Federal agents have been entering American churches undercover.

Department of Homeland Security agents have entered Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopal, and Universalist church buildings in Minnesota and Michigan while tracking activists, secretly recording gatherings, and collecting information about people connected to them.

At University Baptist Church in Minneapolis, an undercover agent entered a class being held in the church gym wearing a concealed recording device. Federal records later revealed additional surveillance visits to the property, including on Sundays.

This despite the fact that University Baptist was already covered by a federal court injunction limiting warrantless immigration-enforcement activity at participating houses of worship. Eleven religious plaintiffs have now asked a court to hold the Department of Homeland Security in contempt. And on August 24, a federal judge ordered the government to explain why it should not be held in contempt for violating the injunction.

If you want to understand how this story came to light, follow Brian Kaylor’s pioneering reporting at A Public Witness and Word&Way. Brian dug through court filings and documented federal infiltration of church spaces before most national media noticed. NPR has now picked up the story, describing a much broader surveillance operation involving churches, community groups, libraries, labor organizations, and private communications.

This deserves far more attention than it has received, because it is not simply an immigration-enforcement story. It is a story about what happens when independent religious institutions become inconvenient to government power.

Something is stirring in Mainline Protestantism

Bishops are confronting presidents. Pastors are putting their bodies on the line. Denominations are drawing theological boundaries around Christian nationalism. Churches are suing the government to preserve their freedom to minister. Congregations are organizing networks of care for immigrant families living under threat.

Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde stood feet from the newly inaugurated president and, in the name of God, asked him to have mercy on immigrants, LGBTQ children, and frightened families. Presbyterian pastor David Black stood outside an ICE detention facility near Chicago with his arms raised in prayer and was struck in the head with a pepper ball fired by federal immigration personnel.

This summer, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) overwhelmingly declared White Christian nationalism a “theological error” incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ and advanced a constitutional amendment opposing the use of state power to establish Christianity as privileged or dominant.

The political press treated conservative evangelicals as essentially the Protestant political story. But the resurgence of Mainline public witness and organizing could matter politically more than many people realize.

Lutheran pastors and bishops in Minnesota have refused to be deterred by immigration enforcement. More than 2,000 United Methodists and other people of faith filled churches on Capitol Hill and marched around the Capitol in a “Faithful Resistance” witness for immigrant justice. American Baptists have gone to court to protect congregations from government interference with worship and ministry.

This isn’t a case of Mainline Christians suddenly discovering justice in 2026. Mainline clergy, congregations, and denominations have been standing with immigrants, confronting racism, defending LGBTQ people, protecting voting rights, and challenging abuses of power for decades. What may be changing is the visibility, coordination, and urgency of that witness.

The political press treated conservative evangelicals as essentially the Protestant political story. But the resurgence of Mainline public witness and organizing could matter politically more than many people realize.

Political reporters: pay attention.

Mainliners are more politically important than the stereotype suggests

For years, “Mainline Protestant” has almost become shorthand for a fading religious establishment: aging congregations, shrinking membership, beautiful old buildings with fewer people inside them.

But something interesting is happening in Minnesota.

During the immigration-enforcement surge, Anoka United Church of Christ became a hub for mutual aid and community organizing. Pastor Chris McArdle told the Minnesota Star Tribune that at least 100 people new to the congregation began attending worship during or after the surge. About half have stayed, helping bring attendance to more than 300.

Some first encountered the church because it was helping its neighbors. Some had been away from Christianity for years.

One congregation does not constitute a national revival. But it suggests something worth watching: When churches become more relevant to their neighbors’ lives, people may begin to find religion relevant again.

And Mainline Protestants remain a larger constituency than the usual story of decline suggests. According to PRRI’s 2025 Census of American Religion, white Mainline/non-evangelical Protestants make up about 13 percent of the American population—the same share as white evangelical Protestants and slightly more than white Catholics.

Politically, they are not simply the religious wing of the Democratic Party. Pew finds that Mainline Protestants actually tilt Republican: 51 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 41 percent toward Democrats. Evangelical Protestants, by contrast, are about 70 percent Republican or Republican-leaning.

That political heterogeneity is exactly what makes Mainline resurgence so important.

When a Mainline bishop, pastor, or congregation challenges unchecked government power, the audience can include Republicans, Democrats, and independents. People who may have voted for Trump but recoil when federal agents enter churches. People who favor stronger border enforcement but don’t believe government should decide whom the church may accompany. People who would never attend a protest but understand that a pastor ought to be able to minister without wondering whether someone in the room is wearing a wire.

There are signs of movement. PRRI found that favorable views of Trump’s handling of immigration among white Mainline/non-evangelical Protestants fell from 64 percent in March 2025 to 46 percent by March 2026. In another PRRI measure this spring, half of white Mainline Protestants described Trump as a potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited. Among white evangelicals, 68 percent instead described him as a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.

This suggests that American religious politics are not neatly divided between a Christian Right and a secular Left. A large Christian constituency sits uneasily between those poles, and Mainline churches have institutions, relationships, and moral vocabularies that can reach them.

Christian nationalism has spent decades trying to persuade Americans that Christian is essentially synonymous with a particular form of conservative politics. An independent Mainline witness disrupts that monopoly. It insists that Christianity does not belong to any president or party.

And that is when churches can become troublesome to unchecked power.

The goal is to make religion submit.

The surveillance of churches belongs within a much larger pattern. Universities have faced funding freezes and political demands reaching into academic governance. Law firms have been targeted over clients and past cases. News organizations have faced lawsuits, subpoenas, and regulatory pressure. Nonprofits and foundations have confronted investigations, canceled grants, and threats to tax-exempt status.

The methods differ: freeze the money, threaten the institution, investigate the critic, punish the dissenter. Make independence costly enough that people begin censoring themselves.

Churches are part of that civil society ecosystem. We have buildings scattered across nearly every community in America. We gather people face-to-face. We move money and resources. We feed people, accompany families, visit prisoners, teach children, preach, pray, organize, and sometimes shelter frightened people. And at our best, we answer to something higher than the state.

That makes independent religious institutions enormously valuable to democracy. It can also make them enormously inconvenient to governments that would prefer fewer institutions capable of saying no.

For Christians, this independence isn’t simply a democratic safeguard. It is a theological necessity. The church must remain free precisely because sometimes faith requires us to challenge the abuse of power.

This is why we need to know something about Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

Orbán didn’t abolish Christianity. He captured it.

Hungary offers a warning because Viktor Orbán, like Trump, publicly elevated Christianity while favoring religious institutions aligned with his political project.

His government wrapped Hungarian national identity in Christian language and favored churches aligned with its political project. Public Christianity remained highly visible. But there was another side to the bargain.

Pastor Gábor Iványi, once personally close to Orbán, became an outspoken critic of his government’s treatment of refugees, poor people, and marginalized communities. After Orbán’s government rewrote Hungary’s religion law, Iványi’s Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship lost its recognized church status. The church and charitable network also faced raids, funding pressures, school closures, and criminal proceedings.

Authoritarian religious politics does not require the destruction of religion. It can capture religion: reward institutions that legitimate political power, punish or weaken those that challenge it, cultivate favored religious leaders, and make prophetic independence increasingly expensive.

Eventually, nobody has to tell religious leaders to stay quiet. They learn.

As Holly Berkley Fletcher reported in The Bulwark, Samaritan’s Purse is set to receive roughly $300 million over two years under the Trump administration’s new foreign-aid structure, while historically Mainline and ecumenical organizations such as Church World Service and Lutheran World Relief received no funding.

That does not prove organizations were chosen or excluded because of their politics. But it should make us pay attention. Church World Service and its member denominations have been highly visible in defending immigrants and opposing mass deportation. Franklin Graham has been among Trump’s most loyal religious defenders.

The question isn’t whether Samaritan’s Purse does valuable humanitarian work. The question is what kind of religious ecosystem government policy creates when enormous resources flow toward religious institutions friendly to power while independent religious institutions face surveillance, investigation, litigation, and financial pressure. You can end up with a government that talks constantly about Christianity while punishing Christians who refuse to bend the gospel to political power.

That is the danger, and it points toward the spiritual task before us.

This is our spiritual practice now

Authoritarian movements run on fear. Fear tells us to contract: protect yourself, circle the wagons, distrust the stranger, don’t make trouble, keep your head down.

Christian spiritual practice moves in the opposite direction. Jesus keeps moving toward people—toward the sick, toward the outsider, toward the person respectable society has decided is expendable, and eventually toward Jerusalem itself, despite knowing the consequences of confronting religious and imperial power there.

So perhaps one spiritual practice for this moment is very simple:

Notice where fear is asking you to withdraw from another human being—and move toward them instead.

Not everyone has to become a professional activist. Moving toward someone might mean making a phone call, bringing groceries, learning the name of the immigrant family worshiping down the pew, showing up when clergy gather, supporting the congregation taking a risk, giving money, driving someone to court, or praying beside someone who is afraid.

Courage rarely begins with feeling fearless. Often it begins by deciding that fear will not determine the distance between us and our neighbor.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer right now than Springfield, Ohio.

Springfield shows us what an inconvenient church looks like

Religion News Service recently reported on churches in Springfield preparing for the possibility that Haitian parents will be detained and separated from their children.

More than 10,000 Haitians live in this Ohio community. As immigration enforcement intensifies, some people have become frightened to leave their homes. Parents are completing power-of-attorney documents so someone can care for their children if they are detained. Churches and faith-connected volunteers are delivering food and diapers, providing rides to immigration court, finding lawyers, and building networks of families willing to step in when someone disappears into detention.

Think about what that means.

Church families are preparing to take children into their homes if the government takes their parents.

That is not an abstract theological statement about welcoming the stranger. That is somebody clearing out a bedroom, buying more cereal, figuring out school pickup, taking responsibility for a frightened child.

Pastor Carl Ruby of Central Christian Church has been standing with Springfield’s Haitian community for some time. When Haitian immigrants were ordered to report to an ICE office near Cincinnati—where many were fitted with electronic ankle monitors—Ruby and other faith leaders accompanied them.

Outside the ICE office, they served communion. Ruby offered the bread and cup as a reminder that these Haitians remained part of the body of Christ.

I can’t stop thinking about that image.

The state puts a monitor around your ankle.
The church places bread in your hand and says, “You are part of the body.”

One system marks a person for surveillance. Another insists upon belonging. That is the crux of Christian teaching.

And it may explain why churches become so inconvenient to abusive power when they become indispensable to their neighbors. When someone loses the right to work, the church brings groceries. When parents fear being taken away, the church finds someone to care for their children. When somebody has to walk into an ICE office alone, the church shows up with communion.

This is what independent religion can do. A government can degrade, but we can dignify. And we can insist that no government gets to overrule the church’s command to love our neighbors and welcome the stranger.

Maybe being inconvenient is part of our vocation

The Hebrew prophets were terribly inconvenient. Moses was inconvenient to Pharaoh. Jesus was inconvenient to religious and political authorities who had learned to live quite comfortably with one another. The early church’s insistence that Caesar was not Lord was not exactly helpful to the imperial public-relations strategy. Faith at its best has always created people who know there are things they cannot worship, bargains they cannot make, and neighbors they cannot abandon.

An independent church can refuse to have its silence purchased with access or funding. It can refuse to baptize cruelty by surrounding it with Christian language, or turn fear into theology and call it faithfulness. It can insist that human dignity does not depend upon the permission of the state.

And it can certainly become inconvenient when politicians claim Christianity for themselves and then discover that Christians intend to behave like Christians.

For years, Christian nationalism has tried to convince America that Christianity belongs naturally alongside domination, exclusion, and political power. That is a lie.

There is a much older faith available to us: a faith of Exodus and liberation, of prophets confronting kings, of Jesus announcing good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed, of disciples discovering that love is stronger than empire, and of communities learning to care for one another when the powers around them will not.

That faith is not gone. I think we can see it becoming more visible.

We see it when a bishop asks a president for mercy; when a Presbyterian pastor keeps praying as pepper balls fly; when a denomination says Christian nationalism is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus; when Baptists go to court rather than surrender the independence of their churches; and when federal agents enter churches and churches refuse to be intimidated into silence.

And we see it in Anoka, where people encountered a church serving its neighbors and decided to come through its doors.

We see it in Springfield, where Christians are working out who will take the children, bring the diapers, make the drive—and carry communion to people walking into an ICE office.

Mainline churches may never again possess the institutional dominance they once enjoyed. I am increasingly convinced that isn’t the interesting question anyway.

Perhaps the church is finding something better than dominance: its voice, its courage, its capacity to love its neighbors without asking permission.

And if you’re looking for a spiritual practice this week, find one place where somebody is courageously standing for justice and stand a little closer to them.

Maybe bring some bread.

Maybe that is how courage grows. Maybe that is how movements grow.

And maybe becoming a little inconvenient is exactly what faithfulness requires of us now.

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Something happened after I wrote, “How to Get Trump Out of Your Head.” A lot of you responded not only to the politics of the piece, but to the spiritual practice underneath it: Be like water.

This tells me that many of us need practices that help us stay courageous, clear-eyed, and grounded when so much around us is trying to make us fearful and reactive. We need this more than another reason to be outraged by something this Administration has done. We want to be awake but grounded.

So I’m going to keep exploring those practices here even as I sometimes provide analysis. I’m not announcing a formal series. I just want to keep following this thread because it seems to be something many of us are hungry for.

Here is another practice:

Dignify.

More on that in a minute.

Before I go into this, I want to recognize that most of us out here have been burned by religion. Some of us were harmed by churches or religion of some kind. Some watched Christianity get used to justify racism, patriarchy, homophobia, exclusion, or cruelty. Some simply got tired of people claiming God for things that looked nothing like love.

And yet I keep coming back to the conviction that we need a story big enough to help us navigate this moment.

That story does not have to come from Christianity, although that is where most of mine comes from. It does not even have to come from religion. Personally, I seem to be slowly becoming a Buddhist Christian who tries to sit at the feet of Jewish scholars of Hebrew Scripture. Christian antisemitism—and Christianity’s long history of reworking Scripture to accommodate slavery and segregation, a history writers like Jemar Tisby have helped expose—has made me deeply suspicious of inherited Christian readings that bend the text toward power.

Throw in a little Star Trek, too. I’m a Trekkie, and Gene Roddenberry, a humanist, probably belongs somewhere on my list of spiritual influences.

But a story we must have: one that calls us and others to higher and more sober ground, helps all of us see through lies, and keeps us from becoming what we oppose.

Because authoritarianism is not only a political project. It is a battle over the imagination.

Before people will tolerate cruelty, they often have to be taught a different story about who deserves compassion. Authoritarian movements tell people what is normal, whom to fear, whose suffering counts, and which human beings can be treated as disposable.

Hear that story often enough, and it begins to shape the way people see the world, even people who would never think of themselves as cruel.

That is why those of us resisting authoritarianism need better stories. We also need to ensure people hear our stories.

When Sacred Text Started Talking Back

I have been an activist pastor for a long time. But after Trump was elected in 2016, something changed in me spiritually. I found myself needing to go deeper.

More strangely, I felt the Spirit telling me to stop for a minute and listen.

Then Scripture started following me around.

I would be at a protest, and some biblical passage would start running through my brain like an earworm. I would come home ravenously hungry, as protests always seem to make me, grab a burger and shake, sit down, and start doing Bible study.

Why is this in my brain? I kept wondering.

Eventually it hit me. God was speaking to me through the text, not giving me political talking points, but something deeper. I was finding words about courage, warnings about power, insights into human behavior, and strategies for surviving frightening times without surrendering your soul.

My friend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove has made an observation that has stayed with me: as authoritarianism rises, the Bible begins to make more sense because so many of its stories come from people living under empire, occupation, exile, and tyranny.

I have found that profoundly true. These stories read differently when the lights begin to go out. Pharaoh makes more sense. Caesar Augustus makes more sense. The prophets make more sense. So do the frightened disciples, the temptation to accommodate power, and the stubborn insistence throughout Scripture that empire does not get to define reality.

We can see it in the awakening all around us, in the faithful showing up in city after city to defend people who are being targeted, much of it happening without national attention.

Sometimes reporters look at this and say something new is happening in religion. But it’s been present for a while. Sometimes people just don’t notice the light until it gets dark.

The truth is, God has been on the move for a while.

Find Your Sacred Texts

So whatever your faith—or lack thereof—I want to encourage you to go back to your sacred texts.

They may be the Torah, the Qur’an, the Gospels, or Buddhist teachings. They may be poetry, philosophy, the writings of your ancestors, Frederick Douglass, or Octavia Butler. They may even be science fiction.

Read them again now. You may be surprised by what you see.

Questions about courage, conscience, fear, truth, power, solidarity, and hope stop being theoretical in moments like this. Stories we may have encountered hundreds of times begin asking different things of us.

But texts alone are not enough. Sacred traditions have always been communal. People argued over these stories, sang them, questioned them, interpreted them, and tried to live them together.

