📊 How MAGA Christianism Falls Into Satan's Oldest Trap

Common Life Politics

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📊 How MAGA Christianism Falls Into Satan's Oldest Trap

How MAGA apocalypticism Is undermining genuine Christian witness

Craig Geevarghese-Uffman

Apr 29, 2025

Transcript

Introduction

In October 2024, just before the presidential election, prominent figures in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) stood before crowds of followers and declared the upcoming vote as "a critical moment of spiritual warfare where the forces of God defeat the forces of evil" in what they described as a battle against "satanic forces" for America's soul. This wasn't merely political rhetoric—it represented a profound theological framework that divides the world into absolute categories of good and evil, with political opponents portrayed not just as wrong, but as literally demonic.

This stark binary worldview exemplifies the third theological mutation of Dominative Christianism: Binary Apocalypticism. This mutation takes Christianity's beautifully nuanced "already but not yet" eschatology—a delicate theological ballet that has challenged the finest minds for two millennia—and transforms it into something more akin to a professional wrestling match, with clearly designated heroes and villains, and a predetermined outcome that somehow always favors those making the designations. It replaces the Christian's complex dance of moral clarity and eschatological humility with a rigid march toward final judgment—a judgment we've helpfully sorted out in advance, at least regarding who belongs on which side.

Like all the mutations we're exploring, Binary Apocalypticism distorts genuine theological concerns. The Christian faith indeed includes an apocalyptic dimension—a belief that history has direction and purpose, that evil will not have the final word, that God's justice will ultimately prevail. But Binary Apocalypticism commits the cardinal theological error of collapsing the "analogical interval" between divine and human judgment. It forgets the infinite qualitative distinction between God's perfect knowledge and our partial perspectives, between the City of God and the City of Man, claiming for itself a certainty about final things that belongs to God alone. It's rather like a toddler attempting to direct symphonic performances at Carnegie Hall—adorable in its ambition, but fundamentally confused about the limits of its expertise.

The Schmittian Revolution: Politics as Friend-Enemy Distinction

At the heart of Binary Apocalypticism lies what political philosopher Carl Schmitt identified as the essence of the political: the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, politics isn't primarily about governance or the common good, but about identifying who belongs to "us" and who constitutes "them"—the existential other against whom we define ourselves. It's politics reduced to its most primitive form: tribal affiliation writ large.

Richard Hooker confronted a similar binary framework in the 16th century, what I've called "Ramist realism" - a method that divided knowledge into opposing binaries and claimed to extract from Scripture "universal rules... discovered as refractions of the mind of God." Hooker recognized that such methods offered the seductive appeal of "marvelous quick dispatch," revealing "as much almost in three days, as if it dwell threescore years with them." The parallels to our contemporary apocalyptic frameworks are striking - both promise certainty without the messy work of discernment, both claim divine authority for human judgments, and both collapse the necessary distance between God's perfect knowledge and our partial perspectives.

Where Binary Apocalypticism sees clear categories of friend and enemy, Hooker saw "manifold secret exceptions" hidden within even the most seemingly straightforward rules. Against those who reduced Scripture to a catalog of absolute principles, Hooker insisted that "general rules, till their limits be fully known... are, by reason of the manifold secret exceptions which lie hidden in them, no other to the eye of man's understanding than cloudy mists cast before the eye of common sense." This insight applies perfectly to apocalyptic frameworks that cast political conflicts as cosmic battles between absolute good and absolute evil.

This framework has profound theological implications. When Christianity adopts this friend-enemy paradigm, it transforms Jesus's command to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) from the radical centerpiece of Christian ethics into a quaint moral afterthought—a lovely sentiment for greeting cards, perhaps, but hardly practical for the serious business of apocalyptic struggle. After all, if politics is fundamentally about defeating enemies rather than seeking reconciliation, then Christian political engagement becomes less about witnessing to God's reconciling love and more about ensuring victory for "our side."

Key Insight: Binary Apocalypticism doesn't merely predict the end times; it attempts to stage-manage them, casting ourselves as the righteous and our opponents as the forces of darkness—a theological version of reality television where we conveniently control both the script and the judging panel.

