Originally, Godwin’s Law invoked that on a long enough timeline, every debate would devolve into Nazi accusations and ad-Hitler hominin attacks. Nowadays, Godwin’s Law is the starting point for any discourse, reflecting a remarkable degradation in human intelligence. Several months back, upon viewing the trailer, we concluded that Eric Metaxas’s Letter to the American Church was NGMI, or not going to make it—that is to say, it is a failed strategy to make everything a Nazi comparison and that the documentary, along with its participants like James Lindsay, would render it ineffective for the church.
Since TPUSA Faith is permitting free access to the documentary, one can observe through the 1 hour runtime that the assessment of the trailer was validated upon a full viewing. Moreover, the viewer will find the rest of the material rather underwhelming and outdated.
Summary and Analysis
The film opens up with Eric Metaxas going full boar with a Nazi and Hitler comparison, equating the supposed silence of the churches during the Third Reich to the modern-day church. Too few leaders spoke out, but the one who did was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Metaxas castigates the pastors who stood silent and refused to sign statements like the Barmen Declaration. This is rather unconvincing evidence given how few churches will sign any given statement regardless of whether they agree with most or all of its tenets. It must further be noted that Metaxas has famously touted Bonhoeffer while ignoring his blatant denial of inerrancy, ecumenism, and mythologizing of the resurrection.
James Lindsay then is featured to compare racial politics in America to Mao’s use of the color red as a basis for identity in China. Movements have always been identified with colors or symbols. This is literally what sports teams do, especially soccer teams like those in the English Premier League which have color coordination for clubs historically associated with either Protestant or Catholic faiths. For Lindsay to compare this to race is a ridiculous oversimplification.
The documentary spends the middle portions providing a standard critique of transgender ideology, which then relates back to Mao separating children from their parents. This then transitions into institutional capture and the WEF, which surprisingly calls out Rick Warren’s participation in Davos. There are standard, dull critiques of Covid tyranny, Big Tech censorship, and abortion. The documentary perceives a gay, technocratic authoritarianism as the major threat akin to the WEF agenda, which largely assumes the sustainability of the federal government amid incompetency, debt-spiraling, widespread degeneracy, and loss of global hegemony. America is not immune to history. The future could just as easily see the US endure a Soviet-style collapse or a balkanization rather than a stronger federal government.
Ironically, the documentary cites the Nazi book burnings but without details regarding the nature of the books being burned—many of them were sexually degenerate publications. Instead, the documentary shows modern headlines of novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye being banned by modern American schools. This is disingenuous and deceptive on behalf of the documentary.
The documentary concludes with Metaxas giving a standard call to action to stand against evil. The suggested action items include steps like running for local office, homeschooling, and involvement in the organizations mentioned in the documentary.
Conclusions
The documentary touches on very dated issues like the Covid tyranny without being forward-thinking in its analysis, that is to say, it does not broach new information, but instead uses knowledge and talking points that many could have received from Con Inc. commentators like Charlie Kirk without having to pay to watch it, thus giving it the feel of a cash grab by Metaxas. There really is nothing groundbreaking or revelatory addressed. Unironically, James Lindsay’s presence in the documentary undermines this as well considering he promoted the lies in 2020. In addition to the omitted historical facts surrounding Bonhoeffer and the book burnings, much of the analysis is lazy and several years too late. There is no detailed analysis on why hyper-individualism (liberalism) and hyper-collectivism (communism) yield the same tyrannical outcome, nor is the subject of liberalism redressed for giving weight to transgender ideology—not that one would expect a critique of liberalism from James Lindsay. Instead, the Gay Agenda is just equivocated with Mao’s communism.
The idea of a letter to the American church should generate images of a modern Pauline epistle, but the documentary fails to provide anything profound or uniquely insightful. In the end, Letter to the American Church is very boomercon cringe, but low quality, low IQ, lazy cringe at that.
