Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone Street. A few weeks ago, a man who should remain unnamed but claims to be a Christian called The Hiding Place one of the most subversive books around. According to his framing, Corey Tenboom, who hid Jews during World War II, was a villain who cooperated with a communist and was guilty of, quote, shielding Christ's enemies. He's a recent example of what are growing fringes from both the left and the right, who claim the mantle of Christianity while at the same time.
Preaching a false and misleading gospel.
Now, of course, each side is quick to call out the other whenever they perceive them to be guilty of misrepresenting Christianity. And there are plenty of examples. From the left, come politicians such as James Tallarico and so-called Christian clergy who offer blessings for abortion clinics. In a 2023 book, The Godless Crusade, author Tobias Creamer, described right-wing groups in Germany, France, and the U.S. who claim to be fighting for Christian civilization, but made the Christian part of that whole formulation quite secondary.
In Europe, there are even some political movements with Christian in their names who openly oppose letting religious elements corrupt their social agendas. About a decade ago, New York Times columnist Ross Dauphick quipped: If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right. And the following year, Pascal Emmanuel Gorby described the post-Christian right as having more in common with a European secular blood and soil nationalism than the philosophical and political. conservatism that emerged in the English-speaking world. That kind of conservatism is, as John Errett put it recently, right-wing hierarchical thought shorn of a Christian mooring.
A so-called Christian worldview, absent anything genuinely Christian, is, he went on to say, quite dangerous. Quote, the challenge of the post-Christian right is not that its ideas are incoherent and confused, born of healthy instincts, which simply need to be channeled in a sounder theological direction. The challenge is that these ideas are in fact deeply coherent and taken together represent a seductive alternative to a faith perceived as too anemic to withstand the coming technological and social storm. Of course, justifying non-Christian practices using the faith as cover is not anything new. But of course, that does not make the justification of grossly anti-Semitic or racist ideas any less evil.
In many cases, an affectation of Christianity is used as a thin veneer for flagrantly anti-Christian values. And the so-called dissident right voices who do as much while claiming the name of Christ are really no different from progressives who deck church walls with rainbow flags, are sexually transgressive and pro-abortion, and reduce the gospel down to something silly like radical inclusivity. More than a few young men have told me that the attraction of these right-wing groups for them and their demographic emerges out of a desire to stand against what they perceive as wrong in the world.
However, they'd be wise to heed GK Chesterton, who said it's always simple to fall. There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, but only one at which one stands. But another way, it's not enough to oppose what's wrong. We have to know what is right and stand for it. As John Errett concluded in his article, any victory for so-called conservatism won through forfeiting the Christian ethic of active love will prove a pyrrhic one.
There are other paths and other strategies. Perhaps knowing what time it is means choosing life and mercy in the possibility of forgiveness. We can still choose to see in the eyes and hands of all those who share our nature the image of God. See, a Christian conservatism without Christ is no more Christian than a Christian progressivism is without Christ. Being involved in the public square today will, of course, inevitably mean getting into the mess of the so-called culture wars.
It's unavoidable, in fact. Still, to paraphrase Christ himself, it does not profit us in the least to even win the whole world in the name of Christianity if, in the process, we lose what makes Christianity. Christian. And that, of course, is Christ. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
And before I go, let me say thanks to Walter of ONI, Maryland, for being a Cornerstone Monthly partner of the Colson Center. Thank you for making this episode of Breakpoint possible. Today's episode was co-authored by Dr. Timothy Padgett. If Breakpoint is a helpful part of your daily worldview diet, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
And find more resources, or a version of this commentary that you can share with others, at breakpoint.org. In a culture that tries to redefine what it means to be human, the church can lead the way in restoring a God-given understanding of human identity. The Colson Center's mission is to equip Christians for this work, but we need your support. When you make a gift to our ministry by May 8th, we'll send you a copy of Dr. Carl Truman's new book, The Desecration of Man, as a thank you.
This timely book examines our culture's transgression of human identity and how Christians can lead the way toward restoration. Make your gift by May 8th at colsoncenter.org/slash April. That's colsoncenter.org slash April.