The consequences are readily apparent in our current moment. The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this approach, with its leaders framing political contests in explicitly spiritual warfare terms. One prominent NAR leader described a vice-presidential candidate as possessing a "Jezebel spirit"—a term laden with both theological and racial overtones that casts political opposition as literally demonic. This rhetoric transforms policy disagreements into cosmic battles, elections into Armageddon, and compromise into betrayal of divine purpose.

Political opponents aren't merely people with different policy preferences but "forces of darkness"—a phrase that manages to be simultaneously melodramatic and devoid of actual content. Elections aren't simply democratic exercises but "spiritual warfare"—as though the Holy Spirit were particularly invested in tax policy or zoning regulations. Compromise isn't prudent governance but "betrayal of absolute truth"—truth that coincidentally aligns perfectly with our preexisting political commitments. Complex policy disagreements become simplified battles between good and evil, with all the cosmic urgency that framework implies.

The irony of Binary Apocalypticism lies in its claim to biblical fidelity while abandoning the very hermeneutic Jesus himself employed. When presented with binary frameworks - "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?" (Matthew 22:17-22) "Should we stone this woman or not?" (John 8:1-11) - Jesus consistently refused the terms of the question, offering instead responses that transcended the false dichotomies presented to him. As Hooker might observe, those most eager to divide humanity into sheep and goats seem remarkably uninterested in the Shepherd's own resistance to binary categorization.

There's a certain comedic quality to apocalyptic certainty, rather like watching a child confidently explain quantum physics based on a half-remembered conversation with an older sibling. The gap between the confidence and the competence creates an irony that would be merely amusing if it weren't so consequential. As Hooker noted regarding his own apocalyptically-minded opponents, they speak with absolute certainty about matters where even "pillars" with "great and rare skill" acknowledge complexity and uncertainty. Perhaps apocalyptic certainty is less a sign of spiritual maturity than of theological adolescence - characterized by the peculiar combination of partial knowledge and absolute confidence that typically accompanies that developmental stage.

As Philip Gorski observes in his analysis of religious nationalism, apocalyptic thinking leads inevitably to "hubris" and "demonization." It seduces followers "into claiming to know things that no human being can possibly know" while transforming opponents into "physical embodiments of evil." This transformation of political opponents into cosmic enemies creates the conditions for justifying extraordinary measures—after all, when facing ultimate evil, ordinary ethical constraints might seem like dangerous naivete. The banal logic of apocalypse always seems to conclude that the end justifies the means—a principle notably absent from the teachings of Jesus.

The 1978 Inflection Point: When Everything Changed

This binary framework didn't emerge from nowhere, like Athena springing fully formed from the head of Zeus. Historical analysis reveals a crucial inflection point around 1978, when multiple disruptions converged to create profound cultural anxiety. This moment saw:

Racial Restructuring: School integration moving from legal mandate to lived reality, challenging generational hierarchies
Gender Reconfiguration: Shifting family patterns and women's increasing economic independence
Technological Disruption: Microcomputer revolution beginning to transform information access

These simultaneous disruptions created what Sarah Churchwell has documented as "power anxiety"—a profound sense of uncertainty about established social hierarchies. This anxiety created fertile ground for apocalyptic frameworks that promised clarity and certainty amid disorienting change. Binary Apocalypticism offered a compelling response: a framework that simplified complexity into good versus evil, a narrative that identified clear heroes and villains, and a promise that "our side" would ultimately triumph. It's a bit like replacing the magnificent complexity of Bach's fugues with the percussive simplicity of a military march—less demanding intellectually but more immediately gratifying.

Binary Apocalypticism typically includes what Hooker recognized as appeals to a "golden era" - claims that "the first state of things was best, that in the prime of Christian religion faith was soundest, the scriptures of God were then best understood by all men, all parts of godliness did then most abound." This nostalgia functions ideologically, shutting down conversation by establishing boundaries on what questions can be asked and what answers are permissible.

