DALLAS — A coalition dubbed Salt & Light Resistance has collected nearly 1,000 signatures on an open letter warning of “a great spiritual danger facing all Christians in the United States today.”
Authored by Collin Packer, Jerry Taylor and Mark Hamilton, the 975-word letter details concerns about “clear evidence of great evil,” including the “deliberate and ongoing persecution of people of color in our country — a persecution that is intensifying, not receding.
“We see the removal of migrants without due process of law or regard for the danger those removed may face,” writes Packer, director of strategic development for Dallas-based Let’s Talk Race Ministries; Taylor, retired founding director of Abilene Christian University’s Carl Spain Center on Race Studies and Spiritual Action; and Hamilton, a professor in ACU’s Graduate School of Theology.
“We see the steady erosion of hard-won civil rights and even basic respect for African Americans and other people of color, including our fellow Christians,” the letter adds. “And we hear the church’s deafening silence as confused or self-deluding white Christians blithely throw away the good news of Jesus Christ in favor of the bad news of Empire.”
The co-authors characterize the statement as “an Open Letter to a Beloved Fellowship,” written by “Christians with affiliations to Churches of Christ and the American Restoration Movement and as partisans of the kingdom of God.”
The spiritual danger, the letter maintains, “goes under many names, most notably Christian nationalism or in its most extreme forms, Christian Dominionism.
“The movement confuses the gospel with a political agenda and makes us susceptible to the death-dealing designs of corrupting leaders,” the statement declares. “It disguises venomous hatred with pious words. It uses the precious name of our Savior, the saving symbol of the cross, and the music by which we celebrate our redemption to mask the great harm done to large groups of our fellow human beings. It wrests the very Scriptures of the church in order to seduce men and women into flagrant disobedience to their Lord.”
Jerry Taylor, one of the open letter’s co-authors, speaks at the Homewood Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala., in 2023.
Why some signed the letter
At the time this story was published, the number of signatures stood at 969 from 42 states and 11 countries.
Mika Roland
Among those endorsing the letter: Mika Roland, a member of the College Church of Christ in Fresno, Calif., and a former missionary to Mozambique.
“When I see migrants removed without due process, when I hear dehumanizing rhetoric go unchallenged, when I watch the church stay silent — I cannot stay silent alongside it,” Roland told The Christian Chronicle. “God is the God of the marginalized, the non-American and the American alike.”
Like Roland, Carlos Carbajal, a Miami Christian who has ministered to congregations in Honduras and the U.S., felt compelled to back Salt & Light Resistance’s statement.
“In this moment, I believe the church, especially within the Restoration Movement, is called to recover its prophetic voice,” Carbajal said. “This means courageously discerning and confronting ideas, systems and powers that distort the Gospel, while also offering a faithful, Christ-centered alternative grounded in love, justice and truth.”
Carisse Mickey Berryhill, a member of the Broadway Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas, and a retired Christian university professor, said: “Christians should advocate for peace and justice in the secular state, but we must protest when human government, or any part of society, promotes war, cruelty or injustice in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The open letter, shown on a computer screen, has accumulated nearly 1,000 signatures.
Why others didn’t sign it
But the letter, made public March 31, has drawn sharp criticism from other Christians.
“I view this letter as absolutely harmful to the unity of the church and for the church’s ability to present Jesus as Light and the salvation for the world,” said Gail Hopkins, a former longtime board chairman of now-defunct Ohio Valley University in Vienna, W.Va., whose family traces its Restoration Movement roots back to the 1800s.
“This letter is quite simply a contemporary political effort couched in theological, biblical and historical terms,” Hopkins wrote in an email. “It is an effort to gin up opposition to President Donald Trump’s current federal government’s efforts to control illegal immigration into the United States of America.”
Jay Kelley, evangelist for the Austin Street Church of Christ in Levelland, Texas, said: “I believe these folks have allowed themselves to be deluded into the very thing they decry — the politicization of Christianity.”
Donald T. Eason, a minister and elder of the Metro Church of Christ in Sterling Heights, Mich., said he believes the co-authors and signers of the letter “are of the best intentions.”
