Monthly Archives: July 2025

Rev. Benjamin Cremer Has the Floor . . .

“Any political party that claims to represent Christianity
should be held more accountable by Christians, not less.”

Neither political party represents the whole of the gospel of Jesus.

The gospel of Jesus is not a political platform; it is the inbreaking of God’s reign, a movement marked by self-giving love, justice, mercy, and reconciliation. It cannot be confined to any one nation, ideology, or party. While some political causes may resonate with elements of the gospel (such as care for the poor, defense of the vulnerable, or pursuit of justice), the fullness of Christ’s message transcends and often critiques all earthly systems of power.

Jesus himself refused to be co-opted by the political factions of his time, whether the zealots, the Herodians, or the Pharisees. He disrupted expectations on all sides, calling all people instead into a radical way of love, humility, and truth.

Yet only one political party in our time has been overwhelmingly claiming to represent Christianity for the last 50+ years.

Since the rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s and 80s, a powerful alliance formed between conservative evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party. This was not primarily a grassroots theological movement, but a calculated political strategy, spearheaded by figures like Jerry Falwell, Paul Weyrich, and Pat Robertson, to consolidate Christian voters around issues like segregation, abortion, school prayer, and opposition to LGBTQ rights.

This movement reframed Christianity in the public imagination, especially in the United States, as being synonymous with conservative politics. Over time, this association deepened, with phrases like “Christian values” and “family values” used almost exclusively to describe Republican aligned Christians. Meanwhile, issues like economic justice, racial reconciliation, peacemaking, environmental stewardship, and care for the immigrant, deeply rooted in Scripture, were often ignored or even opposed by the same coalition. Simply because some of these values were advocated by the “other side.”

This identification of faith with a single party has caused immense harm to the church’s witness. It has contributed to the rise of Christian nationalism, diluted the gospel into a tool for partisan gain, and alienated countless people, especially younger generations, from faith altogether.

The crux of this issue is that any party that claims to represent Christian values should be scrutinized more by the church, not less.

When a political party wraps itself in Christian language and symbolism, it does not become more trustworthy, it becomes more dangerous. History shows us that when the church weds itself to political power, it often ends up compromising the very heart of the gospel. From Constantine’s imperial church to the Crusades, from colonial missionary empires to the state churches of Europe, the pattern is tragically familiar: power corrupts and the message of Jesus is distorted and weaponized.

Theologically, Christians are called to be a prophetic people, not a partisan one. We are to speak truth to power, not be seduced by it. As 1 Peter 2:11 reminds us, we are “foreigners and exiles” in this world, not party loyalists. The church must never outsource its moral imagination to any political agenda. Rather, it must hold all earthly power to account in light of Christ’s gospel, a movement where the last are first, the peacemakers are blessed, and the poor are lifted up.

In our time, scrutiny of this “Christian party” is treated as betrayal, but it is actually faithfulness. It is what the prophets did to kings, what Jesus did to religious leaders, and what the early church did under empire. If a party claims to speak for Christ, then the church must be especially vigilant to ask: Which Christ? The crucified Savior of the Gospels, or a Christ of our own making?

The tragic reality is that much of today’s political harm, particularly policies that strip away rights, target marginalized groups, or elevate power over compassion, is being passed under the banner of “Christian values,” with little resistance from the church. This lack of accountability has allowed hypocrisy to flourish. Leaders can champion “family values” while displaying none of Christ’s character, and pass legislation that causes real suffering while receiving applause from pulpits. When the church refuses to hold such actions to account, it not only abandons its prophetic calling, it becomes complicit in the injustice itself.

This is why the church must reclaim its role as a holy outsider, not chaplain to political power, but a witness to a different way. The gospel calls us not to protect Christian power, but to embody Christ’s love, especially for the least, the last, and the lost.

May it be so with us.

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By Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer · Launched a year ago

July 14, 2025

According to my blogging schedule, every second Monday in the month supposed to be a miscellany of some sort or a miscellaneous post. Today, I’m feeling rather pointless. Not useless but pointless. I gave blood today, so there’s that at least. Afterward, a nap. No writing, little reading, no teaching. (I finished my Summer I grading and turned in final grades for the session yesterday.)

I finally decided to look through some very old blog for July, one of which turned out to be Tuesday, July 14, 2009. That’s, what, sixteen years ago? I was Leesa and I were approaching our 20th wedding anniversary. Lane was about to turn 33 years old, and Raleigh was closing in on 18. I was an Associate Professor at ETSU and Director of the University and Midway Honors Scholars Programs. We had escaped the difficult and embarrassing years of the George W. Bush presidency and were basking in the glow of the new Obama presidency. We were yet seven years from the horrors of Trump’s first presidency, during which we would learn to look back on the Bush years with longing.

Anyway, I guess I was feeling similar 2009 to how I’m feeling today, because that blog post also led me further into the past, to diary entries for 1978 and 1979. On July 14, 1978, I was 19 years old and a music major at Mars Hill College. On July 14, 1979, I was 20 and touring Europe via an AESU student tour.

Here’s the diary entry from 1978 (via my Captain’s Log):

The Walnut Youth Group never recorded an album. I have no memory of Pam Club. The rolling car I stopped and prevented from crashing into something or somebody in the heart of Asheville included one old woman (old to 19-year-old me), who sat in the passenger seat screaming for help.

