Eric Metaxas is following up his recent bestseller "Letter to the American Church" with "Religionless Christianity: God's Answer to Evil." In it he calls believers not to "practice" their faith but to "live" it – heroically and with joy; and he argues such an awakening of faith will bring revival and a renaissance of Christian culture.
The title of Metaxas' more recent book is taken from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's assertion that losing itself in the trappings of religion – a.k.a. "religiosity" – weakens the ability of the Church to engage the culture. Appearing Friday on American Family Radio, Metaxas called out two influential Christians who appear to have fallen into that trap: New York Times columnist David French, and Christianity Today editor Dr. Russell Moore.
"David French just endorsed Joe Biden. I mean, if you can endorse Joe Biden, I don't even know how I can have a conversation anymore," the author stated.
"And … Russell Moore is in the same camp. To be a columnist for the New York Times, it's like more than 30 pieces of silver," Metaxas continued. "It's a horrible thing when you basically fool yourself into thinking you're doing some good, when you're really supposed to stand against it."
Both men, Metaxas said, seem to think that to act on political convictions somehow negates or lessens one's commitment to the Chrisitan faith.
"They say, 'Oh, when you get political, you're just a Christian nationalist.' Well, let me tell you something: George Washington, Billy Graham, Abraham Lincoln – a lot of heroes [of the faith] have behaved in a way that today's Christian Left would call them Christian nationalists."
Metaxas is leaning into the title. "I just think that the term 'Christian nationalist' [is] just the devil's term for true Christian faith," he stated.
In the foreword to "Religionless Christianity," the author encourages living out one's faith – as opposed to just practicing it – in order to overcome evil:
"Many see that we have come to this awful pass precisely because we have not been living out our faith heroically and in every sphere. Therefore, this endless litany of evils that have befallen us – the nightmare of transgender madness, critical race theory, cultural Marxism, and the increasing corruption in all of our institutions, from increasingly authoritarian government to the propagandistic journalistic establishment and the complicity and groupthink of corporate America and beyond – need not be God's final and inevitable judgment. If we take action now, all of these things that have happened can be seen as God's merciful wake-up call to a slumbering church, specifically so that we might repent and do all in our power to live for God in a new way."
