Dose of Devotion

Do things for people not because of who they are on what they do in return, but because of who you are. Harold S. Kushner American Rabbi-Author

WOUNDS FOR CHRIST

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Acts 5:41

Today’s devotional comes from Ron Boyd-MacMillan’s excellent volume Faith That Endures:

The Biblical scholar William Barclay famously described a New Testament Christian as having three remarkable characteristics: “One, they were absurdly happy; two, they were filled with an irrational love for everyone; and three, they were always in trouble!”

Persecuted Christians are constantly in trouble. As a Palestinian pastor put it, “If you speak truth to power, power always reacts.” An encounter with the persecuted reveals the incendiary nature of this gospel we follow, and if our witness does not provoke some sort of explosive reaction, we have to check whether our gospel powder is damp or dry. We should be in trouble for Jesus! If we aren’t, something is wrong…

Persecuted Christians are not tempted into the illusion that the world is actually a friendly place that does not mind our identifying with Christ. The world for them is unmasked in its hostility to Christ.

Once when visiting Czechoslovakia in the 1980’s, I delivered a Bible to an elderly pastor. He had not seen a Bible in years. He smelled it, kissed it with trembling lips, cradled it, and then with great reverence, opened it. Then he turned to me and said, “Let me tell you of my wounds.” And he poured out his trials for God, which included seven beatings by the secret police and the awful seduction of his daughter by a government agent who then fooled her into betraying him. Then he turned to me, his eyes boring into my soul, and asked, “What wounds have you for the Master?” I was embarrassed to have so few to share.

The questions of the persecuted church are simple: Are you in trouble for Jesus? Where are your wounds? If you don’t have any, maybe you’ve forgotten you’re in a fight at all. Whatever culture we are in, we are always being subtly coerced into spending our money, or time, on what is not of Christ. Persecution afflicts us all if we stand up for Christ. The world, the flesh, and the devil will never reach an accommodation with Christ. Like it or not, we are caught up in cosmic warfare. The gospel has landed us in it. We will all be scarred by the battle. We will all experience persecution. The difference is only one of degree and type.[1]

RESPONSE: Today I will evaluate my life and assess what are my wounds for Christ. I will then rejoice in suffering for Jesus.

PRAYER: Lord, I submit to Your Lordship over my life and accept whatever wounds You will enable me to bear for Your sake and the gospel’s.

1. Ronald Boyd-MacMillan, Faith That Endures (Grand Rapids: Fleming Revell, 2006), pp. 322-323.

Restoring Hope

By DaySpring 

This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength. NEHEMIAH 8:10 NIV 

When they began the project, the house looked like a total loss. Rotting wood lined the doorways and window sashes; parts of the ceiling dangled down from above; and random trash left by the previous owners littered the stained and torn carpet below. But the house flippers didn’t mind. They were in the renovation business! The team split up to tackle different problem areas based on their expertise. As they continued to put their skills and sweat to work, a beautiful transformation began to unfold. The formerly dilapidated structure became sound secure and aesthetically pleasing—a desirable place for any new family to inhabit. 

What made the renovation team work so hard, day after day? They didn’t get bogged down by the disaster in front of them because they knew what it would look like in the end. Their vision for the house’s potential and the prospect of a future payoff propelled them to persevere. 

As believers, we can look at our broken-down, fallen world in much the same way as that worn-out house. We can concede that our culture is crumbling and the prognosis is grim unless intervention happens. But we are in God’s restoration business! We have the power of His Spirit inside us to heal what’s broken and bring hope to the hurting. Even in the middle of the day’s difficulty, we don’t despair. The joy of God’s Spirit fills us with strength as we stick to His restoration process, one person at a time. 

When you turn on the news or scroll through your social media feeds, do you feel like all is lost? Look up to the One with the master plan that promises eternal redemption. Let the joy of His indwelling Spirit fill you with energy and strength, knowing that God certainly finishes every work He starts. Remind yourself that earthly efforts for His kingdom promise eternal rewards that far outweigh your current struggle. Today, thank God for the opportunity to join Him in His kingdom work and fill you with joyful hope as you work together to restore beauty. 

Father, I praise Your name because You are good and You restore what’s broken. Thank You that I can experience Your joy to the full even while I’m working through dark and difficult trials because I know You make everything beautiful in its time. In Jesus’s name. 