So find people.

If you can return to worship, somewhere near you there is probably a community trying, however imperfectly, to follow the deeper teachings of its tradition. Research. Look around. And if church is simply too painful, make something else: start a book group, gather friends for dinner, or take the activist group you already belong to and spend an evening asking one another why you do this, what keeps you going, and what you refuse to surrender.

I say this as one who almost left altogether when I was in my twenties. I’m glad I did not. We need communities that help us remember who we are. Nothing can replace human connection.

And we need practices.

The last one I wrote about was Be like water.

Here is the next one.

Dignify

Maybe “Dignify!” sounds a little like a Harry Potter spell. I’m okay with that, because authoritarianism casts a kind of spell of its own.

It teaches us to look at another human being and see a category: illegal, criminal, threat, enemy, liberal, MAGA, other. Once a human being becomes a category, things can be done to them that would horrify us if we were actually looking into their face.

Dignifying breaks that spell. It asks us to look again and see a mother, a child, a neighbor, a frightened person, a human being, a child of God.

Dignity is something every person already possesses. Dignifying is what we do when the world tries to strip it away.

Genesis Is More Revolutionary Than I Knew

While writing Who Stole My Bible?, I rediscovered Genesis, largely because Jewish scholarship helped me see things Christians had taught me to miss.

I had heard the creation story all my life: God made the heavens and the earth. God made plants and animals. God made people. Everything was good.

Nice Sunday school story.

Except it is much more politically explosive than that.

Read Genesis alongside the creation stories of the ancient empires surrounding Israel, and the contrast is startling. In imperial mythology, creation could emerge from violence among the gods, and human beings existed to serve divine rulers.

Genesis tells another story.

God brings order from chaos. Again and again, creation is pronounced good. Then comes the astonishing declaration that human beings are made in the image of God.

Not just kings or priests. Not just men. Not just the wealthy, the native-born, the powerful, or the people belonging to the dominant tribe.

Everyone.

The dignity ancient societies associated with rulers is spread across humanity. Every person carries something sacred.

That is not merely a children’s story. It is a radical claim about human worth, because it means no Pharaoh, emperor, president, pastor, billionaire, or political movement gets to decide that another human being is disposable.

Dignify.

I Saw Genesis in McAllen

I was thinking about all of this during Trump’s first term when I traveled to McAllen, Texas, at the height of the family-separation crisis.

I visited the humanitarian respite center led by Sister Norma Pimentel and Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. Families arrived exhausted after their journeys and their encounters with the immigration system. Volunteers welcomed them. People were fed. They were given clean clothing and a chance to wash. Children were treated like children again.

I was standing outside the center when the volunteers began applauding as a long line of families entered fresh from detention.

I watched a boy, wilting on his dad’s shoulders, perk up and smile.

Dignify.

I realized I was watching Genesis 1 in action.

After being treated as dangerous, suspect, alien—after hearing people across the country talk about them as some invading force—they passed under a mantle printed with the invocation: “Restore human dignity.”

We were not rewriting immigration law in that room, as important as that is.

We were doing something both smaller and, in another sense, enormous. We were refusing the lie that these people were somehow less human than the rest of us. And we were sharing that truth with our networks and news channels.

The spiritual practice was simple: look again. A human being. Image of God. Beloved.

Dignify.

Break the spell.

Tyranny fears Compassion

There is a reason authoritarian movements so often begin by scapegoating minorities. The targeted group changes—immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, racial minorities, political opponents—but the spiritual mechanism is remarkably consistent.

The rest of us must first be taught not to care what happens to them.

Martin Niemöller’s famous postwar confession, “First they came for the socialists,” has endured because he eventually understood this terrible logic. Niemöller himself had initially held deeply conservative and nationalist views. The socialists were not his people.

That was precisely the point.

He came to understand the moral catastrophe of allowing the degradation of people outside his own circle. Authoritarianism continually asks us to shrink the circle of people whose suffering counts.

Which is why I pay attention when Christian leaders begin warning people about the dangers of empathy.

Think about how strange that is: Christians being warned about caring too much.

Vice President JD Vance has spoken of an “order of love” in which obligations radiate outward from family and community. Other figures on the Christian right have gone considerably further, attacking empathy itself as morally suspect.

Why devote so much energy to persuading people that empathy is dangerous?

Because empathy can break the spell. The moment you look at the person you have been told to fear and see somebody’s mother, somebody’s child, somebody trying to survive, the propaganda becomes harder to sustain.

Asserting human dignity is dangerous to authoritarianism.

The Harder Practice

There is another edge to Dignify that I don’t want to avoid.

It does not apply only to the people we are trying to protect. It also applies to our enemies.

I don’t mean excusing what they do, pretending cruelty isn’t cruel, corruption isn’t corruption, or authoritarianism isn’t dangerous. In fact, I think the practice demands the opposite: we need to become much more precise about what we oppose.

I notice how easily our attention gets pulled toward ridicule. Trump’s hair. The way he talks. His body. Whether he looks healthy or unhealthy. Whatever bizarre spectacle has consumed the news cycle today.

Meanwhile, far more consequential questions wait for our attention. What policies are causing hospitals to close? Who is losing health care? Who is enriching themselves through access to public power? Whose rights are being stripped away? Who is being detained, deported, or frightened?

Which story actually helps another person understand what is at stake?

When our critique becomes contempt for how our opponents look, speak, or behave, someone who does not already agree with us may hear only contempt. We can lose the moral argument before we have even made it.

Dignifying an opponent does not mean weakening our opposition. It means locating our opposition where it belongs: in what they do, not in whether we believe they are fully human.

This is the harder part, and I need to come back to it in a future piece.

Compassion Breaks the Spell

There is plenty in this moment to rage about, but I also want us to notice what the attack on empathy tells us about our own power.

If compassion were really weak, authoritarian movements would not work so hard to destroy it. If empathy were politically irrelevant, there would be little reason to attack it. If human dignity were sentimental nonsense, every authoritarian project would not need to teach us that some people matter less than others.

We have a freaking superpower.

Our capacity to see the humanity in another person is power. Feeding somebody is power. Learning someone’s name is power. Accompanying a frightened person to court is power. Standing beside someone being bullied is power. Telling the truth about a group being scapegoated is power. Refusing to mock even the person whose actions you vigorously oppose is power.

Sometimes resistance looks like a march, a lawsuit, or civil disobedience. Sometimes it looks like a room in McAllen, Texas, where exhausted strangers walk through a door, and everybody stands up and applauds.

None of those acts is small, because every act of dignifying another human being weakens the spell that authoritarianism depends upon.

So here is the practice.

Find the person our politics is teaching you not to see. Learn their name. Listen to their story. Feed them. Welcome them. Defend them. Stand beside them. On the bus. At the grocery store. Planned, unplanned. Make eye contact. Smile. Build out from there.

This includes how we treat those under the spell as well.

And when you confront someone doing harm, tell the truth about the harm without surrendering your own humanity in the process.

Dignify.

Remind another person who they are. Remind yourself who you are.

And until next time:

Be like water.
Dignify.

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The state of our democracy is fragile. The state of the church is unsettled. But neither story is finished.

The future will be shaped by pastors who refuse to surrender Scripture to extremists, congregations willing to risk comfort in order to tell the truth, and communities prepared to embody a faith that serves the flourishing of all.

Those are the closing words of a new essay the editors of The Presbyterian Outlook invited me to write about the role of the church in this moment.

The invitation meant a great deal to me. But the question it raised is larger than any one denomination:

What kind of religious communities does democracy need now?

Christian nationalism has not succeeded only because its leaders built political organizations, media platforms and donor networks. It has succeeded because it offers a story—a story about who belongs, who threatens us, what America is destined to become and what God supposedly demands.

It is a dangerous story, built around hierarchy, grievance and exclusion. But it is nevertheless a story thick with identity and meaning.

Democracy’s defenders often respond with policies, constitutional principles and institutional procedures. All of these matter. But they are not enough when people are searching for belonging, purpose and moral direction.

We need a more compelling moral vision.

I begin my essay for The Presbyterian Outlook with an encounter I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

Recently, I was riding the Washington Metro on my way to a No Kings protest. I was wearing my clerical collar and carrying a sign invoking the migrant Jesus.

The train was filled with women heading to the demonstration, many carrying handmade signs of their own. At first, they seemed wary of me because of my clergy collar. Then they saw my sign.

The atmosphere changed immediately.

One woman told me she was relieved to see a pastor at the protest. She had left her church. Soon, several women were sharing similar stories.

They had not necessarily abandoned faith. They had walked away from churches that no longer represented the Christianity they believed in.

That conversation has stayed with me because it captures one of the central spiritual crises of our time.

Christian nationalism has captured not only political institutions, but the moral imagination. It offers people identity, belonging, enemies, destiny and a sense of divine purpose.

Those of us who oppose it cannot answer only with better policies or more accurate information. We must also offer a more compelling account of who we are, what we owe one another and what kind of society is worth building together.

For Christians, that does not mean imposing our theology on a pluralistic society. It means recovering a public faith that is strong enough to resist domination and humble enough to defend the freedom and dignity of people who believe differently.

That is the larger argument I explore in “Church, Country and the Crisis of Moral Imagination.”

Mainline Protestant churches are often described as institutions in irreversible decline. The numbers are certainly sobering. But decline is not the same as powerlessness.

Our churches still possess buildings, land, educational institutions, endowments, community relationships and generations of moral wisdom. Our members lead schools, hospitals, businesses, nonprofits and civic organizations.

Our traditions have learned—often through painful struggle—how to hold disagreement, conscience, scholarship and shared governance together.

I know something about the gifts of these traditions because I have been shaped by several of them.

Growing up, I moved among Quaker, Baptist, evangelical and other Christian communities. Each taught me something important. I eventually found my home in the Presbyterian Church, and I remain deeply grateful for what that tradition has taught me.

From Presbyterian mentors, I learned that faith is not only a matter of personal belief. It is also a way of thinking together about how we build a democratic society.

I learned how to advocate, how to think theologically about public life and how to remain in community with people with whom I profoundly disagree.

At our best, Presbyterians understand that shared governance, freedom of conscience and principled disagreement are not signs of weakness. They are disciplines we practice.

And yet, I have sometimes been frustrated by what can feel like a lack of confidence in the power of our own voice and tradition. We can become so aware of institutional decline and historic failure that we forget the power we still carry.

What we have is a pearl of great price: traditions capable of forming people to think critically, resist authoritarianism, protect conscience and work patiently toward the common good.

This wisdom is not ours to hoard, and it is certainly not ours to impose. But neither should we surrender it to those who use Christianity to sanctify domination.

Whatever your tradition—or whatever community first taught you to seek truth and justice—I hope you will fight to reclaim its deepest wisdom now.

What might change if congregations deliberately formed people for democratic courage?

What if pastors taught Scripture not only as a source of private comfort, but as testimony from people who survived empire, exile, occupation and oppression?

What if churches became places where people learned to resist disinformation, protect vulnerable neighbors, organize for the common good and practice a way of living together that was not governed by fear?

What if our congregations understood themselves as training grounds for courage, conscience and democratic participation?

This would not be a nostalgic return to a supposedly golden age of American Christianity.

The church has too often blessed slavery, colonialism, segregation, patriarchy and empire. Recovering a public faith must begin with truth-telling about both church and country.

Religion has also caused profound spiritual harm. Many people have left religious institutions not because they lack spiritual depth, but because those institutions failed to honor their dignity, questions, gifts or experience.

The church must be humble enough to acknowledge that harm without defensiveness.

But our failures do not erase the liberating power within our traditions.

Enslaved people found the God of Exodus even when slaveholders tried to censor the Bible. The Black church transformed spiritual discipline into public moral power. People of faith have sheltered migrants, defended LGBTQ+ young people, and placed their bodies between vulnerable communities and the machinery of state violence.

Again and again, people facing domination have gone deeper into their traditions—not to escape the world, but to change it.

That is the church I want us to remember.

Not a church obsessed with its own survival, but a church capable of forming people who can tell the truth, resist cruelty, build community and refuse to surrender their humanity.

We are living through a season of profound unraveling. Institutions are fraying, cruelty is being normalized and religious language is being used to justify the concentration of power.

But unraveling can also reveal what has become hollow. It can clear space for something more truthful to emerge.

The state of our democracy is fragile. The state of the church is unsettled. But neither story is finished.

The future will be shaped by pastors who refuse to surrender Scripture to extremists, congregations willing to risk comfort in order to tell the truth, and communities prepared to embody a faith that serves the flourishing of all.

Whatever tradition has shaped you, I hope you will search it for the resources we need now: courage without domination, conviction without coercion, community without exclusion and faith spacious enough to defend the dignity of every person.

Read the full essay, “Church, Country and the Crisis of Moral Imagination,” in The Presbyterian Outlook.

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While it was still Dark

Many Protestants do not pay much attention to feast days. But perhaps we should make an exception for Mary—the woman known throughout Christian tradition as the “Apostle to the Apostles.” She stayed with Jesus through his crucifixion, went to the tomb while it was still dark, and became the first person entrusted to proclaim the resurrection.

Of course it was a woman.

And of course, when Mary Magdalene and the other women told the men what they had seen, their testimony was initially dismissed as an idle tale.

Some things never change.

But Mary knew what she had seen. Death had not won. The stone had been moved. Something new was already breaking into the world.

That is the spiritual posture I am trying to cultivate in this season: paying attention to what is emerging while it is still dark.

During this Trump term, I made a decision. I would not let him take up residence in my head.

I would not spend every day running around with my hair on fire. I would not let his latest outrage determine the emotional weather inside me. That does not mean ignoring what is happening. It does not mean minimizing the danger or pretending everything will somehow work itself out.

It means refusing to grant him dominion over my nervous system, my imagination, or my spiritual life.

Authoritarian leaders cultivate the illusion of omnipotence. They want us fixated on them—enraged, frightened, exhausted, and convinced that nothing exists outside their power.

Permanent outrage can feel like vigilance, but it can also become another form of captivity.

I have a friend who rages about Trump almost constantly. I understand the impulse. There is plenty to rage about. But I sometimes tell her: Do not let him get to you. Do not give him all your energy. Save some for strategy. Save some for community. Save some for beauty and love. Save some for the work that is actually yours to do.

Mary Magdalene teaches me another way of being in a terrifying time.

An encounter with Magdalene

A few years ago, I was in Oxford, England, with a group of religious leaders strategizing about how to counter Christian nationalism.

I was overwhelmed by the state of the world and carrying some personal travails of my own. One afternoon, I went for a walk and wandered into a church nestled on a small triangular piece of land between two bustling roads.

The church bore a name I had rarely encountered: St. Mary Magdalen.

I stopped in my tracks.

Inside the entryway was a sign explaining that Mary Magdalene is known as the Apostle to the Apostles because she was chosen to witness and spread the news of Jesus’ resurrection. She was among the few followers who remained near Jesus at his death, and she returned early on Easter morning to anoint his body.

The church itself dated back centuries. I was struck that people so long ago had built a sanctuary honoring a woman whose leadership the church has so often obscured.

I sat quietly, gazing at an amber-hued statue carved by a Catholic sister. Mary held a jar for anointing. Her face was calm and resolute. Her stance was unshakable.

She had come to stare death in the face while others hid.

She did not abandon the mission when things got hard. She may have doubted. She surely feared. But she did not walk away.

Because she remained present, she became the first witness to the resurrection.

As I meditated alone in that chapel, an image came to me:

Be like water.

Water does not stop to despair over a boulder in a stream. It does not become mesmerized by the obstacle. It moves over it, around it, and—given enough time—through it.

Water does not need to pretend the boulder is not there. It simply refuses to let the boulder determine where the journey ends.

I later learned that “Be water,” a phrase associated with Bruce Lee, became a guiding principle for Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protesters.

Rather than remaining in one place where authorities could easily suppress them, people gathered, dispersed, changed tactics, and reappeared elsewhere. Their resistance was flexible and difficult to contain.

It is easy, in a moment like ours, to freeze—to stare endlessly at the boulder or retreat into an upper room.

But if we become like water, we can keep moving. We can do the next faithful thing. We can remain committed to the vision Jesus gave us: a world in which everyone can flourish.

And when I look closely, I see people doing exactly that.

Signs of resurrection

I have been pulling some of these examples from the Noncooperation Database, which I recommend perusing whenever you need courage, hope, or practical ideas.

Consider what has been happening as the Trump administration attempts to build enormous new immigration detention centers in warehouses across the country.

In Social Circle, Georgia—a town of approximately 5,000 people—the federal government purchased a warehouse it intended to convert into a facility holding as many as 10,000 detained immigrants, supported by as many as 2,500 employees.

The proposed detention center would have been roughly twice the size of the town itself.

City leaders did not possess the power to reverse federal immigration policy. But they did control something the facility needed: water.

