Hope Hilton 2/3/26 Hope Hilton 2/3/26

Rome Killed Jesus. God Did Not Require It. Here's Why

Jesus was executed by the Roman Empire on political charges, by Roman soldiers, using a method reserved for slaves and rebels — and he asked God to stop it. If God required the death, that prayer makes no sense. If Rome did it, the prayer makes complete sense. This changes everything about what the cross means — and what it means for your suffering.

America Is Not in the Bible. Here's Why That Matters

The Bible was completed approximately 1,681 years before the United States existed. It says nothing about America, democracy, constitutional republics, or capitalism. Every verse cited for American exceptionalism — every single one — is about ancient Israel, Solomon's temple, or Jesus's disciples in occupied Palestine. None mentions America because none could. But the deeper problem is not the anachronism. The deeper problem is what this reading does: it takes covenant language belonging to another community, replaces the original meaning with a national myth, claims divine authority for a political project, and silences anyone who questions it. That is not faithful interpretation. It is the same pattern that shows up every time Scripture is weaponized. And it has consequences — for how we treat immigrants, how we justify wars, and how we confuse patriotism with faithfulness.

Jonathan Cain, America's Great Theologian. Journey to the White House. (Journey Series)

You might not know his name, but you know his teachings.

Jonathan Cain is the most widely disseminated Christian theologian of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.

That's not a compliment. That's not an insult. It's just math. More people have sung "Don't Stop Believin'" as an act of communal faith than have sung most hymns written in the last fifty years. Every karaoke bar on earth is a chapel, and that song is the call to worship. The strangers waiting up and down the boulevard are a congregation. The midnight train going anywhere is a pilgrimage without a fixed destination. And "don't stop believin'" is a credal statement that refuses to specify its object.

Believin' in what?

It never says. It structurally cannot say, because saying would limit its reach.