April 27, 2026

Today the church is asking whether it actually believes what it preaches — and whether that belief shows up anywhere that costs something. The Guardian ran a piece on a Christian nationalist church whose sermons are reportedly shaping Pentagon messaging on Iran. That story sits uncomfortably next to First Things on Peter Thiel's secret Girard lectures, which argues that mimetic envy — unchecked desire for what others have — doesn't just fracture communities, it turns apocalyptic. Put those two pieces side by side and a question emerges: when the church borrows the language of holy war or national destiny, is it speaking prophetically, or has it just baptized someone else's envy? Ligonier offers what might be a diagnosis — virtue without love is performance, and performance, however polished, kills the church from the inside. The gap between theological conviction and lived reality is where that rot begins.

Christianity Today profiles a Nigerian theologian who was kidnapped by Fulani militants and came out the other side having rethought everything — not abandoned faith, but purified it. That's the counterweight to the performance problem. First Things on American fathers argues something adjacent: men aren't leaving Christianity because they stopped believing it, they're leaving because they never saw it embodied by the men ahead of them. On March 27 we were watching that same tension between transformation and performance from another angle. It hasn't resolved. TGC also has a piece this week on Gen Z's financial nihilism — a generation that has looked at money, decided it's a lie, and is waiting for something to replace it. The church thinks it has that something. Whether it can actually offer it, or just pitch it, is the whole question.