding day, 23 February 1907, in Belfast

My Uncle Bill McGahey at Montchanin, Delaware

My Aunt Isabell McGahey Smith

My Aunt Tillie (Holmes) Phillips with my Aunts Maria (l) and Isabell (r)

My brother and I standing in front of the house where my dad was born, Montchanin, Delaware, 31 December 2014

My mom's side of the family is quite different. My 7th Great Grandfather, Thomas Angell, was born ca. 1616-18 somewhere in England (Bedfordshire? There is a baptismal record dating to 1617 for a Thomas Angell in St. Paul's Church, Bedford), and emigrated to Massachusetts some time during his teen years. While there, he became associated with the Puritan theologian/minister Roger Williams, and was one of four men who, in January 1636, with Williams fled Salem in haste to form the Providence Plantation on the Providence River in what is today Providence, Rhode Island. In 1643, Angell married, and he and his wife Alice eventually had 7 children. In 1652, Angell was one of 6 men elected to make laws for the colony. Later he served in many prominent capacities, including Constable and, for 17 years beginning in 1658, as Town Clerk. Today there is a street in the East Side of Providence named after him.

Now, as you might surmise, my purpose here is not merely one of antiquarian or genealogical interest, as stimulating as they may be for me. As I see it, there is an instructive thread to be gleaned from their disparate stories. This thread concerns what is now referred to as "Christian Natonalism," a moniker which can run the gamut from the (at first blush) seemingly harmless, ceremonial types of "civil religion" to the more obviously harmful Theonomy or Christian Reconstructionism.

My McGahey grandparents came to America in 1919-1920, which was certainly not a coincidence. They were Ulster Scots--as my dad always made sure people recognized, "Scots-Irish"--who were devoutly Anglican, and later Presbyterian when they ultimately settled in North Jersey. Not only this, but they were also, not surprisingly, resolutely and patriotically British. Indeed, I still recall my Uncle Willie and my dad instructing me in my youth to make sure to wear orange rather than green on St. Paddy's Day because, as they put it, "we are British" (I still do so out of habit every March 17). For good or bad, they passed down to me an Anglophilia that remains to this day, not to mention a love of strong Indian tea (with milk, of course), fish and chips, Premier League football (Go Gunners!) and British TV.

1919, when my grandfather came to the United States, was the year of Michael Collins and the Irish War of Independence. Conflict between Irish Unionists and Nationalists had festered for decades, leading to the so-called "Home Rule Crisis." Matters came to a head during the second half of the second decade of the 20th century. In 1916 Irish Republicans fomented the so-called Easter Rebellion (Easter Rising). Then, in the general election of December 1918, Sinn Féin won a majority of parliamentary seats in Westminster. And they weren't done. They proceeded unilaterally to establish an Irish Parliament and declare independence on 21 January 1919, which led to the long-lasting war between the Irish Republican Army and British forces in Ireland. Finally, on 11 November 1920, the Parliament in Westminster voted to authorize the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which divided the island into 2 territories, Southern Ireland (26 counties) and Northern Ireland (6 Ulster counties in the island's northeast), which were to be largely self-governing while remaining in the United Kingdom. The Act was given Royal Assent by King George V on 23 December 1920, just weeks before my grandmother and her children left for New York.

The problem was that, like the Schuylkill Expressway in my hometown of Philadelphia, this Fourth Home Rule Bill was already obsolete when enacted. The vast majority in "Southern Ireland," not to mention a healthy minority in "Northern Ireland," wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than independence for the entire island. And the Bloody Sunday assassinations in Dublin on the 21st of November were but a foretaste of what would, from the late 1960's until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, be referred to euphemistically as "The Troubles."

What I, as a Protestant of Northern Irish descent, have had to wrestle with is the realization that Northern Ireland is, as Kevin Mooney has articulated, "a state forged in sectarianism and anti-Catholicism." Indeed, as Mooney reminds us, "James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, called it ‘a Protestant state … for a Protestant people’." Decades of discrimination--let's call it like it was: "oppression"--of Catholics in the name of the Protestant faith! As Paul the Apostle would have put it, Mē genoito! Theological disagreements aside (and who this side of the late Rev. Ian Paisley actually thinks 16th century dogmatic niceties were behind this conflict?), how can anybody who takes the Jesus of the Bible seriously acquiesce to, let alone defend, such patently unchristian practices? Don't get me wrong. I am not excusing "Catholic" IRA terrorism any more than "Protestant" prejudice and discrimination of the Catholic minority, let alone "Unionist" paramilitary thugs. Indeed, a relative's business in Portrush was destroyed by an IRA bomb in the 1970's. But what this (ultimately) barbaric struggle demonstrates is both the futility and the theological heinousness of civil religion, in particular an imagined Christian nationalism. To riff on a more recent American iteration of such civil religion, they ended up taking the "Christ" out of "Christian," exposing this nationalism for what it really was, namely, garden variety ethnic nationalism.

