Christian Nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon Would Ban ‘Public Displays of Worship to False Gods’
Texas-based pastor Joel Webbon was among the contributors to a 2023 document called “The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel.” Drafted by Christian nationalists like Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, former Trump administration official William Wolfe, and others, the document declared that the United States must formally “acknowledge the Lordship of Christ” in all its laws, “abolish abortion,” outlaw marriage equality, and “recapture our national sovereignty from godless, global entities who present a grave threat to civilization.”
In his own capacity, Webbon has been even aggressively theocratic, proclaiming that Christian nationalists must gain and use political power for the purpose of “crushing our enemies and rewarding our friends.” Christian nationalists must wield that power, Webbon has argued, because the American people are too degenerate, stupid, and cowardly to abide by the Constitution and must therefore be governed by a Christian dictator who “just rules with an iron fist” and forces everyone to “pretend to be Christian.” Under such a dictator, Webbon wants to see the Apostles’ Creed added to the Constitution; abortion, pornography, no-fault divorce, in vitro fertilization, and birth control outlawed; women banned from voting; and non-Christians kept out of his neighborhood.
During a recent appearance on “The Green Dragon Tavern Show,” Webbon explained what life under this sort of Christian nationalism would be like for non-Christians, who would be banned from any public displays of faith in order to prevent the judgment of God from falling on the nation.
“How do we deal with our unbelieving neighbors in a manner that is fitting to the Christian gospel?” Webbon said. “I would not have a government police system that’s going into private homes of Muslims or Jews or Hindus and trying to catch them mid-family worship as they’re bowing down to some idol. I think that that would be incredibly inappropriate and a breach of the sanctity of individual privacy and that it would be the government stepping outside of its jurisdiction that God has given.”
“However,” he continued. “I would be comfortable saying there will be no Islamic parades. For instance, in Minnesota [there are] Islamic, five times a day, public calls to prayer. I would say you can have church bells—Christian church bells—that everyone in town can hear, including the non-Christians and they can just kind of put up with it. It’s not unnecessarily antagonistic—church bells, not church sirens; you’re not going out of your way to be a jerk—it’s a pleasant sound, but it is a publicly universally heard sound throughout the day by all the citizens, whether they’re Christian or not. But you could not have Islamic siren calls to prayer, even if they were pretty. You still couldn’t have them because allowing for private worship in the home of a Muslim would be permissible, but public displays of worship to false gods, that’s erecting high places in a nation to false gods and God will not bless that.”
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