Who is the real God King?
In the Shadow of Bel and the Dragon, Truth Must Find Its Voice
Over the past few years, Christianity has been re-entering the political conversation in a big way. Whether through revivalist movements, popular apologetics, populist media, or renewed interest in faith-driven identity, we’re seeing Christianity move from the margins back into public discourse. In some corners, it’s being elevated as a cornerstone of Western heritage. In others, it's being dissected, repackaged, and reoriented to fit new ideological frameworks.
This renewed attention has created space for bold affirmation—but also opened the door to distortion, suppression, and control. And that’s where our deeper investigation begins.
A Trinity of Words
Let’s start with the phrase “Christ is King.” Traditionally, it’s a theological affirmation, drawn from passages like Philippians 2:10–11 and Colossians 1:16–18. It’s central to Christian doctrine: Christ reigns over all.
Philippians 2:9-11
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
But now, in 2025, it’s been reframed. Zionist watchdog groups have recently rebranded it a phrase of extremism. According to a recent report titled Thy Name in Vain: How Online Extremists Hijacked 'Christ is King', the phrase is now tied to antisemitism.
The study, released during Lent, aimed to delegitimize Christian theological speech in public, especially when it comes from non-Zionist-aligned figures. Almost comically, it draws an ominous correlation between use of the phrase “Christ is King” and the word “Jew,” a framing that borders on farcical, considering that every Christian knows that Jesus himself was Jewish.
Rather than protecting against actual antisemitism, the report casts a wide net of suspicion over assertive Christian expressions, subtly suggesting that the faith itself, when spoken too plainly, risks crossing some unspoken political boundary between "good Christians" and "bad Christians."
And Candace Owens, who broke with The Daily Wire a year ago, finds herself in the crosshairs. The report doesn’t just reference the phrase, it singles her out specifically. She's listed alongside Andrew Tate, who is a professed Muslim. Tate’s inclusion, despite having no theological link to the phrase “Christ is King” underscores that the report's purpose isn’t to analyze Christian rhetoric, but to target dissent. What unites them isn’t belief, it’s defiance. Owens continues to speak plainly about her Christian faith, to say “Christ is King”, and like Tate, to voice sympathy for Palestinians. That, it seems, is their common offense, and for that, the pressure hasn’t stopped, even a year later.
The Architects of the Report
To understand the political function of the report, we need to look at who wrote it. The study was authored by thirteen people: ten Jewish contributors, two Indian scholars, and one token Christian—Reverend Johnny Moore, a Zionist-aligned evangelical with ties to the ADL, an organization well-known for slandering anyone critical of Israel.
This is not incidental. The overwhelming demographic and ideological composition of the authors reveals the report’s priorities: not a balanced theological critique for Christians or even theologians, but a strategic political effort to define acceptable Christian expression through a Zionist lens. It signals to public figures and platforms: your faith is permissible, but only within boundaries drawn by those who do not share it.
Crossing the Jordan
Which brings us to Jordan Peterson—who has made a career out of unpacking belief, while studiously avoiding any firm declaration of his own. He’s not engaging in rhetorical discipline, but evasion and insulation. A way to speak in parables without owning their implications.
Once hailed as a torchbearer for free speech and known globally for his Biblical lecture series, Peterson now stands in awkward alignment with a report that pathologizes the very kind of open confession he once appeared to defend. The report, published by NCRI—the Network Contagion Research Institute—bears his name among its contributors.
That’s right. Peterson, long cast as a defender of Western civilization via archetype and scripture, and defender of free speech, lent his institutional weight to a document that treats “Christ is King” not as proclamation, but as provocation.
And when pressed on his own theology? He retreats. Not into mystery, but into semantic fog. Asked plainly whether he believes Jesus is God, or any number of questions aiming to get a straight answer on the topic, Peterson defaults to hedging: "It depends what you mean by believe..." The answer never arrives, only deflective analyses of the question. At one point in a conversation moderated by Alex O’Connor, Richard Dawkins calls him out for being “drunk on symbols.”