On the other side of my family, the Thomas Angell-Roger Williams connection is also instructive. American evangelicals love to lionize the Puritans for their courage in leaving (what they considered to be) the apostate Anglican church and embarking on a journey across the Atlantic to establish a new outpost of the kingdom of God on American soil. What the Puritans didn't allow for, however, was liberty of conscience. Roger Williams was every bit the Calvinist the Massachusetts Puritans were, but he strongly disagreed with them, as he did with Calvin himself, on how Christian faith ought to intersect with the state. In particular, he disputed the magistrates' right to judge any person's adherence to the "First Table" of the Ten Commandments. Indeed, in a pamphlet he wrote in February 1644, using language similar to that later utilized by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists, Williams wrote, “[W]hen they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world, God hathe ever broke down the wall it selfe, removed the Candlestick, &c. and made his Garden a Wildernesse.”

"The hedge or wall of Separation between the Garden of the Church and the Wildernes of the world." Thus wrote the fountainhead of American Baptist Christianity. This inexorably leads me, like Dartmouth historian Randall Balmer, to wonder where all the real Baptists have gone in America. And, as one who has often found himself to be at loggerheads with the most "conservative" of that stream of the church, like him I find myself amazed to wish there were more Baptists in the ecclesiastical sea. For, as I see it, Williams's concerns were well founded. History has shown, nowhere more so than in the present, that he was right, that "Christian nationalism" is a dead end that harms both the state and the very church that sees itself entitled to prominence.

What is wrong with such nationalism? That will be the concern of my next post.

R.I.P., Hammerin' Hank

 

     (AP Photo)

The death last night of the great Henry Louis Aaron, the REAL home run king, was both sad and sobering. When I was a kid in the '60's, sports were my lifeblood. My heroes were all athletes: Willie Mays, Jim Brown, Sam Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, and too many others to list. Every spare minute of my seemingly endless days was spent playing sports and imagining myself to be the heroes I dreamed about--shoveling snow in winter at Grasslyn Playground in Havertown, PA to play basketball; playing football in my back yard with my brother, my dad, and neighborhood pals; and especially playing baseball at Grasslyn or wiffle ball in my back yard, pretending to be both Mays and, with relentless running commentary, announcers Bill Campbell, By Saam, and Richie Ashburn (my neighbors were, as I only later understood, remarkably longsuffering). I enthusiastically collected both Topps baseball cards and Philadelphia Chewing Gum football cards. I faithfully listened to WCAU 1210's Phillies broadcasts every night on Philly's muggy summer evenings (indeed, I was listening when, on April 20, 1966, Hank homered off Ray Culp and Bo Belinsky for his 399th and 400th career homers, leading the newly relocated Atlanta Braves to an 8-1 win over the Phils at Connie Mack Stadium before all of 6855 fans). Fall Sunday afternoons were spent watching ex-Eagle Tom Brookshire call Eagles games and, often before the game was over, reliving the game by playing ball in our yard. And both Sixers road games and Big 5 basketball games from Penn's Palestra were on UHF channels 3 or 4 nights a week in winter. Sports, and the men who played them, were everything.

The Hammer--the historian in me likes to refer to him as Henricus Maccabeus--despite playing in smaller markets (Milwaukee and Atlanta) and with a quieter, more workmanlike style than the more visually spectacular Mays and Mickey Mantle, who had made their names in the hegemonic New York of the '50's, was certainly, along with them, one of the "Holy Trinity" of Major League ballplayers of that, the greatest era of the sport. His career numbers are both astounding and legendary: 25 all star games, 3771 hits, 2174 runs scored, a major league record 2297 RBI, a once-record (and, IMO, still legitimate one) 755 home runs, a record 6856 total bases, a .305 lifetime batting average, 240 stolen bases (with 44 homers and 31 steals in 1963, he became only the third player, after Mays (1956-57) and Ken Williams (1922), to garner both 30 homers and 30 steals in a season, and the first 40/30 player), and 3 Gold Gloves (1958-60). His .555 career slugging percentage only slightly trails the .557 of both Mays and Mantle. His 143.1 career Wins Above Replacement ranks 5th all time among position players, behind only Barry Bonds*, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Ty Cobb. His Peak (i.e., 7 year) WAR (WAR7) of 60.3 ranks 16th (behind, inter alia, Babe Ruth [84.8], Mays [73.5], Cobb [69.0], Mike Trout [65.6], and Mantle [64.7]). This latter number highlights the most amazing aspect of his career, namely, his longevity, a longevity not enabled or enhanced artificially (which certainly cannot be said of the one who eventually broke his career home run record). Mantle, plagued for most of his career by devastating leg injuries, had his last great season, 1964, at the age of 32 (though he had a nearly great season in 1966, at age 34). Mays's last "Maysian" season was in 1966, at age 35 (though he, like Mantle, had very good seasons later at ages 37, 39 and 40). Aaron, by contrast, continued to play at a peak level until he was 40, in 1973, when he hit .301 with 40 homers in just 392 at bats in his 20th Major League season. Indeed, one could make a good case that his best offensive season came in 1971, at age 38, when he hit .327 with a career high 47 homers and a 194 OPS+ in only 495 at bats. That is simply staggering. When, on April 8, 1974, in only the 4th game of the new season, he hammered an Al Downing fastball over the left field fence at Atlanta Stadium for his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's most iconic record, he was still near, if not at, the top of his game.

My first Aaron card, the 1964 Topps

One of my favorite cards in my collection, also in the 1964 Topps series. The title of this classic card applies, not only to 1964, but for the entire history of the league.

