He is sounding the alarm.
Nearly a year ago, the phrase “Christ is King” became a controversial topic among Christians and Evangelicals after remarks from two staffers at The Daily Wire. Now, almost a year later, a new report co-authored by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a columnist for The Daily Wire, and Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, warns that extremists have hijacked this phrase to promote hateful ideologies, especially targeting Jewish communities. The report, released by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), highlights how social media users and bot networks have manipulated this Christian phrase for hateful purposes.
The report focuses on a significant rise in the use of “Christ is King” on Elon Musk’s social platform X (formerly Twitter), documenting a spike in its mentions between 2021 and 2024. Researchers found that nearly half of the posts using this phrase were driven by individuals promoting antisemitic narratives. Although the phrase itself has deep theological roots in Christianity, particularly in the Catholic tradition, the report warns that extremist groups have weaponized it to destabilize the nation and promote hatred toward minorities.
Moore and Peterson’s report utilizes advanced AI-driven language modeling to analyze social media trends and the context in which “Christ is King” has been used. They found that the phrase has become increasingly associated with hateful content since 2021, with a peak in antisemitic rhetoric around Easter 2024. Despite this, Moore emphasized that the phrase is not inherently hateful, encouraging Christians to reclaim its meaning and use it positively during religious observances.
Moore also pointed out that bot networks have amplified hateful narratives, skewing public discourse. He praised NCRI for its previous work in exposing extremist content, such as pro-Hamas narratives on TikTok, and tracing the sources of such content. While acknowledging that some of the report’s authors are Jewish and have faced backlash, Moore reiterated that the phrase “Christ is King” should not be used to spread hatred and called on Christians to reclaim it in a spirit of faith and truth.