“By our own vices, not by chance, have we lost the republic, though we retain the name.” St. Augustine, City of God, (bk. XI ch. 21) Augustine might just as well been speaking of the current American empire which, 1,600 years later, has succeeded its Roman antecedent, while apparently learning very little from its fate. That is the historical trajectory of all empires, however, and in the long run we shall fare no better than the rest: Macedonia, Rome, Spain, France, Britain, Soviet Union, etc.

President John Adams once remarked that the then new American republic was fit only for a moral and religious people, arguing that this republican system of government would only endure so long as God remained at the center of her citizen’s lives. The question is whether after 250 years of that experiment in self-government by and for the people we still fit the bill outlined by Adams. To any contemporary casual observer this once viably Christian land no longer seems to function within a Christian context. Granted, there are still a substantial number of Christians around, but their voices have become that of a minority. Even among those who claim to be Christians, what we too often see is a caricature of Christianity.

One recent example is the disturbing invocation by Secretary of War(crimes?) Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon as he seriously quoted a Biblical parody taken from the Hollywood movie Pulp Fiction. The Evangelical Hegseth lifted a gangster character’s take on Ezekial 25: 15-17 out of its movie context, invoking God to exact merciless vengeance on our enemies (the Iranian people) to basically expunge them from the face of the earth. More shocking was the Easter morning message by President Donald Trump on Truth Social where he profanely demanded Iran “open the f###ing Straits,” ending his vile tirade with a sarcastic “Praise be to Allah.” Days later, while still in Easter week, Trump threateningly posted, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be restored.” Presumably he was referring to that deeply rooted Persian civilization, well over 3,500years old before our American republic ever became a pipe dream. So what ever became of that aspect of Christianity which demands, “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father.” (Mt.5: 44) Apparently we have adopted an exclusively “Old Testament” style Christianity as though the New Testament had never modified the former “eye for an eye” narrative.

It becomes increasingly apparent that the Christianity of John Adams’ day has morphed into a grab bag of newer toxic and highly corrosive ideologies: consumerism, ultra-feminism, DEI tribalism, lawless immigration, transgenderism, and trans-humanism among others. Yet on the right side of the political spectrum we find one of the more peculiar ‘isms’ to gain ascendancy: so-called Christian Zionism, based on a 19th century heresy called Dispensationalism. It theorizes that God’s former Covenant with the Jews was never actually replaced by the New Covenant implemented by Jesus. But fulfillment generally means completion, so if Christ fulfilled the Old Covenant to bring about the New, then the Old has been completed and no longer has force. For example, if company A merges with another firm to form company B, then the A’s stock is replaced by stock in company B. The older stock becomes a historical relic, as it no longer possesses voting rights or monetary value.

Christian Zionism is a denial of this common sense reality, which if pursued leads into a kind of ecumenical fantasy realm. For those deluded enough to believe that Christianity and Zionism are fundamentally compatible ~ like trying to blend oil and water ~ consider the outcome. We have witnessed over the past two and a half years a supposedly Godly orgy of non-stop ethnic killing by the Zionist / Christian coalition. The victims have been mostly non-combatants, women, and children ~ first in Gaza, spreading quickly to the West Bank, Iran, and now Christian Lebanon. Yet in the midst of this ethnic bloodbath, as if to prove its moral superiority, the Zionist state of Israel decided to celebrate its gains (sic) by sponsoring a four day Pride Fest, incredibly on the shores of the Dead Sea, the Biblical locus of Sodom and Gomorrah! Those cities were once destroyed by fire from heaven for precisely the very sins now being sanctioned and promoted by the Israeli government. According to that government’s own X account, “This June the Dead Sea becomes Pride Land, the biggest LGBTQ+ festival ever in the Middle East.” Either these lunatical Zionists do not believe their own Scriptures (See Gen. 19:23-29) or their intent is a blatant “pride filled” mockery of the very God whom they claim gave them this Levantine block of real estate in perpetuity, along with some divine right to forcibly evict its former, centuries long inhabitants.

