I recently spent some time listening to Dustin Kensrue’s new album, Desert Dreaming. I like his music, and the new album is good. The first song I heard, though, reminded me of the rumors that he has walked away from orthodox Christianity:
When I left town, I was swept up With the visions of a man from Galilee Along the way, I lost my bearings I got swallowed up by sins of certainty
The heart of sedona
The words to this song triggered a desire to research the truth. Kensure was an impactful Christian musician who wrote the worship album of the year not to many years ago. I wondered, therefore, why he walked away (if indeed he did).
I learned that Kensrue was a former worship leader for Mars Hill, the failed church that rose to the heights of evangelical influence with many campuses, only to collapse with the failings of its erstwhile leader, Mark Driscoll.
Listening to the song, Heart of Sedona, off Kensrue’s new album, Desert Dreaming, gave me pause. The words seem to confirm the rumor, and the story seems all too familiar lately.
His music is as good as ever, but it comes with the melancholy of what used to be. Or maybe it never was. It’s hard to know how to process the deconstruction of someone else’s faith.
Given the back story (involvement in a failed church movement), I suspected his “deconstruction” (and many other artists who seem to have followed a similar path) may be symptomatic of some malady that has infected Evangelical Christianity.
My entre into Kensrue’s story begin with the article, It’s Not Enough: Dustin Kensrue’s Turning Away, which is where I learned that Kensrue was intimately involved in the toxic environment of the Mars Hill church movement led by Driscoll, a controversial and polarizing personality.
I had heard of the rise and fall of Mark Driscoll and the Mars Hill Church, but I did not jump on the curiosity bandwagon when people associated with Christianity Today produced the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I only heard about it, and I had listened to a discussion of the podcast on another podcast. Therefore, I finally felt a need to hear it firsthand to gain some perspective.
The podcast describes the talent and bravado of Mark Driscoll, who was also polarizing and toxic and seemingly proud of it. Driscoll was staunchly reformed in his theology with a cultish personality and a flair for the dramatic. He attracted people on the edges of faith in the notoriously countercultural Seattle area. I summarized some of my thoughts on what I learned in Keeping It Real for the Church: Talent in Tension with Character)
I have also gone back, now, through the tweets highlighted in the article I noted above, and I have poured over Dustin Kensrue’s Twitter (X) feed to gain further insight. These things give me additional food for thought in considering the “deconstruction” of Dustin Kensrue as it relates to the American Evangelical Church.
Though I have spent considerable time researching these things, my thoughts remain preliminary and exploratory. I am not certain that I have gained sufficient perspective to be clear or certain of any conclusions, but all this seems to confirm my sense that the story is symptomatic of a problem with the American Evangelical Church.
In fact, the original article I found, itself, seems to be symptomatic of issues in the American Evangelical Church. These issues may also be reflected in current American culture, affected as it is by social media. I apologize for the length of this article, but I am afraid I do not do much more than scratch the surface here.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? …. God will judge those outside….
1 corinthians 5:12,13
Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians while urging them to deal with sexual immorality in the church that was so bad it would not have been tolerated by pagans. (1 Corinthians 5:1)
I am reminded of these words that Paul wrote as I listen to Gospel Shoes by the folk/Americana group, Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) from Chapel Hill, NC. This isn’t a “Christian” song written by people who profess to be Christian, but it speaks with poignancy, clarity, and tenderness. This version is particularly well done:
Some set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose Drift about their good times, slivers in their boots Some walk the straight and narrow, only passing through Trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes
The opening stanza of the song contrasts the “pagans” of the world with the “Christians” (more or less). Andrew Marlin (the writer of the song) may put it another way. He might say that he is contrasting “normal”, average, typical people with “religious”, church-going people.
To be fair, the caricatures of religious people do not accurately describe most of the people in my church (or in any church I have gone to, for the most part). BUT, those caricatures do have some elements of truth to them about some people, or some segment of people, who are religious in our society.
Those who “set their heads to swimming, nothing to lose”, are living this life for all it can give them because they believe this life is all there is. They “drift about their good times” because they have no particular aim, meaning, or purpose. They are looking for whatever fun and pleasure they can get, though they accumulate “slivers in their boots”.
Those who “walk the straight and narrow, only passing through”, are the religious people, of course. They are people who profess to believe in a better life after death, “trading this world over for a pair of gospel shoes”.
The term, “gospel shoes”, finds some resonance in Isaiah:
“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”
Isaiah 52:7
The word, “gospel”, of course means “good news”. The feet are beautiful of those who say “God reigns!” because it is news of peace, good tidings, and salvation. Or so it should be. Paul says, our feet should be “fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”
Ironic, isn’t it? That Paul in talking about the “armor of God” includes “shoes” made of the “gospel of peace”. (Ephesians 6:15) It’s no wonder that we send mixed messages out into the world. But, that isn’t the “fault” of scripture; it’s our misunderstanding of it and of the upside down nature of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached.