I suppose that it is quite common for 64 year old retirees like myself to engage in nostalgia. Accordingly, I quite often find myself reminiscing, indeed longing to relive, as it were, those days and the Philadelphia of my youth. What Aaron's death hammers home, as it were, is the realization that those days are long gone, never to return. Some of my old heroes, such as Mays, Brown, Jones, Juan Marichal, Fran Tarkenton, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and others still survive in their 80's. But most of the rest of the greats I then idolized are gone--some, like Mantle and Chamberlain, for more than 20 years; others, like Aaron, Dick Allen, Al Kaline, Bob Gibson, Herb Adderley, Bobby Mitchell, Timmy Brown, and Gale Sayers, in the past year alone.

Centuries before Christ, the prophet wrote, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the LORD blows on them" (Isaiah 40:6-7). Later James the Just, the Lord's brother, wrote, "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14). The older I get, the more this hits home ... and not a minute too soon!

R.I.P., Hank.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Gospel for the Whole Person

 

Statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Other 20th Century Martyrs above the West Door of Westminster Abbey, London

(photo: Montrealais; commons.wikimedia.org; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

Over the years, I have found it increasingly important for people like me--middle class white people, especially those of us raised in white evangelicalism, who benefitted from an unacknowledged, and often unrealized, white privilege--to reflect deeply on the work and legacy of Martin Luther, King, Jr. Previously I have written posts about his "I Have a Dream" speech (here), his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (here), and his powerful, prophetic calls for justice and against war (here). Over the weekend, I did some reading on his inspiring ethic of nonresistance, based largely on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and came upon an article he wrote in 1960 for The Christian Century entitled "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence."

Early on, while narrating his intellectual journey from an inherited fundamentalism to liberalism to his ultimate synthesis of what he deemed the strengths of both liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, King recounted his effort to "eliminate," as he put it, social evil, and his discovery of the work of Walter Rauschenbusch, the Baptist theologian famous for his advocacy of the so-called "social gospel." In King's words:

Not until I entered theological seminary, however, did I begin a serious intellectual quest for a method to eliminate social evil. I was immediately influenced by the social gospel. In the early '50s I read Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis,a book which left an indelible imprint on my thinking. Of course there were points at which I differed with Rauschenbusch. I felt that he had fallen victim to the 19th-century “cult of inevitable progress,” which led him to an unwarranted optimism concerning human nature. Moreover, he came perilously close to identifying the kingdom of God with a particular social and economic system—a temptation which the church should never give in to. But in spite of these shortcomings Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose. The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

In this little paragraph lies both the power of King's message and a partial explanation--one cannot discount an unexamined racial prejudice in this matter--for why the fundamentalists among whom I was raised were, to put it kindly, underwhelmed by him. For, you, see, despite his clearly articulated theological criticisms of Rauschenbush, he did not repudiate him, but praised him for providing American Protestantism "a sense of social responsibility."

Fundamentalism, and much of what today is called "conservative evangelicalism," rejects the "social gospel" as heretical, believing its emphasis on social concern--articulated in King's quotation of the liberal Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick above ("The gospel at its best ...")--fatally compromised the "soterian" gospel of Christ's death and resurrection, what I like to summarize as the combination of the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and justification by faith. Adhering to the "social gospel," so the argument goes--in a classic misapplication of Paul the Apostle's dictum found in 1 Corinthians 7:31--substitutes temporal advances in a world which in its present form (to schēma to kosmou toutou) is passing away (paragei) for what "really matters," the eternal destiny of human souls.

Now I firmly confess that "substitutionary atonement" and "justification by faith," rightly understood and nuanced, are indeed elements or implicates of the New Testament gospel. However, as I have previously argued, and hopefully demonstrated, in excruciating detail (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), one cannot legitimately pinch the gospel into such an ideological straightjacket without thereby deforming the full-orbed apostolic message. For the gospel is not simply good news about the future for metaphysical or substance dualists, Christian or not. It is, as Dr. King states, good news for "the whole man." More than that, it is good news in a salvation-historical sense for the whole world. As I wrote years ago, it is nothing less than the good news of the new creation, the announcement of the coming of the promised kingdom of God through the historical events of Christ’s death and resurrection.

On this understanding, the soteriological and social dimensions of the gospel fit hand-in-glove. To put it differently, the soteriological and social dimensions of the gospel are twin elements of the gospel of the Kingdom that, though they may be distinguished notionally, are inextricably bound together. If this is so, those of us who see our vocation in terms of  working for the kingdom--note: not working "to advance/build the kingdom"--to work, as N. T. Wright has so eloquently argued, to implement God's victory won by Jesus in his death and resurrection, must therefore work explicitly to advance the priorities of this kingdom, until that glorious day when God's kingdom comes, on earth as in heaven.

I close with a reminder of these words from Isaiah 61:1-2, read by Jesus in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19) with the claim that they were at that time "fulfilled in [their] hearing (Luke 4:21):"

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to preach good news to the poor,

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to released the oppressed,

    to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

Evangelicalism, R.I.P.

