Opinion
“You know what happens if you don’t vote?” President Donald Trump asked the crowd gathered at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. “You go to hell!”
The Emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century made Christianity an instrument of Roman imperial cohesion, valued Christianity for its capacity to unite an empire under his authority. For many oppressed Christians, this use of Christianity to build empires still exists today, yet in a different form. Today, empire-building is deployed through the language of protecting what many call “Western civilization.” And it is an empire-building strategy that has brought many Christians together across the religious lines that once divided them—Roman Catholic, Protestant, and even “cultural Christians”—as a new ecumenical movement.
Scholars like Leonard A. Schuette call this political ideology “Western Civilizationism.” In this ideology, the primary unit of belonging is not the nation, the state, or the country, but a broader Western civilization: “the West is defined by a specific geographic territory, a shared ancestry, and Christianity.” For adherents of Western Civilizationism, Christianity is a crucial component for organizing a civilization’s culture and values. Any threat to their version of Christianity must be considered a threat to the West itself.
Annie Dillard, one of the greatest American writers, considered her own first book on writing a failure. At least, she called it “dull” and told an interviewer that she “never should have published it.”
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In a 2023 sermon, Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico called Christian nationalism “a cancer on our religion” and denounced Republicans for trying to transform America into a “Christian theocracy.”
Yet, at the same time, Talarico—a Presbyterian seminary student—has made his Christian faith a core message of his campaign. He mentions biblical teachings like “love thy neighbor” when discussing partisan division. He talks about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary as a model for consent and a justification for abortion rights.
To some, these positions may seem to be in tension. If you oppose Christian theocracy, how can you use Christian theology to justify your political positions in the public sphere? When Christian beliefs are presented as the moral arbiter of politics, isn’t that the definition of Christian nationalism?
Most people remember exactly where they were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I was in Nairobi, Kenya, a full day removed from the moment everyone else calls “that morning.”
This September is filled with calls to collectively remember. It was one year ago, on Sept. 10, that conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University. September 11, of course, marks 25 years since the attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
Amid these invitations to remember, I have wondered what it means, in this place and moment, to remember rightly. There is no doubt we remember these events. Yet, our memories differ. As the Catholic theologian Jean-Luc Marion writes, “Once things have happened, there remain only words.”
The late, great Wendell Berry found me at a unique time in my life: I was in the early stages of transitioning between genders.
Up until that point, part of me had always assumed that I wouldn’t connect with Berry’s writing because the people who recommended it to me were usually vaguely conservative men who wanted to live self-sufficient agrarian lifestyles. These people certainly had softer sensibilities than the more overtly militaristic conservatives I knew, but nonetheless, it sometimes felt that their idyllic worldviews and theologies didn’t have much room for people like me.
Churches are obsessed with doors. Churches bless these doors, paint them red, hold them open, photograph them, and put welcome signs on them. We tell the frightened person, the estranged child, the gay man, the addict, the doubter, the refugee, the person who has been made to feel impossible: Come in; there is a place for you here.
I believe in that sentence. But to the end of that greeting we should add: “and you can leave whenever you want.”
A synthetic chorus has taken root across so much of the online world that it is getting difficult to tell the difference between human voices and manufactured ones. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, the incentive to flood public spaces with manufactured consensus will only grow. In an age of astroturf-filled message boards, I would argue that the greater danger is the impulse to hunt for bots. Astroturfing is an activity performed by a person or a group in order to generate the surface texture of reasonable speech, but to do so in a way that overwhelms the ordinary human capacity to slow down and make appropriate judgments.
The result is a culture of interpretation that begins with triage, where we read less for meaning and more for signs of inauthenticity; where the first question is whether the voice in front of us is even a person. Hunting for bots trains us to view the world with an extra amount of suspicion; a suspicion that deepens our collective alienation. Jesus’ parable about the weeds among the wheat offers our culture an important lesson in how to press toward face-to-face interactions that will make neighborliness possible again.
On Jan. 24, 2025, U.S. Border Patrol stopped Samuel Tunick at the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta and demanded to search his phone. Tunick was part of the “Defend the Atlanta Forest” movement in Atlanta, opposed to the development of a police training center dubbed “Cop City.” He has been charged with a felony for giving a customs officer a duress passcode that deleted the contents of his phone when the officer entered it. Not only is the case chilling because of the aggressive nature of the prosecution, but also because the federal government wants to assume characteristics that are typically reserved for God.
The point of government surveillance is not merely to know everything, but to fundamentally change what we do.
