Christian nationalists are actively redefining biblical masculinity to support a hardline political agenda. On The Ezra Klein Show, host Ezra Klein argued that the movement's prominent figures completely ignore the scripture's actual teachings on humility and care. Klein pointed to Donald Trump, calling him a "virtuous, disinhibited, incredibly corrupt man with his multiple wives", and criticized Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson alongside the far-right commentator Nick Fuentes for promoting an ideology completely detached from the actual teachings of The Bible.
While modern political figures strip The Bible of its ethical core to build power, historians are looking at how the text was originally constructed to make sense of ancient ruins. On Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford, host Tim Harford and guest Paul Cooper discussed how early societies used biblical narratives to explain the physical remnants of the past. Paul Cooper explained that ancient peoples in Mesopotamia looked at the crumbling ruins of older civilizations and invented stories like the Great Flood because they "viewed history as the exploits of great men and great stories" rather than an analytical record.
This tension reveals a fundamental divide in how The Bible is treated today: is it a historical document of human myth-making, or a cherry-picked political weapon? While scholars like Paul Cooper treat the text as a creative attempt by early civilizations to process their own history, modern culture warriors treat it as an empty vessel for power. The battle over the book is no longer about theology; it is about who gets to write the next chapter of cultural history.