Vocabulary not adiaphorous

I regularly surf to the website of the British online and print magazine The Critic (The Critic | Britain’s most civilised magazine), which happily features articles by writers of Christian persuasion on a regular basis. This morning’s trip to this online destination did not disappoint, as I encountered and much appreciated a welcome article by a US-born journalist living in London on the topic of ‘Christian Nationalism’: Could Christian Nationalism happen here? | Andrew Cusack | The Critic Magazine.

Andrew Cusack helpfully points out that, ‘The term was concocted by the coastal left in the United States to frighten its own base and has since become a convenient label for anyone on the centre-right whose Christianity extends beyond private sentiment.’

Word choice is oftentimes, nay mostly not a matter to be carelessly left under the umbrella of adiapohora. Rather, words enter conversations and discussions freighted with ballast that consciously or unconsciously steers debate in a certain direction. Adopt the terminology of the unbelieving Left and you will be facing an uphill if not impossible struggle to challenge the premises of a secularist interlocutor.

The barest mention on the part of any cleric or layperson of our fellowship of so-called ‘Christian Nationalism’ serves only to cheer along the world’s adamantine insistence that any and all influence of Christian profession on the public square must be ruled out of order in advance of every discussion or debate that may take place within the domestic and political estates. Moreover, pure madness would be on display should any Christian concerned for the flourishing of these estates embrace the loaded term ‘Christian Nationalism’ as a description of his or her own position.

Truly, Andrew Cusack’s words merit meditative pondering: ‘The term [Christian Nationalism) was concocted by the coastal left in the United States to frighten its own base and has since become a convenient label for anyone on the centre-right whose Christianity extends beyond private sentiment.