Back in 1988, in the wake of  televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's fall from grace due to his hiring of a prostitute--itself coming on the heels of the even more ridiculous Jim Bakker's dalliance with Jessica Hahn--I overheard a fellow member of our church in Richardson, Texas both shocked and worried about the consequences of his fall for "us," i.e., "evangelical" Christians. At the time, I thought her concern ridiculous. These weren't "our" people, or so I imagined. In my way of thinking at the time, the "evangelicalism" to which we adhered was different. It was "respectable." Its leaders, at least in the circles I then associated with, were highly educated, culturally astute, and dismissive of the anti-intellectual Pentecostalism and Prosperity "theology" promoted by these disgraced men.

So I thought then. Now is another matter entirely. Evangelicalism, in my reckoning, is dead. And, considering my own personal history, that is not an easy or palatable thing to concede.

You see, I am a Christian, and have been as long as I can consciously remember. I am what many would consider a "cradle evangelical." I am the son of an evangelical--indeed, by his own preferred nomenclature, a fundamentalist--theology professor of some local repute. I grew up in a "Bible-believing" fundamentalist church. I attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran primary school for four years. I graduated from the same evangelical/fundamentalist Christian college where my dad taught. I attended and earned a terminal degree in New Testament from a famous nondenominational evangelical seminary. I taught Greek at that seminary while earning my doctorate, and subsequently taught New Testament, Greek, hermeneutics, and theology at a proudly evangelical college in my home state of Pennsylvania. I have been a member of the Evangelical Theological Society for decades. I have, as it were, evangelicalism in my blood. Given this history, you can understand why it gives me no pleasure to render the diagnosis of the movement's death. Nevertheless, I find that verdict inescapable. As a result, I must likewise confess to a long-term myopia, if not an ostrich-like sticking my head in the proverbial sand, on this matter.

Part of the problem is linguistic in nature. "Evangelical," as I explained years ago, is a slippery term, amenable to various definitions. As much as I would like to understand the term historically and theologically and take refuge in the term's origins in the Protestant Reformation's putative "recovery" of the biblical "gospel (euangelion)," its later application, both in Britain and in America, to a trans-denominational, conversionist Protestant orthodoxy, and especially in the attempt, in the 1940's and 1950's, to rescue such orthodoxy from the black hole of inter-war Philistine Fundamentalism, to do so is, in my view, sadly no longer defensible.

It is a truism of linguistics that word "meanings" develop, and often change, over time--a lesson I learned well from reading the King James Bible in my youth. Consequently, to rely on, assume, or insist on historical meanings of terms is precarious at best. Words also, as any students of "fundamentalism" can attest, have both denotations and connotations, both of which must be acknowledged and taken into consideration.

The fact that, beginning in the 1970's, so-called "conservative evangelicals"--people who, for all practical purposes, were nothing more than only slightly reconstructed fundamentalists of the old sort--began self-designating this way may have felt a tad disconcerting, but it unmasked the fact that fundamentalists all along had been a subset of the larger group known as "evangelicals." It was in fact the "New" Evangelicals of the '40's-'50's who had purposefully driven a wedge between the two groups. And this further brought into relief the nasty fact that evangelicalism--despite its commendable legacy (if only partial) of social action in the 19th century and renewed emphasis on intellectually- and culturally-responsible engagement with the world in the 20th--has always had a healthy strain of anti-intellectualism within its ranks, the religious element of classic American Know-Nothingism.

Ask anybody on the street--or in a factory like the one in which I used to work--what an "evangelical" is, and they will respond by referring to some iteration of what has, for the better part of four decades, been called "The Religious Right." Whether old school Southern Baptists like Jerry Falwell, Sr., or Pentecostalists like Pat Robertson, or fundamentalist legacy "leaders" and organizations like Franklin Graham and Liberty University, or ever more fringe elements of neo-charismatic and Prosperity "theology," "evangelicalism," in common parlance, is associated with rigid, politically conservative Protestant Christianity, with all the corresponding connotations of anti-intellectualism and self-righteous, culture war-style moral judgmentalism that go along with it. Such linguistic realities cannot simply be waved away.

Indeed, if anything, matters have grown ever more dire during the past four years. In 2016 I was shocked when it was reported that 81% of self-professed white "evangelicals" had voted for Donald Trump, a famously cretinous and racist failed businessman--six bankruptcies!--with a decidedly unchristian penchant for adultery, divorce and, in his words, "grabbing" women "by the p*ssy." Four years later, after 30,000 lies, separating migrant children from their parents at the border, coddling white supremacists, obstruction of the Mueller probe, impeachment due to his extortion of the Ukranian president, obsequiousness to foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin, and an unconscionable malfeasance in dealing with a pandemic that has killed almost 400,000 Americans, some 76% of them still voted for him over Joe Biden, many even indulging the delusional fantasy that Trump was a Christian himself. In the days since his weeks-long firehose of lies about "voter fraud" led to the seditious assault on the U.S. Capitol, many, like faux historian Eric Metaxas, still defend him and hold out hope for a second term in the White House. Worst of all, as I wrote about last week, many "evangelicals" actively participated in the insurrection, flying "Jesus" flags and banners while Christian music blared from speakers on the capitol grounds.

What to do? Some optimistically hold out hope for the continued viability of the term. Reformed theologian Richard Mouw, the retired former President of Fuller Theological Seminary, just two years ago wrote his winsome little book, Restless Faith, in the attempt to rescue the label while navigating the rough waters of needed change. Another to do so is the Anglican New Testament scholar, Oxford's N. T. Wright. In an interview published in The Atlantic in December 2019, Wright said the following:

Part of the problem here is the word evangelical. I know a lot of people who have basically abandoned it since the whole [Donald] Trump phenomenon.

