The Aspiration and the Execution
Toward a Christos Historical Review
Renaissance Ministries | April 13, 2026
A Fellowship Discussion Essay
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
— Romans 3:23
“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
— Philippians 3:12
“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”
— John 7:24
Introduction: The Accusation and the Response
Michael Sherman — Thomas’s friend of sixty years, a thoughtful interlocutor who pushes back on Kingdom claims — came to the April 12, 2026 fellowship with a familiar litany:
- The Crusades
- The Inquisition
- Protestants and Catholics slaughtering each other
- “Whites Only” signs in Mississippi
- The treatment of Blacks, women, Chinese, Japanese
- The Ojibwe and English settlers
- Tevye’s daughters (forced religious conformity breaking families)
His challenge is the challenge of modern liberalism: How can you advocate for a “Kingdom of God” culture when the historical record shows what happens when Christians gain power?
This challenge deserves a serious response — not defensive deflection, not whataboutism, but honest engagement with what happened, why it happened, and what it means for the Kingdom vision.
This essay proposes that response.
Part I: The Three-Part Framework
To engage history honestly, we need three things:
1. The Standard
What would Kingdom culture look like if faithfully executed?
Without a clear standard, we cannot evaluate failures. We cannot say “the Inquisition was wrong” unless we have a basis for what “right” would have looked like.
The standard is not “whatever Christians happened to do.” The standard is Christ — His teaching, His character, His way. The standard is the Bible rightly interpreted. The standard is the theological grammar we have been developing.
Key principle: The failures of Christian history are failures against the standard, not failures of the standard. The Crusaders who massacred Jews in the Rhineland were violating Christ’s teaching, not fulfilling it. The Inquisitors who tortured confessions out of accused heretics were contradicting the Gospel, not applying it.
This distinction is crucial: the failures of Christians do not discredit Christianity any more than the failures of doctors discredit medicine. The question is whether the teaching is true, not whether every practitioner has lived up to it.
2. The Honest Assessment
Where did Christian nations and movements fail to meet the standard?
This requires honesty, not apologetics. Yes, the Crusades included atrocities. Yes, the Inquisition used torture. Yes, the religious wars of Europe killed millions. Yes, slavery was practiced and defended by professing Christians. Yes, “Whites Only” signs were posted in the Bible Belt.
These were wrong. Not wrong because modern liberals say so — wrong because they violated the teaching of Christ, the principles of Scripture, and the character of God.
The question is not whether they were wrong, but why they happened and what they tell us.
3. The Counter-Narrative
What was happening elsewhere? What are the alternatives?
Michael’s litany is selective. It catalogs the failures of Christendom while ignoring:
- The far greater atrocities of non-Christian civilizations (Aztec human sacrifice, Arab slave trade, Mongol conquests, Chinese dynastic wars)
- The horrors that emerged when Christian restraints were removed (French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Soviet gulags, Maoist Cultural Revolution, Cambodian killing fields)
- The positive fruits of Christian civilization that the West takes for granted (human dignity, rule of law, scientific method, universities, hospitals, abolition movements)
- The ongoing atrocities in non-Christian contexts today (Islamic persecution of Christians, Chinese treatment of Uyghurs, North Korean totalitarianism)
This is not whataboutism — it is context. If you’re going to judge Christian civilization, you must judge it against the actual alternatives, not against an imagined secular utopia that has never existed and cannot exist.
Part II: Engaging the Specific Accusations
The Crusades
What happened: Between 1096 and 1291, European Christians launched military campaigns to retake the Holy Land from Islamic control, with varying degrees of success and varying degrees of atrocity.
The honest assessment:
- The Crusades were a response to four centuries of Islamic conquest. By 1095, two-thirds of the Christian world had been conquered by Muslim armies. The Byzantine Empire was collapsing. Pilgrims were being murdered on the road to Jerusalem. This context is rarely mentioned.
