Jesus and The Federalist

A response to The Federalist article

The following is my response to the critical article The Federalist published regarding my recent Palm Sunday Op-Ed in The New York Times. The length and detail of this response are intentional, given the complexity of the issues at stake and the need for careful, substantive and hospitable engagement

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Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. I have. A family member starts speaking in inflammatory slogans. Startling declarations over Thanksgiving dinner. Sudden claims about secret agendas or conspiracies.

You try to engage — with facts, with questions, with nuance. Maybe you offer a few complicating details, the kind that rigid narratives often erase.

That drift — gradual at first, then jarring — reflects a larger national pattern. Not just among individuals, but across institutions: companies, communities, even media outlets.

Last week, The Federalist published an opinion piece by staff writer Elle Purnell titled, “On Palm Sunday, The New York Times Repeated A 2,000-Year-Old Mistake About Jesus” The article criticized a New York Times op-ed I had recently written.

A few years ago, I might have come across it myself. This time, a friend had to point it out — it’s been a long while since I’ve read The Federalist with any regularity.

When I was living in Oxford, I kept up with U.S. politics by reading a wide range of publications, including The Federalist. When it launched in 2013, founders (and still owners) Ben Domenech and Sean Davis pitched it as a home for serious, long-form conservative thought. In those early years, it read more like The Atlantic with a rightward slant — essays on theology, literature, and limited government, written with care and intellectual depth.

Frequent references to classical thinkers like Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville, alongside theological voices like Augustine and Aquinas, gave it a scholarly weight. Its pages hosted thoughtful debates on free speech, religious liberty, and the moral foundations of democracy. It wasn’t a vehicle for polarization; it was a journal for ideas.

Over time, I stopped reading The Federalist. The shift was hard to ignore. What had once been a platform for thoughtful, nuanced reflection became a megaphone for conspiracy theories — often without serious evidence, journalistic integrity, or any real commitment to complexity.

Wrestling with ideas gave way to a kind of cultural fatalism, disguised as righteousness — promoting anger, not understanding; division, not discernment. Theological pieces shifted from right-leaning reflection to reactionary polemic.

But I get it: outrage and certainty are good for business.

In many ways, Elle Purnell’s article exemplifies—even crystallizes—The Federalist’s shift from inquiry to ideology. Her framing surfaces immediately: that Jesus came primarily to “eradicate the sin in their own hearts,” and that concerns about Christian nationalism — “whatever that means,” as she puts it — are misguided or irrelevant. These two instincts shape the rest of her argument: Christianity is reduced to personal morality, and any critique of the Christian pursuit of political power utterly dismissed.

Through these lenses, it becomes difficult to distinguish between revealing the Kingdom of God in contrast to the kingdoms of this world and leading an armed revolt; between advocating for justice within a political system and seeking to overthrow it entirely.

Purnell repeatedly collapses these distinctions. Though she quotes the Op-Ed, that Jesus “came to dismantle the logic of Caesar,” by the very next sentence she has already equated that with dismantling political empires — eventually framing it as an “anti-Roman revolt.” The conflation isn’t incidental; it’s a theological sleight of hand, and a revealing one.

Again and again, Purnell insists that Jesus’ mission is confined to individual hearts, not communities; to personal sin, not the unjust structures we build, sustain, and sanctify. Her refrain — “He came to take the punishment for our sins” — echoes throughout, as if that were the sum total of the Gospel.

My New York Times op-ed lacked the word count for a full-scale theological debate. So, here is my long form reply.

Now, I think we can all agree: Jesus was a master of Scripture. He quoted the prophets fluently, answered trick questions from Herodians and Pharisees with disarming precision, and even bested a Bible-quoting Satan in the wilderness — not by rote recital, but by embodying and revealing the deeper meaning of Scripture.

So let’s talk, briefly, about atonement theology — specifically the model that has dominated American churches, shaped by Anselm of Canterbury in the late 11th century (Cur Deus Homo, c. 1098). Anselm’s model mirrored the feudal and imperial structures of his time, framing sin as a debt — a dishonor owed to a divine Lord — which could only be satisfied by a perfect offering. In this logic, Jesus’ death becomes a necessary payment to satisfy divine justice.