In England, people are a bit embarrassed about the word. But I’ve taken the view that the word evangelical is far too good a word to let the crazy guys have it all to themselves, just like I think the word Catholic is far too good a word for the Romans to keep it all to themselves. And while we’re at it, the word liberal is too good a word for the skeptics to have it all for themselves. It stands for freedom of thought and exploration.

More recently, in response to the terrible events of January 6, Wheaton College's Ed Stetzer wrote an op-ed in USA Today in which he called for "an evangelical reckoning" and repentance for being "fooled" by Trump, tolerating his misbehavior and ignoring matters of justice and genuine political discipleship. 

To be sure, as Stetzer maintains, evangelicals have largely (80%!), to their shame, been fooled by Trump. But--and this is the point--this gullibility is a long-standing one, one which raises the pressing question as to whether or not this gullibility is a motivated gullibility, whether or not this susceptibility to falsehood, authoritarianism, white supremacy, patriarchalism, and idolatrous Christian nationalism is indeed a manifestation of rottenness and theological declension at the core of the movement. When I read or hear words from the mouths of Franklin Graham, Falkirk Center/Liberty University's Jenna Ellis and Charlie Kirk, Metaxas, First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, or even more "respectable" academic conservative evangelicals like Southern Baptist Seminary President Al Mohler and theologian/former President of the Evangelical Theological Society Wayne Grudem, this suspicion is inevitably reinforced. Indeed, listening to them and reading horrifying books like evangelical anti-Trump historian/Messiah University Professor John Fea's Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, makes it clear to me that what such people represent is a fundamentally different understanding of what being a Christian means from that which I have always, as a professed evangelical, held.

Thus, as much as I admire men like Mouw and Wright, and appreciate the outspoken disapproval of Trumpism and Christian nationalism by people such as the Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore and the Presbyterian journalist David French, I now maintain that, at least as far as I am concerned, holding on to the label "evangelical" is a futile endeavor. And this breaks my heart.

I am a Christian. I stake my life on Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Lord, and seek to follow him and his teachings with all that is in me. I am an orthodox, Protestant theologian in the Reformed tradition. I gladly stand in the tradition of New Testament scholars such as F. F. Bruce, I. Howard Marshall, George Ladd, Don Hagner, Harold Hoehner, Darrell Bock, Scot McKnight, Craig Keener, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, and Mike Bird. But I can no longer accept the label "evangelical." I am a Christian. Full stop.

The Confederate Battle Flag in the U.S. Capitol

Over at The Atlantic, Clint Smith reflects on the image of a man carrying the Confederate Battle flag in the halls of the United States Capitol. Here is a taste:

 

Over the course of the past century and a half, the design of the Confederate battle flag became inextricably linked to the story of the Confederacy. The flag’s symbolism cannot be disentangled from the cause of those who fought beneath it. It cannot be separated from the words of its vice president, Alexander Stephens, who wrote in his infamous Cornerstone Speech that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and that the Confederacy had been founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

As I looked at the photograph on Wednesday, I thought of how the flag had expanded and evolved in meaning, how it had become a staple of Ku Klux Klan rallies, how it had been waved by white people attempting to intimidate Black children who were integrating schools after Brown v. Board of Education, how it had been made a part of flags in states whose legislatures worked tirelessly to disenfranchise Black citizens. And now it will forever be associated with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when the nation watched a new iteration of white-supremacist violence, incited by a deranged and cowardly president.

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army never reached the Capitol. The rebel flag, to my knowledge, had never been flown inside the halls of Congress until Wednesday. Two days ago, a man walked through the halls of government bearing the flag of a group of people who had seceded from the United States and gone to war against it. Then, presumably, he walked out—carrying so much of this country’s history with him.

Earlier this week I wrote about the disappointment and angst I felt when seeing flags and banners associating Jesus with the goings on at the Capitol on January 6. Associating the name of Jesus to sedition is blasphemous, and any so-called "Christian"--Paul the Apostle would refer to such a person as adelphos onomazomenos [cf. 1 Cor 5:11])--who does so would bring his withering quotation of Isaiah 52:5 in Romans 2:24 upon his or her head.

But as an American Christian--note: not a Christian American; the syntactical difference is all-important and a pointer to much of what is wrong with so much of what passes for White American Evangelicalism today--the sight of the Confederate flag in our nation's Capitol brought both deep sadness and righteous anger. It was the same response as what I had on July 3, 2008, when I saw that flag flying at a house in the former mill town of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania on the outskirts of Philadelphia. It was the same response I had a few years later when I saw that flag flying on a property in Parkesburg, Pennsylvania while passing on the train on my way from Lancaster to Philadelphia. Don't these people--in Pennsylvania, of all places--realize that an estimated 27,000 Pennsylvanians were killed in the Civil War to destroy everything that flag stood and stands for? Don't they realize that one of their own, Philadelphia's General George Gordon Meade, was the victor over what that flag stands for at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in south-central Pennsylvania?