This postmodern pivot into the deconstruction of language is coming from the same man who lambasts postmodernism and moral relativism, yet when it comes time to confess Christ, or simply state his position on a matter of fact or conviction, he dodges.
And yet, he’s comfortable condemning those who do say it plainly.
In fact, he recently took to Twitter to denounce Candace Owens not with argument, but with accusation, calling her a “Pharisaical pretender” and quoting scripture to paint her as a hypocrite. The irony is rich: Peterson, who sidesteps theological conviction when pressed on his own belief in Christ, lambastes Owens for affirming hers too boldly. He accuses her of performative piety while refusing to declare any of his own.
These lines, lifted from Matthew 23, explicitly show Jesus calling out the Pharisees who deny the core of God's law while performing righteousness for public approval. That Peterson dares weaponize them against anyone affirming “Christ is King,” while he himself shrinks away on whether he believes in Christ at all, reeks not of rebuke but of cowardly projection—an intellectual Pharisee casting stones from behind a Zionist paywall.
And his final jab—suggesting Owens should “forswear the Tate brothers,” shows he isn’t interested in theology at all, only guilt-by-association and narrative policing.
Peterson remains protected because he keeps Christianity symbolic, safe, and defanged. He gestures toward tradition without ever staking a theological claim. He is a functional narrative engineer, curating a domesticated, Zionism-compatible Christianity.
His lectures purport to build up Biblical authority while sidestepping any real Biblical scholarship, carefully avoiding any full-throated allegiance to Christ that might come into conflict with the political demands of his patrons.
Only recently has he begun referencing the New Testament more directly, and even then, he dilutes its implications to maintain ideological safety. It’s a choreography of cat’s cradle hand waving, one that gestures toward faith while submitting to a framework where support for Israel trumps fidelity to Christ.
In doing so, Peterson forwards the rhetorical groundwork for something few dare to call out: the oxymoronic rise of “Christian Zionism” - a posture that elevates nationalism, excuses theological contradiction, and rewrites allegiance not to Christ, but to the political construct of Israel. Whether paid or persuaded, he advances this synthesis as though it were natural to scripture, when in fact it is entirely manufactured. And Candace? She was purged because she invoked Christ as King, with real political consequence.
Squeaking it under “The Wire”
Peterson, once a lion of free speech, now squeaks anemically—muzzled not by force, but by allegiance. He who once thundered against compelled speech now whispers his way through theological minefields, retreating from confession into the safety of symbolic gestures, sanctioned scripts, and the block button on X. Pressed on his belief in Christianity, he doesn't affirm—it depends, he says. Not on Christ, but on the word 'believe.'
The Daily Wire, despite branding itself as a defender of Western and Christian values, has revealed its true loyalty: Zionist compliance.
When Owens stepped out of line, she wasn’t debated, she was disavowed. Her use of “Christ is King” was recoded as antisemitism. Meanwhile, figures like Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles are allowed to speak on Christian morals so long as they don’t cross the Zionist line too explicitly.
Peterson survives because he provides intellectual cover. Shapiro holds the gate. And everyone else must conform or leave—and leave they do. From Candace Owens to others who’ve dared to elevate Christ above politics, the pattern is unmistakable: step outside the Zionist perimeter and you’re cast out, regardless of your theological grounding or public support. The boundary is not belief, but obedience.
The Daily Wire sells Christian identity to its audience but defers ultimate authority to Zionism. And in doing so, it exposes a deeper trend: the erosion of secular equilibrium.
The "Woke Right"
Say what you will about Candace Owens, but she’s demonstrated consistent, long-term resistance to ideological manipulation from both Left and Right. Her anti-woke bona fides weren’t manufactured; they were hard-earned. She stood against COVID mandates, race essentialism under Black Lives Matter, radical gender theory, and progressive overreach. Unlike many, she didn’t flinch when the target moved. And that made her dangerous because she remained consistent when others suddenly weren’t.
