Scared? So Are We. Here’s What to Do About It

A United Methodist Insight Commentary

by

Perspectives

Correction: Thanks to alert reader Ed Womack for correcting my scripture references. See blow.

A United Methodist Insight Commentary | March 12, 2026

War in the Middle East and Ukraine. Immigrants and their supporters terrorized and killed on U.S. streets. New information about the international scope of Jeffrey Epstein's human trafficking ring. The cost of living rising relentlessly – groceries, gas, health care. And the U.S. government drenched in corruption that enriches the wealthy and deprives the middle-class and the poor. Every day a new shock.

Hard as it is, we mustn’t look away, nor can we pretend these perilous events aren't happening. The urgency of this moment coalesced for me this week as I watched a video “Hegseth the Crusader: The Trump Administration's Holy War,” featuring Robert P. Jones, a Baptist minister who is president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and Wajahat Ali, a Muslim who writes op-eds for the New York Times, and is a speaker and podcaster. Their video is shared on Jones’ blog “Redeeming Democracy” and Ali's "The Left Hook," both on Substack.

Robby, whom I’ve met, and Waj, whom I’ve not met but would like to meet, bring renewed urgency in their warnings about the current federal administration’s underlying belief system known as White Christian Nationalism. They focus on the WCN worldview of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has his finger on the "go" button of the world’s largest military force. Secretary Hegseth sees the U.S. attacks on Iran as a “holy war,” the antithesis of Jesus's teaching.

Jones make a vigorous case that Christians haven’t done enough to define and defend faith boundaries, despite polls showing that majorities of people reject the violent motivations of WCN activists as “not Christian.” The double standard shows in polls where people are reluctant to reprove racist, sexist, homophobic and other dehumanizing attitudes in our churches, synagogues, mosques and worship centers. In other words, it’s not enough to say, “no, Christianity is about love,” or “Islam is a religion of peace;” we have to educate, assert and live out our true beliefs.

At the same time, Ali stresses that “if you don’t speak a religious language, you’re missing out on a chunk of America.” Those who dismiss or ignore religion’s influence on American life fail to understand how important a role religion plays in our culture, he contends. The difference politically, according to PRRI statistics, is that those on the right are more homogeneously white Christians, while more of the middle and left political spectrum are Black Protestants and Catholics, Latino Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and more. As a result the moral framework by which we can counterbalance White Christian Nationalism's pernicious influence requires more consensus-building around common values.

Common values

The Rev. Terry Kyllo, a Lutheran clergyman and executive director of Paths to Understanding: Gathering Neighbors, Growing Trust, recently listed these six values as common to many, if not most, religions and to those who claim no religion:

  1. Every human being has inherent dignity.
  2. Power must be limited and accountable.
  3. The vulnerable deserve protection.
  4. Truth matters.
  5. Community comes before unchecked self-interest.
  6. Justice and mercy belong together’

The Rev. Neal Christie, a United Methodist clergyman who is co-founder and director of The Religious Nationalisms Project, recently led the first of six Great Plains Conference seminars on Christian nationalism. Rev. Christie asserted that United Methodists are called to engage in the public square following the example of Methodism’s founder John Wesley, who was “vocal in his views on human trafficking, slavery and a woman’s right to vote,” according to a report by David Burke. 

Last year, as the Trump administration was gearing up, I did a search on Insight for articles on White Christian Nationalism. To my surprise, I found that between 2019 and 2025, we published more than 1,700 such articles. Every one of them warned of the dangers of WCN becoming rampant in the United States.

So if this abundance of articles hasn’t done much to stem the tide of WCN, why bring it up again? We mustn't give up, because we’re seeing the terrifying fruits of this perversion of Christianity bringing destruction once again upon the world.

Once again? Yes, for those of you who haven’t studied history, Christianity has been used to justify some of the world’s most horrific atrocities. The Crusades and Nazi Germany are only two such episodes. And it’s not sufficient to play the false equivalence card saying “radical Muslims do it,” or “radical Hindus  do it.” The very essence of Jesus’s teachings, the manner of his life and his death, refute the domination ethic at the core of White Christian Nationalism.

'Faithful Resistance'

Fortunately, there is hope. Within the past month, 2,000 people led by 1,200 United Methodists worshiped and marched in Washington, D.C., against the current administration's oppressive immigration actions. They called the event "Faithful Resistance."

It's worth half an hour of your time to watch the video of Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling’s sermon from the “Faithful Resistance” worship service. Bishop Easterling, who gave us an inspiring sermon on recovery from sexual violence at the 2024 General Conference, is one of the UMC’s most gifted preachers and one of its most astute theologians. She lays the blame for anti-immigration violence squarely at its source: the greed of humans who have claimed God’s blessed creation expressed in Psalm 24 for themselves. The idea that we humans own the world and hence can exploit it – including its people – for our satisfaction is the lie, the sin, that has snaked throughout history. The bishop terms this theory “moral and theological malfeasance.”

Thus, it can’t be said often enough or clearly enough: a season of evil has returned to stalk the world, and the ones who are truly evil are those who are proclaiming themselves God’s defenders against the “infidels” they oppress. Somehow bloody centuries haven't taught us: God needs no defense. We can’t bomb people into submission; bombing only destroys, creating retaliation, as we’ve already seen in the Middle East. We can terrorize, even kill, the “degenerates” who are “poisoning the blood” of the nation, but that neo-Nazi justification of violence denies Jesus's beloved community.

(By the way, according to the current administration’s standards set out in a September 2025 presidential memo, a “domestic terrorist” is anyone who expresses “anti-American” and “anti-Christian” views. By this definition, I’m a domestic terrorist, and so are we all any time we criticize our government or our church, because then we’re not the “right kind” of American or Christian).

The word “Christian” means “one who follows Christ.” The question is, which Christ do we follow? Is it the Jesus who taught the greatest commandment is to love God and our neighbors in Matthew 22:34-40. Likewise,  commandment to his disciples is in John 15:12-17:  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you…This I command you, to love one another.”  Do we follow the Lord of Love who taught us how to treat “the least of these” in Matthew 25? Or is it a fictional apocalyptic warrior who justifies humans’ worst inclinations toward bloodshed? There is no middle ground here.

I close with the counsel of the Rev. Derek Penwell, a Disciples of Christ minister in Louisville, Ky., who began his Substack blog, Heretic Adjacent, just a few months ago. Derek quotes the prophet Habakkuk: “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore, the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails” (Habakkuk 1:2-4).

Derek writes: “The answer Habakkuk gets is odd. Severe, even. It’s not a five-step plan for surviving the collapse of public trust or a reassurance that everything will be fine by next Tuesday. Just this: ‘Write the vision. Make it plain. And wait.’

“Bear witness," Derek goes on. "Write it down. Don’t let the truth disappear just because it’s inconvenient to the powerful or exhausting to the rest of us. And then wait, not because waiting is easy, but because sometimes faithfulness is less about fixing what we can’t fix and more about refusing to lie about what’s going on. … Name what you see. Tell the truth about it. Don’t look away.”

Scared? Yes, but not hopeless. Take heart, be faithful, and bear witness.

Cynthia B. Astle is Editor of United Methodist Insight which she founded in 2011 as a media channel to amplify news and views for, by and about marginalized and under-served United Methodists.