Five warning signs Christians should not ignore.
Part of an ongoing series examining how religious language is used in modern politics.
This is the fifth part of what will be a weekly series, you can find the previous posting here …
Who is this series for?
This series is for Christians who want to think carefully about the relationship between faith and politics.
Many believers are hearing messages that frame political struggles in deeply spiritual terms. One side is presented as righteous. The other side is presented as evil. Disagreement starts to sound like rebellion against God. In anxious times, that kind of language can feel powerful, even clarifying. But Christians are not called to surrender their discernment when political passions run high. We are called to test the spirits, examine every claim carefully, and measure every message against the character and teaching of Jesus.
That is the purpose of this series. Each week, we look at a small number of claims, ask what they are doing rhetorically, compare them with Christian truth, and consider a better way forward.
When religious language is used to inflame fear, excuse cruelty, or demand uncritical loyalty, the damage is not only political. It also harms Christian witness. Understanding how that rhetoric works can help believers resist fear and hatred without surrendering conviction.
1. Brutality and Biblical Manhood
The claim
Dale Partridge laments that modern Christian men are far less intense than their ancestors: “I point to the way that our ancestors dealt with Muslim invaders. They would kill them, cut their heads off, and stick them on spikes and set them outside of the city to make sure that no more Muslims would come in.”
What it’s doing
This rhetoric takes violence from the past and presents it as a model of masculine strength. It suggests that modern Christian men are weak because they are too restrained, too civil, or too unwilling to inspire fear. The emotional effect is clear. Aggression starts to look like courage, and mercy starts to look like softness.
That is a powerful appeal, especially for men who feel that Christian manhood has been thinned out into passivity. But it confuses force with faithfulness. History contains many examples of Christians doing terrible things in war, including against Muslims. During the First Crusade, when Jerusalem fell in 1099, Muslims and Jews were massacred by Christian forces. That is part of the historical record. But the fact that Christians once committed acts of brutality does not make those acts righteous or worthy of imitation.
The question is not whether violent ancestors existed. Of course they did. The question is whether they are our model.
Reality check
Jesus did not teach his followers to prove their strength by terrorising outsiders. He told them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. Historic Christian teaching has consistently held that hatred and cruelty toward neighbour are contrary to charity and contrary to the way of Christ.
So when someone holds up beheadings and severed heads on spikes as an image of manly intensity, he is not calling men back to biblical manhood. He is calling them toward a vision of strength that has been severed from Jesus.
Discernment
Strong Christian men are not men who indulge violent fantasies about enemies. Strong Christian men are men who master their anger, protect the vulnerable, tell the truth, remain steady under pressure, and refuse to let hatred rule their hearts. Anyone can romanticise slaughter. It takes far more courage to follow Christ when he tells you to love the people you fear and to reject the intoxicating appeal of revenge.
The New Testament does not define manhood by the ability to inflict terror. It points instead to faithfulness, self control, courage in suffering, and love. The fruit of the Spirit is a better measure of maturity than the imagery of conquest.
There is also a deeper danger here. When past violence is romanticised, present cruelty becomes easier to justify. First people learn to admire brutality in history. Then they begin to excuse contempt in the present. Then harsher and harsher treatment of perceived enemies starts to feel righteous. Christians should resist that drift, not baptise it.
Bottom line
This claim tries to present blood soaked vengeance as biblical masculinity. It is not. Christian men do not need to become more savage in order to become more godly. They need to become more like Jesus. That means courage without cruelty, conviction without hatred, and strength without barbarity.
2. Fear and False Witness
The claim
Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon declares that gender equality is a Jewish plot to “eradicate white people”: “It is the root of all bitter, baseless envy that just seeks to destroy the world.”
What it’s doing
This is not a serious attempt to understand social change. It is a form of scapegoating. It fuses anxiety about gender, race, and Jewish people into a single conspiracy story. That story does two things at once. It makes people feel besieged, and it gives them someone to blame.
That kind of rhetoric has a long and ugly history. Antisemitic movements have often blamed Jews for whatever they fear or dislike about modern life. Racial grievance movements have often treated equality itself as a threat. When those patterns are combined and clothed in Christian language, hostility starts to sound like discernment.
Reality check
Gender equality is not a Jewish plot. It is the basic belief that women are fully human and should be treated with equal dignity before the law and in society. That idea did not emerge from some secret ethnic conspiracy. It emerged through long moral, political, and religious struggles involving many people across many centuries.
And the claim that equality exists to eradicate white people is not sober analysis. It is racial panic. Equality does not erase anyone. It simply says that someone else’s dignity does not threaten your own.
More importantly, this way of talking has nothing to do with the gospel. The New Testament does not teach Christians to interpret society through ethnic suspicion or racial paranoia. It does not tell believers to blame Jews for cultural change. And it certainly does not teach that preserving male dominance or racial hierarchy is the centre of God’s plan.
