I've now spent the last three years traveling around the U.S. and the world, lecturing, preaching, and fellowshipping with pastors and parishioners.
I've learned much. I especially learned about the online culture that bleeds into congregational life. I spent hours with congregants, and especially in fellowship with men. Here is what I noticed about some of the gregarious online personalities who initially showed up with enormous zeal and quickly retreated into their ecclesial castles online.
And to me, it is fascinating, and more than a little revealing—and amusing— that many of the men (thankfully, very few were CREC) demanding a government that promotes Christianity (something I, too, affirm) and insisting that the nations submit to Christ are often incapable of submitting to their own local pastors in ordinary ecclesiastical matters.
They want presidents, magistrates, and nations to bow the knee to King Jesus (three cheers for the magisterial reformers!!!), but they bristle when a pastor or elder asks them to be patient, receive correction, demonstrate self-awareness in their social media posts, or something similar (-3 cheers for the magisterial reformers!!!). Mind you, these requests were done in a spirit of humility, and not in any way tyrannical. I witnessed them myself.
There is a deep contradiction here. Many of these guys talk like theocrats online, but they function as ecclesial anarchists. A man who cannot submit to the church he can see is not in a strong position to lecture the nation about submission to the Christ he cannot see. If he cannot be governed in the ordinary place where God has actually put him, under the leadership of a local, godly, Bible-believing pastor (Heb. 13:17), his political theology becomes performative.
This is where their Christian nationalism dies a thousand deaths. Not first in Congress, courtrooms, or constitutional debates, but in their own refusal to live out the thing they demand from others. They call for Christian order while embodying ecclesiastical disorder.
Before a man can speak credibly about Christianizing the nations, he should be able to belong somewhere. They should be willing to receive shepherding from someone and to bear with imperfect saints who don't share the same level of apocalypticism as they do. And that means honoring lawful ecclesial authority. Otherwise, his grand vision is just baptized individualism with a flag attached. And that's no way to Christianize anything.
What are you saying? That we shouldn’t be honest about Muslim gangs raping and sodomizing hundreds of thousands of white British girls because people might get a little angry about that?
Is that what you’re saying? You want the crimes of your “community“ covered up? ( oh excuse me, do you want them to CONTINUE to be covered up???)
Staring down the actual Declaration of Independence before stepping into the octagon as an underdog to beat the piss out of an undefeated fighter in front of the world is an extraordinary level of legendary
So far in 2026: We’ve had TEAM USA win Gold in hockey. We’ve had astronauts circling the moon. We’ve got the World Cup here. We have UFC at the White House. Everyone is getting skinny. We’re curing pancreatic cancer. It’s America’s 250th.
AND YOU’RE BLACKPILLING?
@ZachWLambert You know he doesn't actually have a trillions dollars right? Just owns enough successful companies the valuations of which add up to over a trillion?
You know that right?
@courtneyellis "Referring to image bearers of God as 'criminals' is not the way to get me to vote for you."
Image bearers can be called accurate descriptors if they choose to break the law. Illegal just means they broke border laws. It's not that deep.