‘That ain’t Jesus’

Union Presbyterian Seminary professor denounces white ‘anti-Christian’ nationalism

by Darla Carter | Presbyterian News Service

The Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler Jr. preaches Sunday during the Young Adult Advocacy Conference. (Photo by Darla Carter)

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — The Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler Jr. doesn’t want to see America return to the 1950s when inequality, lack of opportunity and limited voter protections were the norm for non-whites, and so he’s sounding the alarm about Christian nationalism, which he maintains isn’t really Christian at all.

“How can you call something Christian when it stands against everything that Jesus said?” asked Sadler, Associate Professor of Bible and Director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary. In Matthew 12:33, “Jesus said that you should judge a tree by its fruit. Well, the fruit of this movement is the opposite of what Jesus says, so technically, it is not Christian nationalism. It really is anti-Christian nationalism.”

Sadler preached Sunday at the “Jesus and Justice” Young Adult Advocacy Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina hosted by the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations. The regional conference was designed to expand the ways young people do advocacy and to show how important advocacy is to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Throughout the event, participants from as far away as Iowa attended workshops on a variety of justice topics, listened to panel discussions and heard from various regional speakers and church leaders, such as the Rev. Tony Larson, co-moderator of the 226^th General Assembly; the Rev. Dr. Amantha Barbee, ministry engagement adviser; and the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, PC(USA) advocacy director, who said, “Systems need challenging.”

During worship, Sadler explained why he was taking on the topic of Christian nationalism, which has been associated with the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building and intolerant views, often held by Evangelical Christians.

“As a preacher, I may not be able to tell you what is politically prudent, but I can help you to evaluate what is morally right,” he explained. “I want to make it clear that I’m not here today to talk about partisan politics. I’m here to defend the authentic Jesus.”

He identified the authentic Jesus as “the Jesus of love, the Jesus of righteousness, the Jesus of freedom, the Jesus of justice, the Jesus of equality, the Jesus of salvation for all.”

Definitions of Christian nationalism vary, but Sadler described it as a belief that the United States “is a Christian nation, that there should be no separation of church and state, and that the values of white, upper-middle-class America are really what Jesus would stand for instead of a theology derived from scripture.” In other words, “it is a theology that perverts scripture to achieve political (usually white) power.”

Though the topic, which Sadler also calls white anti-Christian nationalism, has garnered much attention lately, he contends that it’s just a new spin on old thinking: “Since the beginning of this nation, people have turned to scripture to elevate ‘white people’ by denigrating Indigenous, Black, Asian, Latinx, non-Christian people, all to secure political power for the whitest and the wealthiest among us.”

Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler Jr. leads a workshop during the Young Adult Advocacy Conference. (Photo by Alex Simon)

He also lamented that Christian nationalists frame abortion and issues like gay marriage as morality topics, though in the Gospels, Jesus “never once mentions these concerns.”

Moving into national and international issues, such as immigration, anti-poverty initiatives and the environment, Sadler cautioned:

“If the Jesus they follow tells you to hate aliens and to incarcerate them on our borders and to deny them citizenship and to shoot them down when they cross into our nation, then that ain’t Jesus. If the Jesus they preach denigrates the poor, blames them for their poverty, imagines the poor to be lesser than they are, calls them leeches on our society, taking money from our pockets, and deems the poor unworthy of support, then that ain’t Jesus.”

He went on to say, “If the Jesus they proclaim supports polluting the planet,” and “if the Jesus that they worship ignores the homeless who are sleeping on the streets, the educational system that is increasingly segregated and failing Black and brown children, the criminal justice system that has a clear bias against Black and brown bodies and foreign wars in Gaza and the Sudan that are seeking to eliminate entire peoples who only want to live in peace in their own land, then that ain’t Jesus.”

The audience of students, PC(USA) staff and other visitors affirmed his message throughout with “Yes!” “My, my, my” and other exclamations. He left them with a charge: “When you go home, you preach about who Jesus really is, so your people will always know when someone is trying to sell them something that really ain’t Jesus.”

Read additional coverage of the conference here and here.

The Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations are among the  Compassion, Peace and Justice ministries of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.