It's In the Code Ep. 100: “If My People Who Are Called By My Name…”
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
“If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” If you’ve encountered this invocation, it’s almost certain that you’ve encountered it in the context of American Christian nationalism. You might know it’s a verse from the Bible, but where does it come from? What is its full context? Does it mean what the Christian nationalists seem to think it does? Does it really justify their theocratic vision for America? Dan tackles all these issues in this week’s episode.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundi As you likely know, my name is Dan Miller.
I am professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I am your host.
Glad to be with you as always.
As always, this is a series that builds off of you.
It builds off of your ideas, your questions, your comments.
So please reach out with all of those, Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Got some things going on in life, as life does, right?
It sort of happens, and so I'm not as up on the emails as I would like to be, but I do respond to them all, I read them, I value them, so please keep the ideas coming.
And as always, for those of you who support us in all the different ways that you do, thank you so much.
We can't do it without you.
Wouldn't want to do it without you, so thank you.
And I'm going to dive right in today to consider a topic that, as always, several people have reached out about.
It's also a topic with some, I don't know, interesting, maybe just interesting to me, but some interesting personal nuance.
And it actually is a Bible verse, right?
As you'll know, as we get talking into this, if this is familiar to you, as those of you who have reached out about this know, it's often not encountered as a Bible verse, by which I mean that when people come across it, it's often not somebody sort of reading the Bible or citing scripture or something like that.
Rather, it's encountered as a kind of invocation or a claim to which a certain kind of Christian makes appeal.
And so what I want to do is I want to talk about this verse a little bit.
I want to give some context to it.
I want to discuss how I think it functions in the context in which people are now coming across it, which are primarily, I think, inflected with contemporary Christian nationalism, and sort of poke some holes in that and just talk about how it operates and do what we do, right?
The phrase in question is something like this, depending on the Bible translation that you come across, right?
It is this verse, and it reads, "...if my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and heal their land." That's the verse.
It comes from the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.
It's in the book of 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14.
So that's the verse, and it's the sort of preface, if my people who are called by my name, dot, dot, dot, sort of all the rest follows from that, okay?
And so how's it used, right?
People reach out to me with all kinds of things.
People don't reach out with every verse in the Bible, but lots of people have reached out with this one.
Again, this is one that I'm familiar with.
It's one that I encountered both in my life in the evangelical world, we can talk about that in a minute, but also with my clients.
And when people reach out about this, again, it's almost, I think almost invariably, given our present circumstances and our own present cultural context, it is almost always in the context of encountering Christian nationalism.
Or at least those sympathetic to it.
People who are maybe not card-carrying Christian nationalists, but they're like, Christian nationalism adjacent.
Okay?
And this kind of makes sense, if you've listened to the show at all, if you've listened to the Weekly Roundup, if you've listened to all the work we do, you probably are pretty familiar with Christian nationalism.
But the idea is that as a quote-unquote Christian nation, that America, or Americans collectively, are called to repent and to turn back to God to quote, heal the nation, right?
That's the idea.
And while that can, in principle, mean different things to different people, and I'll talk about that in a minute, I think in our present moment, I think people that come across this verse, and this is what I mean when I say that they don't usually encounter it as a Bible verse, right?
They encounter it as something that, say, Uncle Ronald say, right?
You know, it says, my people who are called by my name turn to me and I'll heal their nation.
You know, a kind of invocation, a kind of slogan.
It's the kind of idea that people are are generally confronted with this verse as a way of justifying a broadly Christian nationalist view of America, a Christian nationalist view of what's wrong with America, a Christian nationalist view of how to fix America.
That's how the verse kind of works.
And I said a few minutes ago that it has a sort of personal resonance to me.
And here's why, like I once preached a very moving sermon on this verse and it's, it's, I have not preached many sermons for the last number of years, but I've preached a fair number of sermons in my life.
This one stands out.
I still remember this one.
And it was based, it was focused on that very verse.
And it was based on the premise that America was founded as a Christian nation and was called to turn back to God, okay?
Now, this was not when I was a pastor.
This is like a bit of kind of, I don't know, Dan Miller history, Americana Christianity stuff.
But when I was an undergrad at, you know, Conservative Evangelical College, I was training for ministry and so forth, and there was this program where you could go out to different churches on weekends and they would have college students preach sermons, right?
And so I did this, and I did this a lot.
I spent a lot of time logged a lot of miles in my four years there.
Traveling around rural Oklahoma, where I was a student, and preaching at different churches.
And that's what this was.