Enter James Lindsay.
A former vanguard of the anti-woke movement, Lindsay spent years deconstructing the logic of identity politics and weaponized victimhood—until October 7th, when his own framework collapsed. Rather than apply his principles evenly, he inverted them: defending speech policing, identity deference, and ideological loyalty—so long as they served Zionist priorities.
Never mind that the state of Israel began as a Socialist labor movement, with Kibbutzim as literal communes; that even today, about 93% of its land is managed by the Israel Land Authority; or that it later adopted Mussolini-inspired ethno-nationalism under Jabotinsky, who openly admired Mussolini’s methods and styled his youth movement accordingly. Or that is was fused into statehood through the violent acts of militias like the Haganah, Stern Gang, and Lehi. These classical left-versus-right dynamics, synthesized through dialectical tension, seem ironically uninteresting to Lindsay—or too revealing for him to address honestly.
In one recent moment of absurdity, Lindsay equated Tucker Carlson with Rachel Maddow, suggesting that Carlson’s cautious deviation from the pro-Israel consensus made him the Right’s version of a disingenuous manipulator. It was a laughable comparison. Carlson, for all his hedging, has shown more narrative courage than most of the “anti-woke” crowd combined. That Lindsay would smear him while leaving Zionist ethno-nationalism untouched reveals the asymmetry at play or a willful blind spot on his part.
The term “woke” was once wielded almost exclusively by conservatives to describe the ideological excesses of the progressive left, identity politics, censorship, "safe spaces,” and moral grandstanding. But something shifted on October 7th. In the aftermath of that day, the American Right, particularly the so-called anti-woke establishment, suddenly abandoned its anti-woke momentum. Those who had built their reputations on opposing moral panic, collective guilt, and ideological coercion pivoted almost overnight into the very behaviors they had long decried. Lindsay, once an opponent of Mao’s “Unity, Criticism, Unity,” now seemed to embrace the employ of those very tactics.
Criticism of Israeli policy was rebranded as hate speech. Palestinian grief was rendered suspect or nonexistent with cheap remarks like “Palestine? What Palestine?” Dissent was equated with extremism. And “free speech” conservatives became enthusiastic enforcers of silence.
Figures like James, once regarded as defenders of reason and liberty, began policing rhetorical boundaries not for the sake of liberalism, but for ideological containment. His pivot has been especially glaring: having built his brand on opposing the left's use of identity and victimhood politics, he now appears to defend the very same tactics when used to shield Zionist power from critique.
He condemns his so-called 'woke right' for perceived ethno-nationalism, yet spares no scrutiny for the open ethno-nationalism of the Israeli state or its Western advocates. This contradiction, maybe unwitting or perhaps strategic, expresses a double standard: critique is welcome, unless it touches the wrong orthodoxy. In that case, suddenly, feelings matter. Narrative must be protected. And the former champion of liberal neutrality becomes a partisan gatekeeper.
The movement that distinguished itself by its resistance to political correctness suddenly embraced its own form of it: a Zionist moral order where Christianity is welcome—but only if it serves a geopolitical script.
And this is what we now call the Woke Right: a mirror image of the progressive excesses it claims to oppose, recast in the language of national security, religious identity, and unshakable loyalty to Israel. It’s not just hypocrisy—it’s a signal that the fight for secular balance has been abandoned by both sides.
Not in Their Name
To be clear, Lindsay is not wrong to identify certain ideological currents on the Right that deserve scrutiny. There is, in fact, a real Christian Nationalist undercurrent of those who seek to replace the liberal order with a theocratic one, who speak of Christ not as savior but as sovereign-in-waiting for a new political regime. Similarly, there are genuine antisemites who use criticism of Zionism as a pretext for racial hostility or conspiracy-laden narratives. These are not fabrications. They exist.
