With this in mind, it’s hard to believe the numbers are exaggerated. In fact, the situation could be much more dire.
The question Evangelicals must answer is this, “Can Christians continue to support Israel’s wholesale slaughter of civilians without losing their soul?” The question should be answered with all haste because a genocide is taking place right before our evangelical eyes. Evangelicals need to come to terms with the reality that the modern nation state of Israel in not biblical Israel. Zionist Israel is a secular political entity unrelated to biblical Judaism.

The October 7 attack on Israel was brutal, barbaric, and criminal. On that tragic day, world opinion was squarely behind Israel. That Israel had the right to defend itself after Hamas’s appalling attack was scarcely challenged by anyone. However, it has become increasingly difficult to characterize Israel’s actions since October 7 as self-defense. Over 13,300 civilians have been killed. And alarmingly, 5,600 of those fatalities are children, 3,550 are women, with another 6,000 people listed as missing.
Some Christians want to argue that you can’t trust these figures since they come from the Hamas Ministry of Health. However, by Israel’s own admission they’ve dropped almost 30,000 tons of bombs on Gaza which is one of the most densely populated urban areas on earth.  That’s equivalent to two atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Dr Ahmed Sabra, A British cardiologist stuck in Gaza right now while waiting to exit via the Rafah border crossing said in an interview with The Gaurdian, “How can anyone be so heartless as to say the number dead is not accurate. I think the number is understated.” Dr. Sabra, is not alone in his assessment. Many humanitarian workers are making the same claim.
With this in mind, it’s hard to believe the numbers are exaggerated. In fact, the situation could be much more dire.
The question Evangelicals must answer is this, “Can Christians continue to support Israel’s wholesale slaughter of civilians without losing their soul?” The question should be answered with all haste because a genocide is taking place right before our evangelical eyes.
Evangelicals need to come to terms with the reality that the modern nation state of Israel in not biblical Israel. Zionist Israel is a secular political entity unrelated to biblical Judaism.
Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, was a 19th century Jew of Eastern European descent who was fully entrenched in the rationalistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.  While political Zionists often cloak their nationalistic ideas in religious and biblical language, their own writings demonstrate that they were uninterested in the religious aspects of Judaism. Herzl, along with the other early Zionists who helped to found the nation of Israel, were wholly committed to political Zionism over against Judaism.
As James Gelvin observes, in the minds of the Zionists, one of the greatest achievements of the Enlightenment was that it freed Judaism from the grip of rabbinic dominance. So, Zionism was not primarily a form of religious nationalism. Rather, it was part and parcel of the secular nationalistic fervor that was sweeping across the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Those who think of Zionism as primarily a religious movement in which the Jews believed it was their right and duty to return to their biblical lands are misinformed. In actuality, the early Zionists considered many places in addition to Palestine to form their new homeland including: Argentina, Uganda, and the Mid-Western United States.
Palestine, was not chosen because the Zionists believed that Jews had a biblical right to resettle the land. Rather, it was chosen because the Jewish history in the land would make it easier to recruit other Jews to the Zionist cause. Recruitment was the most formidable challenge that early Zionists had to confront. And that challenge was substantial.
The Ashkenazi (European) Jews had to resort to deception and violence to convince the Sephardi Jews from Spain and Portugal, and Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa to immigrate to Palestine. They used bribery, forgery of documents, and even terrorism to accomplish their ends.
Most of these Jews actually desired to stay in their own countries rather than immigrate to Palestine. However, the Zionists put tremendous political pressure on them to immigrate even using the Israeli Underground to destabilize their communities, and create a climate of fear in their own countries. The Zionists did this knowing that many of these Jews would ultimately lose all their wealth, and all of their assets once they immigrated.
These tactics were deemed necessary by the Zionists so they could establish a critical population mass in Palestine in order for the project to succeed. However, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews were severely discriminated against by the supremacist European Ashkenazi Jews. Even to this day Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are treated as second and third class citizens in Israel. As a result, they are also more likely to identify and sympathize with the Palestinian people.
It should be obvious that, on the whole, most Jews at that time were not at all persuaded of the necessity of a Jewish state, and many ardently opposed the Zionist project.
