There’s a certain pastor who’s having his big moment in the spotlight. I’m reluctant to spell out his name because I don’t want to add to that spotlight. But, what he is preaching and sharing is deeply disturbing and unsettling. He’s yet one more “Christian” pastor whose understanding of the Christian message is profoundly different from mine.

This pastor was recently interviewed by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, as part of his “Interesting Times” series. The pastor is a Christian nationalist who claims to be a “theocratic libertarian.” He believes that the entire United States must acknowledge “the authority of God,” and by that he means his “Christian” concept of God. He is the pastor of a supposedly growing network of churches (Pete Hegseth is a member of one of these churches) that endeavors to incorporate, as part of their mission, the re-creation of a strictly patriarchal society. Among the features of this society is the idea that voting in elections should be exercised by household units (rather than by individuals), and that the male of the household is the decider of how votes are cast. This pastor not so long ago declared, during an interview with CNN, that “women are the kind of people that people come out of,” as if the bearing of children provides the only worth of female human beings.

In one part of the interview with Mr. Douthat, the pastor makes a rather startling assertion, declaring that we, in the United States, “should stop making God angry.” When asked to elaborate, the pastor outlined “awful crimes” for which the American public needs to repent: “no more pride parades; no more drag queen story hours; no more abortion on demand; no more legalized same sex unions . . . .” Douthat asked for clarification on this point: “So you’re a libertarian on how people worship, but you’re not a libertarian on who they sleep with. Is that right?” The answer: “yes.”

How can it be that these our most egregious sins in God’s eyes?

What about issues like child poverty? According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in their 2023 State of America’s Children Report: among the 74 million children living in the U.S., 11 million lived in poverty; one in six of those children were under the age of five (the highest rate of any age group); almost half of those children lived in severe or extreme poverty; 9 million children faced food insecurity; and, 4 million children lived without health insurance. In the state where the pastor is based, the poverty rate of children under the age of five was 17.6% between 2016 and 2020.

In terms of what the pastor is most concerned with: in 2022, only 2.3% of all marriages in the state where he is based were same-sex marriages. As of mid-2025, only 1.2% of all married couple households are same-sex in the entire United States.

It’s appalling that the growing ranks of these so-called “Christians” are more concerned with sexual behaviors and gender identity— issues that are not central themes of the Bible— and less focused on those issues that are highlighted again and again in our holy scriptures, like poverty, welcoming strangers, compassion, and justice. This pastor, of a growing network of churches and followers, says that he is interested in having society “follow the Bible.” The Bible, though, seems to be solely summed up in the Ten Commandments which he believes should then become the law of the land.

Somehow, the Greatest Commandment is nowhere to be seen:

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40 (NRSV)

While I’m not exactly comfortable making a declaration about what I think makes God angry, or not, I am comfortable accepting that Jesus clearly laid out the priorities for people of faith. Jesus could have spent time preaching on the importance of posting the Ten Commandments all over the place, of instituting and maintaining a patriarchal society, of castigating those outside of white heterosexuality, but he didn’t.

The pastor’s “vision” of a Christian society is something that appears to align more closely with his personal hopes and dreams for the United States, rather than one that is shaped by holy scripture. To call himself a “Christian,” much less one who believes that he may speak for God, this pastor (as well as others like him), might be considered “interesting” for the times in which we live. And, that’s too bad. In these interesting times, we could really use a more faithful approach to how we live out the lessons and stories of the Christian faith.