The Worship of Power ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
June 28, 2026
Earlier this month, the Department of Defense took the unusual step of eliminating the majority of official religious affiliations for service members, from 211 down to 31. And of those 31 approved religious designations, 20 are various Christian denominations. Unitarian Universalism was removed from the list. So was the United Church of Christ, our progressive religious cousin.
While this doesn’t affect the role of military chaplains – yet – nor does it keep individual service members from identifying themselves according to their choice – yet – it is clearly a move to shrink the number of officially sanctioned religious traditions. One wonders where this will lead.
The Secretary of Defense, or as he prefers to be called, the Secretary of War, is open about his Christian belief. He is a follower of Doug Wilson, who leads the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. This is a deeply conservative version of Christianity that advocates patriarchy, taking away women’s right to vote, criminalizing LGBTQ+ people, and barring non-Christians from holding public office. Wilson openly advocates for eliminating the separation of church and state, so that we can officially be regarded as a Christian nation.
Back in February, Hegseth invited Wilson to lead a monthly worship service at the Pentagon. The Department of War is openly promoting a command and conquer flavor of Christianity. The Empire Strikes Back.
Here we are, on the cusp of our country’s 250th anniversary, in a place that most of us find hard to believe. If you’re like me, you’ve been wondering for some years now, perhaps since 2016, just how this rise of open adherence to a militant form of Christianity has happened.
Our story begins in the fourth century, when the Roman Emperor Constantine became a follower of Christianity. Before that time, early Christians were persecuted by the pagan Romans; imprisoned, mauled by lions. It’s hard to believe that early Christianity even attracted much attention on the part of the empire: small groups met in houses, often over a meal. It’s sometimes said that those early Christians inspired a lot of enmity because they simply refused to participate in daily life, and especially to have fun. They emphasized the ethical teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, trying to live in ways that followed his life as they waited for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Much of this took place in the shadows. Houses where gatherings took place were labelled with a fish symbol. But as we know, as time went on, the story of Jesus, his life and death and resurrection, began to spread more and more widely, first carried by his apostles, and by the writings of Saint Paul, and then by merchants travelling around the Mediterranean.
Emperor Constantine grew increasingly interested in Christianity during his reign, and legalized it. Eventually, Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity to be the official state religion of the Empire. From then on, Christianity became the religion of power, of control, a religion to be enforced, and used to subjugate people. It was never intended to be this way. But the humble dinner churches gave way to massive cathedrals, doctrine, rigid control of people, and then, in the 11th century, to holy war: the Crusades against Muslim rulers to try to take control of the Holy Land.
A gentle religion about the teachings of a humble prophet became a centuries-long worship of power and control, and state-sanctioned violence of other religious groups, particularly Jews and Muslims. Christianity has swung back and forth between these two identities, between the merciful message of the Sermon on the Mount on the one hand and the rousing cadence of the hymn Onward, Christian Soldiers on the other.
Let’s fast-forward to the mid 20th century in the United States. Like many people, I have assumed that the rise of the religious right here was in response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. But in fact, some scholars trace the beginnings of the movement to organize conservative Christians back to the desegregation of schools and the effort to create segregated private Christian schools. Of course, following Roe v. Wade, these organizers used abortion as a wedge issue to further galvanize conservative voters. From there emerged the Moral Majority and the election of Ronald Reagan; the creation of a culture war that rages on today and that would seek to weaken democratic norms.
If you’re like me, you’ve been perplexed since at least 2016, when Donald Trump ran for president and was elected the first time, with widespread support from evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. “How can this be?” I kept asking. The multiple marriages, the open conversation about sexual misconduct, the misogyny and racism, the mocking of the disabled, the allegations of corruption – none of that seemed to matter to people who I always believed maintained strict behavioral standards in the name of their religion. After all, Calvinists believed that the only way to know whether or not you would be saved and have eternal life was clues offered by your conduct during your earthly life. What we’ve been observing in the past 10 years has simply made no sense. Where was the love of neighbor? Where was “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude?” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
What we’re seeing is a resurgence of the Christianity of empire: once again the seeking of power in the name of Christ. We call this Christian Nationalism – a form of Christianity that seeks political control and the subjugation of others. James Talarico, as we heard in our reading, calls it idolatry. Hearing that word, idolatry, makes me think of the golden calf created by the ancient Israelites in the desert in the Book of Exodus. And it also makes me think of the 22-foot tall gold statue of Donald Trump outside of his Doral golf course in Florida. Worship of power. Worship of gold.