Against such thinking, Hooker insisted that "Are we bound while the world standeth to put nothing in practice but only that which was the very first?" He recognized that "Our end ought always to be the same, our ways and means thereunto not so." This insight challenges apocalyptic frameworks that seek to restore an imagined past rather than faithfully responding to present realities. The Christian calling is not to restore Eden but to anticipate the New Jerusalem - not regression to an idealized past but participation in God's creative future.

The historical connection between binary frameworks and racial exclusion is particularly significant. Churchwell documents how "America First" rhetoric had explicit connections to the KKK and white nationalism, demonstrating how binaries often function to reinforce racial hierarchies. This historical entanglement should give pause to Christians who uncritically embrace binary political frameworks while claiming to transcend racial divisions. The genealogy of our theological frameworks matters; ideas have histories, and those histories often reveal uncomfortable truths about their present functions.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this historical trajectory, emerging in the late 1990s but gaining significant political influence in the 21st century. NAR promotes what scholars call "dominion theology"—the belief that Christians should take control of government, media, education, business, arts and entertainment, religion, and family (the "seven mountains" of influence) to transform society according to their interpretation of Christian values. This framework divides the world into those aligned with God's purposes and those opposing them, creating a stark binary that justifies extraordinary political measures in the name of spiritual warfare. The movement's rhetoric around "taking dominion" and engaging in "spiritual warfare" against "demonic forces" in politics embodies the apocalyptic binary thinking that characterizes this theological mutation.

Beyond Justification: God's True Purpose

Douglas Campbell's recent work "Beyond Justification" provides crucial insight into the theological roots of Binary Apocalypticism. The problem runs deeper than specific misreadings of Scripture; it stems from what Campbell calls "justification theory"—a framework that fundamentally misconstrues God's purpose, rather like mistaking the magnificent architecture of a cathedral for an elaborate system of plumbing repairs. In this view, God's primary concern becomes our moral failure, with Christ serving essentially as the solution to a problem—the divine equivalent of a cosmic handyman called in to fix our leaky salvation.

Yet as Campbell reminds us, this framework captures only about 10% of Paul's writings, while the remaining 90% proclaims a different message entirely. In Paul's actual gospel, God isn't merely responding to human sin but enacting a purpose that would have unfolded regardless—to be with us in covenantal relationship rather than contractual transaction. "While we were announcing a conditional gospel, God loved us unconditionally. The repair of the gospel is to simply lay hold of what has been the good news from the beginning."

Binary Apocalypticism flows naturally from justification theory because when salvation becomes conditional upon correct belief, humanity is easily divided into saved and unsaved, friends and enemies. This binary framework enables Dominative Christianism's apocalyptic worldview that divides the political landscape into good and evil, rather like sorting laundry into light and dark—except with eternal consequences.

The alternative—a participatory understanding of divine purpose—emphasizes:

Divine purpose as communion rather than merely problem-solving
Reconciliation rather than division as God's fundamental intention
Evil and sin as obstacles to God's purpose, not its motivation
Resurrection rather than mere atonement as the center of Christian hope

This participatory framework fundamentally challenges binary thinking by emphasizing God's universal reconciling work in Christ rather than division and judgment. It replaces the friend-enemy distinction with a vision of humanity united in Christ while still journeying toward full redemption. It's rather like the difference between viewing marriage as a contractual arrangement to avoid loneliness and viewing it as a covenantal relationship that fulfills our deepest nature as beings made for communion.

Special Equity: A Theological Alternative to Binary Thinking

Richard Hooker's concept of "special equity" provides a powerful theological alternative to Binary Apocalypticism. Where binary thinking reduces complex reality to friend-enemy distinctions, special equity attends carefully to the particularity of each situation. Hooker defined this approach as the "patient endurance of objectionable difference" that seeks justice in specific circumstances rather than mechanically applying universal rules.

"Not without singular wisdom therefore it hath been provided," Hooker wrote, "that as the ordinary course of common affairs is disposed of by general laws, so likewise men's rarer incident necessities and utilities should be with special equity considered." This wisdom recognizes that good laws are necessarily expressed in general language, but their application requires attention to "material circumstances" that abstract principles might miss.