This is an excerpt from True Sweetness: Growing in the Fruits of the Spirit – a devotional now available on DaySpring.com. Shop all books, journals, and devotions from DaySpring here.     

What to Write in a Sympathy Card

Dorina Lazo Gilmore 

When my husband died from cancer, my daughters and I received hundreds of cards. Ericlee was a teacher, coach, and director of a non-profit organization that was supported by several area churches. His influence was far-reaching.

Hundreds of people packed the church for his memorial service, and we went home with bins full of cards. Students from the school where he taught showed up at our door with homemade cards. Friends and relatives mailed us cards to express their condolences. Some slipped gift cards for grocery stores and restaurants inside.

I was overwhelmed by the support.

After family returned home following the funeral and friends returned to work, we had to find our new normal without our daddy and husband. These precious cards remained.

Words of encouragement is one of my main love languages so these cards became treasures to me in a dark season of grief and loneliness.

One of my favorite cards included a letter written by a young man who had been one of my husband’s students and athletes. He talked about how Ericlee had inspired him and encouraged him to pursue a career he wouldn’t have considered before. He shared how his faith in God had grown as a result of knowing Ericlee.

Those words were gold to me. They spoke of my husband’s legacy. They provided a tangible story I could share with my young daughters about who their dad was and how he cared deeply for people.

Words of encouragement are one way that we can love people well through loss. It shows they are seen and important to us. Know this: You don’t need to agonize over finding the perfect words. The gesture matters.

Here are some quick tips for sending meaningful sympathy cards:

Select a card that will be meaningful for the person receiving it.

Does that person like a certain flower or Bible verse? Think about what season of life the receiver is in. Is she a mother? Grandmother? Friend? Cards specific to the audience show that you are paying attention and didn’t just grab something generic.

Avoid giving advice or writing cliché statements.

Oftentimes we feel like we need to offer some advice or comfort to the person in a card. Consider one of these statements instead: “I am so sorry for your loss.” “I don’t have the right words to say, but I want you to know I care about you.” “I can’t imagine what you’re going through today.”

Share a memory of the person who died.

Take a few minutes to share a story or special memory you have of the person who died. How did they influence you? What character qualities did they have that you admired? If you didn’t know the person well, consider including what you appreciate about the person receiving the card.

Remind the person they are loved and remembered.

Don’t tell the receiver how to feel or try to make them feel better. Don’t say things like “Be strong” or “You will get past this.” Instead, acknowledge their grief, and remind them how much they mean to you.

Consider including a gift card, a bouquet of flowers, or a specific offer to help with something.

You might purchase a gift card for a coffee shop, restaurant or house cleaning service to accompany your card. Plan to go help mow the lawn, fold laundry, bring dinner or offer something else that could support the person or family.

We serve a God of comfort. Jesus mourned with his friends Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died. God walks closely with us through difficult times. He also designed us so that we might offer the same comfort to others. Paul illuminates this idea:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction,so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 CSB

Is God placing someone on your heart today who you could encourage with a card? Have courage, my friend. Sending cards does not have to take a lot of time, but it can go a long way in expressing love and sympathy. It’s never too late.

I was blessed every time I opened my mailbox and found another card after my husband’s death. These words helped show me that people still cared about us and remembered my beloved. And that was the greatest gift.

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A Prayer for Simple Discipleship – Your Daily Prayer

A Prayer for Simple Discipleship
By Ashley Moore

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” – Matthew 28:19, ESV 

Discipleship can seem complicated, can’t it? We often overthink mentoring others by spending too much time considering our method. We dwell on things like:

• What program should I follow?
• What Bible Study will resonate with them?
• What time will work best so that we get the greatest participation?

Don’t get me wrong, we do have to consider the details and make a plan. But if you are like me and you get hung up on the logistics, I wonder if it may be helpful to simplify the way you think about discipleship. A disciple is simply a student. John Mark Comer says in his book Practing the Way that a disciple does three things. 

1. Be with Jesus.
2. Become like Jesus. 
3. Do what Jesus did. 

So, to fulfill Jesus’ command, the call is to teach others to do these three things. Obviously, for each of us, the way we choose to do this will vary significantly from person to person. When I felt convicted to begin discipling others beyond my children, I reflected on the ways I was discipled. 