- The Crusades included genuine atrocities — the massacre of Jews in the Rhineland, the sack of Constantinople, the slaughter of civilians at Jerusalem. These were wrong — violations of Christ’s teaching, condemned at the time by some Church leaders.
- The Crusades also included acts of genuine heroism, self-sacrifice, and faith. Reducing them to “Christian imperialism” is historically illiterate.
The standard: A Kingdom response to Islamic aggression would have prioritized defense of the innocent, protected non-combatants, distinguished between the system of Islam and individual Muslims, and sought conversion rather than conquest. Where the Crusaders violated these principles, they were wrong.
The counter-narrative: What was the alternative? Continued Islamic expansion into Europe? The conquest of Constantinople came anyway, two centuries later. The Crusades slowed that expansion. And the Islamic conquests they responded to were far more systematic and permanent than anything the Crusaders achieved.
The Inquisition
What happened: Church tribunals, most notoriously the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), investigated and prosecuted heresy, sometimes using torture and execution.
The honest assessment:
- The Inquisition was institutionalized coercion of conscience — attempting to enforce internal belief through external pressure. This contradicts the Gospel, which calls for voluntary transformation, not compelled confession.
- The numbers have been wildly exaggerated by Protestant and Enlightenment propaganda. Modern scholarship suggests the Spanish Inquisition executed approximately 3,000-5,000 people over 350 years — terrible, but not the millions often claimed.
- The Inquisition also moderated mob justice and provided procedural protections that were advanced for their time. Context matters.
The standard: A Kingdom approach to heresy is persuasion, not coercion. “The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves” (2 Timothy 2:24-25). The Inquisition violated this.
The counter-narrative: What replaced the Inquisition’s attempts at religious unity? The religious wars of the Reformation killed far more than the Inquisition ever did. And the secular ideologies that replaced Christianity in the 20th century killed tens of millions.
The Religious Wars of Europe
What happened: From the Reformation through the Peace of Westphalia (1517-1648), Protestants and Catholics killed each other by the millions.
The honest assessment:
- This was catastrophic failure. Christians slaughtering Christians over doctrinal differences is a direct violation of Christ’s command: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).
- Susan’s answer to Michael at the fellowship is exactly right: if both sides claim Christ, and both sides are ready to kill, at least one (probably both) has departed from Christ’s teaching. The test is love.
The standard: Doctrinal disagreement should be resolved through persuasion, not persecution. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, not literal swords.
The counter-narrative: The religious wars were horrific. They were also ended by Christians who realized they contradicted Christianity. The Peace of Westphalia was a Christian solution to a Christian failure. Meanwhile, the secular ideologies that claimed to transcend religious division produced wars that made the Thirty Years’ War look like a skirmish.
Slavery and Segregation
What happened: Slavery was practiced in Christian nations, including America. Segregation persisted for a century after abolition.
The honest assessment:
- Slavery was universal in human history. Every civilization practiced it. What was unique was not that Christians practiced slavery, but that Christians abolished it. The abolition movement was overwhelmingly Christian in motivation and leadership.
- American slavery was particularly brutal and was defended using misreadings of Scripture. This defense was wrong — a distortion of the Bible, not an application of it.
- Segregation was a failure of the church to apply the Gospel principle that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free… for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
The standard: The Kingdom recognizes no racial hierarchy. Every human is made in God’s image. The stranger among us is to be treated with justice and dignity.
The counter-narrative: Who ended slavery? Christians. What still practices slavery today? Islamic nations, secular totalitarian states, and criminal networks. The Bible Belt had “Whites Only” signs; it also produced the civil rights movement, led by Baptist ministers preaching the Gospel.
Indigenous Peoples
What happened: European settlement displaced indigenous peoples, sometimes through treaties violated, sometimes through war, sometimes through disease.
The honest assessment:
- The treatment of indigenous peoples included genuine injustices — broken treaties, forced relocations, destruction of cultures.
