The newly elected Speaker of the House announced that he holds a biblical world view. That seems to mean a commitment to certain social and political ideologies to which the word biblical has been attached. It’s a common claim among conservative evangelical Christians and has become a major theme of Christian nationalists. What is labeled as conservative Christian evangelicalism describes a minority among Christian traditions, including a good number of evangelicals who have other views. The conservative evangelical world view has less to do with theology and more to do with social and political ideas more reactionary than conservative. It has produced a political agenda based on mythic social values of the two post war decades remembered more from advertising and television than reality. It’s mixed with dislike for the inevitable future in which no race or ethnicity will be in the majority, and the norms of American society will be multiethnic.
Christian nationalists are a vocal subset who favor the reestablishment of United States in which their brand of social and political values would be the law of the land under the guise of a narrowly defined Protestant Christianity. Other religions would be tightly regulated; Christian traditions other than their own would be suppressed to the extent possible; democracy would be redefined to accommodate rule by the few loyal to the “right” way of thinking. It sounds preposterously unAmerican, yet it’s wrapped in the stars and stripes of patriotism.
I’ve had conversations with a few politically right wing conservative evangelicals. Each has been defiant that their convictions are the real Christianity and think other traditions have fallen away from the true faith. They echo the language of well known public figures who make their way into front page news media coverage. Oddly, no matter how loud they proclaim the name of Jesus and trot out favored biblical passages, there is little that has anything to do with God’s word to humanity revealed in Holy Scripture or what Jesus did, said and taught. So what is a biblical world view?
The arc of Holy Scripture begins with creation, and God saw that it was good. Generations of prophets revealed God’s intentions for humanity that expanded the boundaries of godly justice and inclusion of formerly excluded others. Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, sealed the plain meaning of God’s intent, affirming that everything hangs on two commandments: love God with everything you have; love others (as you love yourself). He finished with a new commandment: love others as He (Jesus) loves you. The love of self and others in this case means to relate with yourself and others in ways that contribute to the common welfare of each in the community of all. For Christians, everything, absolutely everything, is subordinate to and judged by these commandments. They are illustrated in action by the way Jesus engaged in all of his relationships with others and in his teaching. All three commandments point directly to God’s word spoken through the ethical prophets, Amos most notably, that have a great deal to say about social and economic justice. There is no authority higher than this.
Any “Christian” world view not grounded in these things is not biblical.