This column was originally published on Sheila Kennedy’s blog, A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.
By Sheila Kennedy
February 7, 2025
Remember those bracelets that were so popular some years ago–the ones that had
“WWJD” on them? It stood for “What Would Jesus Do?” Granted, I’m not a Christian
(and I certainly don’t play one on TV), but I’m pretty sure the White Supremicists and
Nationalists posing as Christians are definitely not doing what Jesus would do.
I’ve previously posted about the book “The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory,” written by Tim Alberta, an authentic and clearly devoted Evangelical who spent two years visiting Evangelical congregations and interviewing pastors. I’ve also posted about the film “Bad Faith,” a documentary which traces the takeover–and transformation– of American Evangelical Christianity by the (very) far Right. Those investigations are being joined by a number of other inquiries into a movement that has been some fifty years in the making, but has only recently become too obvious, too powerful and too frightening to ignore.
Persuasion recently published an essay by Jonathan Rauch focusing on the dilemma faced by the pastors who are clinging to their convictions about the centrality of Jesus message to their religion in the face of congregants who reject Jesus’ “wokeness.” As Rauch explains, in his conversations with these pastors, the words have varied “but the tune is the same. Christian witness is in trouble in white
evangelical America. And the biggest challenge is not from the secular world; it is sitting in the pews.”
Many prominent evangelicals (and some ex-evangelicals) believe the same thing.
Writes Peter Wehner: “In important respects, much of what is distinctive about
American evangelicalism has become antithetical to authentic Christianity. What
we’re dealing with—not in all cases, of course, but in far too many—is political
identity and cultural anxieties, anti-intellectualism and ethnic nationalism,
resentments and grievances, all dressed up as Christianity.”
I have long believed that the rise of the MAGA Christian Nationalist movement is rooted in fear. As American demographics have shifted and the broader culture has become more accepting of women, gays, and people of color, White Christian males have panicked over their perceived loss of dominance and status. As the author notes,
Don’t be afraid is one of the Bible’s most frequently repeated commands. Yet
today’s white evangelical world seems consumed by fear. There is fear of the left:
“Fear,” as historian Paul Matzko has said, “that if Donald Trump doesn’t win in
2016, isn’t reelected in 2020, that is the end of American Christianity as we know
it, that the godless humanists and feminists and civil rights activists are going to
swamp America and destroy what makes us great.” There is fear of cultural
change. More than three-fourths of white evangelicals say the country is in
danger of losing its identity and culture—by which they mean their identity and
culture.
Above all, there is fear of loss of status. “They realize they no longer have
numbers on their side,” the historian Kristin Du Mez told me. “They see that the
democratic process will not secure their aims for them. We’ve lost the culture;
they’re coming for us; we’ve got to defend the right to live as obedient, faithful
Christians.”
Christians have been told to emulate Jesus, but the pastors interviewed for the article report that the transformation of their religion into a political movement has caused their parishioners to ignore Gospel messages. Exhortations to love the marginalized, love the foreigner, “Those words, said one, fall on deaf ears.”
The essay describes a new wall of separation, but it notes that this wall isn’t between church and state, but between what Rauch terms “personal Christianity and public Christianity.”
This wall rationalizes political conduct whose cruelty Christians would abhor in
their church lives; it sets up two incommensurable moralities, an absolute one in
the personal realm and an instrumental one in the political realm.
Roush quotes one Southern Baptist pastor for the belief that the next great “mission field” will not be abroad or among nonbelievers, but within the American evangelical church and its members.
Given the transformation of much of the Evangelical church into a MAGA political cult, Rauch asks the obvious question: has White Evangelical Christianity, in its embrace of MAGA values, repudiated itself? It certainly seems that way, and if that is the case, can we expect the secular world not to notice?
MAGA “Christians” no longer ask what Jesus would do, because the answer is obvious. And very inconvenient.
Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
