How could I not know this? Even people who do not belong to a church, people who have never publicly confessed Jesus as Lord, are hailing Christ as king. The ancient declaration “Cristus Rex” has been hijacked and turned it into an identity marker for political activists, a litmus test for conservatives, and a verbal goad for antagonizing non-Christians, especially Jews.

When people in my generation of Christ-followers learn that conservative millennials, Gen Xers, and Gen Zers are declaring “Christ is King,” they are delighted. Maybe the world is not falling apart, after all. Maybe the next generation is heading in the right direction.

Or maybe not.

Candace Owens, a professed Christan thirty-something with nearly 25 million followers on various social media platforms, has used the “Christ is King” declaration in high-profile settings. Weeks after Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was assassinated, Ms. Owens claimed that she had a dream (a “prophetic vision”) in which Kirk told her he had been betrayed. She insists that the man authorities arrested was not the real assassin, implies that Israeli operatives were involved in Kirk’s murder, and has intimated that Turning Point members were involved. Following her comments, Kirk’s widow Erika began receiving death threats from people who hold her responsible for her husband’s murder.

Ms. Owens has frequently represented Jews in a negative light. She revived a one hundred-year-old murder mystery by claiming that Jewish businessman Leo Frank murdered 13-year-old Mary Phagan in Atlanta in 1925 as part of a bizarre Passover ritual, though serious researchers have long held that Mr. Frank, who was lynched, was wrongfully convicted.

Owens has referred to the Holocaust as “an ethnic cleansing [that] almost took place” and has denied that Nazis carried out medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. What could motivate her to deny the extermination of millions of Jews when there exists mountains of evidence to the contrary, including eyewitness testimony and the Nazi’s own records and photographs?

Then there is 27-year-old Nick Fuentes, an influencer who has a following of well over a million people, the vast majority of whom are young men. Like Owens, Fuentes regularly declares “Christ is King.” Also, like Owens, he denies the Holocaust. He once used a silly and grotesque analogy to “prove” the mathematical impossibility of a Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews. Besides denying the Holocaust, Fuentes has offered profanity-laden praise to Adolph Hitler, calling the Nazi Fuhrer “cool.”

In 2024, during an America First livestream, Fuentes said, “Just like Hitler imprisoned Gypsies, Jews, communists — all of his political rivals — we have to do the same thing with women.  They go to the breeding gulags… Women get sent to the gulags first, obviously. Which women? All women. Every woman. Every woman and girl is sent to the gulags. We will determine who the good ones are after the fact.”

These are two examples, but many others could be given. For example, two young influencers, Andrew Tate and “Sneako” have adopted the “Christ is King” declaration even though they are Muslims. The MMA fighter-turned-podcaster Jake Shields says that he uses, “Christ is King” because “it makes Jews angry.” Shields does not think of “Christ is King” as a confession but as a cudgel for beating Jews.

The main problem with the declaration “Christ is King” is that the some of the people using it don’t believe it. They do not think of Christianity as a living faith in the living Lord Jesus but as an ideology in competition with other ideologies. When they say, “Christ is King,” they are not confessing allegiance to Jesus but declaring victory over their rivals.

Those who say, “Christ is King,” (Latin, Christus Rex) should remember that “Christus regnat a ligno”:“Christ reigns from the wood [the cross].” King Jesus did not bludgeon or berate his enemies (see 1 Peter 2:23-24). On the contrary, he took their sins on himself and died for their salvation.

“Christ is King” is a true, encouraging, and eminently biblical confession. (For more on this, click here.) But should I ever find myself in a politically-charged atmosphere where f-bomb-dropping agitators glorify aggression one minute and break into a chant of “Christ is King” the next, I will not join them.

There is, however, another biblical confession – this one taken verbatim from the Scriptures – that I will make: “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9). Lord of heaven and earth, Lord of lords, and Lord of me. And I intend, with his help, to live like this is true.

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