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The abomination hiding in plain sight: Christian nationalism and the Bible it claims to follow
Scripture warns against abominations across categories — but the ones most embraced by Christian nationalism may be the most serious of all.
By Morf Morford | FāVS News Reporter
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
We humans love a good cause — one we can throw ourselves into. And religion, across traditions and centuries, has fueled some of the most powerful movements the world has seen.
In the U.S. today, something like a revival is underway. But it raises a question worth sitting with: What, exactly, are we reviving?
The Bible — particularly the Hebrew Scriptures shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam — contains dozens of what it calls abominations. They fall into roughly three categories:
- Ritual abominations — unclean foods and improper worship
- Ethical abominations — dishonest business dealings and false weights
- Moral abominations — sexual sins and idolatry
Context matters enormously here. Leviticus addresses moral violations; Deuteronomy primarily covers dietary restrictions. Not all abominations are equal.
And yet many of the loudest voices in American religious life have fixated on the smaller ones — eating oysters, handling a pigskin football, wearing mixed fabrics, shaving one’s beard — while normalizing some of the gravest.
Writer A.J. Jacobs, who spent a year trying to live biblically, found the exercise illuminating precisely because of how selectively we all apply the rules. We all commit abominations daily. The question is which ones we choose to weaponize against others.
Christian nationalism, by any honest biblical accounting, has made some of the most serious abominations into a political identity — conquest, division, exploitation, ethnic cleansing, favoritism and institutional injustice. It has normalized self-righteousness, greed, arrogance and harassment in the name of God. And it has done so proudly.
The Christian New Testament offers a pointed warning about exactly this kind of idolatry. In Acts 12, a crowd cheers a ruler as a god: “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” The next verse is blunt about what followed.
Claiming not just God’s authority but God’s voice and persona is, by any faith standard, the ultimate abomination. Using Scripture to consolidate power, to murder, to exploit — no matter how grand the stated cause — belongs in the same category.
The Apostles’ Creed opens with “I believe” — from the Latin “credo,” meaning “I give my heart to.” The premise of any creed is that we pledge ourselves to something worthy of that gift.
Christian nationalism doesn’t give. It takes, plunders and excludes.
The biblical warnings about abominations exist for a reason: we should only give our hearts to something solid, real and worth believing in. By that standard, rage is not a spiritual gift. And burning it all down is not God’s work.
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Thank you for writing this! It needs to be said and said often – especially in light of the abomination that took place yesterday in the nation’s capitol.
Thank you for your note. You can see a longer version of this article on Substack – and you could subscribe for free! @Morf Morford" rel="nofollow ugc">https://substack.com/@Morf Morford
Since the beginning of time, church state union has been disastrous, almost exclusively for the religious.
Nebuchadnezzar’s statue required all to bow under the penalty of death.
Nero required Christians to just say “Nero is lord” and escape death.
Constantine was the first emperor to separate church and state giving all ecclesiastical power to the Bishop of Rome and keeping civil power for himself.
That somewhat worked until 538 when seven of the nations left over from the Roman breakup gave the Pontif complete authority to decide what was heresy and would punish whoever the Pope chose that did not agree with their dogma, most notably Arianism. This led to the Vandals, Heruli and Ostorgoths being eliminated from history. It was the church, that made the rules and the state that enforced the rules that gave us the inquisition.
That is what any church/state union will ultimately result in.
Many of those that want Biblical morality enforced by the state claim to be against a one world government and that will come with a one world religion (most likely controlled by Rome again), but that is what the infrastructure they are setting up will create. They have forgotten why most of the Protestants left Europe was because of persecution, not just from Rome but from other Protestant denominations too, many using the power of the state to enforce the state’s designated denomination’s dogma.
America was not exempt. John Adams, freshly graduating from Harvard, went out west (central Massachusetts) to start as a pastor intern. As he rode with his would-be mentor into town, a building was still smoldering. He asked what happened and was told it was a Methodist Church. “It was the third time they built and the third time we burned them out. I don’t think they will be back.” John soon changed his profession to lawyer.
God gives reasons to follow Him but will never force the will or the conscience. We must CHOOSE Him. To the rest, they are given the greatest gift a free person can have: freedom to choose. It does come with consequences and costs. We can have what we desire but are responsible for what we ask for. God’s hands are off our choices and the results of our choices are all ours. We, as parents, victims of crime, violence, war and injustice may complain, but God’s hands are off (and so should Christian’s hands be off). We get what we want.
So, there is no difference between the right or the left. They both want a world of peace where THEY get the government THEY want to enforce THEIR dogma, and God lets us have it.