https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/26/pope-leo-trump-hegseth-christianity
Really good essay, imo.
«Virtually no reporter ever seeks out the head of the Methodists or the Lutherans or any of the other sects that once dominated American religious life. Real Christianity is always journalistically represented by evangelicalism – everyone knows its stars, the Franklin Grahams and the Paula Whites, the layers-on-of-hands in the Oval Office. Hegseth’s denominational leader, Doug Wilson, has gotten far more airtime than the heads of the much larger Protestant traditions, because they don’t do insane things like demanding women give up the vote. Partly as a result, a generation of Americans has grown up convinced that Christianity is a freak show, and another generation – those inside the evangelical tent – have grown old unchallenged in their thinking that scripture somehow demands the various cruelties we’ve seen play out in the “culture wars”.
…
…mainline Protestantism started to decline in the wake of the 1960s, mostly because it asked more of its adherents than many of them were willing to give. As the commitment of young preachers to justice kept deepening, many of their parishioners found that a comfortable civic obligation had become an uncomfortable challenge. Many stopped going to church altogether, and others drifted to the evangelical megachurches that offered themselves up as, among other things, entertainment – all pop music and drama. But Methodism and the rest never disappeared; indeed one recent survey found mainline Protestantism is roughly comparable in size with evangelicalism.
Even before the war, there were signs that these churches – while not exactly coming back, certainly not to the dominant role they once played – were reasserting themselves in remarkable ways. The first person to really stand up to Donald Trump in the days after his inauguration, as he launched his blitzkrieg of rightwing change, was Episcopal bishop Mariann Budde, who at the official prayer service marking his ascension, told him: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” specifically naming immigrant and gay communities.…
…the theology that underlays the whole white rightwing megachurch evangelical movement is unforgivably shallow. There are plenty of fine evangelical theologians – in addition to a small left evangelicalism (I write a regular column for its flagship magazine Sojourners), there are serious conservatives[*], too. You can read them in magazines such as Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, or find them at Graham’s alma mater, Wheaton College. But the part that reaches the public from its big name pastors is a mishmash of isolated passages from Revelation and lurid injunctions against carnal sin, things that are very much not the preoccupations of the Gospel. Jesus, many are shocked to hear, never expressed the slightest hint of an opinion on gay or transgender people. Far from backing rightwing economic policies, he held that the rich should give away all that they had to the poor; in place of ICE’s cruelties he called again and again to welcome the stranger.
The depth [i.e., shallowness] of white evangelical theology is demonstrated by the fact that 70% of its adherents still support Trump, even after the carnival of racism, cruelty and blasphemy they’ve witnessed in the second term. The movement’s “spiritual formation” has been tested and found wanting.»
\* As you know, I am deeply, deeply skeptical, at best, of the title “conservative.” Fig leaf for racism and sexism; always has been.
«For a very long time, people outside faith communities have regarded Christianity as some combination of silly and irrelevant. It’s completely fine that they don’t convert – any poll will show that rule by atheists would make America a more humane place than it is at present. But it’s good for everyone to be reminded that the Christian tradition is powerful, radical and subversive.»
Here, Read This 