In fact, in the early days of Zionism, a group of Rabbis in Munich rejected the idea of a Jewish state altogether on biblical and religious grounds stating that, “The efforts of the so-called Zionists to create a Jewish National State in Palestine are antagonistic to the messianic promises of Judaism as contained in Holy Writ and in later religious sources. Judaism obliges its followers to serve the country to which they belong with the utmost devotion, and to further its interest with their whole heart and all their strength.” Similar statements were made by many Orthodox Jews from all around the world. Indeed, this was the sentiment, not only of Orthodox Jews, but of most Jews at that time.
While not widely reported, Orthodox or Torah Jews still oppose Zionism and call for the peaceful dismantling of the state of Israel. So, it’s important to realize that Zionism, as originally conceived, and as currently practiced, is not primarily a religious project, but a secular nationalistic program. Moreover, it is a militant project.
During the 1930s and 1940s Zionists had three “Hamas-type” terrorists groups: the Haganah group, Irun, and the Lehi group (also known as the Stern gang). These groups committed serial acts of terrorism against the British occupiers, and the indigenous Arab population. They razed villages, bombed markets, hotels, and government buildings killing innocent civilians.
Immediately after receiving its legitimacy from the United Nations in 1947, and after declaring its independence in 1948, Zionist Israel forcibly removed 750,000 indigenous people from their homes and lands. This event is called the Nakba or catastrophe in Arabic.
Forget, for a moment, whether these people are Palestinians or Arabs. We don’t have to go back to biblical times to judge who originally dwelt in this land to determine who has a legitimate right to it by way of inheritance. The people that lived there prior to 1948 were the legal residents of the land under both the Ottoman Empire, and British Mandate Palestine, and they had been the legal residents of that land for multiple generations.
With this in mind, you don’t have to be a biblical or legal scholar to understand that a great injustice occurred in 1948 against the people of Palestine. This process was again repeated in 1967 when 350,000 people were forcibly removed from their homes and land. It seems that nearly every decade since 1948 has had its own Nakba for the Palestinian people, and today 2.5 million Palestinians are confined in an open air prison called the Gaza Strip. Only now, Israel is turning Gaza into a “death camp.”
It’s easy, if not lazy, to accept the official Israeli narrative which says that because Hamas has governed Gaza since 2005 then all Palestinians are responsible for the events on October 7. But upon further inspection, this line of reasoning simply doesn’t add up.
Hamas does not control the ports, the airspace, the fishing rights off the coast, the imports and exports, permitting, small business applications, the influx of food and potable water, the utilities, the boarders, or the checkpoints in Gaza. Israel controls all of these things. Indeed, Israel even controls the collection of rain water in many rural Palestinian territories. So, Hamas cannot be said to govern Gaza in any meaningful way? Gaza, and the Westbank for that matter, are in reality governed by Israel.
Moreover, the civilians in these territories are not only governed by Israel, they are being destroyed by Israel, and Evangelicals in America should be mindful that Christians are dying in Palestine, too.
So, to paraphrase Jesus, “For what shall it profit Evangelicals, if they shall gain the whole of Israel, and lose their own souls?
Jim Fitzgerald is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa. His articles have appeared in American Greatness, American Thinker, Antiwar.com, and The Aquila Report.

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The way that the US undermined Chiang during the Chinese Civil War 1946-1949, and the way it cast aside Taiwan at the United Nations in 1971, is reason enough for Taiwan to be extremely cautious in dealing with the US at present. Beyond rhetoric, and sending defensive arms, the US will likely not fight very hard in Taiwan’s defense going forward no matter what happens regarding Speaker Pelosi’s visit.
Taiwan should not be naïve about the purpose of House Speaker Pelosi’s visit. Not just because China has called the action a red line, and threatened retaliatory action, but because her visit will likely benefit China more than it benefits Taiwan. There is a historical precedent for believing this is true.
The first precedent has to do with the actions of the United States during the Chinese Civil War. Right at the time when it looked as if the US backed troops led by Chiang Kai-shek would defeat the communist leader Mao Zedong, President Harry Truman sent George C. Marshall to China to negotiate a cease fire, and form a coalition government. In short, Marshall’s plan failed miserably. Marshall gave up and went home, and US support began to dwindle little by little.
