Disarming Leviathan Review
By Sean Curran
A Samaritan’s Guide to this Apocalypse: A Meditation by Sean Curran on Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor by Caleb E. Campbell
In an April 1, 2025 interview published in The New Yorker, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, Jr., said the following when asked whether he thought the Trump Administration cared about the human consequences of cuts to programs like USAID:
“I know a lot of people in the government who would care a great deal and who actually think that the greater threat to human flourishing is letting a lot of the spending go on, all the programs go on, that aren’t really helping anyone but populating bureaucracies. I personally know some of the people in the Administration making some of these decisions, and I’ll simply say I believe they are not driven by animus, but, rather, driven by the attempt to try to get Leviathan back under some control.”
In this quote Mohler seems to be referencing the work of 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, whose treatise called Leviathan argues that an all-powerful sovereign, a king with power and ferocity akin to a monster from the sea, is the best sort of government over humanity’s natural tendencies toward war and chaos.
Despite what Mohler suggests about controlling Leviathan, though, in Hobbes’s theory it is Leviathan that wields all control. And the notion of Leviathan as a fearful force because it cannot be controlled, is a Scriptural notion—something pointed out by author Caleb A. Campbell.
“In their wisdom the authors of Scripture were aware that an evil force such as this existed, one that promised peace and prosperity while feeding on chaos, demanding allegiance, and eventually requiring a sacrifice. They talked about this spiritual power in a variety of ways, often envisioning it as a beastly creature (Genesis 4:7), such as the serpent (Genesis 3:1), the dragon (Revelation 20:2), or Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1)” (Campbell 40).
In Caleb A. Campbell’s book Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, Campbell strikes a balance between prophetic and compassionate communication, arguing that support by professing Christ-followers in the United States of their country’s political power to be wielded to destroy their perceived enemies and bring about their own prosperity is truly antichrist. Nonetheless, Campbell asserts, such evil will not be overcome through the violence of the State or through any merely human means, but only through the embodied practice of the love of Christ.
“Ancient Christians [were]…concerned that Christians would be deceived into following leaders and powers that present themselves as godly but are secretly working in ways contrary to the kingdom of God,” Campbell writes. “God’s people have been at risk of being seduced by Leviathan’s power for millennia” (42).
Though there are of course a variety of countries over the millennia where God’s people have been seduced by such antichrist power, Campbell’s concern is with the seduction of God’s people within the United States of America, especially in the manifestation of Leviathan that can be identified as Christian Nationalism.
“[Christian Nationalism is] a movement,” Campbell writes, “that calls Christian followers to take government power at all costs to advance their preferred way of being in the world…this great beast of Christian Nationalism—which seeks to destroy dissidents, misappropriate Scripture for its purposes, and encourage acts of aggression, racism, and hatred—has been lurking in the shadows of the American church for years, spoken of in whispers behind closed doors” (Campbell 3).
Although Christian Nationalism is not a recent innovation nor an idea that can be solely laid at the feet of those who have lived in the United States, in the last decade American Christian Nationalism has seen a resurgence concurrent with the Presidential elections of Donald Trump, who has openly identified himself as “a nationalist.” It has been observed that tropes of other historical movements of American Christian Nationalism have been adopted by President Trump and many of his supporters—such as the adoption of the slogan “America First,” which was propagated by the Christian Nationalist organization known as the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920’s (the height of the Klan’s popularity) in the United States. Claims of American exceptionalism have been taken to logical extremes by Christian Nationalists in recent years. Xenophobia and intimidation permeate the words and actions of Christian Nationalists.
“A regular practice of American Christian Nationalism is to demonize people who ask critical questions about America and its history…” writes Campbell. “Critical statements and questions will be perceived as an act of disloyalty—a lack of true allegiance. This, however, fails to recognize how love works. When I love something or someone but do not give it my ultimate allegiance, I am free to criticize it out of love…If my ultimate allegiance is to Jesus, then whenever my marriage, family, church, or nation departs from the way of Jesus, I engage in peaceful, compassionate, yet critical conversation” (57-58).
I am reminded of Luke 11:37-54 in reading Campbell’s words about compassionate yet critical conversation. Jesus in all of the gospel accounts expressed multiple critical observations about the Pharisees, but in this particular passage from Luke Jesus has been invited to dine with a group of Pharisees and scribes. Jesus directly calls out how they have fallen short and sinned against God and his people. Jesus does not do this out of a lack of compassion, but because of his immense compassion. Though the Pharisees and scribes take Jesus’s words as insults and plot hostility against Jesus following this conversation, Jesus had lovingly presented his hosts with an opportunity for repentance.
