In my mind up until the year 2020, radicalization has always been associated with foreign terrorist groups.  Radicalization was the process of people in some far off part of the globe being manipulated into believing lies about the peaceful western world and then being told the only way to combat those lies was with violence. “Extremist” was the name given to strict adherents of Islam, while the much softer label of “Fundamentalist” evolved over time from its original definition of literal interpretation of scripture to include extreme individuals within the Christian faith.  The recent use of the term “Christian Nationalist” has been helpful to categorize the current fusion of faith and politics but still fails to separate those with far right political views from those who are willing to use violence.

Through Elizabeth Neumann’s book Kingdom of Rage and her subsequent talk to our cohort I was struck by just how much I have underestimated the violence and aggression endorsed by the Christian Nationalist movement, and how many have been radicalized into full on Christian Extremism.  I suppose I should not be surprised to hear this.  After all, the propagation of racist, xenophobic, and hateful ideologies that I thought were buried in the past or held by a fringe minority are now being championed at the highest levels of the political sphere.  Where I fell short was in recognizing, through radicalization, how those ideologies turned into acts of real violence.  While I wasn’t looking (or perhaps refusing to) my humble Savior has been recast in the image of the dominant warrior that the zealots of ancient Israel longed for.  

It is no secret that the entanglement of Christianity and our American political system runs deep, affecting methods of prayer, practice, and theology.  For many years I have cast judgement on those who proudly wore this unholy fusion of the flag and the cross.  It wasn’t until this cohort that I began to search inward and pull apart those tangled knots of hypocrisy within my own spirituality.  As I search my heart I feel drawn to press into the areas where this fusion still exists, asking Jesus to transform the parts of myself that resemble the politicians I admonish.  

Lord, let my desire for power melt into meekness, my unjust anger dissolve into mercy, and my speed to aggression soften into the pursuit of peace.  

Through this reflection I have come to believe that I will not be able to fully engage with the messy overlap of church and state within my neighbor until I pry the two apart within myself.