The 13 month cease fire engineered by Marshall gave Mao time to regroup, reengage Chiang’s Nationalist Army, and gain the upper hand in the conflict. Chiang was forced to retreat toward the East China Sea, and ultimately Chiang, his troops, and his government fled to an island known then as Formosa. Today, we know it as Taiwan.
Chiang subsequently built the tiny island nation into an economic powerhouse that was based on the virtues of Confucianism and the principles of biblical Christianity. It’s worth noting in passing, that Chiang and his wife Soong Mei-Ling, were both confessing Christians, and beloved by missionaries, Christians, and statesmen from all around the world. Yet, in the end Chiang was undermined by US foreign policy.
This brings us to the second historical precedent which should make Taiwan suspicious of Speaker Pelosi’s visit. From the late 1960’s to 1971 the US developed a policy of Rapprochement with Communist China at the direction of President Richard Nixon. Nixon was to visit China in 1972. However, in 1971 he dispatched Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to China to discuss normalizing diplomatic relations between the two countries.
At the same time, the US proposed to the United Nations that they seat delegations from both Communist China and Taiwan. Conversely, the UN responded with resolution 2758 which stated that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was the only legitimate government of China. The resolution also stipulated that Taiwan be replaced by the PRC as a permanent member of the Security Council. Taiwan, and the government of Chiang Kai-shek, were summarily expelled from the United Nations and all other organizations related to it.
Keep in mind, while the US proposed keeping both delegations at the UN, and voted “No” on Resolution 2758, it failed to put up much of a fight when the UN expelled Taiwan. Hence, the US has officially supported the  “One China” policy ever since even while offering rhetoric to the contrary.
These two lessons from history should give the government in Taiwan pause as it prepares to receive Speaker Pelosi. The way that the US undermined Chiang during the Chinese Civil War 1946-1949, and the way it cast aside Taiwan at the United Nations in 1971, is reason enough for Taiwan to be extremely cautious in dealing with the US at present. Beyond rhetoric, and sending defensive arms, the US will likely not fight very hard in Taiwan’s defense going forward no matter what happens regarding Speaker Pelosi’s visit. Taiwan, like Ukraine, is caught in the middle of a struggle between two great power countries. It can only win by staying neutral.
There is another, howbeit, unrelated reason Taiwan should be distrustful of the Speaker Pelosi’s visit. In 2019 Taiwan earned the dubious distinction of being the first and only Asia-Pacific country to legalize same-sex marriage, and guarantee LGBTQ rights, including the right for individuals to decide their own gender. Taiwan boasts of the largest Pride parades in the region with over 200 thousand attending in 2021. The country has an extremely large LGBTQ lobby. It is certainly not beneath Speaker Pelosi to exploit this issue and encourage Taiwan to adopt even more of LGBTQ agenda. In Pelosi’s view, this is what it means to be a Western style democracy.
The Church at large should also question its support for these so-called democracies since the meaning of the word “democracy” has gradually been reduced to a single definition: the promotion of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights. From the point of view of the West, governments who openly advocate and legislate in favor of these special rights are seen as fully democratic while all others are not. This reductionistic change in meaning of the term has occurred with lightning speed in democracies all around the globe, but perhaps nowhere faster than it has in Taiwan. Keep in mind, Taiwan had its first democratic election in 1996.
To its credit, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan issued a pastoral letter renouncing the legalization of same-sex marriage and the LBGTQ agenda. Catholics did likewise and issued their own paper on the topic. Thankfully, the church in Taiwan thus far has shown remarkable solidarity on this subject. We should all pray that Taiwan will not be further swayed, either politically or morally, by Speaker Pelosi’s visit.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary serving in North Africa.
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As Philip Jenkin’s reminds us, “While religions might sicken and fade, they do not die on their own accord: they must be killed.” To be sure, evangelicals in Eastern Ukraine have been killed.  Yet they are not daunted by this reality. They continue to courageously serve the people of Ukraine by serving food, providing shelter, and assisting in evacuations. More importantly, they continue to preach the gospel in faith, hope, and love.

According to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, “There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.” History has proven Tzu right in nearly every decade since he first wrote the Art of War around the 5th century B.C. Unfortunately, his sage advice is seldom taken.