It was far enough away that I went out on, like, a Saturday night, and they had, like, a meal for me and stuff, and these people put me up in their home.
And then Sunday, you know, we would do Sunday school and stuff, and then I would preach a sermon, and we would have a nice lunch afterward, and then I would drive back to campus.
So, this was one of these college sermons that I preached.
Okay.
And the entire sermon was effectively premised on taking this Bible passage as a promise for Christians understood as God's people.
Now, it wasn't quite, and I think that this is important, and I think this tells us something about what's happened in the decades since I preached this sermon.
It wasn't quite a Christian nationalist sermon in the style that was so prevalent today, okay?
My focus was on the need for Christians to be faithful to their calling, to win others to the faith.
My understanding of what it meant to be a quote-unquote Christian nation is that those who identified as Christian needed to To win the conversion of non-Christians.
We had to convert America, right?
This wasn't a notion of taking over the government or banning other religions or something like that.
I've talked in the past about, you know, coming from a very Baptist background, and one of the things about the historical Baptist position, which differs a lot from, you know, contemporary Baptists like the Southern Baptist Convention and so forth, Was that there was a strong separation of church and state, and if you wanted to talk about making a quote-unquote Christian nation, you had to make disciples.
That would be the language, right?
You had to convert them.
So that was the sort of framework that I had, this calling that we as Christians had to go and repent in our own lives and win others to the faith and so forth, okay?
I think that vision of America as a Christian nation was much more prevalent then than it is now, and I think that that's one of the ways in which What we're identifying as contemporary Christian nationalism is more extreme, more visible, more mainstream than it was then, okay?
So there was a difference in what I was preaching from the way that I think contemporary Christian nationalism appeals to this, but the overall theme was the same.
The theme was America is a Christian nation, we are called to be faithful to God, and if we are faithful to God, He has promised in this verse that He will heal our land and He will forgive us and so forth.
And man, did it ever land!
It hit!
This sermon, it was a rural church, a church in rural Oklahoma.
Moderate size, it was probably a couple hundred people.
Mostly boomers, and at that time the older folks were also like, you know, greatest generation folks.
There were a lot of World War II era folks and vets and so forth.
It hit.
There were people in tears.
There were people mourning the loss of the Christian America that they remembered and imagined returning to.
It was people who had fought in World War II in Korea and Vietnam and understood what they had done as going out into the world to defend Christian America and so forth.
The point is, man, it resonated.
It hit hard.
It hit hard for me.
It was emotional.
It was emotional for them.
It was intense, right?
And I think the verse still carries that kind of resonance even now, right?
I think that the meaning of it, I said earlier that what it means to be a Christian nation can mean different things to different people, even within a broadly conservative framework.
I think now that verse, the meaning has been sort of intensified and militarized.
I think the vision of Christian America that finds expression when people appeal to this verse is a much more overtly theocratic social vision, okay?
And that's, this is the sense I get when I encounter this verse now, when I encounter people who sort of throw this out, when people reach out and say, you know, somebody in my life is saying this, or you know, I confronted them about like, how can you support So, that's the way that it works, and the point is it still resonates.
these things and they say that my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So that's the way that it works.
And the point is it still resonates.
It still lands.
Only now it lands in a way that legitimizes a much more intense, overtly theocratic social vision.
And it's not exactly a code, right?
So much as it is a straightforward justification for the imposition of a theocratic American state.
If folks haven't listened to it, I invite you to go back.
There was sort of a series within the series, if it's in the code, on biblical inerrancy.
For those who take the Bible to be inerrant, who will use the colloquialism of the Bible being the literal word of God.
I talked at length about why nobody's actually a literalist, but people will still use that language for themselves.
Right?
There's a sense in which I could just pluck out this verse, and they can appeal to it, and it is a divine promise.
Just as it was for me as a 20-something year old college student preaching on this, just as it is for lots of pastors and people now, and it resonates.
It hits.
And the idea now, I think, is that America is called to be a Christian state, a state of God's people who, quote-unquote, seek his face, whether by choice or by force, whether that is because they have converted individually or because we put laws and policies in place that will enforce what we view as a Christian social order.
That's the Christian nationalist social vision.
We talk about that all the time here on Straight White American Jesus.
I don't want to belabor that point.
Instead, what I want to do is I want to highlight a few of the reasons why that appeal to the verse is so problematic, right?
And this is something I recognized even as an evangelical further on, right?
Further on in my training in biblical interpretation, my training in ministry, you know, even as an evangelical, I looked back on this sermon.