But wait! Israel is our closest, most trusted Middle East ally whom all those conservative American Christian Zionists demand that we support unequivocally with our treasure and military power in attacking and subduing Israel’s legion enemies. In fact our Christian Zionist ambassador to Israel is on the record affirming that Israel’s right to all the land between the Euphrates and Nile rivers, encompassing all or parts of six neighboring countries, is indisputable. I wonder if that former Christian pastor, now Ambassador Mike Huckabee, will be attending the “biggest LGBTQ+ festival ever in the Middle East” as a part of his official duties? Or have his many Christian Zionist confreres such as Franklin Graham and Paula White become equally comfortable with this Christian in name only Bible brand? And what do our many Israel first Christian politicians such as Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, or Senator Ted Cruz think about the big June gathering down on the Dead Sea?

More disturbingly, does Israel’s right to defend itself include a license for the wanton destruction of other people’s cultures and civilizations? Only days ago the Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, posted that he was “awaiting a ‘green light’ from the U.S. first and foremost… to send Iran back to the dark and stone age by blowing up its main energy and power facilities and crushing its economic infrastructure.” Of course such actions would constitute undisputed large scale war crimes, so where do Katz’s faithful Christian Zionist allies in America stand regarding such a savage and patently un-Christian policy. Or is this is how we now “defend democracy” while simultaneously virtue signalling to the rest of the world the manifest benefits of our enlightened political system?

The question as to who are the good guys and who the bad guys are has become increasingly obscure in this Christian Zionist fog. The sides have become so utterly confused that there no longer seems to be any moral high ground. Iran can’t be trusted with a nuclear program, meanwhile Israel sits on top of a considerable, and undeclared, nuclear arsenal which it has leveraged for blackmail on at least one occasion. Is the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including 168 Iranian school girls on day one of the current senseless conflict, morally defensible simply based on the argument that they might oppress women or fly a different flag? In the larger moral scheme whose position is really just? Which power is truly supreme, God or the American empire and its proxies?

Pondering these vexing questions, I retreated to re-read St. Augustine’s City of God in which that great Catholic scholar poses the juxtaposition of two cities, the city of man founded by Cain and the city of God exemplified by Abel. Augustine writes, “Now the city of man was first founded by a fratricide who was moved by envy to kill his brother, a man who in his pilgrimage on earth, was a citizen of the City of God.” These two cities, like the parable of the wheat and the weeds, are destined to co-exist alongside one another until the end of time when the angels will eternally separate the citizens of the one from the other. According to Augustine, “Abel had no ambition for domination in the city that his brother was building. The root of the trouble was that diabolical envy which moves evil men to hate those who are good for no other reason than that they are good… in the case of Cain and Abel, what we see is the enmity between the two cities, the city of man and the City of God. (bk. XV ch. 5)

Augustine contrasts the motives which underlays these two cities. “What we see then is that two societies have issued from two kinds of love. Worldly society has flowered from a selfish love which dared to despise even God, whereas the communion of saints is rooted in a love of God that id ready to trample on self. In a word, this latter relies on the Lord, whereas the other boasts that it can get along by itself. The city of man seeks the praise of men, whereas the height of glory for the other is to hear God in the witness of conscience… In the city of the world both the rulers themselves and the people they dominate are dominated by the lust for domination; whereas in the City of God all citizens serve one another in charity. (bk. XIV ch. 28)

In fact the City of God is not some material body but rather a spiritual society which acts within and upon the worldly city of man much like a leaven transforming the mass of dough. This transformative process can be seen historically in the transforming of pagan Rome into what became for over a thousand years that phenomenon called Christendom. Augustine himself was a witness to that transformation during his lifetime in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. From that perspective he was able to observe, “it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, while Abel, as though he were merely a pilgrim on earth, built none. For the true City of the saints is in heaven, though here on earth it produces citizens in whom it wanders as on a pilgrimage through time looking for the Kingdom of eternity. When that day comes it will gather together all those who, rising in their bodies, shall have that Kingdom given to them in which, along with their Prince, the King of Eternity, they shall reign for ever and ever.” (bk. XV ch. 1)

