Over the course of this series, we’ve been looking at the reasons that Conservative Christianity has ended up becoming such a source of cruelty, how it has aligned with someone as devoid of decency as Donald Trump, and how we’ve arrived at the precipice of theocracy.
We’ve looked at the fear at the center of American Evangelicalism, the way the teaching on Hell, actually owning more to Dante’s Inferno than the Bible, has been used to manipulate people into being perpetually terrified, first of God, and then of their neighbors. It’s also easy to see how a religious worldview where people are doomed and desperately in need of saving has groomed its rank and file to seek and welcome authoritarian leaders, both in the church and in government.
Add to that a theological system that has perpetuated both whiteness, maleness, and the myth of heteronormativity since its inception, and it becomes less and less a mystery why Conservative Christianity and politics have worked so hard to marginalize, diminish, and ultimately subjugate both queer people and women through distorted theology, sanctified misogyny, and through their late 1970s pivot from segregation to the issue of abortion as it’s center.
As my guests and I have discussed, a theology rooted in fear and dehumanization always needs an enemy to be defeated, a threat to be eradicated, an encroaching danger to be protected from. This is why, MAGA Christianity runs almost exclusively on manufactured culture wars, incessant alleged emergencies at our borders and in our streets, and halfway across the world. Whether it’s the inhumanity of ICE, the genocide in Gaza, or half a dozen military campaigns across the world, religious people who see everyone else through a lens of distrust and dehumanization can justify almost any kind of violence in the name of defending righteousness.
And ultimately, the single reason Conservative Evangelicals have abandoned empathy and made their bed with the powerholders of empire rather than the poor, hungry, and oppressed being prayed upon is that they now have a Jesusless Christianity.
Pay attention the next time you see a Conservative member of Congress parading their supposed faith in a press conference, stump speech, or Fox News fluff piece. (It shouldn’t take long.) You’ll notice they use words like “God” throughout, and they reference “The Bible” a whole lot and even mention “faith,” but they completely exclude the very namesake of their declared religious tradition.
This isn’t an oversight; it’s a necessity. There’s a simple reason for the omission: they can’t gaslight people with the words of Jesus.
You see, over the past few decades, these people have become experts at slapping a shiny veneer of religion onto the most abominable of ideas and the most sociopathic of behaviors. They know they can weaponize the rather generic idea of “God”, manufacturing a deity in their own bloodthirsty, morally inverted, predatory image: a vengeful, joyless, avatar. They can wield a few random, poorly-exegeted obscure scripture passages like a hammer to justify their every phobia and hangup, making frequent mention of a Bible they’ve torn a majority of the later pages from.
They can brazenly conflate Christianity and America and give life to the grotesque, Frankensteined violent nationalism they daily traffic in as if it were sacred, and they will find a small army of devoted disciples willing to suspend disbelief so they can ratify their hatred.
Republicans and Evangelical leaders can use all sorts of theological gymnastics, pseudo-piety, and performative religiosity to fashion something out of God and the Bible to build a theocratic order and fool their rank-and-file—but they can’t screw with Jesus.
They can’t make him say what they want him to say or get him to consent to their brutal wills—so they’ve simply erased him. The Sermon on the Mount, his central treatise, is antithetical to the Republican ethos. They are oppositional movements: the former rooted in empathy, focused on interdependence, and compelled to invitation—the latter built on fear, strengthened in cruelty, sustained on exclusion.
Jesus’ heart for the poor can’t be twisted into the open contempt the GOP regularly shows them.
His generous feeding of the multitudes can’t justify taking away free lunches for children.
His call to be peacemakers and caregivers doesn’t allow for their warmongering and gunlust.
His healing of the sick and suffering can’t be manipulated into denying people basic healthcare
His compassionate heart for the hurting and the vulnerable can’t be transformed into their unapologetic cruelty toward immigrants and foreigners.
His command to incarnate love for neighbor and stranger and enemy doesn’t mix well with strident “Don’t Tread of Me”, America First bullying.
There is literally nothing in the totality of Jesus’ words in the New Testament that does anything but convict and condemn the Republican Party and MAGA Christianity in both philosophy and in practice, and they know it.
Republicans and MAGA church preachers realize that if they were to even allude to Jesus, his life and teachings would swiftly become the loudest and most powerful public rebuke of their vile movement, that his words would come and violently flip their very tables. They would be forced to admit that not only do they have no interest in the compassionate, benevolent, open-hearted life of Jesus, they actively despise it.
So the vague GOP “God and guns” platitudes will come, and Jesus will be there to tell them that those who live by the sword, die by it.
They will speak about America being a Christian nation, and Jesus will be there to remind them that God so loved the world.
They will be there to trot out some antiquated tough guy, alpha male religion, and Jesus will be there to say the blessed will be the mourners and the last will be first and the humble will be raised.
Republicans will talk about legislating “Biblically,” and Jesus will be there to ask them where they are feeding and healing and loving and helping and welcoming.
They will revel in violence against the different and the disregarded, and Jesus will be there to remind them that he inhabits the least of these and they treat him the way they treat them.
So, the next time you hear a Conservative politician or Evangelical preacher sermonizing about the God they claim they’re listening to and speaking for and governing on behalf of—do something that will confound and infuriate and confront them: just bring up Jesus.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and that you go back and check out any of the sessions you’ve missed. I’d like to thank my collaborators, Monte Mader, Kristian A Smith, Brian Recker, Diana Butler Bass, Mark Sandlin, and Gerlyn Henry for their wisdom and honesty. Please make sure you watch our conversations and follow them on social media.
Ultimately, though it’s going to be difficult to overcome a minority movement that has spent the last 5 decades preparing for what is now coming to fruition with its seizing of unprecedented power, we can hopefully begin to push back against the dangerous and incorrect theology MAGA Christianity perpetuates, we can continue to oppose the legislative assaults on vulnerable people, and to create a broad coalition that leverages its massive collective power.
And for those of us who claim a Christian faith that actually does concern itself with the teachings of Jesus, we’re going to need to be louder and more visible in individually and collectively living a faith rooted in love and not fear.
