The Fake & Fraudulent Prophets Around the President
September 4, 2026 |
Daniel Henderson
Repeat after me: Christian nationalism is not Christian.
Look, I hate to burst your bubble if you’re a fundamentalist (ok, no, I don’t). But I know I’m most likely giving talking points to those fighting Christian Nationalism.
Jesus undermines one of the most important foundational concepts of Christian Nationalism.
Jesus was not just respectful of, but was even validating of other religions and experiences of God. But Christian nationalists are not going to take your word for it. Let’s look at the stories.
The Samaritans are a really interesting group of people.
The Samaritans are a fascinating group. After the Assyrian conquest, some Jewish people were left behind. They intermarried with outsiders who didn’t worship the God of Israel. When that happened, the new population of the region mixed Yahweh worship with other religious traditions.
Eventually, their practice narrowed again to focus on the God of Israel, but they insisted that a different mountain—not Jerusalem—was the proper place to worship. They accepted only the first five books of the Bible as scripture, and a couple other differences.
Because of this, by the time of Jesus Samaritans were seen by mainstream Jews as not Jewish in heritage or religion. They weren’t just practicing a different religion; they were doing worse. They had corrupted the faith beyond recognition.
Yet Jesus centers Samaritans in two of his most powerful stories.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan, the one engaged in worship that corrupted the religion of the Jewish people, embodies God’s will. It is the Samaritan, not the many different Jews in the story, living in the way the Torah commands.
And then there’s the Samaritan woman at the well. She was a Samaritan AND a person who was living a life of sexual impurity according to the Jewish patriarchal system. Though he had lived with his disciples and done incredible miracles among the Jews, he had not chosen to tell them that he was the messiah. He chose this woman, of a different faith to do that.
But the big one for the Samaritans is the story of Jesus healing ten people with a skin disease. Jesus heals a group of people from leprosy. They go get validated by a priest to show they’re clean. Only one comes back to thank him—and it’s the Samaritan.
Then Jesus said to the Samaritan, “Your faith has made you well.”
He doesn’t say, “Convert first.” Jesus says, “Your faith…” your existing faith “has made you well.”
In Luke 7, we meet a Roman centurion. Remember, Romans were completely polytheistic and did not recognize the God of the Bible.
The Centurion comes asking Jesus to heal his slave. Jesus does and says to this pagan, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”
Wow.
Then there’s the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. The Canaanite designation might be the writer calling back to the Old Testament. If not, the people living in the region of Canaan were pagans worshiping Roman gods. Again, we’re talking about a completely different religion. She begs Jesus to heal her daughter. He initially rejects her.
But she persists.
And Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Again, no precondition of conversion. He validates her faith.
One of the most overlooked but profound stories is when Jesus takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi.
Jesus asks the discples, who people say Jesus is. They answer that Jesus is some sort of reincarnation of a famous religious person. Then he asks them who THEY say Jesus is. Crickets, then…
Peter responds: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus blesses Peter and then sells the rest to keep a lid on this.
Now here’s the thing: Caesarea Philippi was home to a temple to Pan, a place believed to be an entrance to the underworld. The worship practices there were seen as sinful by the Jews…like it was sex worship.
It was a place the disciples would have thought of as deeply unclean, a place that corrupted them by even being there. It was a place their mothers told them not to go.
But it was in that place that Jesus took them to reveal that he is the messiah. The place with that pagan temple was the site Jesus chose for one of the most holy moments of his ministry.
It’s not Jus Jesus. This is echoed in the early church. You see it in the general progression of opening this religion up to everyone, not just Jews. But there are even more dramatic moments.
Paul goes to the Areopagus—also called Mars Hill—and speaks to leading thinkers of the day, thinkers who are polytheistic. And as he tells them about this new faith movement, he quotes their own sacred stories to them.
Let me say that again: There are pagan religious texts in the New Testament.
If you believe the New Testament is the word of God, then that means some pagan religious texts are also the word of God.
Paul uses their own text to say, “Oh yeah, you already believe in this god.” He validates their experience of God.
It’s important to note: Jesus doesn’t go around proselytizing. Yes, that does happen in the early church.
But Jesus? He doesn’t walk around telling people their religion is wrong. He doesn’t say they’re going to hell.
He respects them. He validates their faith and their experience of God.
And that is what undermines Christian nationalism.
Because at the heart of Christian nationalism is this idea: There is one true faith. It holds the one true moral standard.
And it is the only way to experience God.
Except… Jesus disagrees.
If you’re following Jesus, you have to be respectful of other religions. You don’t have to believe they’re totally right. You can still believe your religion is the only one that has it all figured out.
But you must respect other faiths.
And you absolutely cannot try to take over a nation’s government with a religion based on Jesus. Because he never supported that.