- It also included genuine missionary efforts, protection of indigenous peoples from worse abuses, and cultural exchange that was not entirely one-directional.
- The “noble savage” narrative (as Brewer’s post discusses) romanticizes indigenous cultures while ignoring their own practices of warfare, slavery, human sacrifice, and territorial conquest.
The standard: The stranger is to be treated with justice. Treaties should be honored. Conquest is not the same as evangelism.
The counter-narrative: What was the alternative? Indigenous peoples were not living in Edenic harmony before European contact. They were engaged in their own cycles of warfare, conquest, and (in some cases) human sacrifice. The arrival of Europeans introduced new diseases and new pressures, but it also introduced the Gospel, literacy, and technologies that many indigenous peoples adopted voluntarily.
Part III: The Deeper Question
Michael’s notes include a key question:
“Is Dr. T trying to create a theocracy?”
Let’s answer directly: Yes and no.
Yes — in the sense that any coherent civilization is grounded in some ultimate commitment. There is no “neutral” position. Secular humanism is not the absence of a religious commitment; it is a different religious commitment — faith in human reason, human progress, human autonomy as ultimate values.
The question is not “Should we have a theocracy?” but “Which theos will rule?” Every civilization answers to some god — whether called God, Reason, Progress, the People, the State, or the Self.
No — in the sense that Kingdom culture cannot be imposed by force. The Inquisition’s error was precisely this: trying to create internal transformation through external coercion. It doesn’t work. It contradicts the Gospel.
Kingdom culture spreads the same way the early church spread — through transformed lives, winsome witness, sacrificial love, and the power of the Holy Spirit. It takes root when hearts are changed, not when laws are passed.
The vision is not imposition but invitation. Not “believe or else” but “come and see.” Not theocracy in the sense of priests wielding political power, but theocracy in the sense of a culture that acknowledges God as the source of truth, goodness, and legitimate authority.
Part IV: Michael’s Specific Challenges
Let’s address Michael’s notes point by point:
“First amendment: Freedom of religion. Toss it?”
No. Freedom of religion is a Christian invention — the recognition that faith must be voluntary to be genuine. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 24:15) assumes the capacity to choose.
What we oppose is not freedom of religion but the abuse of that freedom to protect systems that would destroy it. Islam, for example, uses religious liberty protections to advance in Stage 1 and Stage 2, then abolishes religious liberty in Stage 3. Protecting this pattern is not religious liberty; it is civilizational suicide.
“How much do you propose restrictions on ‘Freedom of Thought’?”
None. You cannot restrict thought — and wouldn’t if you could. But freedom of thought does not mean freedom from consequences, freedom from counter-argument, or freedom from discernment about what ideas to welcome into your civilization.
No society admits all ideas equally. The question is which ideas are excluded and on what basis. Modern liberalism excludes “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “conspiracy theories” — often meaning anything that contradicts progressive orthodoxy. We propose excluding ideas that are inherently destructive of the civilization that hosts them — which, if we’re honest, is what every society has always done.
“What are its laws? What venues are there for modifying/amending these laws? What are its ‘punishments’? Who decides?”
These are practical questions that require practical answers — and those answers will vary by context. The Kingdom is not a detailed legal code dropped from heaven; it is a direction and a standard against which human laws and institutions are measured.
The Constitution’s “self-correcting” mechanism (as Charlie noted) is valuable. A Kingdom-oriented civilization would retain mechanisms for amendment, adjustment, and reform — but would anchor them to transcendent principles rather than floating them on the shifting tides of popular opinion.
“Stranger among us (Black, woman, Catholic, Japanese, ‘marriage choices’…)”
The stranger among us is invited to transformation. The vetting is not about ethnicity, nationality, or background — it is about commitment to the Way.
Are you committed to living according to Kingdom principles? Are you willing to work on yourself, to conform your life to the standard? Then you are welcome — regardless of where you came from.