President Biden is a prime example of ignoring Tzu’s advice. At the NATO Summit in Madrid this year, Mr. Biden was asked “how long will America continue to support the war in Ukraine?” He responded, “As long as it takes.”
In May Biden signed legislation to send $40 billion in US assistance to Ukraine to further prolong the war.
This disregards another warning from Sun Tzu, “If the campaign is protracted, the resources of the state will not be equal to the strain.” With America’s other severe economic woes it will soon be out of resources, and Americans are already feeling the strain.
Therefore, it’s important for American citizens to ask, “How will this war end? And what will it look like once it’s over?”
Answering these questions requires intellectual honesty—something severely lacking in the propaganda from this administration, and from the corporate media who seem happy to see the war go on indefinitely.
By Ukraine’s own admission, they are losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day due to Russian artillery attacks. Another 500 per day are wounded and unable to return to battle, and there are whispers of widespread desertions among shell shocked Ukrainian solders.
Furthermore, Ukraine is using up ammunition faster than American and NATO manufactures can replace it. At this rate the war will soon become unsustainable for Ukraine and its allies in the West. On the other side, Russia still has a large inventory of rockets and artillery shells, and their factories are running day and night to resupply their stockpiles.
To speak plainly, Ukraine’s only option is to negotiate with Russia understanding that they are going to lose most of the territory the Federation has already conquered. Additionally, Ukraine must agree to remain a neutral buffer state, and withdraw its application to become a NATO and EU member. Realistically, there is no other off-ramp for Ukraine.
If Ukraine refuses these terms then it risks further destruction by Russia’s artillery, and indirectly by America’s stubborn unwillingness to take any of Russia’s security concerns seriously. It’s an ugly reality, but it’s the only reality Ukraine has right now.
To the surprise of many in the West, despite the mainstream media’s reporting to the contrary, Russia will likely fare much better than predicted once the war is over. At present, the sanctions have had very little impact on Russia’s economy (except perhaps in the technology sector), and they are unlikely to have any significant effect in the future.
The world’s need for oil, gas, and grain will almost certainly bode well for Russia’s financial future. The growing BRICS economic partnership between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will further solidify Russia’s economic independence from the woke globalists in the West, and other nations are likely to join the partnership. In the end, the United States will have failed in its quest to severely weaken the Russian Federation and/or replace Putin.
On the other hand, should the war continue much longer, the US will find it hard to keep the alliance together come winter. By that time, the cold reality will have set in for the Europeans who have been dependent on Russian oil and gas, and already decreased imports by 40 percent. Public pressure will force politicians to normalize trade relations with Russia, or those leaders will find themselves being replaced by others who recognize that NATO’s policies for Ukraine are bad for domestic politics at home.
The mere possibility of the streets in Europe resembling those in Sri Lanka should be enough to make the ruling class nervous in places like France, Germany, and Italy who were hesitant to get involved in the war in the first place. America may soon see other NATO members begin to back away from Biden’s “as long as it takes,” promise.
Should the United States and Europe not change course, inflation, while not caused by the war, will continue to be aggravated by it. Gas and food prices will fluctuate, but steadily rise. The supply chain will continue to be bottlenecked, and the poorest nations of the world will suffer the most. Wages will remain stagnated, and a deep and long recession is almost certain. Even the most idealistic statesmen cannot long ignore these realities without unrest amongst their citizens.
This prognostication, of course, is based on the assumption that America and NATO will not be foolish enough to escalate the conflict by putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, or try to enforce a no fly zone over its air space. Although, some in Washington are encouraging the President to take exactly that kind of action. If a hot war erupts between Russia and the United States no one can predict what may happen, but everyone can imagine the worst case scenario if two nuclear powers go head to head. The potential for calamity, whether intentional or by accident, increases proportionately each day the war is prolonged.
However, in the absence of direct intervention by America and NATO, this war will end exactly where it started. As Andrew Lantham predicts, whenever the war is finally over, Ukraine will be forced to negotiate exactly the same kind of settlement that Russia was offering on February 23, 2022. Russia will keep most of the territories it conquered in the Donbas region, the Azov coast, and Crimea. Ukraine will agree to neutrality, and not seek NATO or EU membership. The war will have accomplished nothing for Ukraine or NATO making it unlikely that President Zelensky can survive the outcome politically.
