Confusing the Gospel with Nationalistic Greed

My Dearest Wormwood,¹*Editorial Note: Wormwood is the ‘junior demon’ that Uncle Screwtape writes to in C.S. Lewis’ classic work of satire, The Screwtape Letters. Dr. Robert Chao Romero has penned today’s Letter to the Church in the spirit and style of Lewis’ work. A fundamental question to ask yourself as you read is, what is Dr. Chao Romero seeing within the Church today that necessitates this particular approach? ~CK

Good job in getting our patient invited to the White House. Since he came to the U.S. from that small town in Latin America, he has slowly sipped the poison of nationalism which was presented to him to drink along with the healing message of the Enemy.²*Editorial Note: In The Screwtape Letters, the Enemy is God, the Triune Fellowship of Love. He was so overwhelmed by the love and personal healing of the Enemy that we had to think of another way to get him off the Bad Road (Matthew 7:13-14).³“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14, NIV) We couldn’t stop his joy from reading the Bible for the first time and discovering the Son in its pages. We couldn’t stop the healing of his marriage. We couldn’t stop his freedom from alcohol. That was a hard time for us and we experienced a number of setbacks. So we played the long game.

The missionaries who shared about the Son with our patient were effective (from the Enemy’s point of view) at telling them about the new life that people experience after they give their lives to the Son. So instead we encouraged them to mix some seeds of “weeds” among the “wheat”(Matthew 13:24-30). In addition to telling your patient about Jesus, we convinced those missionaries to convince him of Manifest Destiny, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the American Dream:  

“The United States is like a New Jerusalem. It is filled with Christians, just laws, and boundless opportunity. No corruption like in Latin America. All of the leaders are fair and just. No pagan worship of Mary and the papal anti-Christ. America is the closest thing to Heaven this side of eternity. Exceptional in all of human history. A ‘city on a hill.’” 

We waited patiently and found our moment. The patient got recruited to work for the same denomination as the missionaries, to become a “planter” of those despicable gatherings called “churches.” Churches are despicable when they live out the life of the Son in love. Over the centuries though, we’ve come up with lots of ways to turn them into a “con” game. That’s what we’ve been doing over the past ten years. We’ve managed to turn many churches into a “con” that makes lots of money for the pastors and politicians, blurring the lines between religion and politics, playing into people’s economic and racial fears. Our hated enemy Paul warned his mentee Timothy about this in his letter,⁴“They are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” (1 Timothy 6:4-5, NIV) but we’ve found that very few ever remember (1 Timothy 6:4-5). 

We’ve spent four hundred years planting the seeds, and now the weeds are so overgrown that millions of people can’t tell the weeds and wheat apart.We called the seeds “Manifest Destiny,” “the Doctrine of Discovery,” “the American Dream,” “The Tea Party,” “MAGA,” and many other things over the years.

But in the end it’s the same play:

Confuse the life-giving and self-sacrificial message of the Enemy with patriotism and greed. 

Mix up the 4^th of July and Easter. The American Dream with the Great Commission. Xenophobia with Matthew 25. The weeds naturally take over. And so does what the Enemy calls “sinful human nature,” but which we as Americans trumpet as “Freedom.”

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Once again, brilliant move getting your patient invited to the White House once more! This feeds his low self esteem, which is the consequence of 500 years of colonialism in Latin America and the slow dripping poison of systemic racism in the U.S. He wants so badly to no longer be looked down upon as a “campesino” and low class “Mexican.” The one picture he took in the White House that got 150 “likes” will feed his broken ego for a short while, but then it will need to be refilled. 

This brief taste of power makes him feel even more indebted to his denomination and the politicians who have given him some piddly grants to help fund his nonprofit. The $100,000 a year they give him means so much to him and his family, and it gives our leaders a nice photo op that convinces thousands of other people that our politicians are not racist, even though they have launched a ‘beautifully’ violent campaign against your patient’s very congregation members! As a side note, keep encouraging people to use the term “illegal alien” because it dehumanizes those 65 million Hispanics already living of the United States, casts them as perpetual foreigners, and justifies anything we stir up our politicians to do to them. We haven’t been this successful in making the U.S. church forget about Matthew 25 since the 1950’s and ‘Operation Wetback.’

My Dearest Wormwood, I came up with that name, thank you very much! 

In the end it’s the same play: Confuse the life-giving and self-sacrificial message of the Enemy with patriotism and greed. Mix up the 4th of July and Easter. The American Dream with the Great Commission. Xenophobia with Matthew 25. Share on X

Keep the money and social media photo opps flowing, because the more he receives, the less and less likely he will be to speak up against all of our plans. He will feel too “grateful” to bite the hand that feeds him. Eventually he will also become dependent on the charity. If we’re lucky, he eventually he might also even turn his back on the entire immigrant community, like some Latino politicians have long done. That’s what we tried to do with that miserable fellow Moses—make him turn his back on his own people based on the power, wealth, and allure of Pharaoh’s court. Well, we won’t talk about how that went…  

Your patient has no idea that the Enemy cares deeply about justice for immigrants, because the missionary organization erased that from their training program, and has convinced him that this is all “Marxist Communism” stuff, like what he grew up seeing in Latin America.

