Southern Baptist elites have found their scapegoat for declining church membership—American exceptionalism, patriotism, nationalism and Christians who supported Donald Trump. Years of failures in mission strategy and efforts are now conveniently to be blamed on loving America and Orange Man Bad, according Chief Missiologist of the largest evangelical denomination.
“Mixed up in the convoluted concoction of politics and religion is a reemergence of a very unchristian patriotism,” the Southern Baptist Convention’s Chief Missiologist wrote. “Caleb Cohen reminded us that, ‘It does not take an unpatriotic American to recognize that our society has long nursed a heresy of American exceptionalism, equating our national values and interests with those of Christianity itself.