Ukraine had little to say about getting into this war. Sadly, they will likely have less to say about ending it.
G. K. Chesterton once wrote that, “War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.” In this case, however, Ukraine will be unlikely to prevent others from settling things for them once this war is over.
The end of the war may also mean the end of evangelicalism as we have come to know it in Ukraine. Once considered the “Bible Belt,” and the “Eastern Europe’s Evangelical Hub,” it’s probable that Eastern Ukraine will resemble little more than an evangelical ghost town after the war.
As Philip Jenkin’s reminds us, “While religions might sicken and fade, they do not die on their own accord: they must be killed.” To be sure, evangelicals in Eastern Ukraine have been killed.
Yet, they are not daunted by this reality. They continue to courageously serve the people of Ukraine by serving food, providing shelter, and assisting in evacuations. More importantly, they continue to preach the gospel in faith, hope, and love.
However, evangelicals will have to settle for a purely spiritual victory as all the material gains they’ve made these past 30 years will be lost once the war is over.
As Senator Richard Black (R) of Virginia has said, “The decision for war was made in Washington, the decision to attack was made in Russia. But once we made the decision to go to war, the decision to attack was inevitable.”
The decision for peace, however, is not inevitable.
What Americans need to realize is that both Russia and US are apparently willing to sacrifice Ukraine to achieve their own geostrategic objectives. And contrary to conventional wisdom, a war of attrition favors Russia, not America and other NATO-member countries.
Jim Fitzgerald is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa.
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There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”

During the 2020 campaign candidate Joe Biden famously stumbled over the Declaration of Independence saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created…by the…you know…you know the thing…”
Apparently, Mr. Biden didn’t know the thing. More disturbingly, a large swath of the American public don’t “know the thing” either.
The thing that Mr. Biden was referring to was, of course, the endowment of rights bestowed on men by their Creator including, but not limited to, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
This section of the Declaration is one of the most famous and frequently quoted portions of the historic document. Yet, there is something in this text that has escaped the attention of almost everyone except perhaps a few knowledgeable political philosophers and historians.
So, as it turns out, hardly anyone actually “knows the thing.”
As the fourth century church father, Basil the Great, pointed out in De Spiritu Sancto, every phrase, every word, and every syllable is important when trying to understand a text. To take his argument one step further we can say that every letter is important.
Oliver O’Donovan reminds us of Edward Gibbon’s somewhat exaggerated claim that Christianity was once divided over a single letter. That history is repeating itself only this time with a different letter from the English alphabet. Not since the Christological debates of the fourth century has one letter had so much power to change the course of human events. In the fourth century it was the Greek iota that split the church. In our time it is the letter “s” at the end of the word rights.
While the split is largely between academicians at this point, my concern is for the practical and ethical outworking of O’Donovan’s perspective as he interacts and takes issue with the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff. This essay is meant to be an accurate summary and application of O’Donovan’s position which I take to be persuasive.
The Declaration speaks of rights as a plural and inherent concept grounded in the individual person. The ancients, however, nearly always spoke of right in the singular. Translators have often missed this and translated Hebrew and Greek texts in the plural instead of the singular when the equivalent word for right is carried over into English as it is in Proverbs 8:8-9 and Jeremiah 5:28. The shift begins in the twelfth century and gradually morphs until it reaches its apex in the revolutionary literature of the eighteenth century such as the American Declaration of Independence.
Since the idea of rights conceived in the Declaration are inherent in each person then the practical result is a multiplicity of human rights that can be expanded indefinitely. There are now potentially as many rights as there are people. This conception makes rights synonymous with justice.
The problem arises when these rights must be enforced and defended by using the apparatus of the state. This is precisely where the woke western world finds itself at present, and all political, economic, and linguistic means are being used to coerce people, cultures, and entire states to comply. The message is simple: comply or be canceled. This is no small matter when armies are currently being mobilized to cancel countries that refuse to conform.
