A Theology of Inequality
Post 14 in the Peaceful Resistance Series
How Christian Nationalism Chose Order Over Justice
Not all theologies are created equal.
Some are built to liberate.
Some are built to control.
Christian Nationalism claims to follow Jesus.
But its God looks more like Caesar.
It preaches sin but rewards power.
It talks of grace but trades in shame.
It quotes scripture—but only the verses that justify hierarchy, obedience, and exclusion.
This isn’t a faith about love.
It’s a system about order.
Not divine order.
Social order.
Racial order.
Gendered order.
Economic and political order—where some are meant to lead, and the rest are meant to obey.
This isn’t an accident.
It’s a design.
A theology of inequality that uses religion to preserve control.
Not All Theology Is Created Equal
Every belief system is shaped by what it protects.
And Christian Nationalism doesn’t protect the poor, the sick, or the marginalized.
It protects:
Hierarchy
Ownership
Authority
Punishment
Certainty
Its sermons don’t ask who’s suffering.
They ask who’s in charge.
Its policies don’t ask what’s just.
They ask what keeps them in power.
It doesn’t need to understand you to legislate you.
It doesn’t need to love you to control you.
It only needs to name you as a threat.
And once you’re named?
You can be silenced.
Excluded.
Redefined.
Erased.
All in the name of order.
From Eden to Empire
The theology of inequality didn’t start in Washington.
It started in Eden.
And not even with the serpent—but with the way the story is interpreted:
Eve is blamed for all of humanity’s downfall.
Adam is excused as passive, naïve, or even noble in his disobedience.
Women are cursed to suffer pain and submission.
Men are cursed to labor and dominate.
But here’s the trick:
What was written as consequence was reinterpreted as design.
It wasn’t that people sinned and then suffered.
It became that people were meant to suffer.
Especially certain kinds of people.
This is how theology becomes ideology.
And over centuries, it became a blueprint for empires.
Where men ruled over women
Where white bodies ruled over Black and Brown bodies
Where straight people ruled over queer people
Where the wealthy ruled over the poor
Where citizenship, faith, and skin determined your dignity
It justified slavery.
It justified segregation.
It justifies incarceration.
And today—it’s justifying cruelty in the name of “restoring order.”
This is not how Eden was meant to be remembered.
It’s how Empire retold the story—so it could build itself on blame.
Inequality as Divine Design
Christian Nationalism doesn’t just tolerate inequality.
It sacralizes it.
It teaches that the hierarchy is holy.
That submission is sacred.
That difference is disorder.
And from that, it builds a theology that justifies domination as divine will.
Women are told to submit—because God “made” them second.
Queer people are told they’re unnatural—because they don’t fit “creation order.”
Immigrants are told to obey or be expelled—because “laws are God’s order.”
Black people are policed and punished—because slavery was once defended from the pulpit.
Disabled and neurodivergent people are often left out of theology entirely—treated as broken, burdens, or evidence of sin.
This is inequality wrapped in liturgy.
This is oppression with a choir.
And every time the state takes a step backward—
to ban books,
to punish trans kids,
to cut food aid,
to criminalize protest—
Christian Nationalists cheer.
Because they don’t see cruelty.
They see confirmation.
Confirmation that their world is the one God wanted all along.
Not the world where the last are first—
but the world where the first stay first, forever.
What Justice Requires
Justice doesn’t mean punishment.
It means repair.
It doesn’t uphold the old order.
It remakes the world.
But Christian Nationalism can’t afford that.
Because if justice is real—
then their theology crumbles.
Because justice demands:
That power make space for others
That systems serve the marginalized
That truth disrupt convenience
That love dismantle control
And none of that fits in a system built on obedience, fear, and hierarchy.
So instead, they weaponize words like “justice” and “freedom”
to justify doing the exact opposite:
Stripping rights
Shaming the vulnerable
Punishing dissent
Demonizing empathy
They don’t fear sin.
They fear equality.
Because real equality makes them ordinary.
And if they’re ordinary, they lose the illusion that God chose them to rule.
But justice doesn’t need their permission.
It’s already moving in the streets.
In the classrooms.
In the courts.
In the quiet acts of refusal and resistance that say:
“We are not here to obey your god of control.
We are here to build a world where no one has to bow just to be fed.”
NEXT - The Beatitudes Were Never Safe