This approach doesn't abandon moral clarity or theological conviction. Rather, it grounds them in the rich particularity of human experience rather than abstract categories. It recognizes, with Augustine, that we are bound together in a "society of souls" whose differences are not obstacles to overcome but gifts to be received. Special equity seeks the good the natural law intends by attending to the complex reality of concrete situations rather than imposing pre-determined binary judgments.

In our polarized age, this approach offers a way forward that maintains both moral conviction and humble recognition of our limited perspective. It replaces the friend-enemy distinction with what John Bowlin calls "the patient endurance of objectionable difference" - not out of moral indifference but out of commitment to the common good. It's rather like the difference between playing a complex jazz composition and striking a single, insistent note - one requires careful attention to context and relationship, while the other requires merely the ability to make noise.

Being With: God's Incarnational Purpose

Samuel Wells' incarnational theology of "being with" provides another powerful antidote to Binary Apocalypticism. He challenges the conventional understanding that Jesus came primarily to solve the problem of sin—a notion that reduces the glory of incarnation to a rather pedestrian exercise in cosmic problem-solving, as though the eternal Word became flesh merely to perform some metaphysical maintenance. Instead, Wells proposes that the incarnation was always God's purpose—not merely a response to human failure. In his most recent work, Wells "articulates a truly Christocentric theology in which God's means and God's ends are identical," arguing that centering human deficit rather than divine abundance has long been unsatisfactory.

Wells' framework of "being with" includes eight dimensions: presence, attention, mystery, delight, participation, partnership, enjoyment, and glory. Each dimension reveals how God's fundamental purpose is communion rather than correction or condemnation. Reflecting on Jesus' example, Wells notes that Jesus "spent a week in Jerusalem working for us, three years in Galilee working with us, and 30 years in Nazareth being with us. If God spent 90% of the incarnation being with, why should we be different?" One might say that God appears considerably less obsessed with productivity metrics than many of our churches.

This understanding transforms our approach to those we might consider "enemies." Instead of opposition, we're called to presence—showing up in the messy reality of human difference. Instead of condemnation, we're called to attention—actually seeing the other rather than merely the category we've assigned them. Instead of certainty, we're called to mystery—acknowledging the depths of others that exceed our understanding. Instead of severity, we're called to delight—finding joy in the beauty of others created in God's image. Binary Apocalypticism, with its rigid categories and cosmic urgency, has no place for these practices of "being with." It prioritizes division over communion, certainty over mystery, working against over being with—rather like preferring the sterile clarity of a prison yard to the creative chaos of a family dinner.

The incarnation reveals that God's primary purpose isn't judgment but presence. This insight dramatically reframes how we understand theological concepts like "end times" and "final judgment." If God's purpose is communion rather than condemnation, then the culmination of history isn't the sorting of humanity into opposing camps but the fullness of divine-human communion—what the Scriptures call "the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:9). It's less a final exam and more a wedding feast. (Though perhaps I'm biased, having always preferred feasts to exams.)

The Beauty of Theological Complexity

Binary thinking fails not only morally but aesthetically. It reduces the wondrous complexity of divine-human relationship to a crude dualism that neither illuminates scripture nor satisfies the soul. The Christian tradition offers a far more beautiful account through what David Bentley Hart calls "analogical metaphysics"—understanding reality as neither univocally identical with God nor equivocally disconnected from God, but analogically related to God through the divine attributes reflected in creation.

This analogical understanding finds expression in what Richard Hooker would recognize as dialectical rather than divisive thinking. Where Binary Apocalypticism proceeds by dividing reality into opposing categories, dialectic moves toward "mediating synthesis" - not merely splitting differences but elevating discourse to a new level that "inherits the strengths of predecessor/competitor theories and practices while overcoming their weaknesses." It's the difference between a debate where the goal is to win and a conversation where the goal is to understand - a distinction I fear is increasingly lost in our apocalyptic age.