City Manager Eric Taylor placed a lock on the warehouse’s water meter and announced that water and sewer service would remain unavailable until federal officials could explain how the massive facility would operate without overwhelming the town’s already strained infrastructure. The City Council backed him.

And it worked.

In June, the Department of Homeland Security abandoned its plan to convert the Social Circle warehouse into a detention center.

Be like water, indeed.

In Durant, Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation learned that a vacant 1.2-million-square-foot Big Lots distribution center near its government headquarters was being considered as a possible ICE detention facility.

The Tribal Council unanimously opposed the proposal. Durant’s City Council passed an ordinance requiring any detention center to obtain a conditional-use permit. Then the Choctaw Nation purchased the warehouse and surrounding land itself—removing the site from consideration and giving the Nation control over what would be built beside its headquarters and community institutions.

In Salt Lake City, approximately 500 people gathered outside another warehouse purchased by ICE for $145 million. Some had been protesting for years. Others had never attended a protest before.

One woman left her wedding-anniversary plans because she believed showing up was more important. Another came because her son-in-law had been detained by ICE. Protesters raised questions about the human cost, the enormous expenditure of public money, and the wisdom of attempting to confine thousands of human beings in a warehouse.

These communities are not all using the same tactic.

One locked a water meter. Another passed a zoning ordinance and purchased the property. Another filled the streets.

This is what noncooperation looks like: people identifying the power they actually possess and refusing to surrender it.

Resurrection does not always arrive with trumpets. Sometimes it looks like a municipal water regulation.

Sometimes it looks like a tribal council resolution.

Sometimes it looks like a first-time protester holding a handmade sign.

Holding the line

We are also seeing signs of resurrection inside powerful institutions.

In February, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic refused Pentagon demands to remove safeguards from its Claude technology. The company’s restrictions prohibited the use of its systems for mass domestic surveillance and for lethal autonomous weapons operating without meaningful human control.

The Pentagon insisted that it should be able to use the technology for any lawful purpose. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei held the line, arguing that the technology was not reliable enough for such consequential uses and that some applications posed unacceptable dangers to democratic society.

The administration retaliated. Anthropic was labeled a national-security supply-chain risk, and the government moved to ban its technology.

But the company’s refusal inspired others. Hundreds of employees at Google and OpenAI signed letters supporting Anthropic and calling on their own companies to maintain similar safeguards.

Sometimes resurrection looks like saying no.

Sometimes it is the decision to draw a line before the pressure comes—and then refusing to move it when powerful people threaten you.

We are seeing truth emerge from inside the military as well.

After an Iranian drone attack killed six American service members and wounded more than 20 in Kuwait, survivors publicly disputed the Pentagon’s description of what had happened. They said their position had not been adequately fortified and that their unit had been left dangerously exposed. They refused to allow euphemisms and official talking points to obscure what they had witnessed.

Their testimony cannot bring back the dead. But truth-telling prevents those deaths from being buried beneath a lie.

That, too, is a form of resurrection.

The next faithful thing

None of these stories means that everything is okay.

Resurrection does not erase crucifixion. The risen Jesus still bears his wounds.

Resurrection means that cruelty, fear, and death do not get the final word. It means new life can begin before the darkness has lifted and before anyone is certain how the story will end.

Mary Magdalene did not arrive at the tomb carrying a strategic plan for transforming the Roman Empire.

She carried a jar of ointment. She went to perform the next faithful act available to her.

Because she showed up, she saw something the people hiding in the upper room could not yet see.

That is the invitation before us.

We do not need to spend every hour reacting to Trump’s every utterance. We do not need to allow outrage to consume the energy we require for courage, creativity, and sustained resistance.

We need to remain awake.

We need to look closely.

We need to find our water meters, our zoning ordinances, our institutional red lines, our communities, our voices, and our jars of ointment.

We need to do the next faithful thing.

All around us, people are refusing to cooperate with cruelty. They are protecting their neighbors, challenging lies, interrupting harmful systems, and discovering power they did not know they possessed.

The stone is not always rolled away at once. Sometimes it moves one determined inch at a time.

But it is moving.

May God give us the resolve of Mary Magdalene.

May we refuse to hide in the upper room.

May we learn to flow like water—over, around, and through the boulders placed before us.

And may justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

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This weekend, smoke from Canadian wildfires hangs over Washington, D.C., and stretches across the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic. More than 100 million people across the country have been affected by the smoke. The city is washed in a strange gray light, and the familiar outline of the Capitol seems to recede behind the haze.

As I walk my dog—or, more accurately, as she walks me—I find myself looking toward that obscured dome and thinking about another cloud settling over the country.

On Thursday, President Trump used a primetime White House address to resurrect the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He claimed that newly declassified documents revealed Chinese interference and dangerous vulnerabilities in American election systems, even though an earlier U.S. intelligence assessment found no evidence that foreign interference altered the outcome of the election. He demanded prosecutions and used the allegations to press for sweeping new voting restrictions.

This is much more than an airing of old grievances.

It is a strategy.

Trump is manufacturing a pretext for interfering in the November midterms. If he can persuade enough people to believe this lie, then foreign powers, corrupt officials, voting machines, or an unnamed “deep state” can be blamed if voters deliver a result he does not like.

As he was speaking, I was on Zoom with leaders from Faith in Place, an environmental-justice organization working with spiritual communities across Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Our subject was election protection.

At first glance, these might seem like separate conversations: Canadian wildfires, environmental justice, and the integrity of the midterm elections. But they are deeply connected.

Without fair elections, independent courts, an accountable government, a free press, and the right to organize, our ability to protect people and creation rapidly disappears.

The Haze That Hides a Power Grab

Democracies rarely collapse in one dramatic moment. Today’s autocrats more often come to power through elections and then hollow out democracy from within.

They promise order and prosperity. They tell people that immigrants, religious minorities, trans people, racial minorities, or political opponents are responsible for everything that has gone wrong.

Once in office, they weaken the institutions capable of holding them accountable: courts, legislatures, universities, the civil service, independent media, civic organizations, and eventually the rules governing the next election.

The elections continue. But the field is tilted so dramatically that those in power become increasingly difficult to remove.

Trump and his allies have had years to study where resistance came from during his first term. They returned to office with a much clearer plan for bringing independent parts of government under presidential control.

Now the electoral system itself is the next major target.

Trump has been teaching his followers to distrust election officials, voting machines, intelligence agencies, state governments, courts, and any future result that does not preserve his power.

After enough time in the haze, people can begin to accept it as normal.

The Haze That Hides What the Power Grab Is For

But the political haze does more than conceal a power grab. It obscures what that power grab is for.

While Trump and other authoritarian leaders demonize immigrants and minority communities—blaming them for the economic pain and insecurity people feel—they create systems that direct taxpayer dollars, natural resources, and government power toward themselves, their families, and their allies.

Authoritarian politics is often presented as a struggle over national identity or cultural values. Beneath that rhetoric, however, lies a much more material contest:

Who will control the land, the minerals, the energy, the water, the technology, the labor, and the public money?

Who will profit from extraction—and who will be forced to live with the damage?

Consider the U.S.-backed tungsten project in Kazakhstan.

President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick personally helped negotiate an agreement giving a small group of American investors control of 70 percent of a joint venture to develop one of the world’s largest untapped tungsten reserves. Tungsten is essential to missile warheads, fighter jets, ammunition, semiconductors, and other advanced technologies. The project secured preliminary commitments for as much as $1.6 billion in potential financing from U.S. government agencies.

At the same time their fathers were using the power of the United States government to advance the agreement, Trump and Lutnick’s sons were doing business with private investors positioned to benefit from it.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had invested in a company that later agreed to merge with the group controlling the Kazakhstan project, giving them an indirect financial interest in the venture. A firm controlled by the Lutnick family and run by Howard Lutnick’s sons helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for an investor connected to the deal.

And Kazakhstan is not an isolated case.

According to federal filings examined by The New York Times, one or both of the Trump and Lutnick families have financial ties to at least 14 companies seeking critical-minerals deals, federal financing, or permits from the administration in which their fathers hold power. All 14 have either received offers of government assistance or have applications pending before the Commerce Department. The federal support already offered or under consideration reportedly exceeds $8.9 billion.

The administration is deciding which companies will gain access to strategic resources and potentially billions of taxpayer dollars—while the president’s and commerce secretary’s own families have financial connections to companies operating in the same arena.

This is not merely the appearance of a conflict surrounding one mine. It is a governing model in which presidential authority, national-security policy, taxpayer financing, and family enrichment become increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another.

The same political forces seeking fewer restraints on presidential power also seek fewer restraints on fossil-fuel development, mining, artificial intelligence, data centers, weapons production, and corporate wealth.

Democratic debate, environmental review, labor protections, and community consent are treated as obstacles to be brushed aside.

The result is not only corruption. It is polluted air, contaminated water, unaffordable energy, weakened public services, displaced communities, and enormous transfers of wealth toward those already closest to power.

The haze tells ordinary people that immigrants, trans people, racial minorities, or political opponents are responsible for their struggles.

Meanwhile, the people generating the haze quietly consolidate power and divide up the country’s wealth.

The Haze That Makes Authoritarians Seem All-Powerful

The cloud hanging over our democracy is intended to make us feel powerless.

But authoritarian governments are not all-powerful. They depend upon cooperation.

They need civil servants to carry out their orders, businesses to finance and supply them, media institutions to normalize them, religious communities to bless them, workers to keep systems operating, and ordinary people to decide that resistance is futile.

That cooperation can be withdrawn.

Around the world, communities have interrupted the authoritarian playbook through voting, public protest, nonviolent noncooperation, trusted local organizing, independent journalism, credible political alternatives, and broad coalitions that cross race, religion, geography, and ideology.

The work rarely begins with the dramatic confrontation that later makes the history books.

It begins much earlier.

A pastor makes a call.

A lawyer shares a phone number.

A congregation opens its doors.

A neighbor gives someone a ride to vote.

Election officials know that the community will defend them.

Journalists have trusted sources ready when disinformation begins to spread.

Labor leaders, immigrant organizations, disability advocates, educators, environmental groups, and faith communities build relationships before the crisis arrives.

That is the kind of preparation we discussed with Faith in Place.

We need to help people verify their voter registration—and check it again before Election Day.

We need to encourage early voting so there is time to resolve identification, transportation, disability-access, or ballot problems.

We need poll workers, nonpartisan observers, trusted messengers, election-protection lawyers, and people prepared to defend the counting and certification of lawful votes.

And communities need to rehearse the harder scenarios:

• What happens if armed groups intimidate voters?

• What happens if polling places suddenly change?

• What happens if election officials are threatened or refuse to certify lawful results?

• What happens if federal agents arrive at a local election office claiming the authority to seize ballots, voting equipment, or registration files?

The goal is to avoid having untrained people improvise during a dangerous confrontation.

By planning ahead, we can build the legal relationships, communication systems, habits of verification, and disciplined networks that allow a community to respond quickly and wisely without escalating the danger.

What We Can Do Now

Every person, congregation, and community has a role to play based on its particular gifts, skills, relationships, and resources.

Study successful resistance.

Freedom Trainers has assembled an impressive collection of examples showing how ordinary people have been refusing cooperation with authoritarian policies. It knocked my socks off. Its website also offers resources to help groups prepare for election threats and other authoritarian actions. Really, you will be amazed and heartened by all of these.

Read the examples together. Ask what made the actions successful. Look at the relationships, preparation, discipline, and clearly defined goals that came before the public confrontation.

Build national and local connections.

The Interfaith Alliance offers training and updates on protecting free and fair elections. Sojourners provides a Faith Election Protection Guide. Amission committee, adult education group, or entire congregation can work through those materials together.

Then connect with state and local civic-engagement organizations. Learn their strategies, attend their trainings, and ask what support they actually need.

Do not wait until a crisis to exchange phone numbers.

Understand where the risks are greatest.

Consult the Voting Rights Lab’s 2026 Election Risk Heat Map.

Even when your own community is not identified as being at high risk, it may have relationships, volunteers, financial resources, communications capacity, or public influence that can support communities that are.

Ask not only “What might happen here?” but also “Who might need our support?”

Map your congregational assets.

Faith communities bring moral credibility, trusted relationships, organizational partnerships, local knowledge, buildings, communications networks, and volunteers.

Every community is different.

One congregation may have lawyers. Another may have buses or vans. Another may have relationships with public officials, journalists, labor leaders, or immigrant communities. Some may have buildings that can serve as training sites, gathering spaces, cooling centers, or places of refuge.

What does your community have?

What can it contribute?

Whom do you already know?

And which relationships do you need to begin building now?

We Are Not Powerless Beneath This Cloud

Faith communities have a particular role to play.

We possess buildings, relationships, moral language, public credibility, communications networks, and traditions that teach us how to remain human under pressure.

At our best, we can help people resist fear without denying the danger.

We can tell the truth when lies are being used to isolate and paralyze us.

And we can remind one another that domination is never as permanent as it pretends to be.

The smoke from the fires will eventually lift from Washington.

The political cloud will be harder to disperse. It has been gathering for years, fed by concentrated wealth, racial resentment, Christian nationalism, technological power, environmental extraction, and the willingness of too many institutions to accommodate what they should resist.

But the outcome is not inevitable.

Remember. Hope is not the belief that everything will somehow turn out fine.

Hope is the spiritual discipline of acting as though our choices still matter—and then organizing so that they do.

I haven’t written for a few weeks. It is hard to juggle writing and organizing. But I hope the organizing lends itself to more interesting writing.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been in deep conversation with decision-makers in philanthropy, faith, and human rights spaces about the need to counter Christian nationalism as part of the broader autocratic playbook. My guest column in Inside Philanthropy and my Substack post, “The Christian Right Funded Its Voice. Why Don’t We?” sparked more conversation than I expected.

All that to say: I’ve been busy. But I’m getting back to writing.

Something is Shifting

And here is the good news. What I’m seeing out there leads me to believe that something is shifting. I think there is an historic opportunity before us to reclaim faith for justice.

To recover the legacies of the Social Gospel and the Civil Rights Movement, not as nostalgia, but as living traditions that can meet this moment.

For decades, I have argued that progressive and moderate Christians have failed to fund our own voice. For years, no one seemed especially interested. This time, people were. A couple of denominational publications even reprinted the piece. I did not expect that level of engagement.

I think several things are happening at once.

Here I’m paraphrasing the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, who attended a recent global conference in Lisbon hosted by Faith in Democracy, the organization I founded and lead.

First, after decades of well-funded Christian Right attacks designed to polarize denominations and weaken their public witness, many conservatives have already broken away. In some ways, that has left the rest of the church more unified than we have been in a long time.

Second, Christian nationalism has grown so brazen that many Christians are finally seeing what is at stake. We cannot leave the public square to those who manipulate faith in the service of leaders bent on dismantling the values and institutions that protect human and planetary flourishing. We see that project is not about faith. It is about greed, power, and control. And it can only be dismantled through countering it with true faith.

The Battle for the Moral Meaning of Faith

The result is a battle on the world stage over the moral meaning of faith itself.

You may have noticed the full-on, knock-down, drag-out debates over what scripture and tradition say about immigration, artificial intelligence, war, poverty, democracy, and who counts as our neighbor.

Pope Leo is modeling one kind of response. He sees clearly that autocratic-style governments seek to dismantle the systems that have protected human dignity since World War II. He has been outspoken about war, migration, human rights, polarization, and the ethical dangers of artificial intelligence. He is pointing the church toward the real threat.

On the Protestant side, Bishop Mariann Budde has modeled similar leadership. Her simple plea for the president to show mercy gave hope to millions because it named what so many people were longing to hear from the church: courage, compassion, and moral clarity.

Something new is bubbling up.

And there is data to suggest this opening is real.

A new PRRI analysis found that white Christians remain more likely than Christians of color and non-Christians to view Trump favorably. But the numbers are moving. White evangelical Protestants are still the religious group most likely to support him, with 67 percent viewing him favorably in May 2026. Yet that is down from 72 percent just before the 2024 election, and from an all-time high of 76 percent in May 2025. White Catholics have also shifted: 51 percent viewed Trump favorably in September 2024, but by May 2026 that had dropped to 46 percent, with a majority now holding unfavorable views. White mainline Protestants have moved too, from 53 percent favorability in September 2024 to 48 percent in May 2026.

That does not mean Christian nationalism is collapsing. It does mean the religious terrain is not fixed. People are reachable. The story is still being written.

Faith-Forward Public Leadership

Another reason I see a sea change: a number of clergy and faith-rooted leaders are running for office without muting their faith.

James Talarico, a Texas state representative and Presbyterian seminarian, is running for the U.S. Senate. He has drawn national attention for a public theology rooted in love, justice, and democracy.

Sarah Trone Garriott, an Iowa state senator and ordained Lutheran minister, is running for Congress. She speaks openly about the biblical mandate to care for the poor and vulnerable.

Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor and candidate for governor, frequently grounds his public service in moral language and accountability.

