by John Ellis
It’s rare that a conversation with an Uber passenger catches me by surprise. One such conversation happened on a Sunday morning several months ago while giving a ride to a man on his way to church.
Per my usual with any Uber passenger on the way to church, I asked questions about his church and his relationship with it. He has been attending for two years and the main things he appreciates about it are the music and the preaching. He told me that he loves music, and the praise band is really good; the sermons make him want to be a better person.[1] As we neared the end of the ride, he mentioned that he normally attends the later service. This Sunday, though, since he didn’t work the night before, he was able to attend the first service. After I asked him what he does for work, he let out a laugh and said, “The exact opposite of church.”
While the words, “where do you work?” were leaving my mouth, I ran through a brief catalogue of jobs in my brain attempting to determine what he could possibly do that was “the exact opposite of church.” In those couple of seconds, the only thing I could think of, no doubt influenced by having been raised within fundamentalism, was a bartender, which made little sense. I’m pretty sure that almost no one at his church would care if he were a bartender. Thinking back on it, I doubt that I would’ve guessed his job even if I had been given more time to consider my answer.
“I manage a swinger’s club in Kissimmee,” he proudly stated.
As I wrote above, I am rarely surprised by the things my passengers say. This time, though, especially considering the context of the conversation, I was initially rendered speechless. He was happy to fill the silence with a description of the club and what his job entails. As we pulled into the parking lot, I had recovered from my initial surprise but only had time to ask, “What does your church think about your job?”
“They’ve never asked,” he replied but quickly added, “If they did ask, I’d tell them. I don’t think they’d care.”
Being somewhat familiar with his church, I can state with certainty that the pastors would care that a member of their church manages a swinger’s club.
That anecdote is bursting with things that deserve further discussion. But what I want to highlight is that as I drove away, among several other thoughts, I was struck by how anemic the preaching and teaching at that church must be if someone can sit through two years of services and conclude that the church would be okay with him managing a swinger’s club.[2] And here’s my point: I feel the same way about MAGA and Trump supporters who can sit comfortably through church service after church service in “good” white evangelical churches and never feel a single prick of conscience over their support of a man like Donald Trump. Considering the atrocities currently being committed by ICE, this reality has come crashing down on me.
I’m not referring to churches who are open about their embrace of Trump and MAGA. I consider openly MAGA churches, their pastors, and their members as under the umbrella of Proverbs 26:4. I’m talking about those churches in which the pastors and leadership are, by and large, appalled by Trump but the preaching and teaching leaves MAGA world/Republicans unchallenged. As most of the world watches in horror at what’s unfolding under the boots of ICE, specifically in Minnesota, the silence from white evangelicalism says a lot: comfort and power are idols that overshadow the bread and wine on the communion table.
In the days leading up to the presidential election of 2016, while a growing stream of white evangelicals began making their peace with the reality that Donald Trump admitted on camera that he can grab women by their pussy because he’s a celebrity,[3] I realized that white evangelicalism may be irredeemably rotten. I’ve since concluded that white evangelicalism is, in fact, irredeemably rotten.