Here’s the July 14 diary entry from my 1979 summer abroad in Europe:

Skinny dipping Londoners on a boat anchored among the Greek isles.

Forty-six years ago today.

“We have met the enemy . . .

. . . in the mirror.”

It’s no secret and should come as no surprise that the majority of current elected leaders from the president and vice president (and their ignorant, unqualified minions) up through the U.S. Congress to many if not most of the state houses and governors are spineless and mindless, having no moral compass and no capacity for shame.

That’s where we are.

That’s who we are.

That these leaders hold the positions they hold and do the damage they do to the ideals of the United States of America is lamentable. It’s infuriating. But it’s not surprising. They’re not the sickness, sick as they are. They are a symptom of what’s wrong with us.

And what’s wrong with us?

Our terminal diagnosis is a steadily enlarging ignorance, possibly inoperable.

Over the last century and more, we’ve devalued education to the point where a majority of people can’t think past the prejudices that blind them to what is good. They’re impressed by our fool of a president and our snake of a vice president, and they laugh, often drooling, in support of them because these two men hate who they hate. (Truth is, the president and vice president also hate those fools who voted for them.)

Many hope we will do better in coming elections. Maybe we will, but I doubt it. Ignorance and lazy minds are not things that can be corrected during an election cycle. And if we don’t take serious steps to try and reverse this condition (and it’s likely we won’t because ignorance begets ignorance while lazy minds stand by to protect the begetting), it’ll be as permanent and destructive as climate change. We are unlikely to vote for better people ever again, unless better people are able to entertain and deceive our uneducated voters as well as the current clowns and third-rate stand-up comics.

To put it simply for all, the simpleminded included: We’re fucked.

What Is AVALON MOON?

Back in the winter, while finalizing and waiting for the 15 April 2025 publication of Streets of Nashville, I finished the first and second drafts of a new novel titled Avalon Moon.

Like my short story collection A Twilight Reel, all of Avalon Moon takes place in the vicinity of my fictional North Carolina mountain town of Runion.

Here’s my elevator pitch:

In AVALON MOON, somebody is killing people—two by two, female and male—in the mountains of western North Carolina, and the local newspaper editor works with a reclusive finder-of-lost-things and two extraordinary young women to discover the killer, unwittingly making themselves potential pairs of targets.

Here’s part of the query letter for the publisher:

AVALON MOON opens in the mountains of western North Carolina on the eve of Winter Storm Ulysses. Before the blizzard begins, a group of local farmers and landowners meet with the county extension agent to discuss concerns that Avalon Orchards—once a thriving, idealistic community established on an island in the French Broad River—is creating a wolf sanctuary. But penned wolves on Avalon’s Christabel Island will soon be the least of the community’s worries.

A local man has gone missing and is soon found dead in a highland meadow, side-by-side with an unknown woman. When a second man—an unsuspecting visitor to the area—goes missing and a female deputy is found dead, Gabriel Tanner, editor of Runion’s weekly newspaper, and Plumer Reeves, a recluse haunted by the disappearance of his wife a few years before, suspect that somebody is hunting in their mountains. Two extraordinary young women, Avalon’s Ariel Anderson and Lonesome Mountain’s Livvy Goforth, join the editor and the recluse to lead the attempt to discover the killer and stop the killings.

Some information you might find interesting:

The year is 2014. I think this is my first time to set a story in the time of cell phones and widespread computer use, so that was different.
The newspaper editor, Gabriel Tanner, is one of two first-person narrators in the story. If you read my first novel, Gabriel’s Songbook, then you know Gabriel and his wife Eliza. Gabriel turns fifty-five years old as the story is getting underway.
If you read my story “Conversion,” either online at the late great Still: The Journal on in A Twilight Reel, then you’ve met Avalon Moon‘s Livvy Goforth. Livvy is a five-year-old girl in “Conversion.” She’s an intriguing character, I think, who never says a word, but it’s hinted that she has some kind of power that’s part of Appalachian mountain lore. I remember reading for and talking with a book club when A Twilight Reel was just out, and one of the club members asked what happens to Livvy. The question stuck with me, so here she is, now twenty years old and still an intriguing mystery in herself.
Plumer Reeves is the “reclusive finder-of-lost-things.” His first name is my father’s and rhymes with rumor, and his last name is my mother’s maiden name.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), a Philadelphia author that I wrote my dissertation and first book about, makes an appearance via a long lost Avalon manuscript.

Here’s a picture painted by my late friend Don Neblett (1933-2025) that hangs above my desk at home. I don’t know if it could be the cover, but it was inspiring.

I might also add that a submission of the first fifty pages of Avalon Moon was a 2023 Claymore Award Finalist in the Southern Gothic category. (The Claymore is associated with the Killer Nashville International Writer’s Conference.) The Claymore doesn’t offer Appalachian Gothic as a category, which is more accurately what Avalon Moon is.

Words & Music by . . .

Monthly Archives: July 2025

“Any political party that claims to represent Christianityshould be held more accountable by Christians, not less.”

Subscribe to Into The Gray: Substack

“Any political party that claims to represent Christianity
should be held more accountable by Christians, not less.”