Why inerrancy is a threat to democracy

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on October 21, 2024.

If 200,000 Democrats met at the National Mall three weeks before a presidential election, erected an altar and started smashing it while yelling about the GOP candidate getting thrown from a tower, trampled by horses, eaten by dogs and turned into dung, the demand for investigations would be strong.

But when conservative Christians did that very thing last week in protest of Kamala Harris, hardly anyone cared.

Despite the fact that Christian nationalists are three times as likely as other Americans to endorse violence against a political opponent, I imagine if many conservative Christians knew what happened at the “A Million Women” march in Washington, D.C., Oct. 13, they would say that’s going too far and would claim they’re a “different kind of Christian.”

Rick Pidcock

And maybe they are. But the vast majority of evangelicals in the United States promote the theologies this incitement of violence depends on. And while we often talk about theologies of justice, love, worship or community in our conversations about politics, it’s time we name an even more fundamental assumption at play here — the inerrancy of Scripture.

Inerrancy is a threat to our democracy

Biblical inerrancy is a threat to our democracy because it gives authoritarian Christians the perceived right to speak with the authority of God and to defend violence against women.

To make this case, we need to begin by considering a 2015 meeting between Donald Trump and religious leaders in the board room of Trump Tower during Trump’s initial run for the White House. According to the independent charismatic apostle Lance Wallnau, the conversations began by everyone stewing about their common enemy, the media, whom both Trump and the Christian leaders thought were persecuting them.

“I never punch indiscriminately,” Wallnau remembers Trump saying. “I’m a counter puncher. If you get hit and do nothing, it sends the wrong message.”

Another leader said, “It’s open season on Christians in particular.”

Participants in A Million Women smash s cultic altar built just for the event. (Screencap)

Then Trump falsely claimed New Yorkers couldn’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore.

“Every other ideological group in the country has a voice,” Trump told the group. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you guys have gotten soft.”

“That’s the line I won’t forget,” Wallnau explained on social media, looking back.

But Trump had more to say about the challenges facing conservative Christianity.

“People who identify themselves as ‘Christian’ make up probably the single largest constituency in the country but there is absolutely no unity, no punch in exercising that power. Not in political consensus or any other area I can see,” he said.

When the meeting ended and people began to leave, Wallnau took Trump aside and suggested: “The thing we need to do more than anything is to find a way of taking these 10,000 spokes and connect them into a hub of some sort so that there is a unified voice. Our people here need to work together.”

Notice what Trump and these leaders were looking for: a hub that creates a hardened, unified punch in exercising political power.

Donald Trump being prayed over by charismatic evangelistts at the International Church of Las Vegas in 2016. (Screencap from YouTube)

One ring to rule them all

In the opening scene of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the elf Galadriel narrates, “Nine rings were gifted to the race of men, who above all else, desire power.”

She continues, “For within these rings was bound the strength and will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made. In the land of Mordor, in the fires of Mount Doom, the dark lord Sauron forged in secret a master ring to control all others. And into this ring, he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life. One ring to rule them all.”

At the end of the battle against Sauron, Isildor swings his sword at Sauron, slicing off Sauron’s hand and causing the glowing, hot ring to fall to the earth. But before the glow fades, Isildor is able to transcribe a statement that was etched into the inside of the ring.

“In the language of Gollum, an inerrant Bible is authoritarian Christianity’s ‘Precious.’”

Later, when Gandalf appears before the elvish Council of Elrond, the sky grows dark and the elves become fearful as Gandalf reads the inscription, “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.”

In the language of Gollum, an inerrant Bible is authoritarian Christianity’s “Precious.”

Gollum with the ring in “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.” (IMDB)

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

Biblical inerrantists often point to the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” as a modern-day creed of sorts that all biblical Christians must sign on to. The statement originally was put together in a series of three documents in 1978, 1982 and 1986.

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