Ride on, ride on in majesty
In lowly pomp, ride on to die.
Bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, thy power, and reign
— Henry Hart Milman
Ever since my old ACC parish closed, I’ve missed the Anglican way of doing Palm Sunday. I miss the distribution of the palms and the reading of the Passion narrative. I’ve written before about the experience of participating in these readings as a congregation, remembering the particular chill one gets when one loudly shouts, “CRUCIFY HIM!” As a child, I always had to remind myself, “It’s okay, it’s just pretend.” Then again, there is truth to the old hymn: “I it was denied him. I crucified him.”
Many Palm Sunday sermons have made much of the contrast between those cries and the joyous “Hosannas!” that first greeted Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. The assumption is often made that it was the same crowd, lauding one day and condemning the next. It’s not clear to what degree this was actually true, but it’s not impossible that it could have been at least partly true. Crowds can quickly go mad, after all. I am always struck by the words of Pilate, dripping with contempt, more prescient than he understands: “Shall I crucify your king?”
So perhaps it’s fitting that this Palm Sunday, the phrase “Christ is King” has become a bit of a trending topic in my circles. First, some background: It seems that after a prolonged period of conspiracy-mongering and playing footsie with the alt-right, Candace Owens has finally been fired by the Daily Wire. Now, this is the sort of news I normally make a point of blissfully ignoring. I can’t think of anything in which I feel less invested than the shifting fortunes of Daily Wire pundits, except perhaps the presidential election cycle. But I admit I was slightly interested in this particular bit of news, because ever since October 7, Owens’ anti-Israel rhetoric has become progressively more unhinged, doing the classic alt-right thing of wrapping around to shake hands with the left. Meanwhile, she’s spiced up her menu of conspiracy theories with a few specifically antisemitic chestnuts. Given that Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro is American conservatism’s most public Jewish figure, many have wondered why Owens didn’t get the sack long ago. In a lively Twitter clash, Owens told Shapiro he “couldn’t serve both God and money,” to which Ben dryly replied that Owens was free to stop drawing a Daily Wire paycheck if it was coming between her and God. But even then, she wasn’t actually fired. What finally seems to have done it is that she recently “liked” some lowest common denominator tweets resurrecting the ugly old myth that Jews drink Christian blood.
Where does the phrase “Christ is King” come into all this? Well, this was something else Candace tweeted out in the course of her clash with Shapiro. Now, for those of you who are neither very online nor very familiar with offbeat right-wing code-speak…well, first of all, great job, and I envy you. Unfortunately, I’m both, and so I can explain why this tweet likely meant more than just “Christ is King.” Actually, I’ll just link this nice, short explainer by Messianic Jewish scholar Michael Brown, who walks through how the phrase has been coopted by virulent anti-Semites on the “groyper” right. What’s a groyper, you ask? Click here if you’re really dying to know at length, but basically, it’s a group label for alt-right trolls, many of whom follow a nasty streamer named Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has outright denied the Holocaust, among all kinds of other loathsome stuff. Yet, grotesquely, he purports to do so under the banner of Christendom. In this clip from a rally last summer, he rants about the need to “get rid of Jewish power,” asserting that “America is not a Jewish nation. America is a Christian nation.”
And here Nick’s audience begins to chant, “Christ is King! Christ is King!”
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