The armor of God does not protect us against people (flesh and blood) but against dark spiritual forces. (Eph. 6:12) We are not intended to use the armor of God as a weapon against people.
Of course, some people often don’t want to hear about God. They don’t want to do be accountable, so the news of God is not “good” to them. The people who set their heads to swimming, who think they have nothing to lose and drift about the good times, however, are bound to gather slivers in their boots.
Drifting through life doing “whatever feels good” inevitably results in hardship and heartache. These are people, however, for whom God emptied Himself to become human in Jesus and for whom Jesus gave up his life, dying on a cross. He didn’t come to condemn them; he came to save them. (John 3:16-17)
Those slivers in their boots are problems that will fester and get worse. People often do not wake up to the folly of our youth until we have accumulated more hardship, difficulty, and pain than we can handle. And sometimes, those slivers cause problems that linger for a lifetime.
God who loves “those people” so much that He gave His son for them. He loves them no less than any religious person in the world, no matter how devout. Thus, God desires to reach them with His Gospel, the good news that there is a way for them to avoid the pain of their own doing and judgment that inevitably follows this life and enter into relationship with the God who created them and loves them.
As I recall Paul’s words to the Corinthians, I am struck that we often seem to have gotten things backwards. Instead of loving the world and seeking to reach them with the good news, we condemn the world and preach judgment.
I have been listening to the podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. I didn’t listen to it when it came out and was popular. I tend to eschew popular things. This might be wisdom. It might be pride, or it might just be the way I am wired.
That instinct or intuition or character trait, whatever it is, has been good for me in many ways. I resist going along with the crowd, and I have learned not to trust crowds and crowd mentality. That mentality may have been instrumental in my coming to faith and becoming a follower of Jesus.
Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, NASB) When I read that, I was (perhaps) predisposed to be drawn to that sentiment.
Perhaps, I was that way because of some noble intuition. Perhaps, I was that way because I felt like an outsider. It’s hard to be sure (really) of our own motivations. I think the prophet, Jeremiah, was right when he said that human hearts are deceitful. Who among us can really (truly) know our own hearts completely?
Pride has a way of making our own weaknesses look like strengths. Pride tempts us to embrace our character flaws and to lead with them. Pride can even clothe itself in a form of humility and nobility.
The truth is often a very mixed bag. My inclination to buck what is popular and trendy and to seek “the narrower” way may have helped me in being willing to embrace Jesus and become a follower, but it has also lead me down some rocky and rough terrain that was, frankly, dangerous.
For one thing, I almost didn’t return to college for my senior year because of a “cultish” denomination that believed their theology was right, and everyone else was wrong. I was afraid that going back to college might be walking away from God because I was predisposed to believe in the narrow path. (And their path was very narrow!)
Another example has had much more long lasting effects on my life and sent me on a trajectory that continues today. I shared recently some of my story in, Keeping it Real on the Path to Wherever I am Going. My predisposition to avoid the beaten path influenced me to take an alternative route to ministry, which is all I wanted to do after I got “saved” in college. In that piece I wrote:
“I didn’t trust my college advisors because they didn’t believe the Bible like I did. I should have gone to seminary, but I didn’t because the apostles who stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached powerfully and eloquently in various tongues to the crowds in Jerusalem were unlearned men. I wanted to be like them.”
Keeping it Real on the path to wherever I am going
That path to ministry never worked out for me, and maybe it’s a good thing it didn’t! The audacity to think that I could perform in ministry like the apostles without sitting at the feet of Jesus in the flesh for three years would not have been a good foundation for shepherding his flock.
The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill is an object lesson in where my kind of disposition can lead. I am not saying that it must (necessarily) lead to the kind of crash and burn that occurred with the Mars Hill church movement, but the danger is certainly great.
I have listened to all of the primary episodes of that podcast, and I am listening now to the bonus episodes. I am finishing the one that features Tim Keller. The more I listen to him and read what he has written, the more I appreciate his depth of understanding and wisdom.
(You can listen at the link below if you are so inclined. In fact, if you don’t have enough time, energy or inclination to go much further here, I suggest you stop and listen rather than read on. But, I will continue anyway.)
People are talking about Christian nationalism everywhere. The term, Christian nationalism, is often used and often invoked, but I don’t see it often defined. It can mean different things to different people. The phrase has increasingly become a pejorative label, though some people wear the pejorative label proudly now like a badge of honor.
