When Faith Becomes a Fist: Teaching Against the Theology of Control
A blog posting for teachers. Using the See-Judge-Act Method.
When Faith Becomes a Fist: Teaching Against the Theology of Control
Whether we teach in classrooms or parishes, we all encounter that moment when a learner conflates patriotism with salvation, or when defending the faith becomes more about conflict than genuine witness. As theologians and religious educators, we face serious challenges: Christian nationalist movements are on the rise, using familiar symbols and stories for purposes that distort the messages we’ve been entrusted to teach.
This challenge moves us beyond politics. Rather, it’s a crisis of discipleship that demands our pastoral attention and pedagogical creativity.
Seeing the Disease: When Piety Becomes Pathology
Christian nationalism thrives on a toxic cocktail: cultural nostalgia, political grievance, and religious imagery that baptizes the desire for control. Its rhetoric wraps domination in divine mandate. This creates what Willie James Jennings calls a “diseased social imagination”—one that fuses whiteness, nationhood, and divine election into an unholy trinity.
Contemporary neuroscience shows why this ideology is seductive.
Neuroscience shows that revenge activates brain reward centers, releasing dopamine and soothing humiliation or powerlessness. Moralizing this through religious language—calling revenge “righteous defense”—creates something both addictive and theologically toxic.
We’re dealing with a spirituality that hijacks the brain’s pleasure pathways while cloaked in scriptural authority. It swaps the vulnerability of communion for the certainty of domination and redefines fear as a virtue.
For those of us forming adult disciples, this “theology of control” represents both a pastoral wound and a catechetical emergency. It doesn’t just distort doctrine—it deforms discipleship at its roots.
With the problem defined, we must next ask: What does the Gospel actually say about power?
There is good news: Scripture offers guidance and healing if we approach it with honesty in our teaching.
Consider Jesus’ refusal of coercive power in the Gospels. Satan offers control—he declines. Peter uses a sword—Jesus rebukes and heals. Pilate claims authority—Jesus reframes power. See the pattern? Christ’s authority comes from self-emptying love (Philippians 2:5-11), not domination.
This isn’t a weakness. It’s the most radical form of strength imaginable—one that our culture of control can barely comprehend, let alone imitate.
Catholic Social Teaching shows us the structural nature of this crisis. The Compendium describes “structures of sin” as personal sins embedded in institutions that shape entire communities. Christian nationalism is not just individual bigotry; it’s a structural sin making revenge systemic.
The challenge is to develop a “Trinitarian imagination”—seeing difference without hostility, and valuing relationality over rivalry. Our task is not just to denounce false gospels, but to form people who recognize them.
Acting Faithfully: Forming Disciples Who Resist the Fist
So what do we actually do in our adult formation programs, theology classes, and parish ministries? Here are four pathways forward that I’ve found helpful:
1. Develop Critical Theological Literacy
Help learners explore the history of religious nationalism in Christianity. When we trace movements from Constantinianism to apartheid that all used faith to justify oppression, we reveal the pattern.
Create modules that historicize Christian nationalism. Place it within broader stories of racial and religious idolatry. Help your students distinguish between healthy cultural expressions of faith and dangerous claims of exclusive chosenness. Use case studies. Show how the same biblical texts have been used both to justify slavery and to fuel abolition. Let the complexity breathe.
2. Integrate Psychology and Spirituality
Neuroscience is pastorally useful: understanding how revenge hijacks reward systems lets us respond with compassion and challenge.
Offer reflections on resentment’s emotional mechanics alongside contemplative practices reframing vulnerability. Help people see that the powerlessness they fear isn’t shameful—it’s an invitation into Christ’s vulnerability. Use Ignatian examen to uncover control desires. Practice lectio divina with challenging texts such as “love your enemies.”
The goal isn’t suppressing natural human emotions but redirecting them toward communion rather than domination.
3. Create Communities of Practice
Theology must connect to lived reality. Our programs should link with restorative justice, interfaith work, and civic engagement.
Partner with organizations already active in healing. Build parish teams focused on healing. Structure courses around action-reflection cycles that turn anger into advocacy and fear into solidarity. When people taste the joy of building bridges, the theology of control weakens.
4. Reconnect Liturgy and Ethics
Finally—and perhaps most importantly—we need to help our communities rediscover the moral and social dimensions of worship itself—especially the Eucharist.
Each time we gather at the table, we practice an alternative politics—radical hospitality, shared resources, reconciled enemies, and a kingdom that subverts all earthly empires. Do our learners see this, or have we privatized communion so much that it no longer challenges nationalism?
Develop liturgical catechesis linking memory, reconciliation, and solidarity. Ask in RCIA/OCIA: What does it mean to receive Christ’s body if we refuse to see it in immigrants, refugees, or opponents? How can we pray “thy kingdom come” while pledging ultimate allegiance elsewhere?
Relinquishment as Resistance
The theology of control can only be healed through practices that orient believers toward participation rather than possession. In this sense, adult faith formation becomes an act of resistance. Let that sink in for the moment. It is a pedagogy of relinquishment that reclaims power as service and faith as vulnerability to grace.
This work will not always be easy. Some learners may resist, and some may leave. However, many are seeking this kind of formation. They are weary of culture wars and skeptical of simplistic answers. They desire a Christianity shaped by the example of Jesus.
Our task is to meet them in that holy uncertainty and walk toward a faith that opens hands instead of clenching fists.
The real question isn’t if we can defeat Christian nationalism with arguments, but if we can form communities shaped by self-giving love so deeply that control-based theology loses its allure.
That is the curriculum we must teach—not despite resistance, but because of it.