Sacred Unraveling

I have been encouraged by “moderate” and supposedly progressive Christians to “have grace” and “give the benefit of doubt” for Christian Trump voters. Let me take a minute to explain why that’s ridiculous and enables the problem.

I’ve been told “Yes, Trump and right-wing policies are opposed to Christ, but most of his Christian voters meant well. They felt stuck choosing between the lesser of two evils or were unaware of some of Trump’s plans. They were doing their best with the misinformation and community pressure they’ve received.” My disagreement with this led to my being accused of seeing things through a rigid binary. Let me be clear: I value nuance, AND I see absolutely no excuse for this behavior. The world is complex, AND there is no moral gray area in supporting Trump, especially as a Christian. Excusing an antichrist agenda woven into Christendom because “they are one of us” and “didn’t mean it” is exactly how we got to where we are today.

Project 2025 is a full-scale attack on the humanity of its victims. It is the American Holocaust and I can only hope it is stopped before the history books have to call it that.

I understand a lot of Trump voters are stuck in an insular church bubble that feeds them a very narrow worldview. I grew up in that, so I get it. I understand that there is extreme pressure to conform and if you don’t, you lose everything. It happened to me, and it’s extremely traumatic and the cost is so high that sometimes our brains don’t let us even consider going against the grain because of how much damage we would take in the process. It’s self-preservation, I suppose.

But isn’t that the very message we are taught in church? To take a stand even when it’s hard? To swim upstream? To be willing to sacrifice everything to do what’s right? To even give up our lives to defend what is good and true?

I appreciate how extremely difficult it is to access accurate information in high-control religious communities. I experienced firsthand the rules aimed at prohibiting meaningful engagement in the outside world. I remember the brainwashing and fear-mongering that anyone different is trying to destroy us; the stories that I was in danger and only the church was safe. It mirrors the narrative pushed by Republicans (“The radical left is trying to destroy our country! Take America back!”).

The similarities are no surprise when 81% of Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. I can have compassion for the challenges that abused and isolated Christians face. But the same time, I believe there are no excuses for evil (and that’s a Christian message, if I ever heard one). We are all responsible for our own actions. Casting blame on church culture or peer pressure just kicks the pebble further down the road. Culture and peers are made up of individuals, and at some point, somebody needs to take responsibility for what is happening. Actually, all of us do. We need to be willing to pay the very high cost to do the right thing. We must humbly admit the ways we have participated in and contributed to toxic church culture even under duress, and then do what we can to make it right. I think we need to ask the hard question of why church culture is often (roughly 81% of the time) so insular, misinformed and controlling in the first place.

I’ve been reassured that it’s “not all Christians” and those who are mature in their faith can see through Trump’s rhetoric. That’s great, but it’s curious that such a small percentage of Christians have this maturity (19%) and anyone who cares about furthering the Kingdom of God should find that worth investigating.

Call me rigid, but I believe it is a hard-to-swallow truth that no matter how well-meaning or misinformed, anyone who votes for Trump or stands idly by is directly responsible for the deaths, imprisonment, poverty, and sicknesses that will come about and I’m including my own family members in this. Without the voters this literally wouldn’t be happening right now. So yes, they’re responsible. This isn’t about right or left, but about right and wrong.

Hold up, you say. That’s a little extreme! Responsible for deaths?

If I’m applying Evangelicals’ own standards, yes. Binary thinking is exactly how these types of Christians view salvation. Their theology says that even though not everyone has equal access to the gospel, every person is still personally responsible for accepting what little they know about it. If they don’t, they go to hell. The “unsaved” are not afforded the excuse of misinformation or community pressure, so why should Christians be granted this leniency?

It’s a double standard to say that Christians supporting the American Holocaust because of how they were influenced are well-meaning and God-fearing, while someone raised Muslim or Hindu with little opportunity to question it, is still wrong enough to go to hell. You can’t have it both ways. We are either responsible for our actions or we’re not.

I get it that some Trump voters don’t like him and think they have to choose between the lesser of two evils. I personally know people who feel that way. But it should be terrifying that the majority of the American church is able to convince their followers that welcoming immigrants, providing healthcare and housing assistance, protecting the environment, and granting equal opportunity is a greater evil than the belligerent racism, sexism and classism Trump very publicly espouses. It wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t cleverly disguised; Trump’s entire platform ran on the promotion of very blatant and graphic hate. And 81% of Evangelicals, regardless of why, saw that and said “yep! That’s my leader!”

In many ways Evangelicalism has become a political cult using religion to manipulate and control people. Religion is a very effective tool of coercion, and I do wonder how many of these leaders and influencers don’t care about Jesus and are just playing the long game for power. Billionaires know their goals are more palatable draped in “good ol’ fashioned family values”. I recommend looking up Project Russia and its relationship with religion and the similar trajectory in the US with Project 2025.

Even if Trump is somehow stopped tomorrow, I believe there needs to be a very deep look taken at the mainstream American church and what it has become and how we have gotten here. Looking up James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and The Heritage Foundation and their political lobbying for the last 40-50 years is a good but terrifying place to start.

I won’t give grace to Trump voters because of the gravity of consequences of those extreme right-wing ideologies. They are antithetical to Christ, they get people killed, they are fueled by hate and control and power and punishment. The pursuit of Truth is a core Christian tenet, and we don’t get to downplay our actions when we don’t do that.