I am sick and tired of rationalizations to the effect that display of this flag is simply a matter of "heritage" or Southern "pride." As Joe Biden would say, Malarkey! (which also doesn't explain the presence of this flag on properties and pick-up trucks in the North). What is there to be proud of about a society and culture based on human chattel slavery? Yes, a Southern white person could take pride in their heritage of country music, though such postdates the time when that flag had relevance (and, I might add, just as a black Southerner could take pride in the blues and jazz music they created). But this is hardly what display of this flag is meant to signify.

Indeed, this is another matter entirely. The Confederate flag today is a symbol drenched in the despicable mythology of the Lost Cause. It is a tribal symbol of White Nationalism, one that associates America with its White "Christian" past and fears/resents the more culturally and ethnically diverse America that is developing. Indeed, that picture of a person carrying that flag in our nation's Capitol presented a moment of clarity. It showed, for the whole world to see, what the phenomenon of Trumpism signifies. It showed what dead-ender Trump cultists really stand for. Whether or not any of them really believe his endless lies is irrelevant. They see Donald Trump as the last, best hope for reversing the cultural and demographic trends they find threatening, and they were willing to commit insurrection to see him re-installed, however illegitimately, in the Oval Office. These seditionists were eventually repulsed on Wednesday. Finally. But for how long?

Christians and Sedition: Reflections on Yesterday's Insurrection at the United States Capitol

 

(photo credit: Hamil Harris; image @https://religionunplugged.com/news/2021/1/6/some-history-behind-the-christian-flags-at-the-pro-trump-capitol-coup)

12 April 1861. 7 December 1941. 11 September 2001. Three "days of infamy," to use the parlance of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the second of those dates. To these three I would add a fourth: yesterday, the 6th of January 2021, when a mob of seditious thugs, incited to insurrection by the President of the United States, swarmed and invaded the Capitol building itself in a vain attempt to overthrow the will of the people and hinder Congress from certifying the legitimate victory of Joe Biden over their hero, Donald Trump.

This event, predictable as it may have been to anybody remotely attuned to the words and actions of this President, was nonetheless as surreal as it was horrifying. The picture of a man carrying a large Confederate flag outside the Senate chambers, with a portrait of John C. Calhoun, the pro-slavery antebellum Senator and Vice President from South Carolina, behind him, was both disheartening and enraging. No picture, I thought, could better symbolize the racism and, yes, fascism that animates the beating heart of MAGA-hatted Trump loyalists. Nevertheless, disappointing as it was to see such a thing, one could not or should not have been surprised by it. Racists will be racists, just as surely as leopards will always have their spots (Jeremiah 13:23).

To me, however, the most disturbing aspect of yesterday's failed insurrection was the presence of signs such as "Jesus Saves" and the blasphemous "Jesus 2020" banner pictured above. I am a Christian. So, yes, I believe that Jesus "saves." But, I must ask for the thousandth time, what does Jesus have to do with American Presidential elections? (For my thoughts on this issue two election cycles ago, see here and here.) America, like all other nations, has a veritable graveyard, not in a closet, but in its living room for all to see. It is not, nor was it ever, a "Christian nation," let alone a Theocracy. The kingdom of God and any kingdom of this world, including the United States of America, are confused or fused only at great peril and with great misunderstanding.

What interests me at this time, however, is the (to me) very curious phenomenon of so-called white "evangelical" Christians, people who glory in their devotion to the authority of the Bible and to the morality articulated therein, supporting Donald Trump. These are people who, prior to the arrival of Trump, ostensibly believed that "character matters," and thus believed Bill Clinton was, in light of his tawdry affair with Monica Lewinsky, thereby unworthy of the office to which he had been elected. Yet this is a demographic of people who voted upwards of 80% for Donald Trump, not only in 2016, but in 2020 as well, after four years of his unceasing lies, cruelty, undeniable racism, deference to foreign authoritarians, impeachable corruption, and self-interested malfeasance and nonfeasance in the face of a pandemic that has already claimed 360,00 American lives. Indeed, as Messiah University historian John Fea noted today, most of the Congressional objectors to the Electoral College tally were evangelicals.

How does one explain this? I understand that, for some Christians, abortion is the single issue that trumps all others (though I wonder how many of them consider either the fact that the biblical evidence for a hardline position is somewhat slimmer than they have been led to believe, or that many nuanced pro-Lifers such as myself believe the issue is better addressed as a moral than as a legal matter). I understand, but wonder how other, more prominent biblical concerns, such as justice and treatment of the poor, can be so easily shunted aside. To be sure, some, recognizing this, have rationalized their support for Trump by invoking the figure of Cyrus the Great, the 6th-century BCE Persian king deemed God's "servant" in Isaiah 45 for decreeing the return of some Jews to the land. Such an analogy is theologically illegitimate at many levels, not least because America hardly occupies an analogous, covenanted position to Israel/Judah in the purposes of God. Indeed, on this reasoning, every ruler in every country could be deemed a "Cyrus," given the view of Paul the Apostle that "the authorities that exist have been established by God" (Romans 13:1). One must look elsewhere.

