What is ‘the church’ and what is ‘Communion’?

Much ink has been spilled over the last decade revealing the ways white evangelical Republicans have descended into the abyss of authoritarianism. But while they claim to be the most committed to Christ and the church, their empathy-starved embrace of empire actually has led them to redefine Christ and the church altogether.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” The Greek word for church is ekklesia, which means a called-out assembly or congregation.

At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, “Kirk actually in the German language means church. So on this Sunday morning, I’d like to think we’re all in Charlie’s Church.”

That’s not an original thought to Hegseth, by the way, as the church he attends in Washington, D.C. — with ties to Christian nationalist and misogynist Doug Wilson — uses the German word kirk alternately for “church” in its name. The church’s website domain is christkirk.

Is this the church?

“Was Charlie Kirk’s pyrotechnic sparklefest really the church?”

But was Charlie Kirk’s pyrotechnic sparklefest really the church? And if the Gospels in the Bible subverted the gospel of empire by casting Jesus as the anti-Caesar, then were the worshipers at Charlie’s Church really preaching the gospel? As BNG’s Mara Richards Bim observed, “What struck me most about the service was the escalation of efforts to deify Kirk and to articulate a gospel of MAGA.”

And when those of us who aren’t card-carrying members of MAGA share any concerns these days, we’re met with sharp condemnation. One Christian nationalist defending Kirk on social media last week suggested, “God is turning to the political realm because the churches have become soft on sin and scared to offend someone.”

Silly Jesus. He claimed the gates of Hades wouldn’t prevail against the church. But apparently he forgot to mention he’d simply give up on the church and turn to Trump instead. Because we all know Trump isn’t soft on sin, right?

So how did we get to the place where white evangelicals, who claim to be the most committed to Christ and the church, are now redefining the church worshiping Christ as pyrotechnic-lined political sparklefests for the promotion of empire?

What or who is the church?

Definitions of the church tend to identify who the church is with than what the church believes and does. In white evangelicalism, Wayne Grudem defines the church as “the community of all true believers for all time. That is, the church is made up of all the men and women who have been, are or ever will be true believers in Jesus.”

Jeff Vanderstelt, founder of a global family of churches known as Soma, says, “The church is the regenerate people of God saved by the power of God for the purposes of God in this world.”

“Glorifying God becomes defined as submission to a hierarchy.”

But exactly what are those purposes? Many Christians will give answers such as glorifying God, making disciples or building the kingdom. But in today’s authoritarian Christian nationalism, this is where the slippery slope toward redefining Christ as Caesar and the church as the empire begins to take shape. Glorifying God becomes defined as submission to a hierarchy. Making disciples gets translated into politics by making disciples of nations. And building the kingdom means taking the hierarchies of authority and submission from within the church walls through politics to the nation as a whole.

Church ‘outside of the four walls’

In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, one of the most disturbing reactions has come from the mainstream worship leaders who attended. Despite President Donald Trump claiming to hate those who oppose him and Stephen Miller calling us “nothing” and “wickedness,” Chris Tomlin called the service “an awakening moment for our nation” and gushed, “I’m still in the glow of it.”

Brandon Lake said he still gets goosebumps recalling what happened and added: “I’ve been praying for revival about my whole life. And I never in a million years thought he would bring about revival in this way. I always thought it would happen in the four walls of a church. And the church is happening, maybe even more so outside of the four walls of where you attend on Sunday.”

Redefining Communion

One of the featured practices of the church is the sacrament of Communion. And to be fair, the Charlie Kirk memorial service didn’t offer Communion. But that probably doesn’t mean much since most modern white evangelicals hardly ever celebrate Communion in their churches to begin with. According to the National Association of Evangelicals, 70% of evangelical churches celebrate Communion just once a month, with many of the rest opting for quarterly. So it’s no surprise the organizers of Charlie’s Church would overlook it.

“Communion is a mainstay for many Christian nationalist worship services, but not in the way you’d think.”

That said, Communion is a mainstay for many Christian nationalist worship services, but not in the way you’d think. Jesus spoke of eating the bread and drinking the wine in remembrance of him. And when Paul spoke of Communion, he said it was about proclaiming Jesus’ death. In other words, for Jesus and Paul, Communion was about the presence of God with those who are suffering on the underside of empire.