Discernment
Christians should hear alarm bells immediately when a preacher starts teaching them to fear Jews, to resent women’s dignity, or to frame equality as a civilisational threat.
Jesus was Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. The early church was born out of Israel’s story. A Christian worldview cannot be built on blaming Jews as a category for the supposed decline of civilisation. That is not biblical clarity. It is poisonous scapegoating.
The same is true with women. Christians may disagree on some questions of church order or family structure, but that is not the same as treating women’s equal worth as a threat. Scripture teaches that women are image bearers of God. Any teaching that trains men to feel endangered by that dignity is not producing spiritual maturity.
And when race becomes the thing that must be defended at all costs, it stops being prudence and starts becoming an idol. The gospel was not given to preserve bloodlines. It was given to reconcile sinners to God and to one another.
A Christian response should be plain. Brother, you are being taught to fear the wrong enemy. Your enemy is not women. Your enemy is not Jews. Your enemy is sin, pride, hatred, and the temptation to make an idol out of tribe, status, and grievance.
Bottom line
This claim is not courageous Christianity. It is scapegoating, racial fear, and misogyny wrapped in Christian language. It does not protect the church. It distorts it. Christians who want to be faithful should reject it plainly.
3. When Political Hatred Gets Called Righteousness
The claim
Shane Vaughn defends President Donald Trump’s celebration of the death of Robert Mueller: “If I told you Hitler died how would you respond? If I told you that Charles Manson died how would you respond? They were horrible men They destroyed lives…. You’ll pardon Donald Trump if he equates Bob Mueller as a destroyer of lives.”
What it’s doing
This rhetoric tries to make cruelty feel justified by first making the target seem monstrous. That is the move. Once a political opponent is compared to Hitler or Charles Manson, ordinary moral restraints begin to look unnecessary. Decency starts to feel weak. Bitterness starts to feel honest. Celebration of death starts to feel like moral clarity.
But this is not really an argument. It is emotional substitution. Instead of showing that Robert Mueller was actually comparable to mass murderers, it asks the audience to borrow the disgust they rightly feel toward mass murderers and redirect it toward Mueller.
Reality check
Robert Mueller was not Hitler and he was not Charles Manson. He was a longtime public servant, former FBI director, and special counsel appointed to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. People can argue about his judgments, his conclusions, or the impact of the investigation, but those disputes do not place him in the moral category of genocidal tyrants or cult murderers.
Even if someone believes Mueller treated Trump unfairly, celebrating his death and comparing him to history’s worst monsters is wildly disproportionate. It is not truth telling. It is emotional escalation designed to harden the heart.
Discernment
Christians should be very careful here because this is exactly how tribal loyalty begins to overpower conscience. Once you are cheering a man’s death because he investigated your preferred leader, something deeper than politics has gone wrong.
A Christian does not have to admire Robert Mueller in order to reject this rhetoric. You can think he was wrong, biased, or harmful and still say that rejoicing over death is beneath anyone who claims to follow Christ. Scripture does not tell us to reserve human dignity only for people we like. It certainly does not tell us to compare our political opponents to history’s worst killers so that we can feel righteous in hating them.
Jesus told his followers to love their enemies, bless those who curse them, and leave vengeance to God. If politics is training Christians to sneer at the dead, then politics is discipling them more powerfully than Christ is.
There is another danger too. If everything becomes Hitler, then nothing is Hitler. When the names of history’s greatest evils are thrown around carelessly, real evil is cheapened and moral judgment becomes distorted.
Bottom line
This claim is not a defence of truth. It is a defence of hatred. Christians do not have to like Robert Mueller to recognise that celebrating death and comparing a public official to Hitler or Charles Manson is grotesque, false, and spiritually corrosive.
4. When Political Loyalty Starts Sounding Like Faith
The claim
Eric Metaxas is not worried about the conflict with Iran because he knows that “God’s hand is on President Trump”: “The Lord has created him for this season. If I didn’t know that, I would be concerned.”
What it’s doing
This kind of rhetoric replaces moral discernment with emotional certainty. Instead of asking whether a conflict is wise, just, restrained, truthful, or likely to save lives, it tells believers not to worry because God has supposedly placed one leader in power for this exact moment.
That is powerful rhetoric because it makes doubt sound faithless and caution sound disloyal.
Reality check
A war or military escalation does not become wise or righteous simply because someone says God is behind the leader involved in it. Moments of crisis are exactly when sober judgment is most needed. They are not moments for Christians to suspend moral scrutiny because a charismatic voice assures them that providence has already settled the question.
Scripture does not tell believers to place their trust in princes or powerful men. It warns against doing so. Christians are repeatedly called to test spiritual claims, not surrender to them uncritically.
Discernment
Christians believe in God’s sovereignty. But belief in sovereignty should not make us less discerning about rulers. It should make us less dependent on them.
