Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.
Current controversy over the Iowa Department of Education’s proposals for new school standards on science education goes back only a couple of months. But on Sunday, January 26, a Des Moines pastor went back some 3,000 years in scripture to discuss how the agency’s proposals reflect the threats that Christian Nationalism poses to our democracy and the nation’s religious life.
At the end of his sermon, the congregation applauded him for doing so.
The pastor is the Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski.
The congregation is Westminster Presbyterian in the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines.
Going “back some 3,000 years” refers to the prophets Nehemiah and Ezra and their efforts in the rebuilding of Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Babylonians around 587 B.C. They had to revive people in despair. Their actions provided one way the community could reestablish itself in continuity with the past and in unity and hope for the present. Needs quite present today.
The link between Nehemiah’s time and ours, the pastor said, was that back then, some used the Torah (the Five Books of Moses, part of the Hebrew Scriptures) to provide a legal system to manipulate others. The Torah and Christian New Testament can be used today to either humanize or demonize our relations with one another.
You can watch the sermon here, starting around the 34:40 mark:
Here’s the substance of Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski’s sermon, adapted by him for Bleeding Heartland. (The sermon’s perspectives on Nehemiah and Ezra are taken from Feasting on the Word, volumes that provide background for the scripture read each Sunday in Christian churches around the world.)
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Nehemiah was the Cup Bearer to the King of Egypt. Because those Jews remaining in Nehemiah’s homeland were in distress and the walls of Jerusalem were torn down, Nehemiah received permission to return and rebuild the city around thirteen years after Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in 458 B.C.E. The King sent Nehemiah to Judah as governor on a mission to rebuild.
Nehemiah did not have an easy job. Enemies attacked from outside, but more disturbingly, internal disagreements threatened to undermine the community’s future. The people formed factions, arguing about who was in and who was out, who should govern, how the fractured community could rebuild the temple, and how the faithful could reestablish safety and peace.
Whether the Jewish community could revive their life together and reclaim their identity as a worshiping community was an urgent matter of life and death. Their identity had unraveled. Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s actions provided a way for the community to reestablish itself—in continuity with the past, and in unity and hope for the present.
The passage marks a deliberate effort by Ezra to reestablish the Torah in accord with living as God’s covenant community, rather than using the Torah as a legal system to control and manipulate others. The Torah’s meaning is not literal or self-explanatory. Its interpretation changes as the circumstances of the people change. Yet, God’s covenant renewal of all people called them to unity and new life. Fulfilling the call to unity requires an interpretation of the Torah that is divinely inspired. Otherwise, the faithful would have gone down the road to another destruction.
There is much to learn from this passage in our contemporary society. We live in a time when enemies’ internal corruption threatens to undermine our future. Christianity is rotting internally due to a corrupt ideology that peddles itself as Christian and yet is its antithesis. According to a 2024 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Christian supremacy and dominionist theology were prominent features of far-right organizing in 2023. Dominionists preach that only Christians who believe as they do have the right to control governmental and all influential posts in society and culture.
Let Christian churches run our schools
Frederick Clarkson, a researcher at Political Research Associates, defines Christian supremacy or dominionism as “The theocratic idea that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society of taking control of political and cultural institutions.”
The goal of Christian Nationalism is to strip the government of functions such as education and welfare and reserve those for churches. Theirs is not a pluralistic religious vision for the public good. Rather, the goal is to siphon off public funds and put them in the hands of a reactionary minority of like-minded dominionist churches.
The resurgence of dominionism is an attempt to fulfill a decades-old dream, begun when segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional, to keep education shackled to a narrow, authoritarian version of Christianity. Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority wrote in 1979, “I hope to live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.”
In line with Falwell’s hope, The Iowa Department of Education proposes removing “climate change,” “evolution,” and other scientific words and concepts from Iowa’s public classrooms. Doing so would be consistent with the warped belief that the Bible is historically correct in every way, right down to a six-day creation. The separation of Church and State gets blurred even further.
These extremist Christians regularly argue that their opponents or detractors are literally “demonic”!
When everyone but your own is demonic, there is no room for discussion or compromise, which undermines a modern democratic system. Further, when “the other” is demonic, they cease to be human. Dehumanizing others allows us to treat them as non-human. Dehumanizing gives permission to terrorize, starve, allow mass destruction, famine, and any other abuse in the name of national or religious security.
The dehumanized groups include, but are not limited to, other religions, the non-religious, LGBTQ+, immigrants and refugees, and anyone deemed “liberal.” There is a private “religious” school in our community that will not hire anyone who attends Westminster because we are deemed immoral! Immoral because we are inclusive and loving.
Whether we are in 440 BC Jerusalem, listening to Nehemiah’s warnings or the warnings from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the last few months, God calls us to evangelize the true gospel of divine, inclusionary love, grace, and mercy. Do not become cynical; the Holy Spirit will guide us to a new, faithful Christianity!
Amen.
Top photo of Rev. Dr. Scott Paczkowski is published with permission.