Defying Tyrants
A Book Review
Many Christians today sense a darkening theological horizon, storm clouds gathering of a sort we haven’t seen before, at least not in a long, long time.
Tyrants
I grew up believing that tyrants ruled unfortunate people in long ago, far away countries. They were resisted by people of Christian faith. The countries of tyrants are now too close to home for apathy and many of the tyrants are supported by evangelical and charismatic Christians.
That support is the strident outcome of Christian supremacy, the subject of Dr. Matthew Taylor’s latest book, Defying Tyrants.
It was the New Testament churches’ practice of defying tyrants that got the early Christians in so much trouble. It’s the practice of many churches allying with tyrants that’s getting Christians into so much trouble in 2026.
Taylor begs the question, “How did a faith built on love, become one that teaches followers to fear their neighbours, persecute their enemies, and conquer the world?”
I asked to review the book for one reason and then was pleasantly surprised by the unexpected direction of Taylor’s book.
Like Taylor, I was raised in a Christianity that was this beautiful, correct, and logical thing. He characterizes Christian faith as “a walled garden of truth and goodness.” It seemed sad to us that the rest of the world hadn’t acknowledged or accepted our truth yet. Other religions and ideologies were authoritarian and legalistic, but “Christianity had a gospel—a “good tidings” message––of grace, freedom, love, dignity, peace, and justice.”
Christ and Christianity were good.
Where has it gone so wrong?
Our dilemma has its roots in Christian supremacy.
Christian Supremacy
Taylor’s writing calls followers of Jesus back to the assumption of the early church: that Christians of good conscience and a sincere desire to follow the way of Jesus Christ should denounce and loathe all authoritarian abuses of power, whether inside the church or outside it.
Central to Taylor’s writing is a parable of the wheat and tares found in Matthew 13:24-30. Jesus teaches that true Christians are the wheat, and the fake individual Christians make up the zizania, the poisonous, invasive species. That parable also extends to ideas and practices. Other theologies––entrepreneurial, fast-growing, poisonous visions of power and control––have grown up inside Jesus’s community, from the start.
Taylor makes the point that whenever the church, in the name of orthodoxy, abuses power, it poisons the very orthodoxy it is trying to protect.
What is Christian supremacy? At its most basic, it is the idea that Christians are entitled to power over other people.
Taylor opines, “The peril of Christian supremacy reaches far beyond a few hundred extremist preachers, monomaniacal pastors, and abusive priests who snag the headlines with their scandals. It reaches to the heights of power in America and in the world, to the wannabe authoritarians who would invoke the name of God and bless the name of Jesus even as they mercilessly torture migrants, ignore or arm or fund genocidal wars, build financial empires that elevate the ultra-rich to godlike status, dominate others through slavery in all but name, and cut off needed aid to starving people for sport.”
A Cogenital Condition
A smattering of Taylor’s Section and Chapter titles offer clues to the direction of his writing.
The Fever Swamps of Christian Supremacy
The Gospel of Caesar
The Antichrists Have Come
How to Explain Christian Awfulness
The End of Empire
In the history of The Church, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, 300 years after Christ’s resurrection, was the first marriage of Christianity and Empire. That alliance was the beginning of centuries of abuse of power. We’re all downstream of Constantine.
Constantine exposed our congenital condition as Christians. We are drawn to easy solutions and power over our enemies, even though Jesus explicitly taught us to be patient, to love our enemies, and to give up power.
A Scandalous History
Taylor scandalizes Christian history to such a degree that he sent me fact checking. Surely, he was twisting facts to suit his narrative. He couldn’t be right. But I was wrong.
Taylor links the union of Rome with Christ, the birth of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, the rise of the Evangelical and Charismatic churches, and the New Apostolic Reformation with imperialism and authoritarianism.
The Crusades, Christian Antisemitism, the 800-year use of Inquistions, The European Wars of Religion, Colonization, The Holocaust, and the January 6th violent assault on the American Capitol arose from the logical outcome of blending Christian faith with political power.
