Texas is blue (for now).
When I sat down to write Offensive Christianity, I didn’t just have in mind my context in Boulder, Colorado. My most formative years were shaped in Texas, the first twenty-two years of my life in the Lone Star State. I was born there, a seventh-generation Texan. And I chose to leave, taking a risk whose cost I couldn’t count at the time, stepping out in faith to plant a church in Boulder, Colorado.
Yes, Boulder County, and Colorado generally, have inevitably shaped my understanding of theology and public witness, because I see how it plays out on the ground. But who I have in mind are those Texas Christians who have been running the inoffensive Christianity playbook for far too long.
What do I mean by inoffensive Christianity? It’s a Christianity that seeks to be nice above all else. It teaches men to be servant leaders and to keep their wives happy as a lodestar. It still keeps religion and politics out of polite conversation at holidays for the sake of keeping the peace. It trades clear cultural and political stances for pietistic slogans and sentimentality.
Many Christians have adopted this mindset not because it is natural to men but because it has been modeled to them from feckless, cucked pulpits by pastors who refuse to feed the sheep the Word and discipline those who stray. They don’t want to talk about politics, homosexuality, immigration, abortion, Muslims, Hindus, etc. They just want to stick to “God saves sinners” and not deal with the downstream implications of that reality. They keep saying “Jesus is neither left nor right” and think it’s insightful.
The results in Texas specifically are especially sad. Nationally, evangelical turnout was way down. Some of this is a rejection of current economic conditions, and some of it is demographic change. But it is the inoffensive Christianity playbook that is the biggest problem.
And in my mind, Texas is where that playbook has been run the longest and with the most confidence. For thirty years the state was red enough that nobody had to ask Christians or the church to do anything different. The surrounding culture did the work that the pastor didn’t have to. You could preach “God saves sinners” every Sunday, never name a single thing happening in Austin, and still send your people home to a district that voted the way you would have wanted. That arrangement is over, dead on arrival.
The family that hasn’t been taught the implications of the gospel and its application to their lives and the surrounding world will take their cues from somewhere. Most often, they take them from their lost neighbor. In the mind of evangelicals, the health of a local church is pinned to its ability to have a Christian’s neighbor come and feel welcome so that they can hear the gospel. Women are especially attuned to this reality because they sense social ostracization more acutely than men. And so churches have adopted an inoffensive Christianity in order to reach transgenders.
But about yesterday. The war in Iran was the end of Trump’s ascendancy. His coalition was never built on the neocon agenda, but the neocons ate it up. Trump’s administration was largely built against that foreign wars, and it did not survive embracing one. The neocon pundits and consultants will be crowing about how Republicans need to become softer and more conciliatory toward minorities and foreigners in order to take back the House and Senate. Do not let the next two years of Republican repentance confuse you. They will apologize for the parts of the last two years that were good. But something must be crystal clear in your mind: the Republicans are liberals at slow speed.
“Well,” you might say, “Chase, then how can you justify voting for the slow-speed liberals?”
Because they’re not the fast-speed commies. It’s that simple.
I hope you’re ready for an offensive Christianity, because that’s what is going to be necessary to stand strong in the face of Democratic hegemony. An offensive Christianity is not a mood. It is a church that says what the Bible says about the things the culture has ruled out of bounds, preaches it from the pulpit, and disciplines its members accordingly. It teaches men how to govern and lead. It is a church that expects to lose friends, make enemies, and keeps going. If your church has never lost anyone over the truth, it is probably inoffensive.
I’m not dooming, and you shouldn’t be either. Remember 2020, when we were isolated and alone, before you were added to those group chats with other like-minded men? Remember how the Democratic Party had our nation by the balls and Biden was elected? Remember how they pushed transgender madness on everyone, including children and Blue’s Clues? Remember how they told everyone to take an experimental shot and wanted those who refused to be put in camps? Remember when they burned down city blocks? I remember. And then we got a new regime. Four years. Nobody in 2020 saw it coming, and the people who told you to despair were wrong.
As Christians, we shouldn’t doom. We should get to work. You might need to do some self-reflection. Inoffensive Christians, I’ve been begging you to. But for all Christians, it is good to take stock and inventory of the situation we face. So take inventory. Does your pastor preach the whole counsel of God or just the parts that don’t offend the left? Does your church still practice discipline, has it every made enemies? Do you know the men in your church well enough to call them at 1 a.m.? Do you have guys that you can count on when things get tough? You’re going to need to dig in and build.
You will hear plenty of post mortems about this election. Some will suggest localism as the way through. Others will suggest a rejection of populism is the way forward. The neocons will suggest that we have to stop listening to the non-neocon conservatives. There will be plenty of takes. The takes will be endless. So many takes.
Log off, get some sun, work out, pray, read your Bible. And then get to work.