The white evangelical movement as a whole is rotten, regardless of how individuals, including pastors and leaders, may personally feel about Donald Trump. This explains why those pastors and leaders feel compelled to sit in silence. If they do speak up, how many in their congregation would find a “church” that paid better/fuller homage to their gods? I’ve written articles confessing my own cowardice/sin in this area (you can read one of those by clicking here). I’ve come to believe, and quoting the historian Matthew Sutton, “that post–World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics.” This speaks to why personally anti-Trump pastors and church leaders still foster church communities in which MAGA members and Trump supporters feel comfortable. This is why churches in which prayers and comments praising Charlie Kirk were offered have largely remained silent within their churches about the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. This is why churches that sent congregants to and/or support the recent March for Life in D.C. turn a blind eye to the fracturing of families under the socially constructed legal reasoning of immigration law. White evangelicalism and the Republican Party are joined at the hip in ways that make them almost synonymous. Raising a prophetic voice that condemns MAGA/GOP and Trump attacks the very rot upon which white evangelicalism has been built; it’s akin to sawing the limb out from under you if you’re a white evangelical pastor. Anyone who condemns Trump will find him/herself without much of a platform in white evangelicalism.[4]
Within the larger context of my smaller conversation about white evangelicalism, it should be noted that as tragic as the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are, the response to them speaks to what Derrick Bell referred to as interest convergence. Reducing the CRT concept down to its core, interest convergence is the insight that civil rights gains for ethnic minorities generally happen because there is an accompanying benefit for white people.[5]
Trump’s ICE agents have been trampling the civil and constitutional rights of Black and Brown people for nearly a year now.[6] The horror elicited by the on-camera murders of two white people is what is prompting the public relations nightmare that is causing Donald Trump to reconsider his administration’s responses and actions. But what about the horror of migrant children being kidnapped? What about the shredding of the concept of due process accompanied by the murders perpetuated by the U.S. military (under the dictatorial direction of Trump’s administration) via the launching of missiles at boats crewed by non-whites? What about the coming atrocity on Feb. 3 when the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH, will be faced with forced deportations? You know, the same Haitian immigrants who were invited to come and whose hard work has revitalized the town and yet who were/are the victims of gross lies uttered and spread by MAGA racists two years ago.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m glad that white people are finally speaking up with enough volume to begin to move the needle. But not all white people are matching their personal ethics with transcendent ethics, especially not to a degree that implores them to speak up in the defense of the oppressed. The deafening silence from white evangelical churches is damnable. They haven’t lost their voice, though. When protesters interrupted a white evangelical church service of a church who has a pastor employed by ICE, white evangelicals expressed their horror.[7] And I suspect that the overwhelming majority of those upset by the protestors will remain silent if the ICE agents invade church services in Springfield, OH, in a couple of weeks in order to haul out Haitians whose only crime is finding themselves on the wrong side of the moving needle of United States immigration policy.[8] I mean, The Gospel Coalition published an article by Joe Carter about how churches should respond if protestors interrupt their service. As best as I can tell, and I’ve looked, TGC and other like-minded platforms offer no advice to pastors and Christians for if/when ICE invades their services looking to kidnap and unjustly imprison fellow Christians. Even if white evangelical pastors and leaders do not personally condone what ICE is doing, their silence makes them complicit. And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. If MAGA and Trump supporters can comfortably attend a church, that church is failing to raise its prophetic voice about very real, non-abstract sins/evil and call our society to repentance. It can’t do so because it fails to call its own members to repentance.
This is the type of article that is difficult for me to resist the shotgun approach in the hope of hitting multiple targets. The footnotes help rein me in by giving me an outlet to explore important tangents, and I hope you read them. So, to help further rein me in, I want to point to Christian apologetics and church history to help funnel this emotionally charged article to a conclusion.[9]
Something that cultural apologists love to reference, and correctly, is how devoted the early Church (pre-Constantine) was to social justice causes.[10] They – cultural apologists – also love to point out, on a scale from incorrect to overstated, that Christianity started, organized, and led the social justice causes of the 19th and 20th century. If that is true – that Christianity has been characterized throughout history as a, if not the, leader in the fights for social justice – then why the silence now? Why are MAGA members and Trump supporters able to feel so comfortable sitting in the pews of white evangelical churches in the face of grave injustices being committed against Image Bearers by the man and movement they follow?[11] The answers are not easy to stare down, I get that. The solutions are costly, but King Jesus did tell us to take up our cross and follow him. He also said, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:45-46).”
(When the histories of this era are written, it is likely that it will be comedians like Jon Stewart who will be acknowledged as our prophetic voices and not pastors … that’s a shame.)
[1] He told me a third thing but revealing it would run the risk of “doxing” the church.