Matt Schultz, an Alaska congressional candidate and Presbyterian pastor, is engaging voters through a language of compassion, integrity, and public responsibility.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, the U.S. senator from Georgia and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, has long been one of the most visible leaders reclaiming religious language for justice.

This is bigger than one or two charismatic candidates. According to reporting from The New York Times, Vote Common Good has identified at least fourteen Democratic clergy candidates running in twelve states, with at least eight running for Congress.

For the past few decades, there have been only a handful of clergy members in Congress. And we are especially unaccustomed to hearing this kind of overt moral and theological language from white Christian clergy on the Democratic side. That is part of what feels new. In addition, these candidates are not merely mentioning faith as biography (as Obama and Biden did well). They are weaving scripture into their public arguments, directly countering Christian nationalism, and offering a different account of what Christianity requires in public life.

This is a new generation of faith-forward public leadership.

Why is this a good thing? Shouldn’t we keep faith out of politics and politics out of faith?

Not exactly.

Politics is how we organize our life together as a city, state, or nation. Our faiths have a great deal to say about that. Bring good news to the poor. Freedom to the oppressed. Care for “the least of these.” Love your neighbor.

We cannot pretend those teachings have nothing to do with how we vote, govern, spend public money, welcome strangers, protect the vulnerable, or structure our common life.

Do we bring faith into politics in a way that is humble, inclusive, and democratic? Or do we use faith to dominate others?

Christian nationalists seek to impose a narrow, oppressive, conservative interpretation of Christianity on everyone else, both through policy and through claims about whose voice counts as truly American or truly Christian.

That is very different from candidates or public leaders saying: this is who I am, this is what formed me, and this is why I support the policies I do.

Breaking the false binary of partisan faith

I’m encouraged by this because it contests Christian nationalist worldviews. It helps people who have been confused about how to connect faith to voting. It also breaks the false binary that has dominated American politics for far too long.

For years, the left often countered the Christian Right by suggesting, or at least implying, that faith had no place in the public square. We certainly embraced faith when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless clergy, lay leaders, and organizers were leading the Civil Rights Movement. But as Republican operatives began using religion to win over Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s, the Democratic Party gradually backed away from religious language altogether.

That retreat had consequences.

Over time, Republicans became branded as the “Christian” party. Many Christians came to believe that being faithful meant being Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats were branded as godless, and too often we let that label stick.

Political strategists used to call this the “God gap”: the perception that Republicans were the party of religion and Democrats were the party of secularism. But that gap was never inevitable. It was built through decades of conservative organizing, media investment, and political branding — and through the left’s own retreat from religious language.

This was always a distortion of history.

Clergy were among the first to help women access abortion care before Roe. Clergy helped lead the Civil Rights Movement. Faith leaders backed labor rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, peace movements, and economic justice. The progressive left pursued legal strategies to constrain the Religious Right, but too often did so with rhetoric that made it sound hostile to religion itself.

Today we have an opportunity to break that false binary.

If one party always talks about religion and the other almost never does, the religious worldview of that one party will shape public opinion. It may even reshape the public meaning of the faith itself.

That is what happened. The Right rebranded Christianity in its own image: anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice, anti-labor, anti-voting rights, anti-immigrant, and anti-economic justice. And millions of people walked out of churches because they thought that was Christianity.

But what if another public Christian voice became visible again?

What if people heard faith leaders and public officials speak of Christianity as a call to mercy, solidarity, democracy, human dignity, and the protection of the vulnerable?

What we may be seeing now is the beginning of a challenge to the old “God gap.” Not by mimicking the Religious Right. Not by baptizing a party platform. But by refusing to let Christian nationalism define Christianity in public.

But wait, you may ask. Does that violate the First Amendment? Does it undermine the separation of church and state? Does it drag our faith into the dirty business of politics?

No.

The First Amendment protects our right to speak about our faith in public life. It also prevents the government from privileging one religion over another, or allowing one religious view to dominate government and policy.

In a democracy, all of us bring our perspectives, values, traditions, and convictions into public debate. Then we vote on how we will live together. The Constitution does not require people of faith to be silent. It guarantees that people of all faiths, and no faith, can participate equally.

The New Thing Rising Beneath Us

A lot of us feel as though everything is ending.

Democracy is in decline. Church membership is in decline. The economy feels more precarious every day. Institutions we trusted are failing us. The future feels harder to imagine.

Rebecca Solnit, in Hope in the Dark and her new book The Beginning Comes After the End, reminds us that change often becomes visible only after long, hidden labor. Sometimes things fall apart before they come together. Sometimes the new thing has been bubbling underground for years, preparing to break through like spring.

Change that seems sudden is often the result of decades, or even centuries, of faithful action.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe from communist dictatorship seemed impossible until it happened. Today, Indigenous communities are seeing lands restored after centuries of dispossession. Renewable energy has surged in ways that once seemed unimaginable. None of this happened by accident. It happened because people kept acting, organizing, imagining, resisting, and building. It looked small, even ludicrous—until it didn’t.

I recently wrote that I was seeking to join the National Capital Presbytery. I was approved. Now I am watching a Signal thread of pastors doing heroic work showing up for immigrants. I am talking with secular colleagues who are amazed and restored by what the clergy are doing in their cities. People are heartened, but even more, they are spiritually renewed and inspired.

I believe, and pray, that we are in a moment like the one Solnit describes.

A moment made by thousands of small acts over time.

A moment when the conditions may finally be right.

Never doubt that your voice is needed.

Your spiritual voice. Your faith voice. Your small acts.

This is how the world changes.

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Immigrants. Transgender people. Black and brown communities. Women who refuse to submit. Professors. Journalists. Judges. Protesters. Federal workers. Human rights lawyers. Churches that shelter migrants. Clergy who preach mercy too loudly.

Now the Pentagon has given us another warning.

When the State Decides Whose Faith Counts

Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense has reduced its list of recognized religious affiliations for service members from more than 200 to just 31. Unitarian Universalists are gone. Humanists are gone. Atheists, pagans, Wiccans and many others are gone or collapsed into broader categories. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a deeply rooted American religious tradition with many conservative members, many veterans and many reliable Republican voters — was not listed as its own Christian denomination in the way many LDS leaders and Utah Republicans expected.

That should stop us cold.

Because this is how it works. First they come for the people the public has been trained to ignore or fear. Then they come for the people who thought they were safe.

A threat to anyone’s rights is a threat to all rights. A government that can decide which faiths count can eventually decide which consciences count. A movement that can strip protections from one vulnerable group can use the same logic against another. A politics that teaches us to accept the dehumanization of our neighbor will not stop at the edge of our own community.

That is why all Christians should be concerned. Progressive Christians should be concerned. Moderate Christians should be concerned. Conservative Christians should be concerned. Secular people should be concerned too.

The Trump administration clearly likes religion when religion serves its interests. It likes religion when it blesses cruelty as strength, exclusion as order, domination as masculinity, and nationalism as faithfulness.

What it cannot tolerate is independent faith. It cannot tolerate churches that say immigrants are made in the image of God. It cannot tolerate bishops who say mass deportations violate human dignity. It cannot tolerate Christians who insist that transgender people are beloved. It cannot tolerate Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, humanist, Unitarian Universalist, pagan, atheist or agnostic service members who complicate the fantasy of a single “Christian nation.” It cannot tolerate any moral community that reminds the state it is not God.

That is why this Pentagon story matters.

It would be easy to dismiss it as an administrative change. A form. A database. A military personnel code. It is something more than that.

The Authoritarian Playbook

Authoritarianism often advances through bureaucracy. It moves through categories, checkboxes, eligibility rules, grant requirements, disciplinary procedures, visa policies, school guidelines, and personnel codes. It does not always arrive with a dramatic announcement. Sometimes it arrives as a quiet narrowing of who is named, who is counted, who is served, and who is protected.

For Unitarian Universalists, this is not a small thing. UUs have long stood in the stream of religious pluralism, civil rights, LGBTQ equality, reproductive freedom and immigrant justice. They are precisely the kind of faith community authoritarian religion finds inconvenient: deeply moral, often progressive, and unwilling to confuse faithfulness with obedience to the state.

For Latter-day Saints, the warning is different but just as serious. Many LDS voters have been part of the Republican coalition for generations. Many are culturally conservative. Many have supported politicians who promised to defend religious freedom. Yet when the machinery of religious narrowing began to move, even they discovered they could be diminished by it.

This is very revealing.

Today, it is Unitarian Universalists, humanists, pagans, Wiccans, and Latter-day Saints who see how arbitrary the categories can become.

Tomorrow it could be Catholics defending migrants, Methodists blessing same-sex couples, Presbyterians protesting authoritarianism, Baptists opposing political violence, evangelicals refusing to baptize cruelty as strength, or any congregation that says no when the state demands religious cover for injustice.

They eventually come for everyone because the project was never really about protecting faith. It was about controlling it.

We have seen this throughout the Trump administration’s second term. The administration has targeted transgender service members in the name of military readiness. It has waged war on “DEI” and “gender ideology,” as if the presence of women, Black leaders, LGBTQ people or honest history were threats to national strength. It has rescinded long-standing protections that kept immigration enforcement away from houses of worship. It has forced religious communities into court to defend the basic freedom to gather, worship, shelter and serve without turning sanctuaries into hunting grounds.

And it has clashed not with one pope, but with two.

Pope Francis rebuked the administration’s mass deportation plans, warning that removing people purely because of their immigration status violates human dignity and “will end badly.” Trump’s border czar responded by telling him, in effect, to stay in his lane.

Then Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, continued to press the moral issue. He has called for humane treatment of migrants and warned of a global spiritual and cultural crisis marked by violence, polarization and disregard for human rights. That is exactly the kind of faith this administration fears: not faith as decoration, not faith as a campaign prop, but faith as a moral check on power.

Authoritarian movements know that power is won not only through courts, elections and police forces, but through the stories people tell about who belongs. They tell us the nation is under threat. They tell us “real” citizens are being replaced. They tell us children, families, faith and tradition are in danger. They tell us a strong leader is needed to restore order.

Then they point to the people we are supposed to fear: migrants, LGBTQ people, feminists, racial minorities, religious minorities, journalists, judges, professors, protesters.

Once fear takes hold, exclusion begins to feel like protection. Cruelty is reframed as courage. Democratic opposition becomes betrayal. And the institutions that exist to protect pluralism — courts, universities, civil society, the press, houses of worship — become targets themselves.

The Pentagon’s faith-list purge is one more manifestation of that strategy. It sits alongside the attacks on transgender troops, the purge of DEI, the demonization of immigrants, the threats against universities, the intimidation of law firms, the assaults on judges, the attacks on journalists and the efforts to make churches afraid to shelter their neighbors.

The through-line is control: who belongs, who can serve, who can teach, who can protest, who can cross a border, who can receive care, which histories can be told, which religions are recognized and which forms of Christianity are acceptable.

The Freedom We Defend for Others

But faith, at its best, refuses that control.

Faith says the image of God is not distributed by government category. Faith says the stranger is not disposable. Faith says the child at the border, the trans service member, the Muslim neighbor, the Jewish student, the atheist soldier, the pagan chaplain, the UU minister, the LDS family, the Catholic bishop, the Black officer, the immigrant mother and the frightened worshipper all belong to the circle of human dignity.

You do not have to be religious to care about this. Secular democracy depends on freedom of conscience too. A state that can control religion can control nonreligion. Pluralism is not a gift religious people extend to others. It is the ground on which all of us stand.

That is why we cannot wait until our own group is targeted to speak.

Latter-day Saints should defend Unitarian Universalists. Unitarian Universalists should defend Latter-day Saints. Christians should defend Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, atheists and humanists. Secular people should defend religious liberty. Religious people should defend secular democracy.

The administration wants us isolated. It wants each community to calculate whether the latest attack really affects them. It wants progressive Christians to shrug when conservatives are slighted, and conservative Christians to shrug when progressives are erased. It wants secular people to see attacks on religious communities as someone else’s problem, and religious people to see attacks on atheists or humanists as no problem at all.

That is how rights disappear: one category at a time, while everyone else decides whether to care.

We must decide now that we care.

The Pentagon’s list may look like a bureaucratic footnote. It is not. It is a warning flare. When the government starts narrowing which faiths count, it is also narrowing which people count. And when any person’s dignity becomes negotiable, democracy itself is already in danger.

They eventually come for everyone.

So everyone must answer.

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On Sunday morning, as Christian nationalist leaders gathered on the National Mall to “rededicate” America to God, I was sitting in worship at Metropolitan AME Church.

The contrast was almost too stark.

On the Mall, House Speaker Mike Johnson prayed that the United States, in its 250th year, would be “rededicated” as “one nation under God.” The daylong event, called Rededicate 250, brought together prominent Trump allies, evangelical leaders, political figures, worship music, patriotic imagery, and speakers who advanced the idea that America has a particularly Christian founding and future. Religion News Service reported that the program was overwhelmingly Christian, with mainline Protestants and many non-Christian faith traditions largely absent.

Some of this can sound benign if you do not know how to decode it. But as scholar Matthew D. Taylor explains in his helpful “Field Guide to Rededicate 250,” the language of “rededication” is doing theological and political work. It assumes America was once dedicated to God in a particular way and must now be restored to that identity. In Taylor’s reading, the event was not only nostalgic Christian nationalism; it was part of a forward-looking effort to privilege a particular form of Christianity through public power.

The Progressive National Baptist Convention, the historically Black denomination Martin Luther King Jr. once called home, named the danger clearly. In a statement cited by RNS, PNBC leaders warned against “the continued rise of White Christian Nationalism in American public life” and expressed concern about public gatherings that “merge Christian symbolism with exclusionary politics, extremist rhetoric, and partisan loyalty while excluding the rich diversity of faith traditions and communities that make up our nation.” Such displays, they said, “do not reflect the fullness of the American faith experience nor the inclusive spirit of democracy.”

That is exactly right.

A Church That Knows the Cost of Witness

Before I entered Metropolitan AME, I noticed the heavy security outside. It was not incidental. This is a historic Black church that has already been targeted by political extremists. After a pro-Trump rally in 2020, members of the Proud Boys vandalized its Black Lives Matter sign. So on the very morning Christian nationalist leaders gathered on the Mall to claim America for God, I walked into a Black church whose witness has required not only courage, but protection.

That, too, is a sign of the times.

Inside Metropolitan AME, I was worshipping in a sanctuary whose very existence tells another story about God and America.

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Metropolitan AME was born from protest against segregation. Its own history records that the church was formed from Israel Bethel AME, founded in 1821, and Union Bethel AME, founded in 1838 — both emerging from Black Methodists’ dissatisfaction with racial segregation in Washington’s white Methodist churches. The parent AME movement itself grew out of an anti-segregation protest in Philadelphia in 1787.

Metropolitan AME has been a center of worship, civic life, anti-slavery leadership, education, voter registration, and public witness for generations. Frederick Douglass worshipped there regularly, and his funeral was held there in 1895. The funerals and memorials of other towering figures, including Blanche Kelso Bruce, A. Philip Randolph, and Rosa Parks, were also held there.

So while one version of Christianity was being performed on the Mall wrapped in flags, hierarchy, grievance, and the language of national destiny, another version was being embodied in a sanctuary built by people who knew that faithfulness often requires resisting the nation’s sins.

That contrast is the heart of the matter before us.

We are not merely debating whether religion belongs in public life. We are debating what kind of religion will shape public life.

Will it be a faith that baptizes exclusion? Or a faith that widens the circle of belonging? Will it be a faith that claims America for one religious tribe? Or a faith that helps build a democracy where every person bears the image of God?

Christian nationalism is not simply Christianity with patriotic music. It is not ordinary civic prayer.

It takes Christian symbols and uses them to authorize hierarchy: Christian over non-Christian, native-born over immigrant, straight over queer, male over female, white over Black and brown, strongman over neighbor. It rewrites history, and it tells people that exclusion is holiness and that power is proof of God’s favor.

Christian nationalism is powerful because it understands something many progressives have forgotten: people do not live by policy papers alone.

People need belonging. They need meaning. They need a story large enough to hold their fear and their hope.

Christian nationalism offers all three — belonging, meaning, and story — but in distorted form. It offers belonging through exclusion. Meaning through grievance. Story through domination.

The church must offer something better.

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The Faith America Needs Now

That is why Metropolitan AME mattered so much to me on Sunday.

To worship there on that morning was to be reminded that Christianity in America has never had only one public face.

There has always been a Christianity of empire, and there has always been a Christianity of liberation. There has always been a Christianity that blesses domination, and there has always been a Christianity that helps people survive it, resist it, and imagine something more faithful.

The Black church knows this in its bones. It has never had the luxury of separating pastoral care from public courage.

It has had to form souls capable of enduring terror, resisting humiliation, building institutions, educating children, organizing voters, burying martyrs, singing hope into despair, and insisting — against every lie of white supremacy — that Black life bears the image of God.