This is a seismic shift from the ancient concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard embedded in the cosmos. In this way of thinking, as John Carlson explains, justice is the measure of society’s realization of this divine order established by God. Moreover, this unitary right cannot be severed from righteousness itself. In the Bible, human rights are always conferred by God in the context of the covenant community. Hence, the right that we have is to cultivate virtue and conform to the divine standard. Whatever does not conform to the divine standard cannot be a right. It can only be wrong.
In the end, these are two different conceptual histories of justice. As O’Donovan warned, “The moment will come when different readings of the world cash out in different practical determinations.” There is much at stake as we can already see in the western world.
Ironically, many conservatives in America nostalgically think that all we need to do is return to the principles of our founding documents to save our country. Until, and unless, we are willing and able to part with the single letter that is causing all the mischief we are still going to be faced with such things as LBGTQ+ rights, drag queen hour at elementary schools, the grooming of young school children, and the mutilation of a 5-year old’s genitalia.
There is only one way to out of this moral crisis, and it’s by returning to the concept of a unitary right as an objective divine standard in which all society must conform. The question we are confronted with today is not “what should we do?” Rather it is, “Do we have the moral courage to do it?”
Earlier this year Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature were applauded by some, and attacked by many, when they banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for children ages 5-9. I commend the governor and the legislature for protecting kindergarteners through third-graders, but what about fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and so on. This is essentially putting a band-aid on a cancer. Or to put it another way, it’s treating the symptom not the cause.
The cause is the single letter “s.” And as Jesus said about eyes and hands that cause you to sin, “It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”
As for that mischievous letter “s,” it’s past time to pluck it out, and cut it off.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary in the Middle East and North Africa.
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NATO has absorbed nearly all the former Warsaw Pact countries and Baltic states that were once aligned with the former Soviet Union. To channel Mearsheimer one more time, America and NATO want us to believe that all their actions and decisions since the fall of the Soviet Union were virtuous and morally right. “This war,” they say, “is all Putin’s fault, and we did nothing wrong.”

There is a simple fact with which evangelicals need to come to grips immediately or risk blaspheming the evangel itself. This fact is undeniable and unconcealable, and it is supported by insurmountable evidence. Attempts to defend any proposition to the contrary amount to a denial of the faith once delivered. And it is this: wherever on the globe American foreign policy goes, death and displacement of millions of people follow.
When it comes to foreign policy there are not two parties: one Democrat, and the other Republican. Rather, there is a Uniparty bent on keeping America engaged in endless wars resulting in untold horrors to human beings around the world—many of whom are Christian. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine all have one thing in common—American intervention or interference resulting in mass death and displacement. This is not to say that there are no other causes, complexities, or mitigating circumstances, but this is the one constant in the midst of all other variables.
It is time for evangelicals to untether themselves from this Nietzschean nightmare and denounce with one voice, with all the muster they have, all the warmongers who are bringing death and destruction wherever they go by promoting perpetual war.

Many Muslims have done a better job of denouncing the more radical elements within Islam than American evangelicals have done in speaking out against unjust and illegal wars fostered by their own government.

Some evangelicals seem to be schizophrenic in that they identify as prolife on the subject of abortion, but are pro-war and pro-death when it comes to foreign policy. Of course, this is more of a theoretical distinction than a practical one because most evangelicals do very little to oppose abortion in any concrete way. Nevertheless, this is an unbiblical and unchristian dualism, and it must be reconciled before evangelicalism loses it soul.
The soul of American evangelicals was stained by the so called “wars on terror.” Of course these wars were never really about America’s national security. They were always about regime change, and in every instance the regime change that resulted was a complete and catastrophic disaster.
In the same way, America’s involvement with the war in Ukraine is not about preserving democracy, or even preventing further Russian aggression. It is about regime change.
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…the war [between Russia and Urkraine has been cast] in terms of good versus evil, with Ukraine’s true believers on one side, and the fake Christian Putin on the other. Personally, I am much more skeptical about the genuine faith of some evangelicals that have tethered themselves to politicians that for decades have kept us involved in preemptive, interventionist, and illegal wars which killed and displaced millions of people. Many evangelicals have basically given neo-conservatives and neo-liberals in our government a blank check when it comes to being involved in endless wars. Perhaps it’s time to put quotation marks around the word “evangelical.”