I was like, man, that sure hit, but it was not a very good, you know, Bible-based sermon and whatever.
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet in the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Profit by Jeff Fulmer.
Why not?
Let's decode some of this, or maybe decoding is not the right word for what we're doing here.
Let's just situate this verse.
Let's show why it's different than maybe what folks who appeal to it this way think that it is.
So, I said that the verse is in the book of 2 Chronicles.
That's in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament.
In the Hebrew Bible, what is now divided in English Bibles as 1 and 2 Chronicles are a single text.
And Chronicles, as the name Chronicles suggests, is a kind of historical text giving some history of ancient Israel, but it's a very theologically or ideologically informed text.
It's not history in the sense of contemporary historicism, right?
It's history intended to teach a theological or religious point.
And in Chronicles, the focus is heavily on the Israelite kings of David.
People remember, like, David and Goliath or David and Bathsheba.
That David.
And his son Solomon.
Okay?
And the text in 1 Chronicles is all about David.
2 Chronicles talks about Solomon for, like, the first nine chapters.
And then it shifts over to what happens after Solomon dies.
But the focus of the text is on the formal religious and political institutions of ancient Israel.
That its author clearly places at the center of the divine plan.
I think that that's important, right?
The story of Chronicles is basically about having the right kind of what we would call religious and political order and remaining in God's favor through that.
And that's important for this verse, because the verse that's quoted, right, chapter 7, verse 14, It doesn't usually give any context, right?
And if you've engaged folks who are quote-unquote Biblicist in this way, you know that that's how it often works, right?
They'll just like cite a passage from one book of the Bible and a passage from another book and a passage from another book and sort of stitch them together because the idea is that they're all like messages from God and so context doesn't matter and so forth.
But if you look at the context of this verse, It really stands out how this passage, when people use it, is sort of pulled out of context.
So, here's what I mean by that, okay?
It's not only pulled out of context, it's actually, like, half of one sentence.
The verse is not even a full sentence.
If you take, like, the second half of a really long sentence, that's the verse.
And, of course, folks should know, if you don't, that the Bible, when it was written, didn't have verses, right?
It was just written.
So the verse is actually situated right at the moment when Solomon completes the building of the Jewish temple.
Okay?
This is what Solomon is famous for.
And so the focus of the verse is the centrality of the temple For the people of God.
And this is what it actually says.
If you read, like, verses 12 through 16, right?
So we're talking about verse 14.
I'm going to read around that.
This is what it says.
It says,
to the prayer that is made in this place.
For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever, my eyes and my heart will be there for all time.
Okay?
That's the full set of verses.
And the reason I highlight this is that there's more to this passage than fans of Christian America like to cite.
And I think it's important to understand that.
The first thing is that the passage clearly links God's presence to His people through a system of worship structured around the Jewish Temple.
I don't want to go too far into this, but Second Chronicles, the book itself, was written after what was called the exile.
The temple is destroyed, the Jewish people are allowed to return, and eventually we'll build a new temple, and you get the inauguration of what's called Second Temple Judaism.
It's in that context that this book is written, and so what it's really doing is sort of, it's like advocating the building of the new temple, because the idea in the book is, we have to have a temple to be the people of God.
Okay?
That clearly doesn't fit that sort of contemporary interpretation that this is just about Christians and America or whatever, okay?
I also think that the kinds of calamities in view here are telling.
Like, note, and this is the first half of the sentence that's cut off in the verse.
I'll read it again.
It says, When I shut up the heavens so there's no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, Then, if my people are called by my name, etc., etc., etc.
I think it's interesting that, you know, it's very much about natural disasters.
It's about things that happen and negatively impact the people that are understood as a sort of withdrawing of the divine presence.
The idea is, if my people come back to me, I will come back to them.
It's not about conquest.
It's not about taking the land.
It's not about ruling others.
And I think that if contemporary Christians want a closer parallel, if you're talking to Uncle Ron or somebody, I think the parallel isn't about, like, I don't know, overcoming Roe v. Wade or stacking courts or book banning or whatever.
I think that the parallel focus would be things like global warming or storms in the Midwest or fires in the West or rising ocean levels or pandemics like what we experienced in COVID.
Those are the things that are understood as signs of divine displeasure.
And they are exactly the kinds of issues that conservative Christians in America don't interpret as acts of God.
They're exactly the issues they pretend don't exist.
So if you were to talk to Uncle Ron or somebody and say, well, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but, you know, the interpretation of God's presence is not about trans inclusion or banning LGBTQ people or, again, getting rid of books.