Donald Eason
But Eason, who serves as president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Urban Renewal and Education, takes issue with the statement’s claims.
“The idea that a leader guided by Christian principles is ‘susceptible to the death-dealing designs of corrupting leaders’ is concerning,” Eason said. “Those that created this document are Christians but seem to disdain the idea of Christian leadership in the political realm.”
Bill Robinson, a domestic missionary who serves the Upper West Manhattan Church of Christ in New York City, also said he does not question the letter’s sincerity.
“But sincerity does not determine truth,” Robinson said. “The only safe ground is the Word of God. At the heart of the letter is a fundamental error. It shifts the focus from sin against God to social and political conditions as the defining moral crisis. Scripture does not do this.”
Meaning of Christian nationalism
Debate over Christian nationalism has raged since Trump’s 2016 election as president.
The war of words intensified after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — many waving signs linking the Republican political leader, who disputed his 2020 defeat, to their Christian faith.
Tiffany Dahlman
“The embrace of Christian nationalism, even in its subtle forms, rejects participation in the embrace of God, which leaves those who traditionally hold little power in our contexts vulnerable to serious harm,” said Tiffany Dahlman, lead minister for the Courtyard Church of Christ in Fayetteville, N.C., and a member of Salt & Light Resistance’s 12-person guiding coalition.
Trump and many of his supporters maintain that God saved him from an assassination attempt during his successful 2024 campaign “to make America great again.”
“Whether ‘Christian nationalism’ is a danger or not depends very much on how one defines the term,” political scientist J. Matthew Wilson, director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told the Chronicle. “If it means the belief that the United States has been, is and/or should be governed by a general ethos rooted in Christianity, this is a widely held view that is hard to construe as dangerous.
“If, on the other hand, one means the belief that only Christians can legitimately be American, or that other religions should be actively suppressed, this is much more dangerous to the American social fabric — but also much less common,” Wilson added. “Social science research on American public opinion consistently shows that support for more extreme, exclusivist formulations of Christian nationalism remains a fringe position.”
Protesters wave flags and climb the walls of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
‘A public witness’
Salt & Light Resistance’s letter does not mention Trump or any political party by name.
However, in an interview with the Chronicle, Packer voiced concern about the manner of the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration in major cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago.
“It really isn’t related to this administration,” Packer said of the letter. “We really believe there’s a public witness that’s needed whenever leaders of any party are creating a threat to our brothers and sisters and really all of our citizens and those who are undocumented.”
Such a letter “sort of runs against the grain of how Churches of Christ have viewed autonomy,” said John Mark Hicks, a retired Bible professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., and an expert on the Restoration Movement.
“At the same time, unheard or ignored voices might only be heard through this medium,” Hicks said. “When autonomy silences people, they will find ways to voice their concerns and offer an alternative public witness.”
“When autonomy silences people, they will find ways to voice their concerns and offer an alternative public witness.”
John Young, a Restoration Movement scholar at Amridge University in Montgomery, Ala., said: “While there were undoubtedly efforts at mass mobilization among Churches of Christ prior to the internet age, it’s hard to imagine something like this taking off without social media making it possible for this message to be shared. There are definite geographic clusters of signees but also participants from some pretty far-flung areas, and this kind of connection, which is not directly tied to a particular congregation, publication, university or other institution, is unusual.”
Patrick Odum serves as a minister and elder of the Northwest Church of Christ, a Chicago congregation that offers worship services in English, Spanish and Korean.
“I wanted my church, many of whom are immigrants, people of color and others that Christian nationalism excludes, to know where I stand and that I have their back,” said Odum, who signed the letter.
Christians enjoy a multicultural potluck meal at the Northwest Church of Christ in Chicago in 2023.
On the other hand, Kevin Withem, senior minister for the North County Church of Christ in Escondido, Calif., chose not to add his name to the list.
“It seems like ‘Christian nationalism’ is sometimes overapplied as a term,” Withem said. “I think you can have love and appreciation for certain aspects of your country, which offers unparalleled freedoms, without being idolatrous toward it.”
Managing Editor Calvin Cockrell contributed to this report.
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.
