Christian artist Sufjan Stevens ruffled feathers when he wrote a Christian nation is heretical.
“You cannot pledge allegiance to a nation state and its flag, for God has no political boundary,” the “Casimir Pulaski Day” singer says on Tumblr.
But he’s just beginning.
“God is love, period. God is universal, nameless, faceless and with no allegiance to anything other than love,” he writes. “A ‘Christian nation’ is absolutely heretical. Christ did not come into this world to be a modifier.”
Stevens uses Matthew 10:35 and Luke 14:26 as evidence. The same admonition that Christ has come to turn a child against his father and mother was prophesied in Micah 7:6.
“This is not obtuse provocation, but a spiritual deployment of true identity, which no longer resides in skin color, nation, ideology, genealogy, name, people, places and things, but in the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind, which is ruled by love at any cost,” Stevens writes.
He continues, “To gain access to true love and true self, you must die to yourself, to your family, to your heritage, your narrow-minded ideology, your ego, your ill-conditioned consciousness, and your false identity. You must eradicate all the corrupt theological fear-mongering they preach from the pulpit and behind the political podium.”
He concludes his post with a challenge: “Jesus Christ … compels us to participate honestly and responsibly and with righteousness and stewardship in a faulty and dysfunctional society even as we are called to be ideologically and socially dispossessed. We must acknowledge that the real substance of life has nothing to do with money or power or prestige or ‘greatness.’ Your money and your power must be given away (as tax and tithe and service to others).”
That’s a lot to process.
Do you agree with him? Sound off! {eoa}