What seems to be missing in all this religiosity is Jesus, and his efforts to teach about the Kingdom, the Beloved Community. “Blessed are the meek,” he told his followers. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Blessed are the merciful.”
Instead, we have a growing number of people in this country who see the religion called Christianity as nothing but a means to an end. Much like the original Crusades, it is to be used to stoke a culture war, to conquer, and to impose a set of reactionary beliefs on an entire country. It is no longer on the fringes of our society, but is becoming increasingly visible. There were a lot of Christian nationalists participating in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. And Project 2025, the blueprint for the second Trump administration, explicitly draws from the goals of those who would remake our country into their vision of a Christian empire.
What are the basic elements of Christian Nationalism? Scholar Andrew Whitehead lists five: the desire for a traditional social hierarchy, led by white males, heads the list. Next, Whitehead names the preference for people born in this country, especially those who are white. Third, a belief in free-market capitalism that has no safety nets since those would benefit those less privileged. Then, a focus on social control and obedience to authority, a belief that violence is justified in order to ‘save the country’. Finally, Christian nationalists express disdain for the government and perceived ‘elites’, which leads to mistrust and conspiracy theories. (https://andrewwhitehead.substack.com/p/five-elements-of-christian-nationalism)
Nowhere in this list do we see mention of the lessons of the Good Samaritan, or any expression of compassion or empathy. In fact, empathy is regarded as a tool of the political left to try to manipulate the feelings of others. Therefore, empathy becomes sinful.
When you hear what Christian nationalism is truly all about, it explains why so many traditional religious people have been willing to overlook all the moral failures of the past decade: the corruption, the lack of empathy, the personal immorality. It’s worth it, they believe, in order to create the kind of society that makes sense to them: a society more rigidly structured, a clear hierarchy where there is no place for the vulnerable and the marginalized.
It is a sad portrait of a society in which only a few are allowed to flourish. As I have said multiple times this month, when Thomas Jefferson wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, his definition of ‘happiness’ was different than we conceive of it today. The right of happiness meant the right to thrive, to achieve one’s potential, to become who you are meant to be.
Imagine a society that turns its back on the fundamental principle of human flourishing.
Where can we find hope to sustain us in the midst this worship of power?
Luckily, there are still many religious voices out there, some Christian, some not, who do believe in creating a society in which all people have the right to grow and to thrive. Many of them, of course, are Unitarian Universalists, but there are many others. James Talarico, who we heard earlier, is an eloquent emerging voice of compassion and liberal religion.
My congregation knows that I have turned to Pope Francis and now to Pope Leo for their compassion, and to Episcopal bishop the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. In fact, last week Bishop Budde was the Ware Lecturer at our UUA General Assembly, an annual lecture that seeks out important voices in religious and national issues, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Cornel West, Mary Oliver, and Krista Tippett.
Bishop Budde had some very encouraging words for we UU’s in her lecture. She called us ‘hope bearers’. And she told us something important, which I will offer as reported by Kimberley Debus in her blog “Hold My Chalice”: “Bishop Budde spent most of her time calling us back to ourselves. She reminded us that our unwavering commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person means that for our entire history (even before we had that phrase), we have been First: first to respond, first to have the ideas, first to enact what seem to others to be radical suppositions that became globally accepted over time… but someone had to go first, and that someone is often us.”
My fellow hope-bearers, this has been a lot for a lovely summer morning. But this year, our country’s birthday needs to be marked with more than fireworks and parades. There needs to be truth-telling, a naming of exactly what forces are at work among us.
The forces who would assume power, who would exercise their own desire for control over us in the name of religion, are stronger right now than they have been in a long time. We’ve seen that this form of religion has existed probably throughout human history, in one form or another. But we can hold on to who we are, hold on to our vision of a country where no one is left behind. We know that the American people are speaking out and rejecting the vision offered by Project 2025 by wide margins. That’s not to say that Christian Nationalism is waning in power. But we, and the millions of Americans who also reject this vision of a rigid, unhappy society controlled by a few white men have the tools we need to counter this force. We know how to hold on to a vision of a compassionate country, a justice-seeking country. We know how to create strong communities and how to take care of each other. We can remember the words from our Declaration of Independence, those words that have not come true yet, but that can always shine a light before us: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal…”
And finally, we have learned that Interdependence is at least as important as Independence; that as Maya Angelou said, “no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
May it be so, today, and every day.