I became a Christian in college. The Lord began placing people in my life who each taught me how to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did in different ways. I interned at an Animal Clinic where the vet held a daily devotion and time of prayer before the work day began. I worked at a restaurant where one of my coworkers prayed for me and invited me to church. Once I began attending church with her, her mom and dad regularly invited us to their home for Sunday lunch and games. They also took my then-boyfriend, now husband, through a book study. 

The point is that there wasn’t a single method that was more effective than another. The book was transformational, but another book would have proved just as valuable. The time and places we met were significant, but other places and times would have been effective too. I learned to follow Jesus because His people took the time to intentionally teach me what they were taught and to invest in me in the ways they were invested in by others. They didn’t get hung up on how they were going to fulfill God’s command to go and make disciples. They took a chance, made plans, and spent time with me by inviting me into their lives so I could develop a stronger relationship with Christ. 

Now as I think about discipling others, I remind myself to simply show up for others the ways those individuals, families, and employers showed up for me. Discipleship does not have to be complicated. May we keep it simple by replicating how others taught us to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.

Let’s pray:

Jesus,
We thank you for the ways others have obeyed the call to make disciples. Thank you for the big and small ways people have taught us to practice what it looks like to follow you, love you, and love your people. Jesus, forgive us for the ways we let the enemy discourage us from making disciples or allow our own overcomplicated thoughts to distract us from pouring into others. Lord, will you help each of us reading today, or listening today, reflect on the most impactful and meaningful ways we were taught to be with you, be like you, and do what you did? And will you encourage us to examine how we might reproduce that in our own lives, in our own ways, for the people you placed right around us? In Your name, we pray, amen.

Photo credit: ©GettyImages/monkeybusinessimages

Ashley Moore is a writer and host of be the two™podcast. She is known for her relatability and for passionately writing and speaking about mental, emotional, and relational health from a biblical worldview. She has written for Kingdom Edge Magazine, Guideposts, Crosswalk, The Secret Place, enLIVEn, The Bubbling Brook and more. If Ashley isn’t writing, you can find her with her husband, three children, and two floppy-eared Goldens on their south Georgia farmland. The best way to connect with Ashley is to grab a free devotional or Bible study and join her newsletter at free.ashleynicolemoore.com.

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remember, even the devil can quote Scripture

devotionals daily

Against Christian Nationalism

Today’s inspiration comes from:

Jesus and the Powers

by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird

Editor’s note: This is certainly a period of tremendous political unrest which can leave many of us wondering what we Christians should do, especially how to understand the nature of Christian witness in fractured political environments. N.T. Wright and Michael F. Bird’s bring clarity to our questions in their new book Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies. Enjoy this excerpt.

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Christian nationalism is a danger to Christians and non-Christians alike. Now, of course, this depends on what you mean by ‘Christian nationalism’. We have no problem with the notion that Christianity has been part of the heritage of this or that nation. Christianity has shaped our constitutions and cultures for the better, and State and Church can cooperate for the common good in providing education, healthcare, and pastoral care. One can tussle a bit as to whether there should be an officially established church such as the Church of England. We hasten to point out that even with a state-sanctioned church in the UK, there is still a healthy degree of secularity, religious pluralism and multiculturalism. When we warn of the evils of Christian nationalism, we are warning of the danger of the government trying to enforce Christian hegemony combined with civil religion (that is, an outward and merely cultural version of Christianity). 

In other words, the danger is that Christians are given special privileges by the State and Christianity becomes an outward display of patriotic devotion rather than part of true religious affection. 

The idea that the Christian world needs an anointed Christian leader, a Christian emperor presiding over a Christian empire, is one that has existed since Constantine, and even persists into the present. In fact, quite recently, one prominent British theologian has tweeted, in response to Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, that ‘the Queen was effectively the Queen of the world . . . perhaps [the] necessary role of Christian world emperor has now fallen on the British monarchy’.¹

We are all for commemorating Queen Elizabeth II, but we remain unsure if we should valorise her or her successor King Charles III as a ‘Christian world emperor’. The danger is that one is approaching the sycophantic position of Eusebius of Caesarea who claimed that the emperor Constantine was hailed by angels and armies alike as ‘master, lord, and king’.² This christianisation of kingship is not far from those who claimed that US president Donald Trump was a ‘new Cyrus’. Many admirers pushed the idea that Trump, despite his bawdy and tawdry behaviour, was a man whom God had anointed to make the USA great again just as God called the Persian king Cyrus to liberate the Judaean exiles in Babylon.³