This is why the presence of security outside Metropolitan AME struck me so deeply. A church that has given this country so much — moral clarity, democratic courage, spiritual genius — still has to protect itself from the violence unleashed when white Christian grievance is given permission to march.

The Proud Boys’ attack on Metropolitan AME was not random vandalism. Rev. William Lamar IV, the church’s pastor, called it “a softer version of cross-burning, designed to keep us quiet.” A judge later awarded the church $2.8 million in damages, and after the Proud Boys failed to pay, the court gave Metropolitan AME control over the group’s trademark.

That legal victory was poetic. But the deeper truth is sobering: a historic Black church had to sue a white nationalist group for attacking its witness.

And now, in 2026, Christian nationalist leaders are gathering under the mantle of our government while the Trump administration has created a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that could allow January 6 defendants and other Trump allies to recast prosecution as persecution — and seek taxpayer-funded compensation for it.

These are the times we are up against.

But these are also the times for which our faith was made.

The Bible was not written by comfortable people trying to preserve respectable institutions. It was written by people facing empire, exile, violence, occupation, greed, corruption, and despair. It was written by people trying to follow a God who hears the cries of the oppressed, topples Pharaoh, feeds the hungry, welcomes the stranger, breaks the power of death, and exposes the false gods of empire.

That is why I have always understood faith activism as a form of evangelism.

Not the coercive kind many of us were taught to fear — not the kind obsessed with winning souls while ignoring bodies. I mean evangelism in its truest sense: bearing good news. Making visible a faith rooted in love, liberation, courage, and human dignity. Helping people recognize that Christianity does not belong to authoritarians, extremists, or those who use God to sanctify cruelty.

Congregations Are Where Courage Is Formed

This is also why congregations matter so much right now.

A congregation is not merely a place where people attend worship. At its best, it is a school for moral courage.

It is a community where people learn how to grieve without despairing, disagree without dehumanizing, repent without collapsing, and act without surrendering tenderness.

A congregation can teach people to recognize propaganda. A Bible study can help people see the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the false gospel of domination. A choir can sing courage into tired bodies. A pastor can preach the Good Samaritan in a way that unsettles every nationalist boundary.

A session or church board can ask not only, “How do we keep this building open?” but “What does this building make possible for our neighbors?” A retired lawyer in the pews can help protect immigrants. A teacher can help young people recognize disinformation. A grandmother can tell her family, “This is not what our faith teaches.”

This is how movements are built: not only through national organizations, but through communities of conscience that know who they are.

That is why I am thinking so much these days about the connection between pastoring a congregation and pastoring a movement.

For much of my ministry, I have pastored movements more than congregations. I have organized clergy, built coalitions, trained faith leaders, challenged the misuse of Christianity in politics, and worked across borders to confront the rise of Christian nationalism and other forms of religious authoritarianism.

But I may also take a congregation part-time or full-time, even as I continue that global work. At first glance, those might seem like separate callings: one local and intimate, the other global and strategic.

I have always seen them as inseparable.

A pastor to a congregation and a pastor to a movement are asking the same questions:

How do we help people find courage? How do we form moral imagination? How do we speak truth without losing tenderness?

How do we build communities strong enough to resist fear? How do we teach people to recognize false gospels when they come wrapped in flags, money, nostalgia, or power?

Tomorrow, having moved back to Washington, D.C., I am officially joining the National Capital Presbytery this week with gratitude and expectation because I see signs of life there. I see creativity. I see congregations asking hard and hopeful questions about redevelopment, revival, new worshiping communities, shared space, and new ways of being church.

Those questions are not separate from the struggle against Christian nationalism. They are part of the answer to it. Because when credible, courageous, spiritually alive congregations disappear, other forces rush in to fill the void.

Ryan Burge’s work in The Vanishing Church shows that the decline of mainline Protestantism is not only a church story. It is also a polarization story — a story about what happens when the moderate religious institutions that once held many Americans in communities of worship, service, and moral formation lose ground.

When congregations vanish, something more than Sunday attendance disappears.

We lose spaces where people practice being human together.
We lose communities that can hold complexity.
We lose institutions that can organize casseroles and courage, grief support and public witness, prayer chains and resistance networks.

And when those spaces disappear, people do not become magically immune to bad religion. They become more vulnerable to counterfeit forms of belonging.

That is why Sunday’s contrast mattered so much.

On the Mall, Christian nationalism tried to claim the nation for God.

At Metropolitan AME, I sat inside a church that has spent nearly two centuries reminding America that God is not impressed by national myths, racial hierarchy, or displays of power.

God is found among the enslaved seeking freedom.
Among the people singing through terror.
Among the congregations that refuse to be silenced.
Among those who know that democracy is not only a system of government, but a discipline of recognizing the dignity of others.

That is the Christianity America needs now. Not a Christianity that hides behind “unity” while excluding whole communities, but one that builds a democracy spacious enough for all of us.

On Sunday, I worshipped in a church that knows the cost of that witness. And I left more convinced than ever: the work before us is pastoral, political, spiritual, and deeply practical.

We must protect vulnerable communities. We must expose false religion. We must support courageous congregations. We must rebuild forms of church that can nourish people for the long struggle ahead.

Christian nationalism is organizing people through fear. Our task is to organize people through love — not sentimental love, but disciplined, courageous, truth-telling love.

The kind of love that built Metropolitan AME.

The kind of love that refuses to be intimidated.

The kind of love that may yet help save democracy’s soul.

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Autocrats want power for a reason.

We often talk about authoritarianism as a struggle over ideology, identity, law, or violence. It is all of those things. But underneath the pageantry and the cruelty is something very old and very simple: the desire to steal.

Autocrats seize control of government because government is where the money is. It is where contracts are awarded, investigations are dropped, regulations are gutted, enemies are punished, loyalists are rewarded, and national wealth can be redirected into private hands.

“Corruption is the baseline principle of autocratic regimes everywhere. Economic destruction is its inevitable byproduct,” writes Katherine Stewart, the author of Money, Lies and God.

And yet, somehow, we often miss this point.

We miss it because the authoritarian playbook is designed to make us look somewhere else. Autocrats target vulnerable groups: immigrants, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ people, racial minorities, religious minorities, and political dissenters. They manufacture panic. They tell their followers that the nation is being stolen from them by the weak, the foreign, the queer, the secular, the “woke,” the disloyal.

All the while, it is the autocrat and their cronies who are doing the stealing.

And while everyone is fighting over who belongs, they raid the coffers.

That is why corruption deserves far more moral and political attention than it is getting. It is not abstract. It is not merely a legal question for ethics experts. It is not just “conflict of interest” language that makes people’s eyes glaze over.

Corruption is theft from the public. It is a betrayal of the common good. It is the conversion of public office into private enrichment.

The firehose strategy

Isaac Saul at Tangle made a list of the many stories of corruption surrounding Trump and his family in one place.

His conclusion was not subtle:

we are witnessing the most corrupt presidency in the history of America.

The scale of alleged self-dealing, foreign entanglements, crypto profiteering, and pay-to-play politics is so large that it becomes difficult for the public to process.

There are the Trump family’s crypto ventures, launched while the administration deregulates the very industry from which the family is profiting.

There are foreign investors, crypto billionaires, and companies with interests before the federal government.

There are the Trump-branded deals abroad, foreign governments spending money at Trump properties, and new business arrangements unfolding while foreign policy decisions are being made.

The domestic examples include branded phones, exclusive clubs, stock holdings tied to political fortunes, business ventures involving Trump family members, and a web of likely purchased pardons and commutations that signal a new moral order: loyalty matters more than law.

Watchdog systems have been weakened. Inspectors General have been removed, ethics rules rescinded, and enforcement priorities narrowed in ways that reduce the government’s ability to police corruption from within.

Not every conflict of interest is a proven crime. But from a moral perspective, we do not need to wait for a court ruling to recognize the pattern.

The presidency is being treated not as a public trust, but as a profit center.

Corruption is an equal opportunity offender

It is often corruption that brings autocrats down. One reason corruption is politically powerful is that it offends across party lines.

People may disagree about immigration. They may disagree about taxes. They may disagree about gender, education, foreign policy, or the role of religion in public life.

But most people understand that public leaders should not use public office to enrich themselves, their families, and their friends.

Corruption creates justifiable outrage because it hurts everyone. It drains resources from schools, hospitals, infrastructure, wages, disaster relief, and public services. It turns citizenship into spectatorship and government into a private club. It tells ordinary people that the rules are for them, while the powerful live by another code.

That is why exposing corruption can become one of the most effective ways to interrupt authoritarian power.

We saw this in Hungary. Viktor Orbán spent years consolidating power, demonizing LGBTQ people, attacking migrants, controlling media, and wrapping his project in Christian nationalist language. But underneath the culture war was a system of enrichment for family, allies, and loyalists.

Eventually, more and more Hungarians began to see the connection. The culture war was not only about values. It was also a cover story for kleptocracy.

Civil society began to widen its coalition. LGBTQ rights groups spoke to the broader public about family, dignity, and belonging. Religious leaders helped build broader democratic alliances. The corruption story helped people understand that authoritarianism was not protecting them. It was robbing them.

That is the opening we need here.

Why Christian nationalism is so dangerous

This is where we see how Christian nationalism functions to shore up autocracy.

Christian nationalism does not merely provide slogans. It provides moral anesthesia.

It tells people that the leader is chosen by God. As I explained in my most recent Substack, it turns criticism into persecution. It frames accountability as an attack on Christianity. It teaches followers to see cruelty as courage, domination as strength, and greed as a blessing.

In that world, corruption can be excused because the leader is supposedly defending “us” against “them.”

The actual teachings of Jesus have to be dismantled for this to work.

You cannot build a movement around the Sermon on the Mount and also bless a politics of vengeance, greed, and domination. You cannot take the prophets’ denunciations of unjust rulers seriously while cheering leaders who exploit public office for private gain. You cannot worship the God who hears the cry of the poor and then turn a blind eye while the powerful sell access, pardon fraudsters, and enrich their own families.

So Christian nationalism must replace Christianity with something else.

It replaces discipleship with tribal loyalty.

It replaces repentance with grievance.

It replaces love of neighbor with suspicion of empathy.

It replaces the cross with the flag, the market, and the strongman.

Revelation was not written for escapism

This is why I keep coming back to Revelation.

Christian nationalists love to misuse Revelation as a fantasy of divine violence against their enemies. But Revelation was written by a dissident under empire. John wrote from exile, likely under the shadow of Rome, about a system that fused political power, religious devotion, and economic exploitation.

The “whore of Babylon” has often been interpreted in sexist and harmful ways, and we should say that plainly. But I do not want to lose the passage because beneath the imagery lies a furious moral indictment of empire.

What enrages John is not sexual immorality in the narrow way modern readers often imagine it. It is economic exploitation. It is luxury built on violence. It is wealth accumulated through domination. It is the merchants and kings who grow rich from a system that devours human lives.

Revelation 18 gives us a haunting picture of an imperial economy collapsing under the weight of its own corruption:

The merchants mourn because no one buys their cargo anymore: gold, silver, jewels, fine linen, ivory, marble, spices, wine, oil, cattle, chariots — and finally, chillingly, “human lives.”

Empire turns everything into a commodity. Even people.

John is raging because he sees what empire has done. He sees how religious spectacle and political domination have been used to sanctify greed. He sees how the powerful clothe themselves in splendor while human beings are bought, sold, crushed, and discarded.

That is not just ancient history. It is a warning about what we become when we lose sight of who God created us to be. It is an age-old story of tyranny and corruption, one our faith calls us to counter.

The public trust is sacred

In a democracy, public office is not a throne. It is a trust.

Leaders are entrusted with power so they can serve the common good. They do not own the state. They do not own the courts. They do not own the military, the pardon power, the regulatory agencies, or the public purse. They serve us, the people. Autocrats want to flip that power structure.

When leaders use public power to enrich themselves, they are not simply violating ethical norms. They are profaning something sacred.

They are treating the people’s government as personal property.

This is why the biblical witness is so severe about bribery, exploitation, dishonest scales, and rulers who crush the poor. Scripture understands something we have forgotten: corruption is not victimless. It destabilizes nations. It destroys trust. It teaches the powerful to prey and the vulnerable to despair.

“A just king gives stability to his nation,” Proverbs says, “but one who demands bribes destroys it.”

We see that unfolding now as leaders, seduced by wealth and power, bow to a reckless president who is systematically dismantling democracy’s legal and cultural guardrails while destabilizing the economy ordinary people depend on.

The antidote: coalition building & truth-telling

One way to defeat autocrats is to expose what they are actually doing.

To expose not only who they hate and what they say, but what they are taking.

This does not mean abandoning the defense of vulnerable communities. Quite the opposite. It means showing how scapegoating functions. It means helping people see that attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ people, religious minorities, and dissenters are not isolated cruelties. They are part of a broader strategy to divide the public while the powerful consolidate wealth and control.

The antidote is not despair. It is moral clarity.

We need clergy, faith leaders, journalists, organizers, and ordinary citizens to say plainly: this is corruption. This is greed. This is betrayal. This is what Scripture warns us about.

We need to refuse the false piety that blesses plunder.

We need to remind Christians that faithfulness does not mean defending a strongman. It means defending the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the targeted, and the truth.

And we need to tell a better story.

A democracy is not merely a system of elections. It is a covenant of mutual responsibility. It is a commitment that public power should serve the public good. It is a promise that no leader is above accountability and no office is an instrument of private wealth.

That promise is being tested.

It is a promise we can and must defend — with moral clarity, public courage, and faith that refuses to bless corruption in God’s name.

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What to Read

• Katherine Stewart‘s Money, Lies, and God, for the monied interests and corruption of Christian nationalism. See also her Substack.

• Ruth Ben Ghiat, Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall.

• Walter Wink, The Powers that Be, for a theological understanding.

• Walter Bruggeman, The Sabbath, to understand the spiritual practice of rest as resistance to the economics of empire.

Take Action

• Continue to preach, teach, and discuss with those in your community.

• Call for elected officials to hold the White House accountable, to call for investigations.

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On April 30, the Trump administration’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released a report claiming that the Biden administration systematically targeted Christians across the federal government. The report, produced by a seventeen-agency task force led by the Department of Justice, presents itself as an investigation into religious liberty. But it is better understood as a political document designed to advance a story: that Christians in America are under siege.

That story matters because it is one of the core narratives animating Christian nationalism.

This is also a familiar move in authoritarian politics: cultivating a sense of victimhood among people who still hold significant power, then using that grievance to justify attacks on pluralism, civil rights, and democratic institutions.

Christian nationalism is not only about theology or patriotism. It is also about perceived threat. Its power depends on convincing Christians that they are losing “their” country, that pluralism is oppression, and that any effort to protect the rights of others is really an attack on them.

That is why this report should not be dismissed as just another culture-war document. It is a government-backed effort to reinforce one of the most politically potent falsehoods in American life: that Christians are victims of a hostile secular state.

Religious liberty matters. That is why this report is dangerous.

To be clear, Christians, like people of any faith, can experience discrimination. Religious liberty is a core democratic principle, and no one should be targeted by the government because of their faith. No church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or faith-based organization should be punished because of its religious identity.

But that is not the same thing as saying that Christians, as a group, are marginalized in the United States.

They are not.

Christians remain the overwhelming religious majority in this country. Christian language saturates American politics. Christian institutions command enormous cultural, financial, and political influence. Christians serve at every level of government, sit on the Supreme Court, lead major corporations, run state legislatures, shape school boards, fund national advocacy organizations, and influence both major political parties.

This is the truth that must be said plainly:

Christianity is not powerless in America.

That does not mean every Christian gets their preferred policy outcome. It does not mean every conservative Christian claim wins in court. It does not mean every federal agency will treat one theological view of abortion, sexuality, gender, family, or public health as binding on the whole country.

Sharing power is not oppression. Equal protection for LGBTQ+ people is not anti-Christian bias. Reproductive freedom is not a government attack on the church. Public health rules are not religious discrimination simply because some Christians object to them.

The report turns political grievance into a civil rights claim.

The report collapses these distinctions. It takes routine law enforcement, regulatory decisions, civil rights enforcement, public health policy, and disagreements over the meaning of religious liberty and reframes them as evidence that Christians are being targeted. It selectively presents facts, omits context, relies on anecdotal testimony, and treats political disagreement as religious discrimination. The result is not an impartial inquiry. It is advocacy dressed up as investigation.

The political effect is powerful.

Efforts to restrict abortion become protection for Christian conscience. Efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ rights become resistance to anti-Christian coercion. Efforts to privilege conservative Christian organizations in public policy become “neutrality.” Efforts to purge dissenting voices from government become a defense of the faithful. And when Christian leaders promote violence or authoritarianism, criticism of them can be recast as hostility to Christianity itself — even as extremism or terrorism.

This is how a majority begins to speak the language of victimhood while exercising the power of dominance.

