When Hatred Wears the Language of Faith

This week Religion News Service described a small but growing movement of Reformed pastors and online influencers who preach and sell white supremacy, antisemitism and patriarchy to angry young men. The report calls their work old segregationist theology joined to the hypermasculinity of the internet. It is a hard thing to read. It is harder because it borrows the vocabulary of the church.

Scripture will not lend itself to this. The first thing the Bible says about people is that they share one origin and one worth. "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27). Nothing there ranks one image-bearer above another. The line drawn is between the Creator and the creature, not between one kind of person and the next.

Paul wrote to a church tempted to divide along old lines. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). The sentence names the very fault lines a hateful teaching tries to deepen — nation, status, sex — and closes each one.

Today's study asks a plain question. When a doctrine flatters us by lowering someone else, is it the gospel, or the old sin looking for a place to hide? A teaching that needs an enemy has already left the ground it claims to stand on. Hold what you meet this week against these two verses. Weigh it slowly, and be honest about what you find.