Are you committed to a way of life that is fundamentally incompatible with Kingdom culture — honor killings, civilizational jihad, the destruction of the family? Then you are not a “stranger among us”; you are an invader.
Part V: The Vision — Christos Historical Review
This essay has only scratched the surface. Michael’s challenges — and the broader liberal critique of Christian civilization — deserve a comprehensive response.
We propose a new project: The Christos Historical Review.
This would be a systematic examination of Christian history through the lens of Kingdom principles:
- The Standard Established — What does Kingdom culture actually look like? Drawing from Scripture, the theological grammar, and the best of Christian tradition.
- The Aspiration Acknowledged — What were Christian civilizations trying to do? Not assuming bad faith, but taking seriously the stated intentions.
- The Execution Evaluated — Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? Judged not by modern liberal standards, but by their own professed standards — the teaching of Christ and Scripture.
- The Alternatives Assessed — What were the actual alternatives at the time? What replaced Christian civilization where it was removed? What are the fruits?
- The Lessons Extracted — What can we learn? What should be preserved? What should be repented of? What principles should guide future attempts at Kingdom culture?
This is a massive undertaking — years of work, multiple scholars, careful research. But it is necessary. The liberal narrative has gone unchallenged for too long, and Christians have been too defensive, too apologetic, too eager to concede moral authority to those who have no ground to stand on.
Part VI: The Proper Perspective
On Defending Christianity
We do not defend every act committed in Christ’s name. We cannot. Many of those acts were violations of Christ’s teaching, and defending them would be defending sin.
What we defend is Christ’s teaching itself — the standard, not every failed execution of it.
On Imposing Christianity
We do not impose Christianity by force. We cannot. Forced faith is no faith at all.
What we do is proclaim Christianity with conviction, live it with integrity, commend it with winsome witness, and build cultures that embody its principles. If those cultures flourish — as they historically have — others will be drawn to them.
On the Liberal Critique
We do not concede moral authority to liberalism. We cannot. Liberalism has its own body count — the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, the Sexual Revolution’s casualties, the abortion regime’s tens of millions.
Liberalism claims to be neutral and tolerant, but it is neither. It is a competing religion with competing moral commitments, and its fruits are visible for those with eyes to see.
On the Path Forward
We aspire to a Kingdom culture — not because we will execute it perfectly (we won’t), but because the aspiration is right, the standard is true, and the alternative is darkness.
We acknowledge past failures — not because liberals demand it, but because honesty requires it and repentance enables it.
We learn from history — not to repeat its mistakes, but to avoid them; not to abandon the vision, but to pursue it more faithfully.
And we trust that God, who began this work, will complete it — in His time, in His way, for His glory.
Conclusion: The Aspiration Remains
Michael Sherman’s challenges are serious. They deserve serious engagement.
But they do not defeat the Kingdom vision. They reveal its difficulty, not its impossibility. They highlight past failures, not future futility. They call for humility, not surrender.
The aspiration remains: One nation under God. A culture that acknowledges its Creator. A people transformed by the Gospel.
The execution will always be imperfect — because we are imperfect. But the standard is not imperfect. The One to whom we aspire is not imperfect.
And in the end, it is His Kingdom that will come, His will that will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
We press toward that mark.
A Prayer
Lord, we confess the failures of those who came before us — who claimed Your name but violated Your teaching, who sought Your Kingdom but used the world’s methods, who aspired to righteousness but fell into sin.
Forgive us for defending what should be repented of. Forgive us for conceding what should be proclaimed. Give us wisdom to distinguish the standard from the execution, the aspiration from the failure, Your way from the distortions of Your way.
Help us to build better than our fathers built — not because we are better, but because we have learned from their mistakes. Ground us in humility, strengthen us with courage, and guide us with Your Spirit.
And bring Your Kingdom, Lord — not by our strength but by Yours, not in our time but in Yours, not for our glory but for Yours alone.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Renaissance Ministries
One heart to make Christ King
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
— Matthew 6:10