We would naturally be happy to live under the administration of a wise and benevolent Christian leader. Of course, we are also happy to live under a Pharaoh who puts a clever and capable Joseph in charge, or vote for a Nebuchadnezzar who heeds the counsel of a wise man such as Daniel. Even Martin Luther said he’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian. Be that as it may, to contend that one needs a king or president, not only to protect institutions such as the Church, but actively to impose the Church’s worship on others, is always going to prove ruinous to civil and religious liberties. Such a position would imply that God not only uses governments for justice and judgement, but also needs them as the political sword by which people, whether Christian or not, will be compelled to conform their lives to Christian standards. That is dangerous because to identify any leader as ‘yhwh’s anointed’⁴ or a new ‘Cyrus’⁵ is to invest a perilous amount of religious capital in a single person. Such a person may prove to be all too human, all too given to corruption, full of depravity and easily seduced by the lust for power. After September 11, 2001, Tony Blair spoke about ‘evil’ being at large in the world and of his determination to deal with it – almost as though this was a new and unexpected problem – but that with his policies and leadership evil could be conquered. We know where that led. 

The Church breaks down the classes, caste systems and ethnic divisions so that God’s people are those from every tribe, tongue, ethnic group and nation.

When such leaders are venerated with religious adulation, the result inevitably is that any critique of them, no matter how valid, is treated as either treason or blasphemy. The UK Parliament, no less than the US Senate, eagerly backed the dangerous and irrelevant call for a war against Iraq. The messianising of leaders to prop up an imagined ‘Christian empire’ can have dire consequences for social freedoms as well as proving injurious to the integrity of the Church’s own witness when it allies itself too closely with an earthly power. Remember that the Scriptures have a special title for someone who claims to possess kingly and religious authority, who is both presidential and priestly: the word is ‘Antichrist’. Such a person is against Christ by assuming Christ’s own role, because Christ alone is both messianic King and the Great High Priest.6

Christian nationalism of the kind we have described is bad on every level imaginable. Christian nationalism does not lend itself to a tolerant society since it diminishes the rights of the people of other religions or no religion. 

• It leads to a superficial Christianity rather than to sincere faith and deep discipleship. 

Political leaders end up pretending to be religious merely to win the favour of their constituents. Christianity is used to justify unchristian policies and actions related to wars, immigration, income inequality, healthcare and a myriad other issues. 

• Remember that even the devil can quote Scripture and try to rub it in the face of Jesus. 

The other problem with Christian nationalism is which type of Christianity should be supreme. It is baffling that, in the USA, many Baptists are coming out as supporters of Christian nationalism. It is baffling to us because Baptists fled the religious sectarianism of the British Isles to go to America in the seventeenth century. The reason they fled was because Baptists, and other Nonconformists, were persecuted, discriminated against and cajoled in matters of religious conviction. They went to America so that they could practise their faith without government interference. As we all know, there are different Christian denominations, so which one should be supreme in a Christian nationalist state? Should it be Anglicans, who could then force everyone to baptise their babies, worship using only the Book of Common Prayer, demand adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, sing hymns that equate the British Empire with ‘Jerusalem’ on earth, and petition Heaven with ‘God Save the King’? But the same is true whether you put Methodists, Presbyterians, or Pentecostals in charge. They could impose their version of Christianity upon everyone else or grant special privileges to their version of Christianity. 

Religious liberty thus protects Christians from other Christians. 

And, if you are going to give religious liberty to Christians, then why not to non-Christian religions as well? The logical implication of religious freedom for Christians is religious freedom for all people, irrespective of their religion or lack thereof.

Another deficiency of Christian nationalism is that it leads government to try to regulate religion. In Christendom, it was considered normal that the king would defend Christian doctrine and safeguard Christian moral instructions. This is why Isidore of Seville in around ad 600 claimed that ‘secular powers are subjected to the discipline of religion’ while secular princes ‘may use that power to reinforce church discipline’.7 In the twelfth century, Thomas Aquinas said:

The king’s duty is therefore to secure the good life for the community in such a way as to ensure that it is led to the blessedness of heaven, that is by commanding those things which conduce to the blessedness of heaven and forbidding, as far as it is possible to do so, those which are contrary.8

Calvin similarly thought that monarchs and magistrates should promote and protect religion and morals, so that a regent’s role was ‘to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church’.9

The problem is that, if you take the route of the government as the guarantor of Christian religion, then that requires government to adjudicate in matters of religion, to solve theological disputes and to hold heresy trials. Will the government arrest heretics, license preachers, regulate seminaries and impose Sabbath observance? Martin Luther, at least in his early years, knew that ‘heresy is a spiritual matter which you cannot hack to pieces with iron, consume with fire, or drown in water’.10

Or, as the British philosopher John Locke put it, ‘What power can be given to the magistrate for the suppression of an idolatrous Church, which may not in time and place be made use of to the ruin of an orthodox one?’11 In a diverse and pluralistic society, governments would be wise neither to privilege one religion, nor to punish people over their religion.

