Yesterday both catwhite and I had entries on the Rev. Dr. John Lentz, who’s actively taking on the “Ohio Restoration Project” (see Cat’s entry here). Since then, I’ve traded a couple e-mails with Dr. Lentz, who strikes me as a thoughtful man rightfully concerned about what he sees happening to his right (my words, not his).

Here’s what he had to say this morning:

Two weeks ago I preached a sermon at the National Cathedral and used the Ohio Restoration Project as an example of a triumphalistic interpretation of Christian baptism which is wrong….. let alone dangerous, let alone horrifying to anyone who is not Christian (and many of us who are!) If you are at all interested check the Washington National Cathedral web page and go to Sermons. (Link here.)

The issue for me is not faith and politics; rather, it is a narrow interpretation of holiness mixed with nationalism.

Nevertheless, we must keep hope alive and maintain our humor – we shall overcome!

Lentz is dead-on in his National Cathedral sermon, saying:

It seems to me that the lines between the Kingdom of God and its baptism of self surrender, servant hood and reconciling love is being blurred in our country by a misguided vision of the American Kingdom and its baptism of self-righteous patriotism, materialism, and suspicion. We pray “Lord, lead us not into temptation” but we are being led into temptation, I believe, “like sheep being led to the slaughter” equating the great commission of Jesus Christ with an imperialistic dream of winning the world for some other kingdom. Winning the world for some Pax Americana at the expense of Pax Christi.

He goes on to observe that

When the church of Jesus Christ abdicates its mission to any nation, to any government—when we confuse the Christian story with any national story, when we superimpose a national agenda onto our Lord’s agenda—we are close, dangerously close, to losing our soul. We are succumbing to the devil’s temptation in the wilderness to bow down and worship him, so that “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” will be handed over.” (Luke 4:5)

Lentz’s sermon isn’t just worth reading, it ought to be mandatory reading in churches across the country. As I said in my e-mail to him yesterday, my biggest complaint over the last decade or so has been that the mainline Christian majority in this country has been so willing to sit back and let its fringe element hijack God.

Too many of our citizens today labor under a heavy cloud of confusion, unable to distinguish between loyalty to the nation and loyalty to the President, between the message of Jesus and the message of those who would use Jesus as a tool for political leverage, between church and state, between myth and journalism…. We could write volumes on why this is so, but if you’ve read my writing before you know that I tend to track it back to education. A society that emphasizes teaching and learning, that fosters critical thinking, that trusts the power of the unfettered intellect to arrive at productive, even brilliant solutions to complex problems, that society doesn’t develop the kinds of reactionary, simplistic pathologies that plague the US today. A nation that declares open war on education, though….

Of course, the Dominionists/Theonatists understand this perfectly, which is why they have used their control of the White House and both houses of Congress to launch the greatest offensive against education in the history of our nation.

I wish the Rev. Dr. Lentz and like-minded Christians across the country all the best in taking back their faith. I may not be a Christian myself, but you may count me among your allies….