In a recent Twitter rant, “Doctor Strange” director Scott Derrickson went off on “we Christians,” who he said are not the solution but part of the problem in American culture.
Derrickson, a graduate of the evangelical Biola University in La Mirada, California, has made no secret about his own Christian faith. In 2011, he told the school’s student newspaper, “I struggle with my own doubts, but Christianity still holds up under all of the scrutiny.”
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Nevertheless, the Hollywood filmmaker has remained skeptical of modern Christendom’s influence on society, particularly following the ascent of President Donald Trump, who was elected in large part because of the so-called evangelical voting bloc.
Here are Derrickson’s tweets:
American Christians have long loved their pop culture heroes. I have frustrated attempts to make me one because of this singular heart-felt conviction…
…In America, we Christians are not the solution. We are the core problem.
— Scott Derrickson (@scottderrickson) January 7, 2019
Poppycock. Christians in America are spreading Trumpism not the Gospel.
— Scott Derrickson (@scottderrickson) January 7, 2019
1. Reject Christian nationalism — it’s a straight-up heresy.
2. Read the gospels — Jesus was about aiding the poor, the judged, the sick, and the socially oppressed.
3. Reckon with fear and racism — they are deceptively deep roots in the American faith. https://t.co/RTLbkZ6wNX— Scott Derrickson (@scottderrickson) January 8, 2019
Derrickson’s comments about racism in particular come at a time when leading Christian thinkers in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have admitted Christendom’s role in preserving racist mentalities and practices.
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In 2016, following Trump’s victory, Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, penned an op-ed in The New York Times in which he argued the Republican nominee’s success “cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country.”
Moore then encouraged Christians in the U.S. to examine their role in Trump’s election:
When many secular Americans think of evangelicals, they think of old, white precinct captains in Iowa or old, white television evangelists and their media empires. But that’s not what evangelical Christianity is. Evangelical Christianity is committed to conserving the orthodoxy of the church, is rooted in the authority of the Bible over every competing authority and has a zeal to see people come to Christ by being “born again” through faith in him.
More recently, in mid-December, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote a letter addressing the school’s “legacy of slavery and racism” following a report he commissioned on the issue.
“We must repent of our own sins, we cannot repent for the dead,” he wrote in part. “We must, however, offer full lament for a legacy we inherit, and a story that is now ours.”
As for Derrickson, he is currently working on the sequel to “Doctor Strange.”