It is also why Christians committed to democracy need a more prophetic public witness: compassionate enough to understand the fear beneath the persecution story, and clear enough to say that losing cultural dominance is not the same as being oppressed.

Many Christians are experiencing real dislocation as the country becomes more religiously diverse, less deferential to institutional Christianity, and less willing to let one strand of conservative theology define public morality for everyone. That fear should not be mocked. But neither should it be manipulated.

A pluralistic democracy will sometimes disappoint every religious community. That is not a failure of religious freedom. It is the condition that makes religious freedom possible.

The First Amendment protects faith. It does not establish Christian rule.

The First Amendment protects free exercise and prohibits establishment. Those commitments belong together. Religious liberty means the government may not punish people for their faith. It also means the government may not privilege one faith, one sect, or one theological interpretation as the authorized moral voice of the nation.

The Trump administration’s report blurs that line. Its implicit argument is that certain Christian positions on abortion, sexuality, gender, and family should shape federal enforcement priorities.

But whose Christian positions?

The Christian tradition is not monolithic. There are Christians who support reproductive freedom as a matter of conscience. Christians who affirm LGBTQ+ people as beloved children of God. Christians who believe public health measures can be expressions of love of neighbor. Christians who understand pluralism not as a threat to faith, but as a safeguard for it.

The administration’s report does not speak for Christianity. It speaks for a political project that uses Christianity as a marker of national belonging and treats challenges to conservative Christian power as attacks on faith itself.

That should concern all of us. It should concern religious minorities whose real experiences of discrimination are often drowned out by the louder claims of politically powerful Christians. It should concern LGBTQ+ people and women whose rights are repeatedly cast as threats to religious freedom. It should concern secular Americans who are told, implicitly or explicitly, that they are less fully American because they do not share the preferred faith of those in power.

And it should concern Christians most of all.

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Our faith does not need a throne.

Christianity does not need the machinery of the state to defend itself. The gospel does not become more powerful when backed by federal agencies. The church does not become more faithful when it is used as a constituency in an authoritarian political project.

History teaches us that when Christianity is fused with state power, the faith itself is distorted. The language of persecution becomes a tool for domination. The cross becomes a flag. The neighbor becomes an enemy. The vulnerable become scapegoats.

This is why the persecution story must be challenged directly. Not cruelly. Not dismissively. But truthfully.

Christians are not being asked to disappear from public life. We are being asked to share public life with others.

Christians are not being denied religious freedom when the government refuses to impose our theology on everyone else.

Christians are not oppressed because LGBTQ+ people have rights, women have agency, public schools serve religiously diverse students, or federal agencies enforce civil rights laws.

The question is not whether Christians are allowed to bring our values into public life. Of course we are. The question is whether we can do so in a way that honors pluralism and the dignity and freedom of all. Democracy requires us to argue, persuade, listen, and sometimes lose. It does not give any religious group the right to impose its minority theological view on everyone else.

That is the religious freedom worth defending.

Real religious freedom protects conscience without turning theology into state policy. It safeguards worship without licensing discrimination. It honors faith without making Christianity a test of American belonging. It protects Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and every person whose conscience deserves respect.

The Trump administration’s report asks us to believe that Christians are victims because they no longer automatically control the moral terms of public life. But what is changing is not the freedom of Christians to practice our faith. What is changing is the willingness of many Americans to accept one narrow form of Christianity as the default identity of the nation.

That is not anti-Christian bias. That is democracy.

And in this moment, Christians have a choice. We can cling to a false persecution story that turns neighbors into threats and pluralism into an enemy. Or we can bear witness to a better story — one in which faith does not need domination to be strong, Christianity does not need privilege to be faithful, and religious liberty is protected precisely because no one tradition controls the state.

It calls us to love our neighbor, defend the vulnerable, tell the truth, and seek the common good.

That is the Christian witness this moment requires.

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Last week, I wrote a piece for Inside Philanthropy arguing that funders are underinvesting in the very faith leadership authoritarian movements fear most.

The piece was written for a philanthropic audience. But I have been thinking about it as a word for us, too — for progressive Christians, mainline Protestants, religious leaders, organizers, and all those who have watched the Christian right distort our faith and wondered how we got here.

For decades, the Christian right invested in religious infrastructure with astonishing discipline. They built media ecosystems, leadership pipelines, legal organizations, political training networks, direct-mail operations, and theological narratives that fused faith with fear, grievance, and power.

Meanwhile, many of us lowered our voices.

Some of this came from humility. Some from a genuine commitment to pluralism. Some from fear that speaking too explicitly from Christian conviction would make us sound coercive, exclusionary, or sectarian. Some were trying hard to unite various factions. Many of us had seen religion weaponized and wanted no part of that.

But over time, caution became retreat.

We allowed our public theology to recede from the public square just as the Christian right was claiming that space as its own. We secularized our language in civic life. We translated our deepest convictions into policy language while the right spoke in stories about God, nation, family, belonging, threat, and destiny.

And stories shape people. People do not live by policy alone. They live by meaning, moral imagination, and answers to the questions: Who are we? Who belongs? What is sacred? What future is worth sacrifice?

The Christian right understood this. Too often, we did not.

The church did not simply vanish

In a longer essay I have been working on about mainline Protestantism and Christian nationalism, I draw on Ryan Burge’s The Vanishing Church, which argues that the steep decline of mainline Protestantism cannot be understood apart from politics.

Mainline churches did not simply fade because people stopped caring about faith. Our decline accelerated as the Moral Majority rose, as conservative political operatives learned to weaponize religious identity, and as public Christianity became increasingly associated with partisan loyalty, anti-feminism, anti-LGBTQ politics, racial backlash, and authoritarian nostalgia.

They left churches that had become battlegrounds. They left denominations exhausted by disinformation campaigns. They left because the public face of Christianity increasingly looked like domination rather than liberation, exclusion rather than mercy, cruelty rather than compassion.

And while some of us were busy explaining that “not all Christians” were like that, the Christian right was building power.

That is the painful part.

The Right not only built outside our institutions. It attacked the very denominations and communities that might have offered a more thoughtful, liberating, pluralistic, justice-centered Christianity. It targeted women’s leadership, feminist theology, LGBTQ inclusion, racial justice, and the moral credibility of the church itself.

Too often, moderates and progressives walked away rather than fight for the institutions that had formed us. I understand why. Many people were tired, hurt, or had good reason to distrust church power. But the result is that our public theology became thinner at the very moment the country needed it to become deeper.

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We need a faith that can speak

Progressive Christians do not need to mimic the Christian right. That would betray everything we stand for.

Christian nationalism uses religion to claim power over others. Faithful public witness does the opposite: it draws on sacred texts, spiritual practice, and moral tradition to restrain power, defend dignity, broaden belonging, and call communities to courage.

That kind of faith does not threaten democracy. It helps protect it.

But it requires us to speak. It requires pastors who can say clearly that cruelty is not strength; congregations that can teach people why the Bible is a story of liberation, not domination; and seminaries, denominations, religious nonprofits, writers, artists, organizers, and funders who understand that theology is not a side project. It is part of how people make sense of the world.

It also requires us to stop assuming that secular language is always the more strategic option.

We must honor religious diversity and include those with no religious affiliation. And we must never confuse public theology with theocracy. But there is a difference between imposing religion and offering moral witness, between weaponizing faith and reclaiming it, between Christian nationalism and Christianity.

People are hungry for that difference.

This is a call to action

That is why I hope my Inside Philanthropy piece is not only read as a call to funders. I hope it becomes a call to action for all of us.

If we believe our faith has something to offer this moment, we have to invest in it. We have to fund our own public voice: religious writers, theologians, organizers, clergy networks, leadership development programs, narrative strategy, rapid response, spiritual formation, and public education.

We have to help people understand how authoritarianism uses religion — and how faith can resist it.

We have to teach again that Scripture was written by people living under empire, exile, occupation, and tyranny. We have to remind our communities that Exodus is not just an ancient story, but a freedom story; that the prophets were not polite commentators, but truth-tellers confronting corrupt power; and that Jesus was not crucified for being vague, but for proclaiming a kingdom that threatened the powers of his time.

We have to give people language for the faith they still carry but may no longer know how to speak, because the Christian right has not only distorted Christianity in politics. It has distorted Christianity in the public imagination.

And that is a spiritual crisis.

The resources are already here

Progressive faith communities often feel constrained by shrinking budgets, aging buildings, and declining membership. Those realities are real, but they are not the whole story.

We still steward immense resources: moral credibility, educated and committed leaders, land, endowments, institutions, relationships, pension funds, communications platforms, and deep reservoirs of spiritual wisdom.

The question is whether we will mobilize those resources for this moment.

Who is in our pews? Lawyers, teachers, nurses, nonprofit leaders, business owners, grandparents, students, artists, public servants — people who know something is wrong and are searching for courage.

What do they need from us? More than reassurance. They need formation, language, community, and moral clarity. They need to know that resisting cruelty is not a partisan act, but a faithful one. They need to know that defending migrants, LGBTQ youth, religious minorities, women, workers, and all those targeted by authoritarian politics is not a distraction from the gospel. It is one way the gospel becomes visible.

We cannot cede the sacred

Authoritarian movements understand the power of religion. That is why they fight so hard to control it. They know that morally grounded communities can interrupt fear, that faith can sustain courage over time, and that sacred stories can expose false gods — nationalism, domination, greed, violence, and the worship of strongmen.

That is why public theology matters, why progressive faith leadership matters, and why we cannot cede the sacred to those who would use it to bless cruelty.

This is not a moment for nostalgia. We cannot simply rebuild the church as it was. Too many people were harmed or excluded by that church. Too many communities were ignored. Too many injustices were tolerated. But neither can we abandon the field.

Something new is trying to be born: a faith rooted in dignity, democracy, pluralism, courage, and love. A faith that does not seek control, but liberation. A faith that does not erase difference, but builds solidarity across it.

That work will not happen by accident. It will require investment, imagination, courage, and those of us who still believe in a liberating gospel to stop whispering.

We are not powerless. We are not irrelevant.

But we do have to decide, again, whether our faith is worth speaking aloud.

What we can do now

The Christian right did not build power by accident. It invested in media, leadership, theology, organizing, and narrative. Those of us committed to a liberating faith must do the same.

All of us have a contribution to make.

So here is my invitation.

If you are a pastor, preach and teach it.
If you are a funder, fund it.
If you are a denominational leader, build it.
If you are a layperson, ask for it.
If you are a writer, artist, organizer, or theologian, help us give people language for the faith they still carry but may no longer know how to speak.

Share this essay with a pastor, funder, seminary professor, denominational leader, or organizer. Start a conversation in your congregation about what it would mean to rebuild public theology in this moment. Ask where your community’s moral voice is being formed, funded, and made visible.

And support organizations, networks, and leaders working to reclaim faith as a force for dignity, democracy, pluralism, and love.

The Christian right funded its voice. Now it is time to fund ours.

Let me know your thoughts!

How have you seen this dynamic in your own journey? In your worshipping community? Are you comfortable bringing your faith voice to the public square? Why or Why not?

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I have spent much of my life working at the intersection of faith and public life, often in rooms where people insist religion should stay out of politics.

I understand why. Faith has been used to divide, to dominate, to justify harm.

But what I am seeing now is something different and more dangerous.

Faith is being weaponized to silence dissent and reshape reality itself.

The only way to respond is to reclaim it for liberation.

Silencing Dissent

In their quest for absolute power, autocrats demand absolute loyalty.

They achieve it by silencing dissent.

Here is how it works.

On one front, political leaders elevate a distorted Christianity—one that advocates violence, enforces exclusion, and punishes dissent. Criticism becomes betrayal. Dissent becomes a crime. It is an attempt to redefine Christianity in narrower, more exclusionary, and ultimately nationalist terms.

On another front, immigration enforcement becomes a theater of fear—communities destabilized, due process eroded, neighbors turned against one another. The goal is not just enforcement. It is intimidation—an attempt to redefine America in narrower, more exclusionary, and ultimately white terms.

And now, on yet another front, the administration attempts to dismantle the very organizations that expose violent extremism.

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When Truth-Telling Is Reframed as Crime

This week, the Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging fraud tied to its use of informants—informants who helped disrupt violent hate groups.

For more than 50 years, the SPLC has tracked the Ku Klux Klan, exposed white nationalist networks, and documented the rise of Christian nationalism. The group rose to national fame in the 1980s by financially breaking the modern Klan through strategic lawsuits on behalf of its victims. Their offices have been firebombed. Their staff threatened. Their work has saved lives.

Now, that work is being reframed as criminal.

This is not new. It is a pattern.

A Long Tradition of Resistance

Historian Steven J. Ross documents how, before and after World War II, civil society stepped in when the government would not. While federal agencies were slow—or unwilling—to act, groups like the ADL and the Anti-Nazi League infiltrated violent extremist networks and helped stop attacks before they happened.

In one case, an undercover operative infiltrated a fascist group known as the Columbians, who were plotting to bomb a Black Baptist Convention in Savannah, Georgia. She gathered hundreds of pages of evidence, leading to the group’s arrest.

This is the tradition the SPLC stands in: ordinary people taking extraordinary risks to defend democracy when institutions fall short.

And that is precisely why they are being targeted.

Rewriting Reality

Authoritarian power depends on rewriting reality—deciding who is dangerous, who is legitimate, who belongs.

January 6 insurrectionists become heroes. Civil rights laws become “discrimination.” And those who expose violence become criminals.

This is not just about policy. It is about control over truth itself.

What Revelation Teaches

To understand this moment, we have to go deeper.

The early Christians faced a similar test under the Roman emperor Domitian, who demanded worship as a god. Refusal was not just dissent.

It was treason.

It is in that moment that John of Patmos writes the Book of Revelation.

Not as a prediction of the end of the world as Christian nationalists often believe, but as a guide for surviving empire.

Writing in code, John unmasks how domination works: through fear, spectacle, and the demand for total allegiance.

The “mark of the beast” is not a mystery. It is a metaphor of the pressure to conform, to give loyalty to a ruler or beast who claims what belongs to God.

And John offers a counter-command:

Do not comply.
Do not be deceived.
Do not worship what is not God.

He teaches his community how to see clearly—and how to endure.

We Have Seen Another Way

We saw it in Minneapolis. Neighbors showed up for neighbors. They alerted them to danger. They took kids safely to school when parents could not for fear of being profiled. They delivered medical aid to houses. They gave money so families could pay rent

.After federal agents killed two U.S. citizens during aggressive immigration operations, community members refused to accept the official narrative. They documented what happened. They organized. They protested. They demanded accountability. And it mattered.

Public pressure forced a shift. Leadership changed. Agents were pulled back.

Not everything changed.

But something did.

They disrupted the story. They refused the lie. They told and demonstrated the truth in thought, word, and deed.

And it changed what was possible.

Bearing Witness

That is the power authoritarianism fears most.

But for those of us shaped by the gospel, there is something even deeper.

Jesus does not only call us to reject lies. He calls us to bear witness.

To bear witness that another reality is already breaking through. To bear witness to a kingdom not built on domination, but on dignity; not on fear, but on love; not on exclusion, but on belonging.

We resist not only through truth-telling, but through loving action, by standing with the vulnerable, protecting our neighbors, and refusing to participate in systems that deny their humanity.

This is not passive, nor is it naïve.

It is how empires fall.

What You Can Do

• Listen to Steven J. Ross talk about The Secret War on Hate on Fresh Air.

• To explore the meaning of Revelation, get my book Who Stole My Bible.

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For clergy and faith leaders

Your public theological voice matters. Continue to help your communities name what is happening—not in partisan terms, but in moral and theological ones. Create spaces where people can tell the truth without fear.

Have a plan. I recently visited an evangelical church where a retired national security official sat quietly by the door, keeping watch so his neighbors could worship in peace.

For all of us

Refuse the lie. Find others who refuse and join them.

Pay attention to whose voices are being silenced—and why. Support organizations that protect the vulnerable and expose violence. Stand with your neighbors when they are targeted. Tell the truth, even when it costs something. Use your faith voice to call people back to who they are.

And remember:

We are not only resisting what is wrong.

We are bearing witness to what is already breaking through.

The ongoing clashes between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Pope Leo are not simply a disagreement between politicians and clergy. This is a battle over who gets to define morality, who gets to speak with authority, and whether faith will be used to comfort the powerful or challenge them.

For years, Trumpism has sought to cloak itself in religious legitimacy. There have been Bibles held up in front of churches, prayers offered as campaign props, claims that Trump was “chosen” or “anointed” by God, and increasingly bizarre attempts to portray him in almost messianic terms.

But when actual faith leaders speak with moral clarity — whether about migrants, war, poverty, greed, cruelty, democracy, or corruption — they are told to stay out of politics.

That contradiction tells us everything.

When JD Vance suggested that Pope Leo should “stick to matters of morality,” he not only revealed a misunderstanding of his own tradition, but something deeper about the administration’s project.

The administration wants faith leaders to provide blessing, symbolism, and cultural cover. It does not want them to exercise prophetic authority.