Dialectical thinking reflects a world understood as dynamic rather than static, as open to God's continuing creative acts rather than fixed in predetermined patterns. As David Congden reflects on Karl Barth’s insights, "election is 'new every morning'" - God meets us always in our irreducible particularity, not through abstract universal principles. This means there are no timeless absolutes upon which to ground our ethics, "no original created human nature to which we can point," but only the concrete reality of Christ himself, "the contingent event that is universally significant in that it includes all other people and events within its singular reality."

This analogical understanding recognizes that all truth participates in Truth itself—that partial glimpses of beauty, goodness, and justice appear even among those with whom we profoundly disagree. Binary apocalypticism can't accommodate this aesthetic complexity; it requires stark oppositions and absolute divisions where Christian tradition has typically recognized subtle gradations and partial apprehensions.

Perhaps the most powerful counter to Binary Apocalypticism is Hooker's recognition of the "beautiful variety of things" and the "manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude of those ways, whereby his Church upon earth is guided from age to age." Where Binary Apocalypticism demands uniformity and certainty, Hooker saw diversity as reflecting divine creativity. The "manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude" he celebrated stands in stark contrast to the monotonous certainty of apocalyptic frameworks.

This aesthetic critique is not merely superficial but goes to the heart of how we understand God's relationship with creation. A God who delights in "beautiful variety" and "harmonious dissimilitude" seems unlikely to be impressed by rigid frameworks that reduce complex reality to simplistic categories. There's something deeply unimaginative about Binary Apocalypticism - a failure not just of ethics but of theological imagination. It lacks the creative capacity to envision reconciliation beyond victory, community beyond uniformity, truth beyond certainty. In the end, Binary Apocalypticism fails not because it's too radical but because it's not nearly radical enough - too constrained by the world's friend-enemy distinctions to imagine the revolutionary communion toward which all creation moves.

The result is a theological framework devoid of beauty—and as Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us, without beauty, goodness loses its attractiveness and truth loses its persuasiveness. Put simply, binary apocalypticism isn't just wrong; it's ugly. It lacks the harmonious integration of diversity that characterizes truly beautiful things. It prefers the monotonous uniformity of ideological certainty to the symphonic complexity of theological wisdom.

The analogical interval—that space of both similarity and difference between Creator and creation—is precisely where genuine theological thinking happens. Binary apocalypticism collapses this interval into either univocal identification (where our judgments are identical with God's) or equivocal separation (where our enemies are wholly other than ourselves). Both moves destroy the analogical relationship that makes theological thinking possible at all.

The Psychological Mechanism: Identity Through Opposition

Paul Kahn's analysis of political theology illuminates how binary frameworks generate meaning and identity. Binary Apocalypticism doesn't merely provide a worldview; it offers adherents a secure identity forged through opposition to enemies. This process works through four interconnected mechanisms:

Identity Through Opposition: Creating stable identity through contrast with enemies—rather like defining yourself primarily as "not a Yankees fan" rather than by any positive commitments
Meaning Through Conflict: Generating purpose and significance through struggle—as though our lives only matter insofar as we're engaged in cosmic battle
Evil Projection: Unifying "our side" by projecting evil onto external others—allowing us to maintain a pristine self-image by locating all darkness elsewhere
Sacrificial Mobilization: Motivating sacrifice through narratives of existential threat—because nothing motivates quite like apocalyptic emergency

These mechanisms explain the peculiar persistence of apocalyptic thinking despite repeatedly failed predictions. The function of Binary Apocalypticism isn't primarily predictive but identity-forming. It tells adherents who they are by telling them who they're against, providing psychological security amid disorienting social change. As Blaise Pascal might observe, it fills the God-shaped void in our hearts with the considerably less satisfying but more immediately available alternative of enemy-contempt.

