Drew Strait speaks at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in March about white Christian nationalism. He is assistant professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. (Photo by Peter Ringenberg)

Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary professor to speak on the Bible and Christian nationalism

Drew Strait, assistant professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, will explore biblical perspectives on Christian nationalism at Eastern Mennonite Seminary and at Park View Mennonite Church later this month.

The seminary’s worship service will be Wednesday, March 16, at 10:10 a.m. in Martin Chapel (room 215) and the fellowship area (room 218). It will also be livestreamed on EMU’s Facebook page.

The seminar will be Wednesday, March 16, from 7-8:30 p.m. at Park View Mennonite Church, located at 1600 College Avenue. The seminar will be livestreamed on the Park View Mennonite Church website or the Park View Mennonite Church YouTube channel.

Strait will grapple with the challenges patriotism and Christian nationalism present for Anabaptist discipleship. Through personal stories and engagement with biblical texts, Strait hopes to empower Christians to become an alternative global community of love, peace and justice that bears witness to Christ’s peaceable kingdom by embracing human difference rather than fearing it.

His lecture at Park View defines what white Christian nationalism is in biblical and theological perspective, and offers suggestions for how congregations can faithfully challenge Christian nationalism with the way of Jesus.

Strait completed his PhD at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 2015. His passion for the church’s potential to uplift the brokenhearted has led him to mission work with Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic and an interim pastor role at Living Water Community Church in Chicago. Most recently, he served as an elder at Peace Fellowship in Washington D.C. He formerly taught at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was awarded the Dunning Distinguished Faculty Lecturer for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship in 2016.