[2] It should be noted that his description of his job as “the exact opposite of church” reveals some understanding. However, based on the conversation, I believe that whatever understanding he has of the tension that exists between his job and church in general is a product of overall culture and not the preaching at his church. I mean, he explicitly praised the pastor’s sermons for making him want to be a better person. Yet, he also believes that his church would be fine with his job if they knew. That tells me that whatever “better person” means to him, it does not include reevaluating what he does for a living.
[3] Many of those who are the loudest in their condemnation of relativism have embraced a relativistic approach to Trump’s words and actions.
[4] Look, and to be clear, I’m not meaning this to be about me, but I do believe that I have a personal anecdote that is instructive. Almost 2 years ago, during a white evangelical controversy that I have some first-hand knowledge/understanding about, I tweeted something that revealed some things about the main player in the controversy. My series of tweets received over 100,000 views/impressions. I was followed and then DM’d by several religious reporters. At first, it was exciting but then I looked into my heart. I knew that if I went down that path, I’d likely end up compromising my beliefs in the other direction attempting to curry further favor and expand my platform. You see, I know what it’s like to write something that gets over a million views. And I know what that kind of platform did to me. So, 2 years ago, I decided that I was not going to put myself in a situation that would encourage me to compromise in the “progressive” direction as a form of penance for compromising myself in the “conversative” direction years ago. I don’t have a platform because in my best moments I don’t want a platform, understanding the deceitfulness of my heart and desire for acceptance. I will go to my grave deeply ashamed of my previous compromise in the service of building a platform. By God’s grace, I will never do it again.
[5] Derrick A. Bell, Jr., “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest Convergent Dilemma”, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement ed. Kimberle Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, Kendall Thomas (New York: The New Press, 1995).
[6] And longer, going back to Trump’s first administration … and lest Democrats become too sanctimonious at this point, Democrat presidents, including both Obama and Biden, do not have a good track record regarding the treatment of Black and Brown migrants.
[7] If you attend a church with a pastor who is a member of ICE, you need to find a new church.
[8] At some point, I want to write an article about how white people in America who hide behind “but they’re breaking the law” should ask themselves why so many families risk so much to leave their homes to come here. The short answer is that our – the U.S. of A.’s – foreign policy has left their countries decimated. Our wealth and comfort have come with a cost. Condemning those who have paid that cost for wanting to enjoy at least some of the benefits is beyond hypocritical. It falls under God’s condemnation found in places in the Bible like the book of Amos. America’s immigration policy is sinful and falls under the command to obey God rather than man. I am so very sick and tired of hearing pastors and white evangelical leaders parrot the power/privilege protecting line, “immigration policy is something we can agree to disagree on without undermining the unity we have in the gospel.” No, it’s not something we can agree to disagree on!
[9] Look, and it’s stupid that I have to point this out, emotions possess epistemic value, too. Read the aforementioned Amos. The prophet was most definitely not emotionless while insulting the rich women of Samaria by calling them cows of Bashan. And his emotionally charged language does not undermine his point; it is part of his point because God hates injustice and loves social justice.
[10] I repeat almost ad nauseum to anyone who will listen that the greatest mistake the Church made was allowing Constantine to marry her to cultural power and prestige. Likewise, the greatest mistake the Reformation made was failing to initiate the divorce. I have concluded that many of the people who claim to agree with me either aren’t really listening to what I said or haven’t thought through the ramifications. So let me make the main ramification clear: Christendom was and remains a great evil. This means the true reformation demands the Church divorce herself from cultural power and prestige and embrace our illegal alien status in our specific Babylon. … Side note within a side note: The notion of “neither Babylon nor Jerusalem” being applied to anywhere, including the U.S.A., is non-sensical and contentless.
[11] Expository preaching and the so-called inductive Bible study method have been weaponized to silence the Church’s prophetic voice in society. … That’s for those pastors who will respond, “well, John, I hear you but our preaching schedule, which was established months ago, has us in 1 Thessalonians.” … I had to think for a minute before coming up with a book of the Bible that doesn’t speak directly to social justice causes. Even then, 1 Thessalonians 5 could be used as a jumping off point to condemn the Trump administration and MAGA.
Practically Known Theology 