But war is a moral issue. Migration is a moral issue. Poverty is a moral issue. The abuse of power is a moral issue.

These are exactly the questions that faith traditions have always spoken into. At their core, our traditions teach that human beings deserve dignity, that the earth is sacred, and that a world less defined by greed, violence, and domination is not naïve, but possible.

These are precisely the kinds of issues that prophets, pastors, priests, rabbis, imams, nuns, and ordinary people of conscience have confronted throughout history.

What this administration clearly wants is not religion itself, but religion emptied of its moral force. It wants a faith that blesses power without questioning it. This, in a nutshell, is Christian nationalism.

JD Vance said the Pope “should not do politics.”

But theology is political because it reveals that we are all called to strive for a world without tyranny, without violence, without domination, greed, and poverty.

The Pope and other religious leaders continue to remind the world that human beings are not meant to be ruled by the logic of vengeance, violence, and greed. You do not have to be Catholic to understand why this matters. The pope is one of the few global figures with enough moral authority to challenge nationalism, militarism, greed, and the worship of power on an international stage.

In response to the White House’s direct attacks on the teachings of the church, the Pope asserted that he does not fear this administration.

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He is reminding us that power has limits– something too many political leaders seem to have forgotten. No leader is above moral scrutiny. No nation is beyond accountability. No president, no matter how adored by his followers, should ever be treated as if he possesses God-like powers.

Authoritarian movements depend on convincing people that power is inevitable, that resistance is futile, and that those who oppose them are weak, naïve, or irrelevant.

Faith leaders disrupt that story. They remind people that empires fall. That kings can be challenged. That courage is possible.

Your Moral Voice matters

Sometimes the most dangerous thing in the world is not a politician with an army, but an ordinary person who believes that justice is possible.

This is why your moral voice is powerful. Everything you do to lift up what our faith truly teaches is critical to resisting authoritarianism. It can be tempting to shrink in embarrassment or fear, but this is where we learn the true power of our sacred texts and the beauty of who God has made us to be.

And this is why authoritarian leaders so often try to co-opt religion, silence clergy, mock faith leaders, or hollow out faith traditions from within. They not only want to silence prophetic religion. They want to take away its power to convict, inspire, organize, and give courage.

But they will not succeed.

Fracturing of MAGA Base?

Already, some of this effort to silence prophetic faith is backfiring. Even Christians in the MAGA base are growing uncomfortable with the increasingly idolatrous imagery surrounding Trump. Even some who once embraced Trumpism are beginning to use words like “blasphemy,” “false prophet,” and “antichrist.”

Some of us will say, “It is about time.” But I say let’s welcome them into the fold. People cannot leave unless they have a place to go. Invite them in.

Faith, at its best, has always belonged to the people who resist domination, not the people who seek to impose it. Religion is most powerful not when it blesses the powerful, but when it gives courage to those who challenge them.

Prophets have always been inconvenient to kings. May we all continue to be an inconvenience.

What to do Next:

Learn how to talk about faith as resistance to autocracy, read my book Who Stole My Bible. Host a book study. Invite me to speak.

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This piece was originally published in Religion News Service. Subscribe for unparalleled daily news coverage on religion in public life.

A National Security Strategy That Signals a Deeper Shift

When the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS) in early December, the document stirred controversy among politicians, diplomats, and analysts concerned that it abandoned — in the words of one Democratic member of Congress — “decades of values-based U.S. leadership.”

For Christian nationalists in the United States, however, the NSS read less like a rupture and more like a confirmation.

Though nonbinding, the strategy offers a window into an administration’s guiding principles. Its portrayal of Europe, Russia, and the global order reflects a worldview Christian nationalist leaders have cultivated for years — one that energized President Donald Trump’s political base and is now shaping how American power, morality, and belonging are defined on the world stage.

Europe Recast as a Civilization in Decline

The NSS describes Europe — long home to the United States’ closest democratic partners — as a civilization “at risk” of cultural decline. It warns that low birth rates, migration patterns, and weakened “civilizational self-confidence” have placed Europe’s future in jeopardy.

This framing marks a sharp departure from the past 75 years of U.S. foreign policy, which viewed Europe as an essential partner in global security and democratic stability.

The focus on “civilizational erasure” echoes a core theme of Christian nationalist rhetoric: the fear that secularism, social liberalism, and multiculturalism are dissolving a divinely inspired social order. Once fringe, these ideas now underpin a national security vision that could dramatically reshape the global order.

By casting pluralistic Europe as spiritually weak and politically compromised, the NSS suggests it may be time for an America supposedly anchored in Christian heritage to seek other partners.

Russia’s Appeal to the Christian Right

Equally striking is the document’s treatment of Russia. The NSS is notably muted on Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine and its repression of dissent, instead calling for “strategic stability” with Moscow. It also expresses skepticism about NATO’s long-standing purpose, further distancing the U.S. from its Western European allies.

To many observers, this pivot appears baffling. But Russia’s appeal within Christian nationalist circles has been growing for two decades.

Under Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has aligned closely with the Russian Orthodox Church, promoting a national identity rooted in traditional gender roles, hostility toward LGBTQ rights, and suspicion of religious minorities. This vision resonates strongly with Christian nationalist movements in the United States.

The far right’s admiration dates back at least to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and conservative culture warrior Patrick Buchanan suggested that “God is on Russia’s side.”

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Exporting the Culture Wars

American Christian organizations have been exporting culture-war ideology since the late 1990s — especially to Russia and Eastern Europe. Groups such as the World Congress of Families (founded in partnership with Russian sociologists from Lomonosov Moscow State University), Family Watch International, the Political Network for Values, CitizenGo, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the American Center for Law and Justice have built sustained transnational networks.

Across Europe, Latin America, and Africa, these organizations promote what they call the “natural family,” opposing LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and immigration while defending a narrow vision of Christian civilization.

These networks are not merely seeking religious or cultural reform. They are reshaping political parties, influencing elections, polarizing societies, closing civic space, manipulating electoral systems, and accelerating democratic backsliding. Russia, Hungary, and Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro have all collaborated with these movements.

How This Worldview Shapes U.S. Policy

The effects are increasingly visible at home. Research shows that Americans who affirm Christian nationalist beliefs express warmer attitudes toward Putin and are more likely to see Russia as an ally — even while acknowledging it as a geopolitical threat.

Viewed through this lens, the NSS’s softer posture toward Moscow is less puzzling and more indicative of an emerging ideological and geopolitical realignment aligned with Christian right values.

A Moral Break With the Postwar Order

Since World War II, U.S. foreign policy has been grounded — at least rhetorically — in shared commitments to human rights, democratic governance, and multilateral cooperation. These values helped bind the United States to its closest allies.

The new NSS openly questions these commitments. It argues that international institutions have constrained U.S. power and that America should instead pursue narrowly defined national interests.

This is not merely a strategic shift. It is a moral one.

The strategy suggests abandoning universal human dignity in favor of protecting a culturally defined national identity that privileges conservative Christian beliefs over pluralism and equality.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, addressing the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in the days after the NSS was made public, said the United States should not be “distracted by democracy building” or “woke moralizing,” but instead focus on “concrete” interests. alist.

His critique reflect a deep suspicion of pluralism and rights-based frameworks — values embedded in the postwar order that the NSS now treats as burdens. Hegseth has publicly identified himself as a Christian nation

Reclaiming a Faith Tradition Rooted in Human Dignity

Christians across traditions — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, evangelical, and others — have long supported human rights, welcomed refugees, defended religious freedom, and worked for peace. The Civil Rights Movement, interfaith human rights coalitions, and the faith-rooted struggle against apartheid all stand in this lineage.

After World War II, Christians were instrumental in building civic support for the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — institutions and ideals now viewed with suspicion by Christian nationalists.

The new NSS signals a foreign policy shaped less by democratic principles than by a religiously inflected nationalism that treats diversity and equality as threats — and authoritarian regimes as potential partners.

This shift should concern people of all faiths.

The debate over the NSS is not only about military alliances or foreign policy doctrine. It is about the story the United States is telling about itself.

When national security is filtered through Christian nationalism, pluralism becomes a liability, democratic allies become suspect, and authoritarian power gains moral cover.

For people of faith, this moment calls for moral clarity. Christian traditions teach that strength is measured not by dominance, but by justice, hospitality, and the protection of the vulnerable.

If America’s global posture is reshaped by a vision that confuses faith with exclusion and power with authoritarianism, the consequences will extend far beyond security strategy — shaping how the world understands American power and how Americans understand their moral responsibility to one another and to the world.

Call to Action

Moments like this demand more than analysis — they call for moral clarity and collective action.

I invite you to connect Faith in Democracy to follow the global struggle and learn from wide range of scholars and religious leaders.

Share this essay within your networks, and join us as we work with faith-rooted and secular leaders around the world to counter authoritarian movements and build a more just, pluralistic global order.

Faith can be a force for liberation rather than domination. The choices we make now will determine which story prevails.

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Not energized in a frantic way.
Not fired up by outrage.
But grounded, joyful, and reminded why I said yes to this work in the first place.

Kristine and I talked about faith, humor, play, doubt, and what it really takes to sustain movements for justice over the long haul. And at the heart of our conversation was a simple but often overlooked truth:

Joy is not a distraction from social change. It is one of its most powerful fuels.

Reclaiming spiritual language—for the sake of action

One of the questions Kristine raised was why spiritual language still matters in public life—especially in a moment when so many people feel alienated by religion or wary of how faith has been misused.

For me, reclaiming spiritual language isn’t about dogma or dominance. It’s about shared moral vision—values like dignity, compassion, responsibility, and love of neighbor—that can create bridges between secular and religious communities.

When we speak those values out loud, we create space for people of diverse perspectives and background to unify and build a world where all can flourish.

That’s been central to my work with Faith in Democracy: equipping faith leaders to show up in public life not as culture warriors, but as bridge-builders—people who can translate moral conviction into democratic action that strengthens the common good.

Prayer as alignment, not escape

Podcast host Kristine Michie captured the raw anger so many feel when catastrophe is met with the empty ritual of “thoughts and prayers.” What was meant to be a spiritual practice of discernment and courage has been hollowed out into a cover story for cowardice. After mass shootings, members of Congress reach for prayer not as a call to conscience, but as a shield — offering piety in public while privately protecting the gun lobby’s greed and the system that keeps killing our children.

Instead, prayer should disturb us. It should strip away our excuses, sharpen our moral vision, and leave us unable to return to business as usual while bodies are still on the floor.

“When we pray, we’re actually trying to align ourselves with what God wants here and now… Jesus calls us to really put our values and beliefs into action here and now, to love our neighbor here and now, and that’s how we draw close to God.”

Prayer, at its best, doesn’t remove us from reality. It roots us more deeply in it.

It reminds us that faith is not about waiting for another world—it’s about participating in the repair of this one.

Why movements need play (yes, really)

We also talked about something that doesn’t always make it into strategy memos: play.

Humor. Lightheartedness. Creativity. Music. Art. Laughter.

These aren’t indulgences. They are tools of resistance.

Play helps us lift our heads when the work feels crushing. It loosens rigid thinking. It keeps teams connected and human. And it quietly undermines systems that depend on fear, exhaustion, and despair to maintain control.

As I shared on the podcast:

“True faith is actually playful and joyful and life-giving… What play does and joy is it really helps us lift our head and our perspective to understand that God created and called everything good.”

Authoritarian movements thrive on severity and scarcity. Tyrants want us to be crouched, paralyzed, sapped of energy.

Play enables our bodies to be exorcized from fear.

I share an example of this etched in my memory. The night before Stacey Abrams launched her bid for governor, I worshiped at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta—King’s church, Warnock’s church. The air was electric with gospel music and possibility, alive with the hope that Georgia was on the verge of history: the nation’s first Black woman governor.

That moment never arrived. But something else did. During a gospel song, the Civil Rights legend and Senator John Lewis sprang up and began twirling people around the floor, joy erupting in the very sanctuary that has held generations of struggle. It was a reminder I carry still: progress may stall, but the soul of the movement keeps dancing. I even caught it on camera;

Faith, doubt, and commitment

One of the most honest moments of the conversation was naming doubt, not as a failure of faith, but as part of it.

“Faith, by nature, is full of doubt. As scripture says, ‘It’s the assurance of things hoped for, things not yet seen.’ For me, assurance is simply a commitment. God is justice, God is liberation, God is love—and I am committed to that even when it looks bleak.”

That commitment is what carries us through discouraging seasons. Not certainty. Not optimism. But a decision to keep showing up aligned with love, even when outcomes are unclear.

Sustaining the long work

We ended by talking about playfulness as critical to movement building. I share how it figures prominently in scripture as a strategy for resisting autocrats.

My dog’s crazy antics. Dancing things out. Hiking. Being goofy with friends (who let me). These practices help us stay emotionally regulated and spiritually grounded in demanding times.

They remind us that the goal is not just to win battles, but to build a world worth living in—together.

If you’re doing long-term work for justice and democracy, I hope this conversation offers you a breath of air, a moment of joy, and permission to bring your whole self—faith, doubt, humor, and all—into the work.

Be sure to catch the whole series.

You can listen to the full episode of The PlayFull Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Hear prominent activists reflect on how play powers them forward.

And as always, I’d love to hear:
How do you find joy when things look bleak? Where have you seen play used as a spiritual practice to give a movement hope and creativity?

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When I first began writing here, I wasn’t trying to start an organization. I was trying to make sense of what was happening — to my country, to my faith, to the moral compass that once seemed to guide our nation and the world.

Faith, which has stirred movements for abolition, civil rights, and peace, was being twisted into a tool of domination.

Many of you have written to say you’ve felt that same ache — watching something sacred to you used to divide and destroy.

That ache became a calling.

From Witness to Action

Over the past few years, I’ve sat in rooms with pastors in the American South, gender justice advocates in Uganda and Kenya, Brazilian democracy defenders, LGBTQ activists and European peace and security advocates.

Everywhere I turned, the pattern was the same: authoritarians using religion to inflame resentment, undermine democracy, and cement their own power.

But I also saw something else — quiet acts of courage, communities refusing to give in to despair. Faith leaders who chose solidarity over silence. Movements rooted not in anger, but in love of neighbor.

Those encounters reminded me why I do this work. Faith has always held the power to resist — to awaken conscience, build bridges, and sustain hope in dark times.

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The Birth of Faith in Democracy

That’s why I founded Faith in Democracy, an international nonprofit launching this month with offices in the U.S. and Germany.

Our mission is to help faith leaders and allies around the world recognize and respond to anti-democratic narratives, strengthen civic courage, and connect with one another across borders. 👉 Subscribe to our global newsletter here.

We’re already partnering with governments, international bodies, and faith-based organizations to confront religious nationalism and the global anti-rights movement. Over the next year, we’ll be sharing new research, tools, and training — and most importantly, stories of those reclaiming faith as a force for freedom.

My colleague Gionathan Lo Mascolo, who edited The Christian Right in Europe, put it beautifully:

“Faith communities opposing the religious right often seek the training, transnational solidarity, and infrastructure needed to coordinate effective responses. Faith in Democracy fills that void.”

Reclaiming What’s Sacred

The global religious right is well-funded, well-organized, and transnational — but so is faith itself. People of every religion are rediscovering the courage to speak moral truth to power, to insist that no one’s dignity is up for debate.

Faith in Democracy exists to lift up that moral courage and to ensure that those who stand for freedom never stand alone.

My Journey Here

This takes me back to my earlier work in the international space. It started in the Peace Corps where my efforts to start a community library led a village to rise up against their corrupt village chairman. I learned the power of organizing from Mayan community leaders.

I then led Presbyterian Church advocacy efforts at the United Nations where I encouraged faith leaders to use their moral voices to address the global aids pandemic, advocate for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and oppose the war in Iraq.

I had a front row seat to the religious right undermining human rights both in my denomination and at the United Nations. I became a leading expert on their tactics, writing my book Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized. Everything I warned about in that book has now come to pass.

I have hope because my faith teaches me that God hates tyranny. God hears the groans of those oppressed and works through us to transform society. It’s a joy to be part of that plan.

Join Us

If you’ve followed my reflections on faith, courage, and democracy, I hope you’ll take the next step with us.

👉 Subscribe to our global newsletter at www.faithdemocracy.org to stay connected to this emerging movement.

👉 Follow us on LinkedIn
You can also follow Faith in Democracy on LinkedIn for stories, updates, and upcoming events.

📚 Read my earlier Substacks on the transnational religious right

• The Global Christian Nationalist Threat to Democracy

• Reclaiming Faith to Counter Global Christian Nationalism

Faith in Democracy is not just an organization — it’s a community of conscience. Together, we can reclaim faith’s power to defend truth, heal division, and build a world where everyone can flourish.

Upgraid to Paid

A lot of us are asking right now: What can we do as political violence continues to rise? How do we turn down the heat while still speaking out about injustice and wrongs? How do we practice nonviolence even as our president stokes it?