But Lindsay’s category error, and the danger of his framing, is in collapsing all dissent into that bucket. Even potentially legitimate critiques of Israel, warrant the appropriate level of tone policing. By painting all critics of Israel as ethno-nationalists or “woke” crypto-Nazis, he delegitimizes legitimate voices, replacing discernment with guilt-by-association, suppressing authentic opposition to Zionist overreach by equating it with genuine bigotry.
This dynamic is compounded by the fact that much of the legitimate criticism of Israel comes from the political left—a source Lindsay reflexively distrusts. Rather than engage with the substance of their arguments, he reduces their critiques to ideological sabotage, as if any concern over Zionist policy must be rooted in Marxist subversion or antisemitic animus. In doing so, he not only sidesteps the argument but discredits the only voices still willing to challenge Israeli state actions on moral grounds. The result is an intellectual vacuum where criticism is not rebutted—but preemptively dismissed.
We should reject both extremes: the reactionary theocrats and identitarians who seek domination, and the narrative gatekeepers who use their influence to render critique impossible. A secular framework means all belief systems must be open to criticism, Judaism included, without the automatic imputation of malice.
Because if critique itself becomes contraband, the only narratives that remain are the ones approved from above. it claims to oppose, recast in the language of national security, religious identity, and unshakable loyalty to Israel. It’s not just hypocrisy—it’s a signal that the fight for secular balance has been abandoned by both sides.
The Wrong and the Right
In Lindsay's defense, he has made a conscious effort to distance himself from Christian Nationalism, dedicating an entire episode of his New Discourses podcast to debunking any connection between himself and said political movement.
Notably, he maintains a long-standing affiliation with Sovereign Nations, led by Michael O'Fallon, a vocal opponent of progressive ideology who often frames his cultural critiques through a biblical and American exceptionalist lens. This partnership makes Lindsay’s professed neutrality a little more complicated, and has opened him to scrutiny.
While claiming to oppose both woke progressivism and religious nationalism, Lindsay operates within ecosystems many associate with the latter. He frequently nods to Christian values on New Discourses, not from conviction, but as a rhetorical bridge to his Christian audience.
This distancing reveals a deeper contradiction. As a former New Atheist firebrand, Lindsay’s recent friendliness with Christianity comes not from theological awakening, but from ideological convenience—a shift in aesthetic alignment, not metaphysical belief.
One might expect a former New Atheist to be skeptical of a state founded on the premise of God as real estate agent. But Lindsay, for all his past secular rigor, appears to have chosen a tribal allegiance—one that exempts the identitarian state of Israel from the scrutiny he once so forcefully applied elsewhere.
Fear of God and Godwin’s Law
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.
- Godwin’s Law
Any criticism of the state of Israel, especially in the context of this conflict, is quickly funneled into accusations of antisemitism. One can't possibly suggest that Israel has no right to defend itself, and to speak against Zionism is an affront to Jewry itself, or so the straw-manning rhetoric goes.
So for all one’s efforts to sincerely voice concern over the brutal collective punishment inflicted on Palestinians, the continued intransigence of the response prompts a deeper question. Why Jews? What is it about the history of Jews that led to this?
The Jewish Question
“The Jewish Question” refers to a centuries-old inquiry, often debated, often weaponized, about the role of Jews in political, economic, and cultural life, particularly within Europe. Originating in the 18th and 19th centuries during Jewish emancipation, it was initially framed as a civic dilemma: how to integrate a historically separate religious and ethnic minority into secular nation-states. But over time, it morphed into something dark - an ideological sinkhole exploited by both the far right and far left. Today, the phrase carries radioactive associations due to the dark history of the Holocaust.
While publicly contemplating the “Jewish Question” today instantly marks one as an antisemite, its Muslim corollary faces no such taboo. The Daily Wire exemplifies this double standard, vilifying Islam as incompatible with the West while shielding Zionism from even the mildest critique. Though Israel often cites peaceful Arab coexistence to deflect charges of chauvinism, some go further, casting it as the West’s last defense against Islam. The popular but selective fusion of “Judeo-Christian values” reinforces this narrative, excluding Islam from the Abrahamic fold for political utility, not theological coherence.