The Christian calling is to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular and traumatic. We can’t explain away our support of oppression as being a result of manipulation from community pressure and propaganda. It’s the job of Christians to see through that. We expect it from non-Christians when we ask them to go against their families, cultures, communities and everything they have ever known to follow Christ. You can’t put individual responsibility on non-believers to secure “salvation” no matter their context, and at the same time think it’s justifiable for Christians to support evil if their church tells them to.

Besides, by Christian rhetoric access to the Holy Spirit should be more than enough of a resource to point Christians in the right direction. Because “the Holy Spirit is our conscience”, right? That’s what makes Christians morally superior to non-Christians, is “we have the Holy Spirit and they don’t”? And that’s why “we can discern the truth and they’re hopelessly lost without Christ”? Sound familiar? Yep, no excuses!

The furthest, most extreme and controversial left-wing ideology that I can personally think of is redistribution of wealth. And it’s controversial because people would rather hoard resources than help others like Jesus tells us to do. But it’s directly Biblical with the Old Testament concept of Jubilee and Chapters 1-2 of Acts. And yet somehow it’s the radical left that endangers Christian values and the American lifestyle?

Many Christians put politics before faith. My parents are always talking shit about Mormons. But my dad voted for Romney, who is a Mormon and my dad knew that. I asked him why he could vote for a Mormon and he said It’s because they had similar values. But then he refused to vote for Obama or Biden, both of whom are Christians and attend church regularly. Clearly, my dad and a lot of Christians like him, have greater allegiance to the Republican party than to their faith. It’s become about politics and control instead of allegiance to Christ. The latter is a justification to keep people voting for these conservative power grabs and destruction of the vulnerable.

The way I see it, there are true Christians in the margins of American evangelicalism, but the movement as a whole is so far warped beyond its original intent. It’s a political cult now and honestly has been for a long time.

If the American Church received one of the “Letters to the Churches” like those in Revelation, I believe it would be VERY strongly worded to the point where we’d be envious of the those who only received “will spit you out of my mouth.”

Just look at our American “Christian Heritage”:

See how many of our American Christian leaders endorsed the KKK or received funding from it (Billy Sunday and Bob Jones Sr did, for example).

Bob Jones University, one of the most well-known Christian universities in our country, didn’t lift their ban on interracial relationships until they lost accreditation for it. It wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Southern Baptist Convention only exists because they split off from the Northern Baptists over support of slavery.

Billy Graham, the father of Evangelicalism and responsible for roughly 90% of Baby Boomers coming to Christ, told Nixon to finish Hitler’s job and said the Civil Rights Movement had gone too far.

James Dobson has proven ties with Paul Popenoe and promoted Eugenics and Conversion Therapy. Not to mention The Heritage Foundation and how it was a conservation political power grab under the guise of family values. They’ve been weakening our democracy for decades. Dobson also advocated for beating children and made millions off his classes and books such as “The Strong-Willed Child” which is a manual on child abuse.

Focus on the Family knowingly interviewed fake “Ex-Muslim terrorists” to “prove” horrible things about Muslims to get Christians angry and afraid. They went out of their way to intentionally create racial tension and racially-motivated hate, for no other reason than increasing the hold they had over their followers and increase support for their evil plans.

Moody Bible Institute was built with funds gifted from the wealthy anti-union activist Cyrus McCormick Jr., well-known for his employees being killed when striking. Yet Dwight Moody praised Cyrus’ wealth as a “gift from God”. When Reverend Fielden said it was actually a gift of unjust capitalism at the expense of the workers, he was sentenced to death while Moody continued to receive large donations from the wealthy. This is one of our most prestigious Christian Universities in our country.

Gary Ezzo advocated for beating babies starting at 7 months, and made millions from his classes and curriculums.

After his death, it came to light that the popular preacher and theologian Ravi Zacharias was a sexual predator and had potentially hundreds of sexual assault victims.

John Piper, an extremely influential Evangelical theologian and author of many well-known Christian books, publicly teaches that women should submit to beatings from their husbands. The clip is readily available on YouTube if you can stomach it.

This recap doesn’t even touch on huge sweeping Christian movements like the IBLP (watch the documentary “Shiny Happy People”) or the more contemporary Hillsong (watch the documentaries “The Secrets of Hillsong” and “Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed”). Hillsong is sung in Evangelical churches more than any other “songwriter” and is involved in multiple ongoing sexual abuse scandals and is well-known for using their tax-exempt status to make real estate investments for their wealthy leaders.

This is just a shallow skimming of the surface of the American Evangelical movement. This is why I believe that at best, a minority of true Christians are in the margins of this movement. Unless the core of Christianity is evil, which at this point I could definitely be convinced of, then this is about power and oppression, not religion. Religion is the means to the end and anyone who cares even a little bit about Christ’s message should flee from and fight against the American Church.

When I started taking Jesus’ teachings seriously, the church put a target on my back. When I started learning about biblical nonviolence, my best friends started distancing themselves from my “extremism”. The church can’t have “The Lord’s Army” going soft. When I started studying the first chapters of Acts and reading about intentional and sustainable community, I was screamed at for being a liberal commie. Nothing enrages Christians more than the Bible.

This is the foundation this country is built on.

Our history is very dark.

There is not even the smallest amount of ethical wiggle room allowable for people who use their religion to terrorize others. So no, I do not give the benefit of doubt to Christians who voted for Trump. I hold them to their own theology. Sorry, no grace!