This understanding helps explain why attempts to correct apocalyptic predictions with facts often fail. The appeal isn't primarily intellectual but existential. Binary Apocalypticism offers a secure identity and a meaningful narrative when both seem increasingly elusive. It's rather like treating existential anxiety with apocalyptic Red Bull energy drinks—providing an immediate sense of purpose but typically resulting in a crash, followed by the need for increasingly potent formulations.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this identity-forming function, with its rhetoric of "prayer warrior networks" and "spiritual battle" providing adherents a clear identity and purpose. What scholars describe as a "religio-political movement" creates meaning by positioning followers as God's agents in a cosmic battle to "take dominion" over cultural and political institutions. This frame promises significance, security, and clarity in an increasingly complex world—psychological benefits that help explain the movement's growing influence despite its theological contradictions with historic Christianity.

The Ecosystem: Information Closed Loops

Binary Apocalypticism never operates in isolation, like some rugged individualist of theological error. It creates and requires what we might call "epistemic bunkers"—closed information ecosystems that reinforce binary worldviews while excluding contrary evidence. We see this in:

Media platforms that present political opponents as fundamentally evil rather than merely misguided—rather like episode descriptions for particularly melodramatic soap operas
Church communities that treat political alignment as a test of Christian authenticity—turning communion into a partisan membership card
Social networks segregated by political viewpoint that prevent meaningful encounter with difference—creating digital ghettoes of self-congratulation
Online environments where the most extreme expressions of binary thinking receive the most engagement—rewarding rhetorical pyrotechnics over thoughtful engagement

These closed ecosystems create what philosopher Charles Taylor calls "mutual fragilization"—when isolated communities increasingly view competing perspectives not merely as wrong but as existentially threatening. This dynamic transforms political disagreement from democratic debate into perceived spiritual warfare. The result isn't civic discourse but mutual incomprehension across hardening boundaries—a theological Tower of Babel where we speak increasingly distinct languages while imagining ourselves perfectly clear.

The jazz band metaphor illuminates what's lost in this binary framework. Where true Christian community might resemble a jazz ensemble—diverse instruments creating harmony through responsive listening—Binary Apocalypticism creates a rigid marching band, demanding conformity to a single militant rhythm. The rich complexity of improvisation gives way to the reductive simplicity of combat. The question is whether we're called to march in formation or to make music together—and the biblical images of heavenly worship suggest the latter.

The New Apostolic Reformation exemplifies this ecosystem development through what researchers describe as "prayer warrior networks" in all fifty states and around the world, creating parallel information structures that reinforce binary apocalyptic frameworks. By positioning adherents as spiritual warriors engaged in cosmic battle against demonic forces in politics, business, and culture, these networks create closed epistemological communities where skepticism toward the movement's claims is itself evidence of demonic influence—a perfect epistemic trap that resists correction.

The Alternative: Eschatological Realism

Christianity need not choose between moral clarity and humble patience. The theological tradition offers robust alternatives to Binary Apocalypticism, alternatives that unite the true, the good, and the beautiful rather than sacrificing any for partisan advantage:

Hospitality as Theological Practice

Luke Bretherton's concept of hospitality offers a theological framework for encountering difference without either erasing it (liberalism) or treating it as an absolute barrier (nationalism). Hospitality "hallows bare life" by recognizing the irreducible worth of the other without requiring their assimilation. It creates "tent-like places" for meaningful encounter across difference while maintaining distinctive identities.

This approach doesn't abandon truth claims or moral clarity. Rather, it practices truth through relationship rather than imposition. It makes space for the other while maintaining faithful witness. It recognizes difference without making it ultimate. It's less like building walls to keep others out and more like setting a table where all can be fed—which happens to align rather nicely with Jesus's preferred social activity.

Tolerance as Moral Virtue

John Bowlin's understanding of tolerance challenges the assumption that tolerance means moral weakness. True tolerance isn't indifference but "the patient endurance of objectionable difference" rooted in commitment to justice and the common good. It requires moral conviction rather than abandoning it.

Bowlin distinguishes between tolerance (a natural virtue related to justice) and forbearance (a specifically Christian virtue related to love). Where tolerance patiently endures objectionable differences for the sake of justice, forbearance does so for the sake of love, mirroring Christ's endurance of sin for the sake of reconciliation. There's nothing weak about this patience; it requires considerably more strength than the immediate gratification of righteous condemnation.

