‘Christ is King’ apparently being ‘weaponized by hate groups’ as Christian renewal trends

Disparate parties coalescing behind the message “Christ is King” found faithful Christians warning against “narcissists, hedonists, and psychopaths” weaponizing faith.

Virality remained an apt description for any idea that began its rapid spread across social media, as, all too often, the content proved infectious to an otherwise healthy ecosystem. Such was the case as scholars from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) joined with the Congress of Christian Leaders to decry the use of “Christ is King” by online extremists.

Amid a trend toward Christian renewal, particularly in the United States, the March report found, “This resurgence is being met with a challenge: the co-optation of Christian language and symbols by small, vocal groups of extremist actors who seek to redefine religious identity for ideological ends.”

Focusing on the declaration “Christ is King,” the authors of the report, that included former U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom commissioner Rev. Johnnie Moore and renowned Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, told Fox News Digital, “We were looking at a lot of different kinds of heated languages and arguments and this sort of look online for threat-actors in general.”

“We noted that prevalence of the use of the term and a mismatch of the actors that were using it, that just didn’t make any sense. And we want to understand it, like, what is the origin of this? Where did it come from?” they asked.

Noted in the report was how the saying had a resurgence under Pope Pius XI as a result of the 1925 institution of The Feast of Christ the King, also known as the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, as a pushback on the spread of radical ideologies undermining Christianity in the West. Though initially held in October, the solemnity was moved in 1970 to be celebrated on the last Sunday of the liturgical year.

The report highlighted that after a fivefold increase in the phrase on X from 2021 to 2024, “In 2024, more than 50% of all engagements around ‘Christ is King’ posts were driven by extremists and fringe influencers. Posts by Nick Fuentes, Sneako, and Andrew Tate achieved over 13.6 million views and more than 100,000 engagements during Easter 2024 alone.”

Moore told Fox News Digital, “What was really fascinating is that the NCRI folks were in real-time tracking the bot activity.”

“The question was how much of this vicious, virulent antisemitism that emerged when we published the report were these bot-nets — It was north of 30% of all the activity … were these antisemitic bot-networks latching onto [Christ is King,]” he explained as he also called out a resurgence of the phrase during antisemitic protests in New York and Los Angeles Thursday that was tied to the Chinese Communist Party. “It’s quite clear that people are trying to steal this phrase from us, and we’re saying no, it’s a Christian phrase.”

“You sure as anything can’t use it to spread hate against Jews,” argued Moore. “They’re losing their battle to Christianize antisemitism, because there’s just a sheer amount of Evangelicals in every country … we’re all pro-Israel.”

Likewise, Peterson shared the findings of the report in March and asserted, “The narcissists, hedonists and psychopaths occupy the fringes wherever they can obtain power and, using God’s name, attempt to subvert the power of the divine to their own devices. A warning: not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The narcissists, hedonists and psychopaths occupy the fringes, wherever they can obtain power and, using God’s name, attempt to subvert the power of the divine to their own devices. A warning: Not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. https://t.co/essOv0VkDp

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) March 13, 2025

Adding to the response, Catholic Princeton University jurisprudence professor Robby George asserted to Fox News Digital that bad actors were readily spotted as the proper response to “Christ is King” was “Amen.”

“But if you hear someone say the same words as an antisemitic taunt, the correct reply is, ‘I stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters.’ Don’t be played,” he warned.

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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