One is hard-pressed to attribute support of Trump to simple ignorance alone. Yesterday on Facebook, I somewhat uncharitably referred to yesterday's rioters as "lame-brained," and was justly called out for it. Yet one is hard-pressed to deny that ignorance, both empirical and theological, lies at the bottom of this support. Moreover, at least at the level of empirical evidence, this ignorance is nothing if not a willful ignorance. Anyone who believes a word coming out of Trump's mouth must ignore the 30,000 lies, fact-checked ad nauseum, that he has uttered the past four years. Even prior to this, remember that Trump had been in the limelight for four decades. His history of self-aggrandizement, grandiosity, racist real estate practices, womanizing (cheating on his multiple wives, including with a porn star he paid off to keep quiet, bragging about "grabbing them by the p*ssy"), philistinism and six (!) bankruptcies were all public knowledge. His conduct in office--whether acceptance and cover-up of Russian help in getting elected in the first place, his racist cruelty to refugees and would-be immigrants, his impeachment for extorting the Ukrainian president to harm Joe Biden's electoral prospects, his shameful response to the COVID pandemic--cannot simply be attributed to "Fake News" or disinformation by "Democrat" [sic!] politicians or the "liberal" media. Acceptance of (what Joe Biden would call) Trumpian "malarkey" is, like it or not, ignorant. And this ignorance is both willful and, hence, culpable. Indeed, such culpable ignorance manifests a fatal lack of both intellectual and moral discernment, one which has besmirched the name of the very Lord evangelicals claim to follow.

But what, ultimately, lies behind this gullibility and failure of discernment? In short, I would suggest that this ignorance is fundamentally a motivated ignorance. By that I mean that the type of die-hard Trumpian support of so many white evangelical Christians is due to their unexamined presuppositions, preunderstandings, and prejudices (my former students will, I hope, remember this constant emphasis in my teaching). Simply put, at least for the past 40 years, after Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right coalesced in their allegiance to Ronald Reagan and the GOP, it has been an article of unexamined faith that "conservative" Christian religious convictions must be married to so-called "conservative" (read: "right wing") political convictions. Thus, by definition, even a confessed Christian such as Barack Obama, because he was a political liberal, must be seen as suspicious at best, and malicious at worst. Donald Trump, though manifestly irreligious and empirically corrupt, is to be preferred to the Methodist Hillary Clinton or the devout Roman Catholic Joe Biden. 

Now the recognition of motivated points of view is nothing new. Indeed, it is one of the hallmarks of the postmodern critique of modernism's hubristic positivism. We all have presuppositional grids through which we interpret everything we experience in the world. That can't be helped. Nor is it a bad thing. But one cannot simply reduce interpretation of evidence to simple solipsism, such that each person is entitled to his or her "alternative facts," as Kellyanne Conway put it. In other words, as I have argued previously, one must make every effort to examine one's presuppositions, and humbly allow the preponderance of evidence to alter them. Evidence must trump ideology (pun intended).

Changing one's mind can be as difficult as changing one's behavior, especially in matters of group identity. Doing so, as I can attest, can cause great existential angst and professional peril. Years ago I recounted my own somewhat painful journey from an early, inherited/assumed Republicanism to a theologically-motivated switch to the Democratic Party more than 30 years ago. That did not mean then, nor does it mean now, that I follow in lockstep with every element of the Democratic platform. It does mean, however, that fundamental matters of justice and loving one's neighbor as myself are the determinative factors in my affiliation.

I am aware, of course, that not all--indeed, not many--of my Christian brothers and sisters will agree with my stance. And that's fine. Personal experience and innate temperament interact with our rational faculties to create our own points of view. And thus I have great respect for principled conservatives with whom I may disagree, both among friends and authors/columnists whom I read regularly.

But that is not at issue in MAGA-hatted Christian Trumpism, such as we saw yesterday in Washington. Enthusiastic support for Donald Trump the politician is hard to explain, given the history of the past four years, abortion notwithstanding. Support for Trump the man--the egomaniacal, mendacious authoritarian-wannabe--is even less so. But following him and committing oneself to his cause--the New Testament scholar in me recalls the favorite Johannine construct pisteuein eis--to the point of treasonous sedition, like we saw yesterday in our nation's capitol, is a dead end road. Associating Donald Trump with Jesus is itself bizarre. No politician in American history, Richard Nixon included, diverges so far from the example of our Lord than does Trump. Beyond that, however, the very act of sedition in the name of Jesus is blasphemous. It runs counter to everything Jesus ever taught or embodied. And it invalidates any claim to be a genuine follower of the Prince of Peace who laid down his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

This is a serious matter. Such unexamined support for the unsupportable is the scandal of today's evangelical church. In the midst of his polemic against his fellow Jews in Romans 2, Paul the Apostle, quoting Isaiah 52:5, writes these scathing words: "You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, 'God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you'."

Let the one who has ears to hear listen.

The Feast of Epiphany and Gentile Christianity

[Note: This is a revision of a post originally written on 1/6/2013.]

 

 (Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, The Uffizi, Florence, 1475)

Today marks the traditional date for the Feast of the Epiphany (though, as in the Anglican Church, usually celebrated on the Sunday between 2-8 January), which commemorates the visit of the Magi bearing their gifts to the baby Jesus narrated in Matthew 2:1-12. This feast has special significance to the vast majority of present-day Christians who, like me, are Gentile in their origin.