Later, Aquinas would build on this foundation, reinforcing it with scholastic clarity and embedding it in Catholic doctrine. Today, it remains the quiet architecture behind much of modern Western preaching: salvation as transaction, sin as debt paid.

But the Scriptures Jesus quoted — and the ones that shaped him — tell a broader, older, and far more relational story. Especially in the wisdom and prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible, forgiveness isn’t earned or bought. It is declared, enacted, embodied.

Consider Psalm 103:12: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” (KJV)

How far is the east from the west? It’s poetic language, yes — but its beauty lies in the precision of its imagery. East and west never meet. They are infinitely far apart. It’s not just lyrical; it’s theological.

God’s forgiveness of sin was already written into Israel’s self-understanding five to seven centuries before Jesus’ birth, likely during the exilic or post-exilic period (6th–5th century BCE). It isn’t a response to Rome. It isn’t a medieval invention. It’s the language of covenantal mercy — already at work long before the cross. Before Golgotha. Before any theory of atonement had been systematized by Anselm or Aquinas.

Which raises the question: If sin had already been removed, why would Jesus need to “eradicate” it again — from the inside out? Unless, perhaps, the work of Jesus was never to erase what God had already forgiven, but to reveal the deeper logic of grace — and to confront the systems that kept that grace out of reach for so many.

So if sin had already been infinitely removed, what then was the purpose of Jesus’ life and ministry? Surely not to redo what had already been done. Not merely to “eradicate sin in our hearts,” as Purnell claims. That’s too narrow a view — reductive, even — of his mission.

Jesus didn’t come just to clean up individual souls. He came to embody the mercy Psalm 103 describes. To confront the structures that denied that mercy to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast. He came to reveal the Kingdom of God in its fullness — not as a retreat into personal piety, but as a direct confrontation with every power that kept people bound.

When the crowds around Jesus cried, “Hosanna — save us,” they weren’t asking for inner tranquility. They were pleading for material change. It was liturgical protest.

And it is, quite frankly, the very thing Purnell — and so many like her — seem unwilling to consider: that Jesus didn’t die because he was misunderstood, or because God needed someone to take a hit. He died because he stood in direct contradiction to the priorities of empire, and the empire did what empires do to those who threaten them.

This is why the dominant model of penal substitutionary atonement is not just theologically insufficient — it’s too small. It reduces the Gospel to a legal transaction: sin as debt, God as judge, the cross as payment. It’s neat. It’s efficient. It’s easily weaponized.

But it cannot contain the Jesus who dines with outcasts, who overturns temple tables, who heals the sick, calls out injustice, blesses the poor, and warns the rich. It has no room for the Jesus who disrupts not just personal piety, but public systems.

This isn’t abstract theology. It shapes how we preach, how we govern, how we punish, how we ignore. When the cross is imagined as divine vengeance, justice becomes retribution. And when salvation is only about escaping punishment, the here and now stops mattering. The poor are told to wait. The abused are told to forgive. And the systems that crucify are left unchallenged.

But the Gospels give us another lens.

To make her case, Purnell points to the story of the paralytic healed by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels as a way to frame sin. She writes: “Even some of those who sought his healing were looking for something less important than what Jesus came to offer — Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of a paralytic who was brought to Jesus for healing, only for Jesus to tell him, ‘your sins are forgiven.’”

It’s one of the most revealing episodes in the Gospels — not just for what it says about forgiveness, but for what it reveals about power.

Let’s take a closer look at this story.

The scribes were already grumbling about blasphemy, asking, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus then turns to the gathered crowd and asks, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?”

In Jesus’ world — like ours — the removal of sin was big business. Huge. To simply declare, “Your sins are forgiven,” was, in the eyes of the scribes, not only an act of usurping divine authority but also a threat to the very system that paid their salaries. Blasphemy!

(And that charge will follow him to the end. But note: according to the Scriptures, the penalty for blasphemy — enforced by the chief priests and temple authorities — was stoning. Spoiler alert: Jesus wasn’t stoned to death, even though stoning was the prescribed punishment. Just ask Stephen.)

