Eight years into one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history, actual followers of Jesus need to testify loudly to something: the white Evangelical Church in America has failed us all—fully, grievously, irreparably.
I grew up with white evangelical Christians. Many I considered friends. I even dated a few.
I kept up with them over the years, watching as their hate and intolerance--both called "love," of course--grew and grew and grew. I tried reasoning with them--this was clear back in the 90s, at the very latest, mind you--all to no avail. They tossed me to the curb when they got married and I didn't, judging me unworthy of them and a freak, their blissful amatonormative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatonormativity) suburban life tracks fully engaged, which states in no uncertain terms that married people do *not* have unmarried "freaks" as friends. And so they abandoned me.
Trump-supporting MAGAts today, these people are now vowing, by means of Project 2025, to end people like me. I'm not a gay man; I'm not trans; I'm a straight heterosexual male who simply wanted to live a life without a ring on my finger and kids at heel, and who, in the end, chose not to worship their God, the one I was literally beaten to worship as a child by my father who, if he were alive today, would probably worship Trump. Almost certainly, he would.
I was raised in a Catholic church that told me each Sunday that if I did this, if I did that, if I didn't do this, if I didn't do that, I would burn in hell for eternity. I was literally told by a nun at Sunday School that if I didn't feel guilty each day, that *that by itself* was a sin, and that I would burn in hell. What was I to feel guilty for, I asked. For that I was reported as a troublemaker to my father, who beat me even more severely than in times past. The words "God," "Jesus," "heaven," and "hell" have long since become trauma words for me, and I can scarcely even think them today, decades later, without feeling anxiety and depression well up inside me.
In the 80s, as the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and the fundamentalist Christian movement were gaining huge ground across America, I made a prediction to one of those "friends" I grew up with, that all this crap was going to come crashing down on them one day, and it was going to end the Christian Church in America, or at least end its toxic dominance--permanently.
The individual in question looked at me and said in serious reply: "Jesus won't let that happen. This is a Christian country."
Here were are, and that is *exactly,* *precisely* what is occurring. Don't you dare tell me it's some sort of tragedy; it very much *is not.* It is in fact something worth celebrating and even adding one's time and energy into seeing come to full flower. For, as my dear mother said, "If Jesus were to come back tomorrow morning, he'd be crucified that night by those idiots who claim to be his most ardent followers." My mother--a die-hard Republican and devoted Christian.
You are so right with the if not for them. This country would be a better place for everyone. Instead placing the Ten Commandments in schools, they should be posting the beatitudes from Jesus’ sermon on the mound. Most don’t follow the commandments any
Interesting article but it makes me wonder if these guys are not like this due to lack of being in church but it’s just who they are . Therefore they would be more likely to quit the church . It sounds like they kept the principals that suited themselves or didn’t affect them in a negative way and adopted things they didn’t want to give up when they were attending church but gave up anyway to be in line with the church community. Once they stopped putting church attendance as a top priority they felt more free to indulge their desires .
I wonder what would these evangelicals think if they found out that Jesus surrounded himself with women. What they would think if they found out that the first evangelical was a woman. Remember the woman at the well “come see a man that told me everything about myself, he must be the Christ!” Isn’t that what their mission is about. Preach the gospels about Jesus Christ and why he was born. Like he said, even the tax collectors and prostitutes will make it to heaven before any of them. Because they listened to John the Baptist and repented for their actions. These bastards have no intentions of repentance for their wicked ways. I left the church because I was never good enough, I was judged and treated by others as if I were a leper, or any other person that didn’t meet their standards. I am okay with that.
The White Evangelical Church in America has been failing everyone except wealthy conservative white men for far longer than Trump has been campaigning for president. I’d say they have been failing since at least the late 1970’s if not longer.
Christ has never been a part of that church or those alleged “Christians”. Christ knows who loves Him and whom He loves. Love is more powerful than hate. Love is not Democrat or Republican. Love is not any race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Love is all. Love forgives. Love unifies. Love is kind.
White Evangelical Church have failed America and jesus.