Saying that God’s hand is on a leader does not answer the hard questions. Is this action truthful? Is it just? Is it restrained? Will it protect the innocent or multiply suffering? Does it reflect wisdom, or recklessness clothed in confidence?
Jesus said blessed are the peacemakers. That does not mean every use of force is automatically wrong. But it does mean Christians should be wary whenever spiritual language is used to shut down scrutiny rather than deepen it.
If a war is truly necessary, it should be able to withstand serious moral examination. If it cannot, wrapping it in God talk does not make it holy. It only makes it harder for believers to think clearly.
Bottom line
This claim asks Christians to trade discernment for devotion to a leader. That is never a safe trade. Faith in God should make believers more honest about the dangers of war, not less.
5. When Sacred Language Is Used to Excuse Violence
The claim
While advocating the use of imprecatory psalms calling for the destruction of their political enemies, Christian nationalists Joshua Haymes and Rich Lusk say “there are times where we have to kill” them for the good of the nation.
What it’s doing
This rhetoric takes political hostility and clothes it in religious language. Opponents are no longer simply wrong. They are recast as enemies of God, enemies of nature, and threats to the nation. Once that happens, extreme responses begin to sound righteous rather than reckless.
That is a very old and very dangerous pattern. First people describe their opponents as monsters. Then they say the stakes are so high that normal moral restraints no longer apply. Then violence begins to feel like duty.
Reality check
In a democratic society, political opponents are not invading armies. They are fellow citizens. Christians can oppose bad ideas, confront falsehood, vote against harmful policies, and resist destructive movements without speaking as if killing ideological enemies might become necessary for the nation’s survival.
The use of biblical language here also badly distorts Christian teaching. Yes, the Psalms contain cries for judgment. But Christians read the Psalms through Jesus, who told his followers to love their enemies, pray for those who persecute them, and refuse the logic of retaliatory destruction. The New Testament does not teach believers to turn political struggle into holy war.
Discernment
Christians are absolutely allowed to name evil as evil. They are allowed to defend the innocent, protect their families, and resist what is destructive. But the moment believers begin talking as though the destruction of political enemies is something to welcome, something has gone badly wrong in the soul.
That is not courage. It is hatred searching for a Bible verse.
Jesus did not tell his followers to save the nation by cultivating fantasies of violence toward their rivals. He told them to love their enemies and to be known by their fruit. If politics makes us eager to speak about eliminating opponents, we should not assume we are hearing the voice of God. We should ask whether we have baptised our anger and called it righteousness.
There is a real difference between lawful protection against actual violence and rhetorical bloodlust against ideological enemies. A man attacking your family in your home is not the same thing as a political movement you deeply oppose. Once those categories are blurred, cruelty becomes easier to justify.
And history offers a warning here. Whenever Christians convince themselves that violence, or fantasies of violence, are necessary to save civilisation, the result is usually not renewal but disgrace. The church begins to sound less like good news and more like a faction grasping for power.
Bottom line
This rhetoric is not strong faith. It is political hostility wrapped in sacred language. It does not call Christians to holiness. It trains them to see neighbours as enemies and rage as virtue. Faithful Christians should reject it.
Lessons learned: how to spot the pattern and how to respond
Across all five examples, the basic pattern is the same. Political rage is given a religious costume so that cruelty looks like courage, paranoia looks like wisdom, hatred looks like holiness, and loyalty to a leader looks like faithfulness to God.
It works because fear and confusion create an appetite for simple enemies and spiritual certainty. When people feel disoriented or under siege, grand moral drama can feel more comforting than truth, patience, or humility.
The Christian response is to slow the spell down. Name what is happening. Test every message against the character and teaching of Jesus. Refuse to let fear, tribalism, or fantasies of domination define what faithfulness looks like.
A simple checklist for discernment
- Ask what the message is cultivating. Is it making you more loving or more hateful?
- Ask what it is rewarding. Is it teaching you to tell the truth, or simply rewarding your anger?
- Ask how it treats opponents. Does it see them as fellow human beings, or as monsters beyond mercy?
- Ask what kind of character it is forming. Is it moving you toward Christlikeness, or toward grievance, vengeance, and pride?
- Ask whether it welcomes scrutiny. Does it invite honest moral examination, or demand automatic loyalty to a leader or movement?
- Ask what it feeds in the soul. Does it deepen faith, hope, and love, or does it stir panic, contempt, and suspicion?
- Ask where it is leading. Is it helping you endure evil faithfully, or tempting you to become a different kind of evil in response?
In the end, that is the real test. Any message that asks Christians to become more brutal, more fearful, more dishonest, or more hateful in order to save the faith is not saving the faith at all. It is hollowing it out.
The better way is harder, but it is also clearer. Stay truthful. Stay humble. Stay unafraid.