For the crowd, Jesus’ question — “Which is easier?” — would have been compelling. They knew a paralyzed man, carried to Jesus by friends, couldn’t simply get up and walk. In the same way, the religious rhetoric of the day made clear that the removal of sin required a trip to the priests.

And in this brief story of healing, we find a key to unlocking many of Jesus’ deeper truths — including his journey to Jerusalem. Not only are the man’s sins forgiven, but his material suffering is addressed. Both are healed. Both are restored.

The “Kingdom of Heaven” — Matthew’s phrase for the “Kingdom of God” — is not some distant, otherworldly place, if Jesus is to be believed. Again and again, Jesus insists that the Kingdom is at hand (Matthew 4:17, 10:7; Mark 1:15), near to you (Luke 10:9), in your midst (Luke 17:21). Even in John’s Gospel, to be “born again” is to “see the Kingdom of God.”

In other words, just as the paralytic experiences Jesus’ healing as both inward and spiritual, but also physical and material, the crowds on the road to Jerusalem cry out “Hosanna” — literally, “Save us!” — to Jesus, whose very name, Yeshua, is drawn from the same root verb: to save. The salvation they call for, and the salvation he offers, has both spiritual and material dimensions. Imagine while slaves in Egypt God desired only eradicate the sin in their own hearts without real liberation.

All of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God — and indeed, all of Jesus’ life — shows how the divine and the spiritual are meant to dwell within the material and the earthly. What is Jesus himself if not the embodiment of those two connected realities? His life makes visible how the eternal inhabits the everyday.

His parables almost always begin: “The Kingdom of God (or Heaven) is like…” — and then reveal divine truths through ordinary, earthly experiences: sowers and seeds, lost coins, laborers and wages, debts and forgiveness, rich men and beggars, weddings, feasts, kings settling accounts, coins stamped with Caesar’s image, Samaritans caring for the wounded. Each one teaches that the Kingdom is not abstract or distant, but rooted in daily life — in economics, justice, mercy, and care for the neighbor.

I’m sure there were many who, on that first Palm Sunday, conflated Jesus’ Kingdom with the kingdoms of this world. Some were likely hungry for revolution, ready to crown Jesus as an earthly king.

But there is a difference — perhaps lost on The Federalist — that Jesus came to call for personal transformation, yes, but also systemic change. The word is metanoia — repentance, turning — not just of individual hearts, but of the structures that oppress and exploit.

Those in power want neither. And one unimpeachable fact remains, attested by all four Gospels: Jesus was crucified.

Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for thieves (like the two crucified beside him), for runaway slaves or slave uprisings, and for insurrectionists. It was not the penalty for blasphemy.

Jesus was killed by state execution.

If blasphemy had been the charge, he would have been stoned. That was the prescribed punishment under Jewish law. If blasphemy had been the charge, it would have been written over his head at crucifixion, as was customary under Roman practice.

But it wasn’t.

Rome didn’t crucify healers. Rome didn’t execute people simply for claiming to be God, or for debating scripture in the Temple, or for urging private spiritual renewal. Rome crucifies people who threaten the system.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Jesus challenges the values and priorities of empire. He agitates those complicit in abuse and injustice — because their hearts need conversion too. Hardened hearts create oppressive systems.

And those in power understood — all too well — the real danger of Jesus’ message.

Think of the Woes he pronounces against the Pharisees:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance you make long prayers… Woe to you who tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” (Matthew 23)

Devouring widows’ houses and tithing mint and dill while neglecting justice — these are material actions that reveal spiritual corruption. They are both individual and systemic, sins of self and sins of structure.

On that first Palm Sunday, the crowds shouted Hosanna — Save us! But salvation was never meant to be a retreat into private piety. It was — and still is — a confrontation with the powers that bind, exploit, and divide.

To shrink Jesus’ mission to personal sin management alone — to draw hard lines between the forgiven and the unforgiven, the saved and the lost — is not just a theological error. It repeats the very imperial logic he came to dismantle: a system that prioritizes purity over mercy, profit over people, belonging over liberation.

Jesus didn’t die to bless the status quo. He died because he exposed it.

And if we are to follow him — not just reframe him for our purposes — we will have to resist the temptation to rebuild, in his name, the same empires he came to overturn. Not with banners and armies, but with certainty, division, and fear.

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