If you were of a marginalized minority, hated by Evangelicals your entire adult life, you may have realized that all White, Black, Asian, or any other ethnicities’ mythologies have always failed, but not because they failed imparting jesus love to all, but because they failed to choose love—period—choosing hate over love. If you can accept that jesus, the same jesus believed to be the son of god, is not real, then you can understand that to think otherwise is to belong to a cult which worships mythology as if it were real. While the very definition of mythology is that it is a belief that is not real. All religions are mythologies, whether they manifest love or hate, they are still mythologies. And manifested love or hate from a mythology is as unreal, unreliable, and impotent as the myth by which it was birthed. And the idea that a mythology is how one finds authentic love is complete misinformation, dangerous and misleading. So of course the White Evangelical Church has failed America and jesus. It could do nothing but. If authentic love is the goal, then no church has ever hit the mark. The fantasy of jesus may inspire one to love, but jesus is not love, nor is the fantasy. And no amount of sentimentality will make it so. Love and only love is love. And love is only accessed and manifested when we die to our false beliefs, traditions, and programs; falling to ground zero, allowing our pretend life to be buried, and then and only then can we resurrect and bear forth the fruit of love, real and authentic. Hanging on to remnants of sentimentality and false hope serves no purpose. There may have been a jesus, a man, a real person, an individual who may have known and chosen love--as did Rumi--but love has never been accessed through knowing and accepting an individual, let alone a person birthed in the loins of a myth. What true love is and how you access it is a whole another story. But to be clear, Evangelicals, of any color, have never manifested authentic love, because the most their mythology has ever allowed anyone to do is to pretend, intellectualize, humanize, and mimic versions of love. Therefore, their acts and claims of charity have fallen short, “…becoming as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” So to ever imagine that to believe in jesus, or to belong to an Evangelical, Christian, or Christian Nationalist Church births loving people is naïve at best. And to believe its suppose to birth loving people is even more naïve. Religions do not need to be revised or corrected—they need to be abolished. The human race has always chosen hate over love and church steeples over reality. Church is where deniers and hate gathers, breeds, and infects and inflicts. Bad people and good people alike go to church, believe in church, and build a church. But how good or bad a person is, is irrelevant, what ‘s relevant is that authentic love never goes to church, it leaves the church. Yes, you may struggle, desperate to hang on to the past, sentimental over all the seemingly good energy and community thought derived from the church, but once authentic love circumcises your heart, you can do nothing but leave. You will dust off your shoes, and you will walk away. But not fascism, fascism, authoritarianism, tRumpism, pUtinism, and the Mike Johnsons of the world—they will run to the church—looking for the most fundamental, conservative, evangelical, jesus worshiping congregations; and there they will find like minded followers: Fear and hate mongers, all jacked up on ideologies of sin, shame, guilt, forgiveness, blood, cross, devil, demons, hell. All pathological deniers and liars. Worshipers of mythologies, cult like followers with jesus complex; drunk on guilt and hate, medicating their shame with sanctimonious judgment of others. No…the Evangelical Church has not failed America or jesus—it’s done exactly what its always been primed to do. It gave us tRump and Maguts and it always will…completing the circle of hate.
I grew up with white evangelical Christians. Many I considered friends. I even dated a few.
I kept up with them over the years, watching as their hate and intolerance--both called "love," of course--grew and grew and grew. I tried reasoning with them--this was clear back in the 90s, at the very latest, mind you--all to no avail. They tossed me to the curb when they got married and I didn't, judging me unworthy of them and a freak, their blissful amatonormative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatonormativity) suburban life tracks fully engaged, which states in no uncertain terms that married people do *not* have unmarried "freaks" as friends. And so they abandoned me.
Trump-supporting MAGAts today, these people are now vowing, by means of Project 2025, to end people like me. I'm not a gay man; I'm not trans; I'm a straight heterosexual male who simply wanted to live a life without a ring on my finger and kids at heel, and who, in the end, chose not to worship their God, the one I was literally beaten to worship as a child by my father who, if he were alive today, would probably worship Trump. Almost certainly, he would.
I was raised in a Catholic church that told me each Sunday that if I did this, if I did that, if I didn't do this, if I didn't do that, I would burn in hell for eternity. I was literally told by a nun at Sunday School that if I didn't feel guilty each day, that *that by itself* was a sin, and that I would burn in hell. What was I to feel guilty for, I asked. For that I was reported as a troublemaker to my father, who beat me even more severely than in times past. The words "God," "Jesus," "heaven," and "hell" have long since become trauma words for me, and I can scarcely even think them today, decades later, without feeling anxiety and depression well up inside me.
In the 80s, as the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and the fundamentalist Christian movement were gaining huge ground across America, I made a prediction to one of those "friends" I grew up with, that all this crap was going to come crashing down on them one day, and it was going to end the Christian Church in America, or at least end its toxic dominance--permanently.
The individual in question looked at me and said in serious reply: "Jesus won't let that happen. This is a Christian country."
Here were are, and that is *exactly,* *precisely* what is occurring. Don't you dare tell me it's some sort of tragedy; it very much *is not.* It is in fact something worth celebrating and even adding one's time and energy into seeing come to full flower. For, as my dear mother said, "If Jesus were to come back tomorrow morning, he'd be crucified that night by those idiots who claim to be his most ardent followers." My mother--a die-hard Republican and devoted Christian.
Spot on! Thank you John. May this get through to some of his cult and spread.
This is so true. The Jesus I believe in teaches the total antithesis of what these people profess Thank you for this clarification.
You are so right with the if not for them. This country would be a better place for everyone. Instead placing the Ten Commandments in schools, they should be posting the beatitudes from Jesus’ sermon on the mound. Most don’t follow the commandments any
I drove but a church in Idabel OK that has posted the beatitudes in stone…it encourages me.
There is no more virulent hate than Evangelical Christian hate.
Thank you. Sing it loud.
Also, this is an assertion without substantiation.
