“We are in a war.”
With these words, New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas opens his powerful, timely, and essential new book, Religionless Christianity: God’s Answer to Evil.
Metaxas expands his war analogy by pointing to previous battles fought to keep alive the glorious and noble values of America’s founding. The first and second—the Revolutionary War and the Civil War—were military conflicts fought by laying “blood and treasure” on the line for the ultimate prize of freedom. The third battle is currently spiritual in nature and has not gotten to this stage of violent destruction—at least, not yet.
Religionless Christianity is designed as a wake-up call to those pastors and churchgoers who are carefully staying on the sidelines of the cultural and political fight. Many simply do not see, or will not acknowledge, that a popular new “secular religion” has filled the void left by churches that are currently “silent in the face of evil.” This new twist on secularism can be seen as a Christianless religion, which is anathema to the genuine article.
The phrase “religionless Christianity” was used by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a positive sense. Metaxas explains it as “the radicalness of genuine Christianity,” whereas a “Christless religion,” which is practiced in many churches today, “is a watered-down faith that has made its peace with secular society—and with evil, too.”
St. George slaying the dragon by Martin Schongauer. Met Museum (public domain).
In one sense, Metaxas dovetails with the groundwork laid by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn in his 2022 book, The Return of the Gods, showing chapter-by-chapter specifics of the infiltration and ugly effects of “gods” who have returned behind the scenes, as it were, to bring down America. In actual fact, however, Religionless Christianity is a pointed........