But it is not simply a matter of which team jersey one happens to be wearing that ultimately matters but rather it is a matter of what is in that individual’s heart and not what flag he may happen to be flying which will determine final judgment, for “many are called but few are chosen.” Simply put we are utterly incapable of determining our own righteousness, having all been tainted by the original sin of Adam. Even if we sincerely will to do good we are nonetheless concupiscent creatures, ever struggling to battle our natural tendencies to pride and vanity. We desperately want to command the esteem of our fellow men, to be accepted by others whatever the cost, and so we have this tendency to compromise, to hedge and rationalize regarding the truth so that we can ‘belong.’ We mold or at least bend our opinions to align with what the ‘important people’ are saying. Consequently many people who gain power, even those with high ideals, gradually become corrupted because they fear that upholding their initial principles will diminish their effectiveness or popularity.

We are seeing this dynamic at play in the current war games being played out in the Middle East where governments, under patently false pretexts, target civilian schools, hospitals, and infrastructure ~ even churches, mosques, and synagogues. War crimes are being disguised as routine military operations, yet anyone who protests the barbarities is immediately labelled as ‘unpatriotic.’ There is a clear parallel between Christianity as the City of God, and the Empire representing the city of man. Under the influence of the latter good men and women become fearful to correct not only their civil leaders but even family members who may stray from the path of virtue in their personal lives. In short we lack the moral courage to speak the truth even in those situations where we might have some influence because we fear to fall out of someone’s good graces. At times I have fallen prey to such moral cowardice as I suspect that most of us have at one time or another. “For evil men to prosper it is sufficient that good men do nothing,” wisely observed Edmund Burke.

St. Augustine does not spare this weakness of our human nature but calls it out plainly in the City of God. “For the most part we hesitate to instruct, to admonish, and, as occasion demands, to correct and even reprehend. This we do either because the effort wearies us, or we fear offending them, or we avoid antagonizing them lest they thwart or harm us in those temporal matters where our cupidity seeks to acquire or our faint hearts fear to lose.

Thus good men shun the wicked and hence will not share in their damnation beyond the grave. Nevertheless, because they wink at their worse sins and fear to frown even on their minor transgressions, the good must in justice suffer temporal afflictions in common with the rest… What is reprehensible, however, is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice... they fear that a possible failure to effect reform might jeopardize their security and reputation… They are victims of that human infirmity which loves the flattering tongue and earthly life, and which dreads the censure of the crowd and the anguish and death of the body. In other words, they shirk this duty of fraternal correction because of a certain slavishness to avarice, not because of the obligations of charity.” (bk.I ch. 9)

You may recall that fraternal correction, far from being “judgmental,” is rather one of the spiritual works of mercy. For it is never the sinner that we are allowed to judge but the sin alone, which is why Augustine, again in his writings, states imperatively that “we are to hate the sin but love the sinner.” Hatred of persons is always sinful which is why wars can be so morally dangerous to the parties involved. Wartime propaganda stirs up the strongest emotional impulse to hate one’s enemy, doubly so if the war in question is being unjustly prosecuted. It is a long accepted fact that the first casualty in every war is the truth. But to fail to speak out against unjust aggression is perhaps equally sinful, especially where the innocent are being unduly harmed. If you have never seen the movie A Quiet Life I would highly recommend it for its sublime portrayal of the dilemma which war represents at the level of an individual. Of course, the war we must all fight is that interior struggle between the flesh and the spirit alluded to by St. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians 5:16-17.

Augustine’s two cities of man and of God are destined to contest with one another until the end of time. One city seeks to impose peace through domination which, as every bygone empire has proven, is not a lasting peace (vis. Pax Americana), the other city seeks an everlasting peace which only true charity for God and neighbor can effect. St. Augustine notes that, “This, in fact, is the difference between good men and bad men, that the former make use of this world in order to enjoy God, whereas the latter would like to make use of God in order to enjoy the world.” (bk. XV ch. 7) Those who invoke God to justify their belligerent plans and call upon Him to crush their enemies are most likely members of the latter group, wholly attached to the city of man. For our own part, any who seek a true peace will strive to become good and faithful citizens of that other society, the City of God.

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.