Mindy Belz has positioned herself as an apologist for the “It’s all Putin’s fault” narrative in an article she wrote in the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2022 titled, Ukraine’s Believers and the ‘Christian’ Putin. The quotation marks around the word Christian suggests skepticism about the genuineness of Putin’s Orthodox faith, and allows Ms. Belz to cast the war in terms of good versus evil with Ukraine’s true believers on one side, and the fake Christian Putin on the other.
Personally, I am much more skeptical about the genuine faith of some evangelicals that have tethered themselves to politicians that for decades have kept us involved in preemptive, interventionist, and illegal wars which killed and displaced millions of people. Many evangelicals have basically given neo-conservatives and neo-liberals in our government a blank check when it comes to being involved in endless wars. Perhaps it’s time to put quotation marks around the word “evangelical.”
But not Ms. Belz, she is concerned that some evangelicals have been “Lured…by statements suggesting Mr. Putin is pro-church, antiabortion and anti-same-sex-marriage.” Therefore, “some religious conservatives have been reluctant to acknowledge the Russian leader’s expansionist aims.”
Apparently, Putin’s expansionist aims are obvious to Ms. Belz, and she thinks they should be for everyone else too. Yet she is completely ignoring the insurmountable material reality of the massive eastward expansion of NATO as a reasonable and plausible explanation for Putin’s action in the Ukraine—as ugly and horrifying as that may be.
Since 1998 fourteen countries have been absorbed into NATO from the Baltic states and former Warsaw Pact. This means that America and NATO can potentially establish military bases, deploy troops, and install ballistic missiles all around the Russian Federation.
At the 2008 Bucharest Summit Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership in NATO. In protest Russia announced that it would consider NATO expansion into boarder countries a direct threat to its national security, and said they would do “all they can to prevent Ukraine’s and Georgia’s ascension into NATO.” Russia did exactly what they said they would do, first in Georgia, and then the Ukraine. This should not have been a surprise to anyone who was listening. Yet to this day, the US refuses to acknowledge any of Russia’s security concerns.
Also, Bosnia & Herzegovina have enjoyed a cozy relationship with NATO since the early 1990s. In 2006 they joined the Partnership for Peace, and in 2010 they were invited to join the Membership Action Plan as stepping stones to becoming full NATO members.
Since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have indicated their intention to join the alliance. Indeed, as recently as 5/16/22, the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnel promised that Finland’s and Sweden’s application to NATO would be fast-tracked, and he hopes that congress would approve it by August of this year. If membership is granted to these applicants it would be a total of nineteen countries added to NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union, and it means that Russia would be essentially surrounded.
Of course, none of this matters to the warmongers at the White House and in the Congress on either side of the aisle. They have their propaganda arm in the mainstream media steadily pushing the strategic lie that this is all Putin’s fault. He is the aggressor, and he is trying to reestablish the old Soviet Union. Unfortunately, many evangelicals either aren’t paying attention, or they’ve already believed the lie. The truth is that NATO is an offensive alliance, not a defensive alliance.
Moreover, what does Ms. Belz mean when she writes about “statements suggesting” Putin is prochurch, antiabortion, and anti-gay marriage? Does she mean that these are not in fact Putin’s views? Or does she mean that even if these are his true convictions, his ill-liberal political bent should be weighted more heavily by evangelicals than his stance on social issues when assessing his Christian bona fides?
What is conspicuous by its absence in Ms. Belz’s article is whether or not these traditional views on social issues are held by the neo-liberal government in Kiev, the protestant churches she claims to speak for, and the new Orthodox Church in Ukraine which broke away from the Russian patriarchy at the behest of the American State Department under Secretary Mike Pompeo.
As a whole the people of Ukraine are nearly as conservative on social issues as are the people of Russia. Evangelicals in Ukraine seem to be holding the conservative line on these issues but are increasingly being pressured by LGBTQ+ activists to soften their position. The metropolitan of the new Orthodox Church in Ukraine was caught on a prank call agreeing that the church in Ukraine needs to soften its views on LGBTQ+ issues and adopt positions more consistent with European values. This is in stark contrast to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church which sees the whole trajectory of religious and political institutions in the Ukraine as one big gay pride parade. And he is not completely wrong on this point.