One may see from what I have highlighted of Campbell’s book that his message not only is challenging to think about but also challenging to put into practice. The stakes are not small in opposing Christian Nationalism, which is ultimately one and the same thing as committing fully to the way of Jesus.
And yes, Jesus is the one who turned over the money tables and drove the merchants out of the temple courts, but he had authority to do so because he was willing to lay down his life. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again” (John 10:17-18, NRSVUE). It is the loving surrender of Christ that confounds and is victorious over the power of the sword.
…But the heroes I long to emulate for the most part are the ones carrying swords and not the ones being led away to condemnation at the point of swords. As much as my heart has been transformed by Christ’s death and resurrection, the archetypal Messiah that appeals to my gut is one that conquers with violence.
As loathe as I am to admit it, I see that I do share something in common with Christian Nationalists. What a horrible conundrum, that indulging the natural desire to kick the butts of the bad guys pretending to follow Christ ultimately makes me into ONE OF the bad guys pretending to follow Christ!
Campbell seems to relate to this sinking feeling as well:
Early on in my encounters with American Christian Nationalism, I frequently felt disgust and outrage at the fact that this movement tore into piece my friendships, community and church. I hated it for what it was doing to the people I loved. I hate the fact that I was disassociating from people that I had known for decades.
My initial attitude was militant, seeking to destroy the idea and those who believed it. I hated American Christian Nationalism, and frankly, I hated those who gave themselves over to it.
This posture stole my joy, increase anxiety, multiplied despair, and ultimately took my eyes off Jesus. I also discovered that this resentment, embarrassment, shame, and rage were ultimately a me problem, not a them problem. Most of the work that needed to be done was in me, not them. I needed to work on my heart with Jesus and return to a place of peace, rest, and confidence in the Lord (127).
So brothers and sisters…what now shall I do?
Campbell’s Disarming Leviathan is a helpful and important book to read, but I have been agonizing over its effect in my heart for the last month.
I recognize more clearly after reading Campbell’s book that there is a gap in my heart, a discrepancy between what I profess to believe and what I embrace as true.
I profess that God the Father causes the sun to shine on both those who are evil and good and brings rain to both the just and the unjust, and that to be children of this Father I should therefore love my enemies.
But I would much rather embrace contempt and hatred for my enemies called Christian Nationalists. I don’t want to call them my neighbors, much less love them as my neighbors. But then again, maybe that puts me right in the camp with armchair theologians quibbling over what Christ means by loving “the least of these.”
Who is my neighbor?
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I spent some time this year on the anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination meditating on King’s final sermon, delivered the night before he was killed. The sermon centers on Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
In his sermon, King encourages the striking sanitation workers of Memphis to consider Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan and to act in a “dangerous unselfishness” towards supporting their peers against the pressures exerted by the city authorities to end the strike.
King also indicated that he was aware of the danger he was in against some of the same authorities and the more radical persons aligned with some of these authorities who wished to silence his leadership.
I had focused in my reflection on this sermon initially on King’s courage against death, one he was perhaps unaware would occur some 24 hours later, when I first read the transcript of his words. But another aspect of King’s address astonishes me: “[…] I got into Memphis. And some began to […] talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?”
The very people planning to kill King he referred to as brothers. Though he was demonized by such men and women, King responded with inclusive love and an eye to the need for healing in their hearts.
They were his neighbors to love, come what may.
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“Our mission field,” writes Campbell, “is caught in a deceptive trap laid by an enemy at work since the beginning of time…Ultimately, our conflict is not with humans but with these perverse spiritual adversaries that seduce people to partner with them in producing these evil acts” (42-43).
But what will happen to me if I stop to care for them?
“As missionaries we want to truly know the people we are seeking to serve by understanding what they believe, what they care about, and why they care. Truly knowing someone requires a genuine relationship built on hospitality, and so we work to set the table for relationships to grow. In the context of a safe community, we can work to gently show the inconsistencies of their belief system; by modeling what it looks like to live a Christ-centered life, we can show the beauty, joy, and power of the way of Jesus” (Campbell 99-100).
If I do not stop and care for them, what will happen to them?
“‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.’ (John 10:11-15, NRSVUE)”
God, help this sick white brother to go and do likewise.
References
Campbell, Caleb E. Disarming Leviathan. 2024.
“Here Is the Speech Martin Luther King Jr. Gave the Night before He Died.” CNN, 4 Apr. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/us/martin-luther-king-jr-mountaintop-speech-trnd.