White evangelicals are leaving the church. According to CT, when that happens, "Data suggests that, when their attendance drops, these nominal Christians become hyper-individualistic, devoted to law and order, cynical about systems, and distrustful of others." https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/august-web-only/church-attendance-sbc-southern-evangelicals-now-lapsed.html
Interesting article but it makes me wonder if these guys are not like this due to lack of being in church but it’s just who they are . Therefore they would be more likely to quit the church . It sounds like they kept the principals that suited themselves or didn’t affect them in a negative way and adopted things they didn’t want to give up when they were attending church but gave up anyway to be in line with the church community. Once they stopped putting church attendance as a top priority they felt more free to indulge their desires .
Why is it, do you think they, those WEC extremists have failed so miserably to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and give shelter to the homeless?
“Let us make sure love gets the last, loudest word.” This statement gives me hope. Thank you, John.
I wonder what would these evangelicals think if they found out that Jesus surrounded himself with women. What they would think if they found out that the first evangelical was a woman. Remember the woman at the well “come see a man that told me everything about myself, he must be the Christ!” Isn’t that what their mission is about. Preach the gospels about Jesus Christ and why he was born. Like he said, even the tax collectors and prostitutes will make it to heaven before any of them. Because they listened to John the Baptist and repented for their actions. These bastards have no intentions of repentance for their wicked ways. I left the church because I was never good enough, I was judged and treated by others as if I were a leper, or any other person that didn’t meet their standards. I am okay with that.
The White Evangelical Church in America has been failing everyone except wealthy conservative white men for far longer than Trump has been campaigning for president. I’d say they have been failing since at least the late 1970’s if not longer.
Christ has never been a part of that church or those alleged “Christians”. Christ knows who loves Him and whom He loves. Love is more powerful than hate. Love is not Democrat or Republican. Love is not any race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Love is all. Love forgives. Love unifies. Love is kind.
Once again, not once have you spoken up in this way about Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.
The more that this comparison exists, the more it seems like cynical rhetoric that exists to preserve the power of one group over another.
One of the best pieces I’ve read. Now I’m a subscriber. Thanks, John.
AMEN AND AMEN!!!
White Evangelical Church have failed America and jesus.
If you were of a marginalized minority, hated by Evangelicals your entire adult life, you may have realized that all White, Black, Asian, or any other ethnicities’ mythologies have always failed, but not because they failed imparting jesus love to all, but because they failed to choose love—period—choosing hate over love. If you can accept that jesus, the same jesus believed to be the son of god, is not real, then you can understand that to think otherwise is to belong to a cult which worships mythology as if it were real. While the very definition of mythology is that it is a belief that is not real. All religions are mythologies, whether they manifest love or hate, they are still mythologies. And manifested love or hate from a mythology is as unreal, unreliable, and impotent as the myth by which it was birthed. And the idea that a mythology is how one finds authentic love is complete misinformation, dangerous and misleading. So of course the White Evangelical Church has failed America and jesus. It could do nothing but. If authentic love is the goal, then no church has ever hit the mark. The fantasy of jesus may inspire one to love, but jesus is not love, nor is the fantasy. And no amount of sentimentality will make it so. Love and only love is love. And love is only accessed and manifested when we die to our false beliefs, traditions, and programs; falling to ground zero, allowing our pretend life to be buried, and then and only then can we resurrect and bear forth the fruit of love, real and authentic. Hanging on to remnants of sentimentality and false hope serves no purpose. There may have been a jesus, a man, a real person, an individual who may have known and chosen love--as did Rumi--but love has never been accessed through knowing and accepting an individual, let alone a person birthed in the loins of a myth. What true love is and how you access it is a whole another story. But to be clear, Evangelicals, of any color, have never manifested authentic love, because the most their mythology has ever allowed anyone to do is to pretend, intellectualize, humanize, and mimic versions of love. Therefore, their acts and claims of charity have fallen short, “…becoming as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” So to ever imagine that to believe in jesus, or to belong to an Evangelical, Christian, or Christian Nationalist Church births loving people is naïve at best. And to believe its suppose to birth loving people is even more naïve. Religions do not need to be revised or corrected—they need to be abolished. The human race has always chosen hate over love and church steeples over reality. Church is where deniers and hate gathers, breeds, and infects and inflicts. Bad people and good people alike go to church, believe in church, and build a church. But how good or bad a person is, is irrelevant, what ‘s relevant is that authentic love never goes to church, it leaves the church. Yes, you may struggle, desperate to hang on to the past, sentimental over all the seemingly good energy and community thought derived from the church, but once authentic love circumcises your heart, you can do nothing but leave. You will dust off your shoes, and you will walk away. But not fascism, fascism, authoritarianism, tRumpism, pUtinism, and the Mike Johnsons of the world—they will run to the church—looking for the most fundamental, conservative, evangelical, jesus worshiping congregations; and there they will find like minded followers: Fear and hate mongers, all jacked up on ideologies of sin, shame, guilt, forgiveness, blood, cross, devil, demons, hell. All pathological deniers and liars. Worshipers of mythologies, cult like followers with jesus complex; drunk on guilt and hate, medicating their shame with sanctimonious judgment of others. No…the Evangelical Church has not failed America or jesus—it’s done exactly what its always been primed to do. It gave us tRump and Maguts and it always will…completing the circle of hate.