• Religion is at its most free when government does not interfere with religion or try to adjudicate in matters of religion.

Thus, a certain degree of secularity – by which we mean preventing theocracy, enabling the free exercise of religion, and permitting liberty of conscience in religion – is far better than Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism, in its Protestant form, can lead to a certain degree of Erastianism,12 where Protestant governments attempted to regulate religion to keep it pure and publicly acceptable. Or else, Christian nationalism, in its Catholic expression, tends to a hierocratic Integralism13  built on the state-sanctioned purification of religious life and the subjection of secular government to papal authority. These should be differentiated from ‘establishment churches’ where, due to a mixture of history and heritage, certain states have established churches that have been part of the fabric of society and woven into the social landscape since late antiquity. One thinks here of the Church of England or the Church of Sweden. Contrary to reputation, these churches are not ‘Constantinian’ or ‘theocratic’ institutions, but simply attest that, historically, many churches have had a close and cooperative relationship with the government and continue to do so even up to the present.

Yes, there is a certain danger of civil religion or cultural Christianity when churches have an established status, but that is simply the price paid for the success of the Christian mission in those countries. Our point is that, whether one exists in a country with a wall of separation between Church and State, or whether there are established churches, the regulation of religion by the State and the punishment of religious dissenters by the State are not conducive to the freedom of worship of a country’s citizens. Moreover, using religion to manufacture social and ethnic homogeneity is doomed to give sanction to prejudice and to weaponise religion in the hands of wicked actors.

Christian nationalism also lends itself to feelings of ethnic superiority and promotes interracial tensions especially when Christianity is aligned with ‘whiteness’. In countries where one religion is dominant, it is usually dominant among one ethnic group. Thus, religious privileges get fused with the hegemony of one ethnic group and its political apparatuses. For example, in Malaysia, the country is dominated by its Muslim Malay population. Thailand is dominated by its Tai majority who are also majority Buddhist.

But Christianity is not an ethnic religion. Christianity is a global religion, not the religious expression of an ethnic identity. As Wolterstorff argues, the Church included Romans but not all Romans. So the Church is not Roman. The Church included Slavs but not all Slavs. So the Church is not Slavonic. Similarly, the Church includes Americans, but not all Amer cans, so the Church is not American. The Church includes Brits, but not all Brits, so the Church is not British.14

The Church breaks down the classes, caste systems and ethnic divisions so that God’s people are those from every tribe, tongue, ethnic group and nation.

Christian nationalism, requiring state interference in religion and ethnic homogeneity, is a threat to the multi-ethnic nature of the global Church.

1 JOHN MILBANK, TWITTER, 9 SEPTEMBER 2022: HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/JOHNMILBANK3/STATUS/ 1568177131967991808 (ACCESSED 11 SEPTEMBER 2023).

2 EUSEBIUS, SPEECH FOR THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF CONSTANTINE’S ACCESSION 1, CITED IN FROM IRENAEUS TO GROTIUS: A SOURCEBOOK IN CHRISTIAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, 100–1625, ED. OLIVER O’DONOVAN AND JOAN LOCKWOOD O’DONOVAN (GRAND RAPIDS, MI: EERDMANS, 1999), P. 60.

3 ISAIAH 45:1–13.

4 CF. PSALM 2:2.

5 ISAIAH 45:1.

6 SEE ESPECIALLY OLIVER O’DONOVAN, THE DESIRE OF THE NATIONS: REDISCOVERING THE ROOTS OF POLITICAL THEOLOGY (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996), PP. 203, 214–15.

