Jesus is Our Counternarrative

Just in case you missed this story, the descendants of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have written up a powerful rebuke of the American tendency to enlist Bonhoeffer for their political agendas. The family’s eyes are on Eric Metaxas’s “biography” that sadly colonized Bonhoeffer for a populist American agenda. DB was an elitist, an aristocrat, and vehemently opposed to all things populist, which is exactly how some today appeal to DB. Furthermore, he was no evangelical and pushed against the Lutheran pastors who found the theology and hermeneutic of Rudolf Bultmann to be dangerous. It remains a pity in the legacy of Tim Keller that he endorsed Metaxas’s book.

Populism in the USA is a problem on two fronts that lead into today’s discussion. Some American populists have formed into Christian nationalism, which has significant racist undertones to it, and it is a fact that much of American evangelicalism’s appeal is to populists. Out of this movement Christian nationalism has formed, and my friend Drew Strait has written a helpful book for churches and church leaders with the courage to stand up and resist the corruption of the church by Christian nationalism. His book is called Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism.

Followers of Jesus resist and opposed Christian nationalism. Pastors and church leaders who fail to resist it are complicit.

One of Strait’s strategies is to outnarrate white Christian nationalism, which anchors truth in whiteness, a theory about a Christian nation, the legitimation of rebellion and violence (more below). From Gorski and Perry’s The Flag and the Cross: “White Christian nationalism’s “deep story” goes something like this: America was founded as a Christian nation by (white) men who were “traditional” Christians, who based the nation’s founding documents on “Christian principles.” The United States is blessed by God, which is why it has been so successful; and the nation has a special role to play in God’s plan for humanity. But these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from “un-American” influences both inside and outside our borders.”

That narrative appeals to populist America. Narratives do amazing work in providing perspective, history, location, future, and meaning for daily living – not to ignore which candidate to support in any election. As is the case with all candidates, the candidate for some becomes a totem of a people’s vision and hope.

Strait: “I believe that the way of Jesus is our best antidote to strange worship. … Jesus is a jarring figure whose life and teachings challenge the worst impulses of Christians across the political and theological spectrum.” But for many in CN, appealing to such themes as peace, social justice, or loving one’s neighbor gets labeled “woke.” So Strait writes a chapter on why we need the Bible more for this discussion, not less. One reason is because CN-ers quote the Bible.

Some may remember the famous picture of President Trump on Lafayette Square holding up a Bible (which he obviously didn’t even know how to hold). What most don’t realize is that just hours before he did that, “US Park Police and Bureau of Prisons officers used pepper spray and tear gas to clear protesters from Lafayette square near the White House.” Trump’s staged action endorsed the protesters, which as Strait writes, were a version of Christian nationalism (CN).

He delves into how CN-ers interpret the Bible, which he calls biblicism and biblical literalism. They obviously are the pick and choose sort. I do not believe the problem is their hermeneutic. Their problem is an ideology that raids the Bible for support. Anyone can pick and choose in the pages of the Bible what they would like to support. Bad character leads to bad hermeneutics. But I agree with Strait that a different narrative and hermeneutic needs to become more publicly on the part of Christians who opposed Christian nationalism. The reason this needs to go public is because Christian nationalists have gone public with their narrative. Strait contends we need a Christocentric narrative, and I say a hearty Amen! to that. “The interpretive lens through which many Christian nationalists read scripture is tinted with red, white, and blue, and is anchored in loyalty to one's ethnic and partisan identity. I call this a state-centric hermeneutic. … A Christocentric hermeneutic is a way of reading the Bible through a Jesus-centered lens rather than a state-centered, fear-centered, or a me-centered lens.” One can’t win this argument through hermeneutical conversations. It’s about characters reshaped by ideology vs. a traditional gospel-shaped reading.

A Christocentric hermeneutic morphs inevitably into resistance against corrupted powers while it affirms tov-shaped powers (that’s possible). It resists the Constantinian temptation that besets all (except some Anabaptist approaches) Christian readings of the church and state. It roots itself in the Jesus Creed (Strait doesn’t use this expression) of loving God and loving others as ourselves, which is the most quoted OT text (Leviticus 19:18) in the New Testament. This was also the hermeneutic, you may not know, of Augustine.

Violence – structural, cultural, and symbolic – inevitably promotes itself in the CN hermeneutic and it must be countered with a counternarrative. “Jesus is our counternarrative.” He opposes three levels of the spiral of violence: Violence No. 1 = “Where the privileged oppressed the underdog;” Violence No. 2: “Where the oppressed underdog retaliates with violence;” Violence No. 3: “where the privilege preserve their power by responding with overwhelming violent repression.”

What does the counternarrative of Jesus look like? Here is an extensive quote that could be printed out and displayed in a church foyer for all to read:

In teaching to turn the other cheek Jesus shamed Violence No. 1.

In teaching enemy love, Jesus disrupted Violence No. 2.

In teaching the things that make for peace, Jesus stymied Violence No. 3.

In proclaiming freedom for prisoners, Jesus interrupted structural violence.

In practicing inclusive table fellowship, Jesus flustered cultural violence.

In including women among his disciples, Jesus disoriented symbolic violence.

In proclaiming good news to the poor, Jesus undermined economic caste systems.

In eating with tax collectors, Jesus practiced enemy love.

In speaking woes to the rich, Jesus condemned hoarding wealth.

In blessing peacemakers, Jesus contested the efficacy of violent resistance.

In healing the diseased, Jesus showed the limitations of state and military power.

In forgiving sins, Jesus redefined power.

In publicly dying on a Roman cross, Jesus exposed the spiral of violence.

In rising from the dead, Jesus publicly disarmed and made a public spectacle of the pax Romana.”

The counternarrative who is Jesus cannot be simplified into an individualistic gospel, it must center the Gospels, it requires thinking about the world through the lens of Jesus and his kingdom, and it envisions the ethic of Jesus being embodied in his followers who live out that ethic in the public sector. It was the ethic of Bonhoeffer, whose primary political opponent was Christian nationalism under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.