President Trump has continually threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, a move that would allow him to deploy the U.S. military to Chicago and other cities to perform regular police duties — including arresting civilians. What would stop him from sending troops to quell protests or intimidate voters on Election Day? This represents a serious escalation in authoritarian tactics, especially as millions are expected to take to the streets this weekend for No Kings Day demonstrations.

It means exercising our right to speak out and to protest peacefully is all the more important. It also means the president feels threatened by our power and the fact that his actions are increasingly unpopular. The “Sleeping Giant” of Civil Society is waking up.

Yesterday Governor Pritzker held a press conference with former U.S. major generals, admirals, and veterans to address the growing militarization of American cities. It was heartening to hear them speak about the untenable position our young soldiers could be placed in — and about the grave threat this poses to citizens and to democracy itself.

US Mayors Declaration on Political Violence

I was also encouraged by a new Declaration on Political Violence signed by mayors from both political parties. The declaration was released at the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an act of domestic terrorism that killed 168 people who ranged in age from three months to 73 years old. Nineteen of them were children. Hundreds more were injured.

The Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, who currently serves as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, organized the event and led the declaration. In addition, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, much to Trump’s dismay, publicly condemned the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago from Republican-led states. Its obviously a good sign that Republicans are stepping up and that state level alliances for democracy are still possible.

The declaration has been signed by 100 of the 1,400 mayors in the Conference, with more joining each day. Below is a list of those who have signed. I encourage you to thank your mayor if they have signed — and urge them to do so if they have not.

For those of us who are wrestling with how to guide our communities — whether congregants, students, or family members — through this volatile moment, this declaration is a powerful teaching tool. It preaches.

It reminds us how democracies are meant to function, and it models the moral clarity we need to restore them.

At a time when so many norms are being torn asunder, this declaration calls us back to our shared humanity — and to the discipline of hope that sustains it. This declaration is pointed. Read it carefully.

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The Oklahoma City Declaration on Political Violence

We have each affirmed today that:

We believe that political violence of any kind is unacceptable and should be met with the harshest condemnation and penalties.

We will condemn those who use or condone political violence, and will seek full accountability for their actions — even if their political position is one with which we agree.

Even in a pluralistic society those things we have in common still far exceed those things that make us different.

We will seek ways to inject our shared humanity into debates, even when those debates are emotional and in fact especially when those debates are emotional.

We believe that civility matters because it is a reflection of our respect for our shared humanity.

We will refrain from referring to those with whom we disagree by anything but their preferred name — and, if they have a title, we will use it.

We believe that dehumanization is the rhetorical device that has paved the way to the worst atrocities in human history.

We will refrain from referring to fellow Americans with whom we disagree as enemies or as evil, or with terms that imply they are less than human in any way.

We believe that we each deserve to be treated as individuals.

We will refrain from impugning the actions or statements of one person to an entire group or to everyone perceived to share that person or group’s political positions.

We believe there is no issue within the bounds of the American experiment — outside of insurrection or war — that is truly existential and we will refrain from using apocalyptic political rhetoric.

We believe that truth matters, especially when false information contributes to unnecessary outrage and emotion.

We will refrain from spreading false information, and will correct and condemn the spread of false information even when it originates from a person or group with whom we agree.

We believe that everyone participating in the American experiment is motivated by the same thing: a better life for all of us. Unless there is serious evidence to the contrary we will refrain from questioning the personal motivations of those with whom we disagree.

We believe that not every thought has to be expressed out loud, especially on social media.

We will use social media responsibly and with restraint.

And finally, we believe that we are humans first, Americans second, and partisans last.

Keep on refusing to obey in advance. The Emperor has no clothes. Continue to speak out in love and take to the streets. This is what will save us.

What can we do?

• Thank or encourage your mayor to sign on (signers at bottom).

• Read and discuss this statement in your congregation, class or other such community and discuss it. Where can we challenge ourselves and help others to communicate and set boundaries?

• Enjoy no Kings Day! Fear not (as scripture constantly tells us). The sooner we boundary this tyrant, the more possibility we have of a free future.

  

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Initial Signers (Thank these mayors!)

The initial signers of the declaration were: Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, Arlington (TX) Mayor Jim Ross, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth Kautz, Carmel (IN) Mayor Sue Finkam, Columbia (MO) Mayor Barbara Buffaloe, Columbia (SC) Mayor Daniel Rickenmann, Columbus (OH) Mayor Andrew Ginther, Edina Mayor James Hovland, Edmond Mayor Mark Nash, Findlay Mayor Christina Muryn, Fontana Mayor Acquanetta Warren, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, Gresham Mayor Travis Stovall, Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, Kansas City (MO) Mayor Quinton Lucas, Kent Mayor Dana Ralph, Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, Mesa Mayor Mark Freeman, Moore Mayor Mark Hamm, Mount Vernon (NY) Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, Piscataway Mayor Brian Wahler, Redmond Mayor Angela Birney, Riverside Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson, Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart, West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero, USCM CEO & Executive Director Tom Cochran.

Real faith resists tyranny! Support this effort to reclaim faith for justice by becoming a paid subscriber or sharing with others:

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The more authoritarianism rises in America the deeper my understanding of scripture. After all, scripture is the product of people working with God to overcome tyranny and oppression. I hope this will help you begin to read it with new eyes, and realize it speaks to us today as we struggle against those who concentrate power and resources in the hands of a few.

Here is a fantastic summary by UCC reporter Tiffany Vail, who brilliantly summarized the 40-minute speech.

The Rev. Jennifer Butler did not mince words during her keynote address to the 35^th General Synod of the United Church of Christ, saying, “these are terrifying times.”

But she also delivered a message of hope, declaring that the Bible is a “handbook for resisting tyranny.”

Butler, who founded the organization Faith in Democracy and is author of “Who Stole My Bible,” invited Synod delegates to go Into The Deep in a sacred journey through Scripture.

“I want us to know we are not alone,” she said. “We are walking with spiritual ancestors: people of the book, and people who came after them.”

Butler said she has always admired the United Church of Christ’s God Is Still Speaking catchphrase.

“I’ve talked to many a person who has returned to church because of your banners,” she said. “But the truth is that today, though God is still speaking, too many Christians are refusing to listen.”

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Butler called out the current “dangerous Christian nationalist ideology,” and said there is a radical charismatic network of leaders “spreading a doctrine of white Christian dominion over every area of society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business.”

“Christian nationalism is an oxymoron,” she said, quoting UCC General Minister and President/CEO Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson’s address from the previous evening. “But it is not new, and it has been dangerous in its every iteration.”

“This is the ideology that justified genocide against indigenous people under the Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery. It justified the slave trade in the name of Jesus Christ. It burned crosses on lawns and unleashed terror to enforce segregation,” she said. “And today it is duping people into accepting ever more violent and authoritarian policies with twisted versions of Christian theology.”

She pointed to the February cover of Time Magazine, which said: “it is the nature of kings and conquerors to offer belonging and purpose in exchange for obedience. And it is in the nature of people to believe them.”

“Today, democracies rarely fall to military coups. They crumble slowly, eroded from within by autocrats who skillfully rally public support while dismantling democratic norms,” she said, adding that a recent survey of 500 political scientists found that the U.S. is rapidly moving toward authoritarianism.

“Christian nationalists have risen to the highest reaches of our government. They have proudly anointed their new king who sits in the Oval Office. They crafted Project 2025 as a blueprint for the U.S. – one that imposes their will on the rest of us by rolling back civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, deporting immigrant neighbors, funneling wealth to the top, vilifying DEI, censorship, and rewriting the rules of power so they can cling to power, all in the name of Jesus,” she said. “Christian nationalism is no longer fringe.”

Butler said Scripture warned us about this. She talked about the Israelites who were initially led by prophetic leaders, but who grew afraid, and asked for a king.

“God offered a sober warning in I Samuel 8: 11-19. A king will take your sons. He will take your daughters, your land, your labor, until you yourselves become slaves. Six times that refrain repeats,” she said. “He will take. We would do well to remember those words today.”

Butler said the current administration is literally taking food from the mouths of children, snatching parents form the streets, and working to dehumanize and breed fear of “the other.”

“Yes, this moment is dark and frightening. And it is also a summoning. We are being called to bear witness, called to reclaim faith as a force of good in public life,” she said.

Butler said the Bible is a “handbook for resisting tyranny,” and said “humanizing one another is a tool of resistance.”

As examples, she lifted up the actions of Pope Francis, who publicly reminded Vice President J.D. Vance of the story of the Good Samaritan, saying “Christian love does not stop at borders,” and Washington DC Bishop Mariann Budde, who spoke directly to President Trump at the National Cathedral, calling on him to show mercy.

“We Christians have a moral responsibility to reclaim our hijacked text as the liberative text it was meant to be,” she said.

Butler said that while the Christian right has tried to use the Book of Revelation as a horror story, it is actually a powerful guide to hope. It talks about the fall of Babylon, of empire.

“The lamb of God may look vulnerable and weak, but the lamb prevails because every act of justice, every refusal to bow, every choice to love rather than dominate is a sign that Babylon is falling,” she said.

“As Christians, we were made for this moment. We are not powerless. We can protect this world from the Pharaohs of our time,” she said. “This is our moment to reclaim faith, not as a weapon, but as a moral vision. Not to dominate, but to dignify. So, I ask you: do you know the power that you carry?”

“God is still speaking. Do you hear it?”

A link to the full speech is below.

The best part of this was seeing a next generation inspired to take up the mantle.

I spent an hour signing books and hearing people’s stories. They inspired me deeply. So many people working for justice. When we get overwhelmed, just remember that!

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You can just follow this link for the video highlights.

To order books or invite me to speak, go to my author website.

In the wake of the horrific murder of Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump has taken white Christian conservative persecution narratives to new and dangerous heights.

At Kirk’s memorial service, he closed by saying, “I hate my opponents.” Then, days later, he did something about it. He quietly signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) — a directive giving the FBI, IRS, and Treasury sweeping new powers to treat ordinary advocacy, including the work of churches and nonprofits, as a national-security threat.

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In practice, this means any nonprofit, faith group, or donor working on causes the administration dislikes can be accused of aiding “domestic terrorism.” It’s an enormous and chilling expansion of government power over civil society, free speech, and freedom of religion.

I joined more than 3,700 civil-society organizations in signing a public letter rejecting these attacks on the First Amendment. But will the courts hear us? Will any Republican senators have the courage to say “Stop”?

Tyranny cannot allow true faith to flourish — because real faith stands with all people. It rejects the demonization of any group. It seeks to build a world where all can flourish. The creation story reminds us that every person bears God’s image; Jesus modeled this by dining with and healing the outcast under oppressive rule.

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The Attack in Broadview

On a recent Saturday, ICE agents in Broadview, Chicago, rushed out of their facility and fired on clergy. They struck Presbyterian minister Rev. David Black in the face with a pepper ball and drenched him and other praying clergy in chemical agents. Those who tried to protect him were shoved to the ground and sprayed.

Rev. Black later reported, “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof.” By all accounts it looks as though ICE very deliberately took aim at the man in the clerical collar who was praying.

The irony is staggering. For all the talk from this administration about “Christian persecution,” they attack pastors and suppress the faith they claim to defend.

Faith Under Fire

This persecution began early and is accelerating. In February 2025, Trump allies Mike Flynn and Elon Musk accused Lutheran and other faith-based groups of fraud and “money laundering,” with Trump amplifying their claims through his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk. Flynn even mocked these groups by putting quotation marks around “Lutheran,” implying they weren’t truly Christian.

Meanwhile, NSPM-7 frames political dissent as anti-Christian “domestic extremism.” In truth, it is the Trump administration that has become profoundly anti-Christian—redefining faith as ethnonationalism wrapped in religious language.

But authentic Christianity teaches something entirely different: that love, compassion, and justice are the hallmarks of faith. For too long, many of us have hidden our light under a bushel, embarrassed by how faith has been misused. Now is the time to lift it high — to proclaim love and freedom in the face of domination and destruction, whether that harm falls on immigrants, trans people seeking care, or farmers struggling under tariffs.

Faith Leaders Push Back

Rev. Black and others have filed suit against ICE and federal officials.

Undeterred, nearly 200 clergy and supporters marched peacefully to the Broadview facility days after the attack, seeking to offer holy communion to detainees inside. Organized by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, they were ultimately denied entry — but their witness drew national attention.

Millions have joined peaceful protests against the government’s escalating repression.

Rev. Black told MSNBC, “A new creation is coming to life right now in America.”

Rev. Quincy, a Chicago minister, described these protests as “watching the kingdom of heaven smash against the gates of hell.” He spoke of people caring for one another and standing together even as they face assault.

Courts are taking action. Two days ago a judge in Illinois has temporarily blocked federal agents from using certain types of force and crowd-control measures against protesters.

We even see some political movement. Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican and the chair of the National Governors Association, said Thursday he opposes sending National Guard troops across state borders without the state’s permission – a position that received a rare rebuke of the president from a sitting Republican official. There are signs others Republican governors may speak out as well. Such acts could save the nation. So I pray they do.

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Conclusion: Faith That Defies Fear

What we are witnessing is not the “war on Christianity” Trump claims — it is his war on authentic faith. Authoritarianism cannot tolerate a faith that insists every human being has dignity and that love is stronger than fear.

This is a defining moment for people of faith.
We must stand together — across denominations, traditions, and nations — to defend the freedom to believe, to serve, and to love.

Because real faith, the faith that heals and liberates, will not bow to tyranny. It will rise — again and again — until love has the final word.

Last week, after the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk by a disturbed young man, the president did not call for healing or unite Americans in measures that would address our growing polarization. Instead, he began weaponizing grief—using the murder of a young father of two to further polarize the nation, blaming “the left” and silencing critics.

We could all feel in our bones where this was headed.

But something unexpected happened. When Trump pushed ABC and Disney to cancel comedian Jimmy Kimmel, the people rose up. Crowds gathered outside Disney and at ABC affiliates around the country . Customers unsubscribed. Pressure mounted until Disney reversed course, putting Kimmel back on air.

The pressure campaign worked. Tuesday night he returned to television. Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” averaged 6.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That is nearly four times as much as his usual audience, even though more than 20 percent of ABC affiliates boycotted the show.

What does this tell us? For one thing, it tells us that our protests and boycotts work, especially when directed at institutions we still have power over. Republicans in Congress may have lost their spine but businesses have a bottom line. And we showed them that courage is in their interest. We cannot always count on them to act out of patriotism (although I hope and expect some will), but we can push them to defect from the MAGA coalition.

Secondly, many of us will unexpectedly find ourselves on the front lines. Our years of spiritual practice and quieter activism have prepared us for this moment. Our sacred texts are full of examples of unlikely heroes hurled into the limelight because of circumstances. Behind such figures are those never mentioned who paved the way for their courage.

Kimmel himself rose to the moment. Supported by fellow comedians, he spoke humbly and with conviction:

“But I don’t want to make this about me… this show, this show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with comedians and talk show hosts from countries like Russia, countries in the Middle East who tell me they would get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power. And worse than being thrown in prison. They know how lucky we are here. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country.”

He did what the president should be doing: uniting us around free speech and shared values. He and millions of Americans brought about a powerful rebuke to the president’s policies reminding us that we still have power to save our democracy.

Unlikely heroes

Unlikely heroes often carry the message we need. The Right Reverend Mariann Budde, who has served as the Bishop of Washington DC since 2011, knows this well. On June 1, 2020, she stepped before cameras after Trump’s Bible-waving photo op at St. John’s Church. With clarity and courage, she declared: “President Trump does not speak for St. John’s. We align ourselves with those seeking justice for George Floyd and countless others.”

In her new book, Bishop Budde writes that moments of courage are not about the leader—they are about what the people need to hear. In her book How We Learn to Be Brave, she insists we all have this capacity. Courage is built over a lifetime of small choices, preparing us for decisive moments. I’m reading it now and finding it chock full of wisdom for this moment.

Humble leadership is what we are witnessing now. From those who unsubscribed to those who protested, each act added up to a collective roar of resistance.

Like Moses, we may feel unqualified. Like the midwives of Exodus, we may feel shockingly thrust into situations where we could feel powerless. Yet they used what they had—words, wit, and faith—to subvert tyranny.

This week, the narrative shifted. From silencing to resistance. From fear to courage. It took millions of us. And it took each of us.

Never forget the power you have. Use it.

For Inspiration:

The events of the past two weeks drained me and I talked to many who felt the same. We have miles to go before we sleep.

Find inspiration from those who have lead in difficult moments. Here are two books I’m reading:

• Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

• Maria Ressa, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future.

  Maria Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work challenging corruption in the Philippines as a reporter and CNN bureau chief and later as the founder of the online news organization Rappler. She was imprisoned by President Duterte. Her book is both inspiring and an essential update on the battle against disinformation.

What are you reading that inspires you and keeps you moving?

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