Eschatological Patience

Perhaps most fundamentally, Christian tradition offers eschatological patience—maintaining hope in God's ultimate redemption while accepting present ambiguity. This patience:

Distinguishes between penultimate political concerns and ultimate theological concerns—avoiding the idolatry of treating politics as final
Recognizes the partial and provisional nature of all human political projects—neither demonizing nor deifying our political arrangements
Maintains moral clarity without claiming divine certainty about final judgments—acknowledging that we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Practices enemy love as central Christian discipline rather than optional extra—recognizing that if Jesus meant what he said about loving enemies (Matthew 5:44), our political engagements might require significant reconfiguration

This eschatological patience doesn't abandon moral judgment or political engagement. It engages precisely because it believes God's redemptive purpose encompasses all creation, including political life. But it engages without the triumphalism that characterizes Binary Apocalypticism, recognizing that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood" (Ephesians 6:12) but against powers and principalities that distort all human systems, including our own. It's less like storming the barricades of enemy territory and more like tending a garden amid the ruins—a garden that prefigures the renewed creation toward which all history moves.

Conclusion

Binary Apocalypticism offers a tempting simplicity in complex times. Like all the mutations we're examining, it addresses legitimate needs—for moral clarity, cosmic meaning, and secure identity. But it addresses these needs by collapsing distinctions that Christian theology insists on maintaining—between divine and human judgment, between enemy and evil, between righteous anger and self-righteous certainty. It's rather like addressing hunger by consuming not bread but stones—a solution that satisfies immediate cravings while providing no actual nourishment.

The alternative isn't moral relativism or political disengagement. It's a more faithful witness that maintains both the "already" of moral clarity and the "not yet" of eschatological humility. It's a politics shaped by cruciform love rather than the friend-enemy distinction. It's a witness that speaks truth to power while recognizing our own complicity in systems of domination. It's a bit like the difference between a teenager's black-and-white certainties and a parent's more nuanced wisdom—not less committed to truth, but more aware of truth's complexity.

In practical terms, this means:

Maintaining moral clarity without demonizing opponents—recognizing the image of God even in those with whom we profoundly disagree
Pursuing justice without claiming perfect righteousness—acknowledging our own partial vision and mixed motives
Speaking truth without claiming infallibility—holding our convictions with both confidence and humility
Building communities of witness that transcend political binaries—prefiguring the reconciliation toward which all history moves
Practicing reconciliation as central to Christian witness—not as an optional extra but as the heart of the gospel

As we navigate polarized times, Christians need not choose between prophetic critique and humble patience. The cruciform pattern of Jesus offers a different way—neither the binary certainty of apocalypticism nor the moral confusion of relativism, but the difficult, beautiful path of truth spoken in love, of justice pursued with mercy, of communities that witness to God's reconciling purpose for all creation. It's a path that requires both courage and humility, both conviction and openness—a narrow way that leads to life precisely because it refuses the broad highways of ideological certainty that lead only to mutual destruction.

In the end, perhaps the most damning critique of Binary Apocalypticism is aesthetic: it's simply too boring. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is infinitely more creative, more surprising, and more delightful than our binary categories can accommodate. The final triumph of divine love will almost certainly confound all our expectations and transcend all our categories. And in that surprise—that divine joke that upends all our certainties while fulfilling our deepest hopes—we might finally learn to laugh at ourselves, to hold our judgments lightly, and to trust the One whose judgments alone are true, good, and beautiful.

Key Terms

Binary Apocalypticism: Divides the world into absolute categories of good and evil, friends and enemies, creating a framework where political opponents become cosmic enemies. Full entry →

Participatory Freedom: Understanding freedom as capacity for love and non-domination rather than absence of constraint, grounding political engagement in cruciform love rather than friend-enemy distinction. Full entry →

Being With: A theological framework that understands God's purpose as communion rather than merely problem-solving, emphasizing presence, attention, mystery, and delight as divine attributes revealed in Christ. Full entry →

Special Equity: Hooker's concept of attending to the particularity of each situation rather than mechanically applying universal rules, seeking justice in specific circumstances rather than enforcing abstract principles. Full entry →