In your email you also told me that your patient has a daughter who just left for college. She has friends from church who are afraid to leave the house to go to work or even the grocery store. Some of her friends have also been racially profiled and arrested even though they are U.S. citizens. Be careful. There’s a big vulnerability here. The patient’s daughter doesn’t feel the same loyalty to the missionaries and is more likely to see clearly what the Son calls “injustice.” 

Make sure that she doesn’t come into contact with enemy organizations like the CCDA, or theology like Brown Theology or the long history of Catholic social teachings. Keep her away from the history of the Brown Church, the 500-year history of Latina/o Christian social justice. Knowing this history and these teachings will make her question whether or not the injustices she sees are consistent with the Bad Book. That could also lead her down a rabbit trail of discovering the Ancient Church. That would be catastrophic because then she would realize that the mixing of Christianity and empire was a later, and foreign, additive to institutional Christianity—some of our best work! She would learn that those earliest followers of Jesus taught that keeping anything beyond what they needed was actually stealing from the poor!⁵“Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.” (Matthew 5:42, NIV) 

She would learn that those same followers of the Enemy invented those dreaded social ministries called “xenodochia,” or houses of welcome for immigrants and strangers. 1700 years ago, they invented Christian community development ministries, which turned into modern hospitals. Xenodochia were even required to be established by church law! The earliest followers of Jesus taught, without any doubt, that when they love immigrants and the poor, they are doing the same to Jesus; and when they fail to do so, they will actually be judged for that neglect at the end of times (Matthew 25:31-46).

The weeds naturally take over. And so does what the Enemy calls 'sinful human nature,' but which we as Americans trumpet as 'Freedom.' Share on X

Instead, keep her confused. Keep sending email and social media messages from her relatives that equate Christianity with MAGA. Then, confuse her more by sending her to a meeting of activists who believe that Christianity is only a white man’s racist, classist, and sexist religion. Make them think that Christianity has only existed for the past 500 years since Columbus, and that European colonial history comprises the sum total of the Christian movement. My cousin Herbert has won a special award for drumming that narrow belief into progressive circles over the past 100 years. The most effective lies of course, are those sprinkled with partial truth. 

As I mentioned earlier, don’t let her know about the early church. Don’t let her know that for the first 1,000 years, Christianity was centered in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean, and that a theological consensus existed for these first 1,000 years—which emphasized love and care for the poor.

Don’t let her know about the history of the Black and Brown Churches who have challenged colonialism and racism for 500 years. Hide from her the fact that Christianity is no longer centered in Europe and the West. The Enemy has His solid grips once again in Africa and Asia, as well as in Latin America and among immigrants throughout the West. Remember that Christianity is a generational process, but don’t let her know that. At all costs, keep her away from those few campus student groups who embrace those 2,000 verses from the Bad Book which speak so clearly about the Enemy’s heart for immigrants and the poor. 

Finally, my dearest Wormwood, keep them confused and battling over human politics. It doesn’t matter which side. The ultimate victory is to confuse their social identity as followers of the Son and any political party. 

We’ve been planning for this moment for a long time.  It’s glorious to see!

Your Affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape⁶*aka Dr. Robert Chao Romero

The earliest followers of Jesus taught, without any doubt, that when they love immigrants and the poor, they are doing the same to Jesus; and when they fail to do so, they will actually be judged for that neglect at the end of times. Share on X

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*Editorial Note: This piece is transcribed with care and love by Dr. Robert Chao Romero, on behalf of the “Enemy’s”  (The Triune God of Love) glory, and for the edification, healing, and wholeness for all within the Church of our day. It is written in the spirit of C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece of prophetic satire, The Screwtape Letters. Dr. Jerry Root, widely considered the foremost Lewis scholar alive, has an illuminating lecture series on Lewis’ book at the C.S. Lewis Institute. Dr. Root’s background introduction is helpful in explaining the point of view of both Lewis’ work, and Dr. Robert Chao Romero’s letter, written in the same spirit to the Church today:

“The Screwtape Letters is a very important book for our times. In our secularized and materialistic society, even Christians have little awareness of the spiritual side of reality. C.S. Lewis’s classic work explores the nature of temptation and evil and resistance to them. First published in February 1942, the story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter.” (The Screwtape Letters with Dr. Jerry Root)

~CK

*Editorial Note 2: Letters to the Church is Missio Alliance’s newest long-form series. The latest letter to our growing collection will go live each Friday throughout the rest of 2025. We invite you to prayerfully listen to the Spirit as you read, asking God what you might say to the Church in your own voice. ~CK

“Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what God is saying to the churches.” (Revelation 2:29)