A few months ago, another manuscript came my way: Matthew Taylor’s Defying Tyrants. I felt the same way reading this one. It’s another perfect book for this moment.
You may already know Matthew for his book The Violent Take It By Force, an essential work on the New Apostolic Reformation. Now, he’s written a book for Christians in particular who are sorting through what is being said and done in the name of Christ.
Matthew D. Taylor established himself as one of America’s leading scholars of Christian nationalism with The Violent Take It by Force. Here he turns from diagnosis to theology, arguing that Christianity itself contains the resources to resist authoritarianism and political idolatry. Tracing the tension between faith and power from the early church to the present, Defying Tyrants is likely to interest believers and non-believers alike who want to understand religion’s continuing role in public life.
“Their fixation with their own prophecies, and in the way they interpret biblical prophecies, is very influential today,” theologian and religious scholar Matthew D. Taylor told me. “ I wouldn’t necessarily say, ‘Oh, Donald Trump believes in their end-times prophecies,’ but they do, and they are advising Trump.”
While the United States has no official state religion, Christianity has long been dominant in the country. Adherents of an ideology called Christian nationalism are increasingly calling for incorporating their beliefs into US policy.
“It’s pretty common to have people involved in a Christian nationalist narrative, a Christian nationalist agenda, a Christian nationalist philosophy but not be very deep Christians themselves,” Taylor said. “If they’re a regular Fox News person, if they hang out in right-wing circles, it’s the media they consume, the cultural tribe they belong to.”
“It’s a very useful way to get around the Christian imperative to love your enemy,” Matthew Taylor told me. “For the most part, that is the ironclad command. So how do you get Christians to hate their enemies? Or to hate them even if they love them? Demons are easy to hate. They are irredeemable objects of hatred.”
Matthew Taylor sees Pursuit’s new leadership as deliberately choosing the Pacific Northwest for its oppositional potential, comparing their strategy directly to Mark Driscoll’s at Mars Hill, who relished in his opposition to Seattle culture.
“Christian nationalism isn’t one thing,” Taylor told CT. “We’re using this one phrase to capture a number of different phenomena.” Some proponents are nostalgic for a time when Christianity was more culturally prominent, Taylor said. Others want Christians to be a privileged class in society, which he classifies as “Christian supremacy.”
“There’s this very sharp tension going on right now, I’d even call it a low-grade civil war, between the more Christian Zionist factions that are very pro-Israel, very pro-war in Iran … versus this kind of rising tide of antisemites in the far-right coalition,” Taylor said.
Many religion scholars, Weaver-Zercher says, see the rise of authoritarianism under Trump as a deeply theological problem. “We have to have a robust theological response,” she explains, pointing to Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists (Broadleaf, Oct.) by Matthew D. Taylor, an expert on Christian extremism. The book draws on scripture to challenge people who abuse power in the name of Jesus.
Taylor’s forthcoming book, Defying Tyrants, is a theological manifesto that speaks directly to Christians who are drawn to so-called Christian Nationalism... “If they [the Christian Right] are the only ones making religious arguments, they’re going to win that argument over people speaking only in the language of Enlightenment values,” he says.
Taylor said the invocation of ancient Scriptures invoked amid modern military conflict raises a “very, very significant question.”
“Do the Geneva Conventions apply to a holy war? Do the Geneva Conventions apply to an apocalyptic war? Because that is what Trump is threatening,” said Taylor.
“Hegseth's Christian nationalist rhetoric is part of a broader effort…to run back the clock and take us back to a time before all that diversity and complexity became part and parcel of U.S. culture and identity,” Taylor said.
“I think it’s extremely concerning the way that he is operating. It’s concerning to me as a Christian, and it’s concerning to me as an American,” said Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.
“The ideological consolidation of the military is something that we have historically not wanted. We want the military to be diverse. We want the military representative of the American people,” he added.
“I think Israel has become a kind of battleground between these folks with the more interventionist kind of Christian Zionist,” said Taylor, “versus this more kind of isolationist, Catholic and Calvinist, supersessionist and antisemitic coalition.”
Matthew D. Taylor, a visiting scholar at Georgetown who studies religious extremism and has been a frequent Hegseth critic, said, "The U.S. voluntarily going to war against a Muslim country with the military under the leadership of Pete Hegseth is exactly the kind of scenario that people like me were warning about before the election and throughout his appointment process."
Taylor believes that the spread of what he calls MAGA Christianity is serving as cover for the authoritarian turn in right-wing politics: if your enemies are controlled by demonic forces, why would you respect how they voted?
Since the Hamas attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023, tensions over Israel have divided the MAGA movement, says Taylor. “On a deeper level, it’s also about this America-first kind of anti-interventionism, blood and soil, white Christian nationalism versus this more global, populist, authoritarian imperialist vision that is deeply Christian Zionist and pro-Israel.”