My concern about “Christian nationalism” grows out of my own Christian experience. I admit that my experience is primarily anecdotal, but I find in Scripture adequate cause for that concern, and Scripture shines light on my experience and on any form of Christian nationalism, as I will explain.
I am chiefly concerned about the Church’s faithful witness and faithful adherence to following Christ. I am concerned that the world often confuses Christianity with particular political expressions, and I am concerned that Christians often do exactly the same thing.
The very fact that “Christian” nationalism has become a pejorative label suggests my concerns have some warrant. And not just me; I see a rising tide of concerned followers of Christ wrestling with the issue.
Jesus was clear to his detractors, and to his followers, that people should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. (Mark 12:17) I don’t see Jesus confusing or conflating what is Caesar’s and what is God’s, but the idea of Christian nationalism does both.
The very term, Christian nationalism, blurs the lines between what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. It suggests a conflation of biblical and political principles. It creates confusion that results in (or from) not knowing where politics end and Christianity begins.
I have the same issue with the way people use the term, evangelical. Originally, the term had a purely religious and theological meaning. Today, media and political pundits ascribe a political meaning to it. For the majority of people today (perhaps), the meaning conflates political and religious ideas into a confused mess that can mean very different things for different people.
As for a definition of Christian nationalism, I “asked” Bing’s Copilot for help. The resulting definition is my starting place for the rest of my thoughts today (not that I think it is a particularly good definition):
“Christian nationalism is an ideology that seeks to fuse Christian religion with a nation’s character.”
I would agree that Christian nationalism is an ideology, but ideologies do not seek. (People do.) (So much for the power of AI.) It seems more accurate to say that Christian nationalism is an expression of Christianity and of nationalism that fuses the two ideologies together. Whether people seek to fuse them, or simply do fuse them, together may be splitting hairs.
Having become a Christian in college in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I can attest to the organic nature in which patriotism fused with my own newfound beliefs in the milieu of the post-Jesus Movement. I didn’t seek or set out to fuse them together. They just became entangled.
Before I became a Christian, I grew up pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, as did all public-school students in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The Fourth of July rivaled only Christmas on my list of favorite holidays. Parades and flags and fireworks were the traditional rituals of the observance of nationalism and those rituals continue today.
Columbus Day served as reminder of our good fortune that God-fearing explorers with perpetual good will braved stormy seas and the specter of a flat earth to discover our fair land. Thanksgiving was encouraged as reminder that God ordained these things and established our manifest destiny in His good graces.
The groundwork for nationalism was laid in my life long before I became a Christian. I am a Boomer who was educated in an atmosphere of post-war optimism, but I am also a late Boomer. I was born on the cusp of the tumultuous 1960’s.
I witnessed the backlash against that post-war patriotism on the nightly news. The protests and protest songs, the burning of American flags, the “sit ins” and “love ins”, and increasing counter cultural attitudes pushed back against that patriotism institutionalized in the 1950’s and ingrained in my educational experience in the 60’s.
Many people in the American Church resisted the rising tide of rebellion against conventional norms, both in the Church and outside the Church. Many people clung reflexively to patriotism and national pride in reaction to the countercultural protest and unrest.
If traditional churchgoers were like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son in that time, the protesters were like the (younger) prodigal son. Our focus may be drawn to the excesses of the younger son, but we realize in the back of our minds that the older son is prodigal too.
My own story links up with the Jesus People Movement. The Jesus People were countercultural prodigals who found Jesus. They repented, turned from their rebellious ways, and embraced the Ancient of Days, God who became incarnate and died for the sins of the world.
I became a believer in 1980, and I joined a church with roots in the Jesus People Movement in 1982. The “radicals” who got saved in the early days of the church had long turned from their rebellious ways, when I joined them, and they had settled into a cultural conservatism that belied their former years.
Sometimes, we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes, in rescuing the baby, we take some bathwater in. Their newfound cultural conservatism was turning political and patriotic when I arrived. It was a patriotism not simply informed by secular pledges of allegiance; it was a patriotism that was infused with biblical blessing and mandate.
I spent six years in that church formed by hippies who migrated to the northeast in the late 60’s and early 70’s and found Jesus on their way.
These people had turned from flower power to a higher power, from the Rolling Stones to Randy Stonehill, and from sticking it to the man to worshiping the God who became man in Jesus and died for us.
When I joined this church, the original members had already closed their candle shops to become landlords and insurance salesmen. They no longer lived in communes where they shared resources in common. They were no longer long-haired hippie freaks. They had stable families and businesses and owned their own houses.
With their conversion, they repented of their sins, and they rejected their former radicalism. In rejecting their former radicalism, they embraced a newfound conservatism that included a renewed sense of patriotism.