It's about, you know, natural calamities that we see all around us.
Maybe we should interpret those as signs of divine displeasure.
Another point is that the concept of the people or nation, these are synonyms here, my people or my nation turned to me, I think that's important.
We know that the New Testament describes Christians as the new Israel, and that's why people will say, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's about the Jewish people and the Jewish temple, but Paul says Christians are the new Israel.
But for Protestants, again, that's the tradition out of which most Christian nationalists come, somebody has to willingly convert to be a Christian.
So if Christianity is a nation, it's not one into which one is simply born, nor does one enter into it through something like political citizenship.
And certainly this has not typically been the American view.
It's something that people have to convert to.
And again, that's very Baptist.
I understand that.
Like, that's my interpretation.
I think it's also a traditionally American interpretation.
So if it's true that God will respond to His people turning to Him, I don't think there can be any simple equivalence between a political state and God's religious people.
And I think that that's an issue that really cuts against the logic of Christian nationalism and Christian nationalists who cite this verse.
And finally, I think there's just this.
It's the whole issue of humility.
I just want to, you know, one more time, what it says, if my people are called by my name, humble themselves, pray, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, right?
Then God responds and so forth.
Folks, if there's one thing that contemporary Christian nationalists don't do very well, it is humility.
They do not humble themselves.
Christian nationalism is not about humbling oneself as a good, observant Christian, humbling oneself before God, and asking God to move in the world.
Christian nationalism is about humbling, or better, humiliating others.
Christian nationalism is about identifying what you think are the enemies of God and punishing them for that.
And there is just nothing of that in this verse.
There is nothing in this verse about blaming others for God's turning away.
It is about taking responsibility for oneself and one's own community as a community of quote-unquote God's people and responding accordingly.
So even if one accepted all the stuff about contemporary American Christians being some sort of divine nation, about America being founded as a Christian nation, none of these things are things that I accept.
But even if somebody did, the actions that the verse says God demands to bring about God's favor, number one, it's against calamities that contemporary Christian nationalists kind of deny And number two, the actions are not about militancy.
They're not about punishing others.
They are about humbling oneself.
All of which are reasons why I think when the Christian nationalist in your life throws out this verse, it could be worth pointing some of those things out.
Even if it doesn't change their mind, even if it doesn't convert them, I think that there's value to that.
All right?
Gotta wind this down.
I want to point out, and some of you will have heard this, if you, again, were in the evangelical world, certainly if you ever sort of trained in seminary or something, they used to have this saying within conservative evangelical circles, and they'd say, that'll preach, right?
If somebody says something or has quote-unquote a good word, did a series or an episode on that a long time ago, somebody would say, man, that'll preach, okay?
The Christian Nationalists, If My People Are Called By My Name message, that message will preach.
It preached when I was at that little church in Oklahoma delivering that message.
I have seen other powerful messages with it.
I have heard people who are moved and motivated by that verse.
It'll preach.
It probably preaches for Uncle Ron.
It might preach for your grandparents, or your mom or your dad, or your siblings.
Okay.
But even a cursory look at the passage shows its limitations.
Just read the verse in front of it, right?
Read the whole sentence.
If I were encountering Uncle Ron, I'd be like, Uncle Ron, that's interesting that you cite that.
Let's look at that.
I mean, you know that's like half of a sentence, right?
Let's read the first half of the sentence.
Are we talking about pestilence?
Are we talking about plagues?
Are we talking about locusts or bad crops?
Because that's what the verse is talking about.
To say nothing about situating it within temple worship, situating it within a very different concept of people or nation, the emphasis on humility, all of that.
A cursory look at the passage.
I think a look at the passage that even an inerrantist like Uncle Ron or somebody like that has to take seriously.
I think the passage on their own terms doesn't do what they think it does.
If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, etc., etc., etc., that's where we're at.
I think it's a kind of part of the Christian nationalist playlist.
It's an invocation you'll hear.
But if we dig in just a little bit, we can see not just how it operates, but maybe ways to undermine that.
As I said, I've got to wind this down.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
If you're in a position to subscribe and you haven't done that and you would consider doing that, I would just ask you to give us some real thoughts.
It helps keep us going.
All the ways that you support us, we value.
And as always, please feel free to reach out for me, excuse me, to me, danielmillerswaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Keep the comments coming, the feedback, the ideas for topics.
I'm into summer now.
End of my term, I'll be working to catch up on the emails to be in touch with all of you who reach out.