7.  ISIDORE OF SEVILLE, SENTENCES 3.51, CITED IN FROM IRENAEUS TO GROTIUS, ED. O’DONOVAN AND O’DONOVAN, P. 208.
8.  STTHOMASAQUINAS:POLITICALWRITINGS,TRANS.ANDED.R.W.DYSON(CAMBRIDGE:CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002), P. 53.
9. CALVIN, INSTITUTES 4.20.2; FOLLOWED BY TURRETIN, INSTITUTES OF ELENCTIC THEOLOGY 3.316–36. THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH 23.3 (1647) DECLARED THAT THE MAGISTRATE ‘HATH AUTHORITY, AND IT IS HIS DUTY, TO TAKE ORDER, THAT UNITY AND PEACE BE PRESERVED IN THE CHURCH, THAT THE TRUTH OF GOD BE KEPT PURE AND ENTIRE; THAT ALL BLASPHEMIES AND HERESIES BE SUPPRESSED; ALL CORRUPTIONS AND ABUSES IN WORSHIP AND DISCIPLINE PREVENTED OR REFORMED; AND ALL THE ORDINANCES OF GOD DULY SETTLED, ADMINISTERED, AND OBSERVED’ WITH ‘POWER TO CALL SYNODS, TO BE PRESENT AT THEM’. MANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES AROUND THE WORLD HAVE MODIFIED THIS LINE SO IT DOESN’T GRANT SUCH AUTHORITY TO THE CIVIL POWERS OVER THEIR SYNODS. INTERESTINGLY, THE 1689 LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION, WHICH USES THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH AS A TEMPLATE, CONSPICUOUSLY AVOIDS GRANTING THE MAGISTRATE SUCH AUTHORITY OVER BAPTIST CHURCHES.
10.  MARTINLUTHER,TEMPORALAUTHORITY502–3.
11.  JOHN LOCKE, A LETTER CONCERNING TOLERATION (LONDON, 1689), P. 34.
12.  ERASTIANISM IS A POLITICAL DOCTRINE THAT ADVOCATES THE SUPREMACY OF THE STATE OVER THE CHURCH EVEN IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS. IT ORIGINATED IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND WAS NAMED AFTER THOMAS ERASTUS, A SWISS THEOLOGIAN WHO SUPPORTED THE SUBORDINATION OF THE CHURCH TO THE STATE.
13.  THERE IS A SPECIES OF CATHOLIC POLITICAL THOUGHT KNOWN AS ‘INTEGRALISM’, WHICH POSTULATES THE THEORY THAT THE IDEAL STATE IS ONE THAT IS GUIDED BY CATHOLIC PRINCIPLES AND THAT THE CHURCH SHOULD HAVE A DIRECT ROLE IN THE GOVERNANCE OF SOCIETY. CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM IS PREMISED ON RECOVERING THE INTEGRATION OF CHURCH AND STATE (OR POPE AND KING) THAT DISAP- PEARED AFTER THE DECLINE OF CHRISTENDOM AND THE RISE OF NATION STATES IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. THERE IS A TENSION IN CATHOLIC THOUGHT, EXEMPLIFIED BY THE DIFFER- ENCES BETWEEN THE VATICAN II DOCUMENT DIGNITAS HUMANAE (1965) WHICH AFFIRMS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, AND THE WAY POPES OF THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES HAD CON- CEIVED OF ‘CHRIST AS KING’ EVEN OVER CIVIL AFFAIRS, SUCH AS IN POPE PIUS XI’S ENCYCLICAL QUAS PRIMAS (1925). FOR A CRITIQUE OF CATHOLIC INTEGRALISM, SEE KEVIN VALLIER, ALL THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD: ON RADICAL RELIGIOUS ALTERNATIVES TO LIBERALISM (NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023).
14. NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF, THE MIGHTY AND THE ALMIGHTY: AN ESSAY IN POLITICAL THEOLOGY (CAMBRIDGE: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012), P. 112.

Excerpted with permission from Jesus and the Powers by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, copyright The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Text by Tom Wright and Michael F. Bird.

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Your Turn

In this important voting year, it’s more important than ever to remember that we, the Church, are one Body. Christian nationalism isn’t a unique phenomenon. Let’s remember that as such we are not separated by class systems or ethnic divisions. We believers are from every tribe, tongue, ethnic group, and nation! Praise Jesus! ~ Devotionals Daily

Words of Encouragement

Lord, You have certainly loved me through all my messes, and You’ve never quit on me. Thank You for Your rich mercy. Please empower me to love like You, committed to the people You place in my path, until You call us home. In Jesus’s name.