Finally, Ms. Belz cites the former finance minister in Ukraine, Natalie Jaresko. Ms. Jaresko stated that Putin cannot stand to see “a Slavic nation on his border that has a successful democracy, albeit messy. He cannot abide an example of democratic success next door while he remains an example of oppression.”
One wonders why Ms. Jaresko, a US citizen and former U.S. Department of State official, was appointed as Ukraine’s Minister of Finance in the first place if Ukraine is such a shining example of democracy? As it turns out, many of Ukraine’s top ministerial posts are held by foreigners from the US, Lithuania, Georgia, and elsewhere. Many more lower ranking positions are also held by foreigners.
Needless to say, none of these foreigners running the government were democratically elected by the will of the Ukrainian people. They were all appointed because of outside pressure from Western institutions such as IMF, EBDR, WTO, the European Union and the U.S. Department of State. With this in mind, it seems unlikely that Putin is viewing Ukraine as anything close to resembling a successful democracy. The facts would suggest that we shouldn’t either.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary with Equipping Pastors International.
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A realistic assessment of our present situation in America would have to admit that overturning the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage is at best improbable, and rewriting the First Amendment is nearly insurmountable. Of course, no Christian living in 312 A.D. could have imagined that a Christian empire would emerge just one year later when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. Regardless of the precise cause of the Christendom’s end, we would do well to remember that Christendom was born in just such a time as this.

In an article that appeared in the Aquila Report on November 8, 2021, Chris Gordon makes the argument that “Christendom has come to an end in America.” He cites Robert Godfrey who claims that something very specific “has happened in America that brought Christendom to an end”—namely, “the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage.”
In general, this is a very good and informative article that is worth reading. I take no issue with its assertion that Christendom has come to an end in America. Nor do I disagree with the author’s claim that “everything seems to be unraveling,” and “something very demonic is at work before us in our present moment.”  I would, however, like to suggest that Christendom’s end took place much further back in American history than the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage in 2015.
Indeed, I wish Gordon and Godfrey were right in their assertion. If only the end of Christendom in America was actually the result of the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, then the restoration of Christendom could be accomplished simply by overturning the court’s decision. While overturning the court’s decision would be of monumental importance for the church, the country, and the common good, overall, it would do little to restore Christendom.
As Oliver O’Donovan has observed there are many competing causes for the end of Christendom, but one sticks out more than the rest: the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. For O’Donovan, the end of Christendom was not in 2015, but in 1791.
There is both paradox and irony here. The paradox can be seen in that the First Amendment as conceived by the founders was supposed to be the guarantor and protector of Christendom. Yet it is precisely this amendment that was used to trigger antireligious sentiment, and the weakening of the church in society. The irony is that the First Amendment is the most cherished and championed of all amendments by the majority of evangelicals. Yet it was the quintessential flaw of the founder’s political theory in that it nearly guaranteed that theology and politics would thereafter be permanently separated.
D.D. Clark correctly recognized that the founders never anticipated this outcome. They never envisioned that atheists, antitrinitarians, Roman Catholics, and Muslims would ever legally hold office. Their context was one of Christian hegemony not religious pluralism. They wished only to separate the legal tie between the Crown and the church as it existed in England. Nevertheless, in the First amendment, they provided the framework for the end of Christendom.
How different America might be at present if only our founders would have enshrined Christianity in the text of the constitution rather than asserting a vague notion of the free exercise of religion. This does not mean, as so many evangelicals presume, that other religions would be discriminated against as a necessary condition. We only need point to Hungry, Poland, and Finland as examples of the contrary. But of course, we have to disabuse ourselves of any utopian ideas on the one hand (such as the existence of a country without any discrimination at all), and to recognize the country in which we now live on the other hand (a country in which discrimination against Christians is becoming alarmingly routine).
A realistic assessment of our present situation in America would have to admit that overturning the 2015 Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage is at best improbable, and rewriting the First Amendment is nearly insurmountable. Of course, no Christian living in 312 A.D. could have imagined that a Christian empire would emerge just one year later when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. Regardless of the precise cause of Christendom’s end, we would do well to remember that Christendom was born in just such a time as this.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary with Equipping Pastors International.