‘When the wicked are in power …’

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on December 23, 2025.

“Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world,” Fleming Rutledge says in Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.

In these final days of Advent, we are indeed living in dark times. And ironically, it has everything to do with our understanding of Christianity.

Rick Pidcock

“The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation,” Vice President JD Vance declared to the Christian nationalist Turning Point AmericaFest gathering. His statement was met with raucous cheers that lasted more than 30 seconds.

And of course, it’s total nonsense. But Vance didn’t stop there. He kept going.

“I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American,” he clarified while making fun of the media for possibly taking his comments out of context. “I’m saying something simpler and truer: Christianity is America’s creed.”

“Nowhere in the Constitution does it say this. He’s just making it up.”

Again, nowhere in the Constitution does it say this. He’s just making it up.

He continued, “The shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond. Across that history, our country’s major debates have always centered on how we could best as a people please God.”

Steve Bannon agreed. When he got his chance to address the authoritarians, he said, “We have to re-Christianize this country.”

So apparently, we’re a Christian nation with a theological creed that centers all our policy debates on how to please JD Vance and Steve Bannon’s god.

And who is this deity?

Over at the Pentagon, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was celebrating Vance and Bannon’s god at a Pentagon Christmas worship service with Christian worship leaders Matthew West and Anne Wilson, with the sermon being delivered by Franklin Graham. And while many Christians like to focus on messages of God’s love and God being with us, especially during Christmas, Graham had a different picture of God in mind.

“Did you know that God also hates?” Graham asked. “Do you know that God also is a God of war?”

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.