In the fall of 2013, my family drove from the city of Boston to Greenville, S.C. We visited Charleston, S.C., where Confederate flags could still be seen at government buildings and all over Fort Sumter. As I walked through the city in the humid southern heat, I thought about the negative aspects of white culture in the South—racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I continued thinking about those things as we pulled into the school my parents chose for me: Bob Jones University. A little less than a mile away, at a Jack in the Box, I had stepped into the restroom to trade my shorts and tank top for a tan maxi dress and sweater, well aware my knees and shoulders would not be a tolerated sight at the ultra-fundamentalist university. Besides knowing about the dress code, I went in unprepared for the dynamic cultural shift I was about to experience.
I’ve noticed a new trend among evangelical Christians: They’ve been recording themselves as they preach on airplanes. In each video, the evangelist rises with the chime of the seatbelt sign to address the whole plane. “You know, San Diego is known for the beautiful landscapes, right? And the perfect weather?” says one woman named Whitney Lynn in a video she posted to TikTok. “But I want to tell you who is so perfect and so beautiful, better than anything in this life, is knowing Jesus Christ personally as Lord and Savior.” Smiling from ear to ear, the evangelist returns to their seat knowing that they stood up for the gospel and did their part for God’s kingdom.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. are living in uncertain times. On June 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with a plan to end Temporary Protected Status—a federal program that allows people to stay in the United States when the government considers their own country unsafe—for around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. Their work permits are scheduled to end July 24, leaving TPS holders at risk of deportation.
This uncertainty is not new. In 2010, President Barack Obama granted TPS to Haitians living in the U.S. after an earthquake killed approximately 200,000 people in Haiti. The original period was 18 months, but TPS has been renewed multiple times because of humanitarian concerns, gang violence, and political unrest.
“Professor Shannon, do you not believe in the devil?” I had a decision to make. Was I supposed to uphold my sacred pedagogical ideal of neutrality? Or should I give her honesty? “Isn’t it obvious?” I replied.
Some students seemed relieved. Perhaps my answer gave them permission to question beliefs they had inherited without ever examining them. Most, however, were disappointed—if not openly defiant. They retorted with Bible verses mentioning Satan, presenting them as airtight proof that the devil does exist. I left each class genuinely perplexed. Why does our culture so desperately want to hold on to the devil? Further, why do we seem to need devils at all?
Tap, tap, tap. I rap my knuckles against the glass pane.
A young man opens the sliding door, his shoulders fill the door frame as he raises his eyebrow at me. I was not invited to the party, and even worse, I had beef with some people present—the man with the furrowed brow included. The greeter turns his head to shout toward his friends, maybe to announce that an uninvited guest has appeared, or to call out for help. Who knows.
I came for one purpose. I grab the handle of the door and lean back for leverage, my weight shifting. I lunge forward and land a blow right on his unsuspecting chin. He falls back onto a table behind him, where it collapses from his weight. No introductions needed. I walk in.
I was 20-years old then. I am now 36.
This story from my past is one of many marked by regretful acts of violence, revelry, and a restless search for purpose.
Following credible accusations of rape and sexual assault, former Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner withdrew from the race. The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to choose a replacement.
Many people, including me, believed that Democrats should have figured out long ago that Platner was unfit for office. Yet Platner was buoyed through numerous scandals thanks to his claims that he had changed, and his insistence that his past words and actions did not define him. Platner was a veteran who discussed past struggles with PTSD and addiction. He catered to people’s love of a redemption arc.
And while he’s an atheist himself, Platner also leveraged America’s very Protestant belief that the internal experience of transformation or goodness is more important than what one has done, or even than what one is doing.
These days, it's rare for a political speech to capture my imagination. But a few months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke at the World Economic Forum declaring with moral clarity and candor that there’s been a “rupture in the global order” tied to a “brutal reality” where the strong can act without constraints and the weak must endure the consequences.
I remember the first time I heard the term “empire.” It was when I read anti-imperial literature written by revolutionaries who defended my home, the Philippines, from Western domination. I learned from their witness that empire is a structure of sin. I also learned from fellow Filipino Christians that if one calls themselves a “disciple of Jesus,” imperial power must be concretely challenged and resisted, as it does not cohere with the way of Jesus.
A shorthand for “imperial power” among social justice Christians is the term “empire.” When Christians use this term, we are not just describing a historical structure of domination, but we are comparing and contrasting the politics of empire with the kingdom of God (Matthew 5:3-12; 20:25-26).
My wife is a novelist, and she’ll tell you that the best surprise ending should feel initially shocking but inevitable in hindsight. That’s an apt descriptor of this horrible Graham Platner arc.