But for authoritarian Christian nationalists, it’s the opposite.

When Sean Feucht led Communion at his 2024 Kingdom to the Capitol worship tour, he said: “I was getting ready for a fight. As we go to these capitols, I’m like, we’re going to have to get lawyers, which we had to get. We’re going to have to get contracts. We’re going to have to threaten governors that if they don’t let us do what the church has done, then they’re going to be in trouble. And we’ve had to do that. And so I was ready for a fight and I had my like intercessor face on. … The more constipated you look, the more intercession’s happening. … The Lord was like, ‘Hold on, hold on, Sean. You’re not going to win the battle in a way in which you fought in the last season.’ He says, ‘You’re going to win it on your knees taking Communion.”

He immediately followed that up by saying, “If you’re a nonbeliever, this is not for you.”

That same weekend, just up the road in D.C. at the “A Million Women March,” one of the leaders said, “We just took the Lord’s Communion on Capitol Hill and now we’re believing the veil has been torn over the whole nation!” Then they told everyone to stretch their arms forward “and just begin to command a mass beholding of the Lamb of God.”

So a quarter million people stretched their arms out in all four directions and chanted, “Behold!” seven times.

A couple weeks later, at a worship event on the National Mall that included a video greeting from Trump himself, Feucht led Communion while defining Jesus’ blood as the “highest authority” that will save the United States.

Then at the worship event in Seattle that devolved into a riot, the worship leader yelled: “God called us all to stand in this moment. To stand for our families. To stand for Seattle. To stand for Washington. To stand for the United States. In this moment, the courageous brave few in this moment. And our greatest weapon of warfare, our greatest weapon of warfare is Communion. So right now, we’re going to take Communion!”

Then just like Feucht, the worship leader directed their attention to non-Christians and demanded, “You will not disrespect the blood of Jesus Christ!”

Trading in the church for the government

With political gatherings outside the traditional church worship gatherings being called “the church,” and the presence of God in Communion being defined not as the suffering servant subverting the empire but as the highest authority wielding it, the church gets traded in for and redefined as the empire.

“The church gets traded in for and redefined as the empire.”

In the Roman Empire, the Greek term ekklesia meant “a governing body.” So when the early church began using the term, they were using it as a co-opting, a subversion, or as Matthew D. Taylor puts it, a “revolutionary appropriation” in order to liberate us from our harmful assumptions about power.

In his book The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, Taylor points out how today’s authoritarian Christians exchange a “congregational mindset to a congressional mindset” and embrace the original Roman creation of the term by defining the church as God’s “governing body in the earth.” This is why megachurches are trying to take over city councils. And it’s the mindset behind the City Elders movement.

It’s not simply the insurrectionary extremists of the New Apostolic Reformation who use the term in this way. Charlie Kirk did so as well.

During one of his events at a university, a young Black man told Kirk he believed Christian nationalism was “antithetical to the values of the early church.”

Kirk claimed, “Moses was so political that he wrote an entire book of the Torah all about how to set up a government. It’s the book of Deuteronomy.” This is part of a widely held false narrative among conservatives that the U.S. government was founded on Deuteronomy.

Then Kirk asked, “Christ said, ‘On this rock, build my what?”

“Church,” the young man responded.

“Wrong,” Kirk replied. “Ekklesia. It’s not the word church. … The original Greek term says, ‘On this rock build my government structure. Ekklesia was a secular word used in that time which was all about the advancement of freedom and liberty.”

Of course, freedom and liberty weren’t exactly features of the Roman Empire. Instead, the empire was all about establishing and maintaining hierarchies that strengthened the power of those at the top, dehumanized those below and waged war against those who wouldn’t submit.

Then Kirk continued: “Christ called us to be salt and light. We as Christians should change the environment that we come in contact with. That’s what salt and light do. So why should we then not care about changing government to be more Christlike?”

And that’s precisely the problem. By redefining worship gatherings as pyrotechnic political sparklefests, redefining Communion as “the highest authority,” and redefining the church as a government structure, they haven’t actually made the empire more Christlike. They’ve simply redefined “Christlike” in terms of empire and thus have redefined Christ and the church.

So maybe Pete Hegseth was right. Maybe they actually were in Charlie’s Church.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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