Christian imperialism encircled the globe and, collectively though fractiously, aimed at global domination. In far too many of these cases, “Christianizing” people meant enslaving them. (p.42)
The Nazis adopted the list of abuses Martin Luther suggested against the Jews as an outline for Kristallnacht, a night of semi-coordinated attacks in November 1938 that destroyed fourteen hundred Jewish synagogues and community prayer rooms. It was an inaugurating event of the Holocaust, timed to occur on Luther’s birthday. (p.43)
Christian scientists, Christian theologians, and Christian historians created a whole system of “racial differentiation” based on hackneyed science and assumed white Christian superiority. White nationalism, white supremacy, modern antisemitism, chattel slavery, eugenics: Christians brought these into the world.
“Down we go, through the centuries: Christians abusing power, Christians slaughtering their enemies, Christians getting in bed with tyrants to create church-empire mergers to persecute their Christian rivals. The perpetrators of these seventeen centuries’ worth of Christian evils, abuses, and dehumanizing acts are, by every agreed-upon, historic definition of the word, Christian.” (p.44)
Foundation
The foundation of his argument against Christian supremacy and Christian Nationalism is in my favourite chapter about the Incarnation. Taylor’s insights about the Virgin Mary are worth the price of the book alone and will provide any pastor with a perspective worth sharing this coming Christmas.
“The incarnation is the cornerstone of Christian theology, and that means it also has social consequences. God’s emptying, God’s self-lowering into the body of Jesus, equalizes humanity.” (p. 76)
“God comes into the world, not as a coercive force, decimating all who threaten or taunt or dominate him. He comes as a vulnerable baby in the womb of a teenager in obscure Nazareth.” (p.77)
“To live by the ethic of the incarnation is to defy entrenched hierarchies and all totalitarian imaginings of God. The God who is bone of our bone has no characterological need to dominate humankind.” (p. 79)
Takeaways
1. I enjoyed studying the history of Christianity in Bible College. Taylor shares facts about the historical context of the Gospels that are news to me. His insights to the Gospel of Mark will inform readers of a deeper meaning to the Gospels. And Taylor writes in a readable, entertaining format.
2. There is nothing Christlike about Christians seeking domination, political power, and premier status in society.
3. The Christianity of Christian supremacy and nationalism is not what Jesus called his followers to.
4. Taylor offers a sound look at a New Testament passage that has been misunderstood and misapplied to a Christian response to government. Jesus did not teach a carte blanche approach to those in authority. “Romans 13 teaches the persecuted church in Rome not to piss off Caesar unnecessarily and whole of Jesus’ life in Mark teaches the persecuted church how Jesus inaugurated a quiet theological rebellion against––and event at times, a terrifying confrontation with––Caesar’s kingdom.” (p.116)
5. He warns about what the American and particularly Albertan churches are entertaining. “The minute we blend the mustard-seed kingdom of God with earthly power—whether in the subtle form of a majority-Christian democracy that promotes Christians’ interests over others’ or an outright dictatorship—the gospel becomes something else entirely.” (p. 124)
In Conclusion
Taylor asks a probing question: What do you call a Christian who is theologically and technically “orthodox” but who weaponizes Jesus to dominate and harm others and operates in a way that is antithetical to Jesus’ teachings and example?
His answer will no doubt be controversial. It won’t land well with evangelicals.
The fifth-century theologian Augustine, when preaching on 1 John, captured this gulf between rightly recited creeds and atrocious real-world action so well:
“For if all [Christians] be asked, all with one mouth confess that Jesus is the Christ. Let the tongue keep still for a little while, ask the life. . . . We find these also to be antichrists: whosoever in his deeds denies Christ, is an antichrist. I listen not to what he says, but I look what life he leads. . . . A more lying antichrist is he who with his mouth professes that Jesus is the Christ, and with his deeds denies Him.”
Taylor points out that there has never been a Christlike nation. Tyrants with claims on Christianity who endeavour to create one are to be defied in the name of Jesus.
Defying Tyrants will be released in October. Get your copy here.
Until then, hear Taylor on his informative podcast series on The New Apostolic Reformation and follow his writings on Substack.
Please join the conversation and post a comment. Thank you.
And again, you bring such quality, wisdom and insight!! Thx for writing this!