Authentic Christian Freedom: Deconstructing the American Gospel of Liberty
Elizabeth L. Hinson-Hasty
Orbis Books, 160 pages
Published May 28, 2025
Politicians on the left, right, center and all points in-between insist they will protect our freedoms in radically different ways. Freedom from government intervention, for example, can include the “parental right” to decline vaccinations or insist that one’s children are exposed only to books and teachings consistent with their parents’ values. A “freedom to” approach can insist that government ensure the individual freedoms of its citizens, including the right “to be safe from gun violence, (and) the freedom to make decisions about your own body,” in the words of Kamala Harris.
Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty uses these and other examples as a way into America’s culture wars and the “American Gospel of Liberty,” deftly exploring competing definitions of freedom, tensions between American ideals and our lived “past history of settler colonialism and slavery,” and the complicated ways authentic Christian freedom offers a path forward.
Hinson-Hasty is a respected academic who capably writes for a broad audience. People of faith will appreciate her judicious use of the exodus to describe both a liberative God and a story that has “been used as a theological ground to validate political dominance and establish or perpetuate White supremacist systems and structures.” She praises, and occasionally criticizes, theologian-activists Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pauli Murray, and Howard Thurman as healthy examples of religious leaders who embodied “authentic Christian freedom to live in self-giving love for the sake of others.”
Finally, Authentic Christian Freedom offers practices for activism, rituals and relationships within churches. In the end, Hinson-Hasty suggests, we cannot let our nation’s partisan divide define the church’s mission, so we need to stay in relationship with Christians who understand freedom differently, finding a deeper dialogue that just might lead us to deeper truths.
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