Matthew begins his Gospel by identifying the subject of his biographical work as “Jesus Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1, my trans.). These titles, as well as the order in which he lists them, provide an essential clue for how to understand the narrative that follows. Both of them allude to covenant promises found in the Hebrew Bible, and implicitly assert God's faithfulness to those promises, despite the people's unfaithfulness ("exile:" Matt 1:11, 17). By identifying Jesus as “Messiah” (“Christ”) and “son of David,” Matthew is making the claim that this Jesus of Nazareth, about whom he is writing, was the long-awaited heir to the promise of a Davidide who would finally bring the nation's exile to an end and inaugurate the hoped-for everlasting kingdom (2 Samuel 7:4-17; Psalm 89; cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:21). Simply put, Jesus was the rightful heir to Israel's throne occupied, at the time of his birth (ca. 5-4 BCE), by the Idumean Roman puppet, Herod the Great. 

Jesus, the “son of David,” was also, according to Matthew, the “son of Abraham,” a status Jewish people proudly understood themselves to have (e.g., Matthew 3:9; 8:11-12; 4 Maccabees 6:17, 22: 18:1; t.Ned. 2.5; Sifre Deut. 311.1.1 et al.; cf. the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians). By this designation Matthew refers back to the foundational covenant promise of Genesis 12:1-3 (reiterated and expanded in Genesis 15, 17, 22) and thereby identifies Jesus as the “seed” of Abraham in whom the promise of blessing for all the world is fulfilled. Jesus, in other words, was Israel's king for the whole world. How this blessing is extended and received becomes clear at the conclusion of the Gospel, where the resurrected Jesus commissions his disciples in Matthew 28:19: people from all nations—even Celtic Americans like me!—receive the Abrahamic blessing when they respond to the gospel and become disciples (i.e., “followers”) of the “son of Abraham.”

This is how the visit of the Magi must be understood in Matthew's story. These astrologers “from the east” (Parthia? Babylonia? Arabia?), having seen his “star” (the tailed comet recorded in the Spring of 5 BCE?) deduced (because of the planetary massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 7-6 BCE?) that one had been “born” (techtheis) “King of the Jews” (Matt 2:2). Here Matthew's skill as a storyteller and narrative theologian becomes evident, as he tells the story of the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus by using the template provided by the story of the birth of Moses in the Torah. His basic theological point is obvious: just as Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of captivity in Egypt, so this Jesus would be the deliverer who would effect the New Exodus promised in, inter alia, Isaiah 40-55.

In Matthew's telling, Herod (thus implicitly viewed as a usurper to the throne) and “all Jerusalem” responded to news of the birth of the Jewish King the very paranoid way Pharaoh and the Egyptians were said to have done more than a millennium earlier in response to the Israelites' fecundity (Exodus 1): they were “terrified” (etarachthē [Matt 2:3]; cf. Josephus, Ant. 2.206, 215; likewise, the response of Herod in ordering the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem [Matt 2:16] parallels that of Pharaoh in ordering the murder of all male Israelite infants [Exod 1:22]). 

In contrast to this Jewish response (foreshadowing the passion narrative; cf. Matt 27:1, 25, 37), the pagan Magi found Jesus and “worshipped” (prosekynēsan) him. In Matthew's narrative, it becomes clear that this act of homage/prostration is a picture of the rightful act of worship due the one already described as "God with us" (Matt 1:23). More significantly, Matthew intends the Magi to be understood as the firstfruits of the anticipated pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the true God (cf. Matt 8:11-12). The Evangelist does not, as he does a number of other times in the chapter, use a formula quotation to argue that this act "fulfilled" a biblical text or texts (cf. Matt 2:5-6, 15, 17-8, 23). But he didn't have to. Indeed, his narrative clearly echoes two texts. First, Psalm 72:10-11, 15, 17:

        The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him;

            the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts.

        All kings will bow down to him

            and all nations will serve him ...

        Long may he live!

            May gold from Sheba be given him.

        May people ever pray for him

            and bless him all day long ...

        May his name endure forever;

            may it continue as long as the sun

        All nations will be blessed through him [cf. Matt 1:1!],

            and they will call him blessed."

Second, Isaiah 60:6, a text describing the nations' coming to Israel's light (Isa 60:3) when their exile is finally over:

        Herds of camels will cover your land,

            young camels of Midian and Ephah.

        And all from Sheba will come,

            bearing gold and frankincense

            and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.

Significantly, for the last line the LXX translation of Isaiah 60:6 reads, "Hēxousin pherontes chrysion kai libanon oisousin kai to sōtērion kyriou euangeliountai" ("And they will come bearing gold, and they will bring frankincense, and they will proclaim the salvation of the Lord"). By implication, with this resounding echo Matthew declares that the Magi's prostration before the baby Jesus is eloquent testimony that this child would be the one to bring God's promised salvation to his people (Matt 1:21!).

All too often we Gentile Christians forget that the one we love and serve is, first and foremost, Israel's Messiah, and that it is by God's grace alone that we “wild branches” have been “grafted in” to replace the “natural branches” who have been broken off the olive tree because of their unbelief (Romans 11:17-24). But, thanks be to God, the natural branches will one day be grafted back on (Rom 11:25-27)! Let us, then, remember what  Paul said in a later letter: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called 'uncircumcised' by those who call themselves 'the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:11-13 [NIV]; cf. Rom 15:8-12). Soli Deo Gloria!

I will close by quoting the Collect for Epiphany from The Anglican Book of Common Prayer:

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.