Choose Your Misadventure
And some concerns are not illegitimate. Western and European nations are grappling with real cultural and demographic pressures. Issues like the rise of grooming gangs in the UK, “no go zones,” radicalized enclaves in France and Sweden, and the political tightrope walked by figures like Keir Starmer, who must appear tolerant while managing escalating intergroup tensions, reflect deep anxieties around assimilation, identity, and sovereignty.
These challenges are often exaggerated or manipulated by political actors, but the underlying frictions are not imaginary. In the UK, figures like Tommy Robinson convert public anxiety into populist activation, sometimes pointing to real state failures, but more often inflaming division through ethnic scapegoating. Starmer, by contrast, employs an institutional containment strategy: cautious, technocratic, and rhetorically muted. If Robinson thrives on moral panic, Starmer governs through moral ambiguity, managing appearances rather than confronting contradiction. Both reflect different responses to the West’s real identity crisis.
In their wake, a civilizational vacuum opens—not by accident—and into it step two rival theological archetypes, both descended from ancient, adversarial lineages.
On one side: the God of land covenants, divine election, and irrevocable geopolitical entitlement. On the other: a transnational religious law structure premised on expansion, submission, and civilizational unity. One is invoked as the West’s last line of defense; the other, as its looming threat.
Caught between these poles are Christians—the West’s historic moral core—now split and triangulated. Pulled between incompatible theologies, they’re pressed to align either with a state-centric covenant narrative foreign to their gospel, or with a posture of total civilizational defense against Islam. It’s a manufactured dialectic: oppose Islam and become captive to Zionist interests, or assert Christian identity and risk being smeared as bigoted or regressive. In either case, Christian political and spiritual agency is hollowed out and replaced with reactive loyalty tests.
But here’s what’s almost never discussed: from a Jewish theological standpoint, Islam is sometimes viewed more favorably than Christianity. Not because of shared values—but because Christianity, unlike Islam, is considered idolatry under Judaism.
Today, secularism is under siege, not as a safeguard of liberty, but smeared as weak, rootless “cultural relativism,” blamed for eroding Western cohesion. But in reality, it may be the last firewall against theocratic rule disguised as civilizational rescue. Secularism isn’t some postmodern indulgence, it’s a pragmatic structure that protects pluralism by keeping theology from claiming the throne.
The very concept of separating church and state, once considered a hallmark of Western progress, is now being reframed as a liability by both camps—one that must be overridden by divine mandate or spiritual warfare. But once that wall collapses, it's not just religious pluralism that dies—it’s the freedom to dissent from power cloaked in scripture.
In the apocryphal tale of Bel and the Dragon, the prophet Daniel exposes the fraud of idol worship. He reveals that the sacrifices offered to the god Bel were not consumed by divinity, but secretly eaten by the priests and their families under cover of night. It was an elaborate deception. Sincere belief became a source of power. Ritual became a tool of control, all in service to a false god. The story is a warning—not just against idolatry, but against systems that feed on faith while hiding their appetite.
And when that moment arrives, it won’t be the West that’s saved—it will be a new dominion enthroned. Not by the God of mercy, but by whichever Canaanite war god proves more ruthless in laying claim to the ruins. Whether it’s Moloch, reanimated through a theology of blood and soil, as found in Deuteronomy’s command to “show no mercy,” or the sword-wielding Mahdi of apocalyptic Islam, heralding submission through violence. In the end, the contest may not be between good and evil, but between rival absolutes—each claiming divine sanction, each demanding tribute.
Or will Christian grace, as once in the courts of the temple, overturn the tables—refusing to serve either idol, and making room again for what is holy: not dominion or vengeance, but the immeasurable worth of human life?