While I was living with them, I saw the influence of the Moral Majority take hold. The post-war patriotism of the Baby Boomer generation turned religious when hippies converted, rejected their former radicalism and were welcomed into the church by older prodigals who championed the Moral Majority.
I also saw portents of a darker future. On the edges of that idyllic, “New Testament church” with communal roots from a more radical past lurked associates of the John Birch Society and sundry other political influences.
My church embraced politics as an expression of working out God’s purposes in our local community and to the ends of the earth. But the path to the kingdom of God is always a narrow one. We don’t have to wander far from it to find ourselves invoking God to work out our own purposes in our local community and to the ends of the earth.
Christian nationalism involves a blurring of the lines between God’s purposes and our own purposes. Christian nationalism is a form of syncretism – the blending of Christian belief into a new system, or the incorporation of other beliefs into the expression of our Christian beliefs.
In a recent podcast conversation I listened to Skye Jethani speaking with Brian Zahnd who mentioned his disillusionment with American Christianity at one point in his pastoral career. (Beginning at about 54 minutes into the podcast) Zahnd shared that he came to a place where he thought, “Jesus deserves a better Christianity than what I have experienced.”
What Zahnd may have been talking about is the kind of consumeristic Christianity that grew alongside the Charismatic renewal as the turbulent 1960’s gave rise to the Jesus People Movement and leveled out into a new style of conservatism and the allure of the Prosperity Gospel. that was his world, and it was partly my world as well.
I can relate to Zahnd. Though I grew up Catholic, I became a Christian in college and plugged into that environment – a more or less loosely associated connection of independent, charismatic churches in the 1980’s that had grown out of the Jesus People Movement. That religious culture was variously impacted by PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, the Christian Broadcasting Network with Pat Robertson who ran for President, and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which became a political rallying cry.
And then I went to law school.
Influences during my time of “growing up in the faith” in my twenties included the prosperity gospel and right-wing political groups ostensibly intending to bring our country back to its “Christian roots”. These influences focused on gaining prosperity for ourselves and regaining power and control that we perceived we were losing in our society.
Brian Zanhd described a period of time in his life in which he began trying to “untangle American Christianity from Americanism”. I was forced into that same position by law school and what I learned about our founding fathers.
Today, someone might call what I experienced “deconstruction”. I began to see things from other perspectives. I began to see that separation of church and state was a mechanism that people hoped would protect the church from the state, as much as anyone hoped it might protect the state from the church. I began to see a disconnect between the things Jesus said and the ways we twist them to suit our own ends.
In more recent years, I have come to see that “empire” isn’t the way of Jesus. Empire is the way of the world. Jesus said his kingdom isn’t of this world! Jesus preached an upside down kingdom that many Christians warp into a religious version of an earthly kingdom.
Jesus rejected the temptation of empire in the wilderness. When the devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor (Matt. 4:8-9), Jesus responded this way:
“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
Matthew 4:10
The podcast focused on “Americanism”, understandably, because that is the cultural milieu in which we live in the United Stated of America. Americanism, however, is indicative of tendencies that are common to all human beings. These are the tendencies Satan tried to capitalize on when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness with the promise of power, influence and privilege.
These human tendencies are antithetical to everything Jesus taught:
Consider others better than yourselves;
Love your neighbor;
Love your enemy;
The parable of the Good Samaritan;
The greatest among you will be servant of all; and
Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.
(God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.)
We naturally are attracted to what is familiar. We naturally advance our own interests. We naturally protect ourselves and our own kind. We naturally see ourselves as the good guys. We assume the best about ourselves. We identify with our own people, and we have a hard time protecting others from ourselves because we don’t see the need to protect them from us.
People were no different in the 1st century. Jesus was well aware of this human tendency, and he addressed it head on with his first followers.
The first time we see him doing that is right after the temptation in the wilderness in which the authority and splendor of all the kingdoms of the world were offered to him. The next thing Jesus did after leaving the wilderness was to walk into his hometown synagogue, pick up the Isaiah scroll, and read from it:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luke 4:18-19
When he finished, he sat down, and he said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”. (Luke 4:20)
At first, the townspeople spoke well of him. They were even amazed at his words. Their amazement began to wane when someone remarked, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22) Then, Jesus dropped a bomb on them:
“Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
Luke 4:23
They did not even have time to process what Jesus just said when he added, “Truly I tell you … no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” They still didn’t understand, but they they were about to become really agitated.
With the next words Jesus spoke, Jesus picked a fight when no one was (yet) in a fighting mood, but he knew what was in their hearts. It is the same thing that is in our hearts, if we are not careful to root it out. I think you will see what I am getting at if you read on.
Navigating by Faith 