Religion, Politics, and What's Broken My Brain for Ten Years

I don't always know what it looks like to be a Christian in the world of politics, but I feel confident that it's neither of these two extremes.

Jun 13, 2025

Five months ago I hit a breaking point.

Or maybe, to be more precise, I had a moment of absolute clarity regarding something that has slowly been breaking me for the past ten years.

Think about that. Imagine something messing with your head for a solid decade. Something that you couldn’t make sense of. Something that not only didn’t sit right with you, but sat diametrically opposed to how you’d previously understood reality.

What is the something I’m referring to?

What has been giving my brain an unscratchable itch for more years than TikTok has been in existence?

It’s this: The overwhelming support of Donald Trump by Christians in general and the evangelical church in particular.

I’ve finally found an outlet to help process this crushingly confusing decade, but before I get in to that let me back up and talk about politics, religion, and the Kingdom of God.

Politics and Religion: No Perfect Candidate

Look, I get it, when it comes to politics and religion there is rarely (if ever) a perfect option for a political candidate. Even a good option feels like a breath of fresh air when it comes.

The domain of politics and the domain of the spiritual life don’t always map onto each other all that well. While it might seem optimal to vote for a candidate (for any office, let alone the highest in the land) who represents all of our values, that’s obviously impossible. I myself, on most days, cannot manage to represent all my own values all the time.

Life is constantly a negotiation between conflicting values.

Point being, it’s naive to expect anyone to only ever vote for someone who aligns with all of their goals and values. No such candidate exists.

Which means that every time we step in to a voting booth we are stepping in to a conscious choice for compromise. We know we will be voting for people we cheer on and support for how they approach issues A, B, and C, all the while accepting that we wish they’d feel differently about X, Y, and Z.

I bring this up because one common refrain from Christians who voted for Trump is, “Well I sure as heck wasn’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton / Kamala Harris,” followed by very understandable and legitimate reasons why their conscience couldn’t support a vote for a Democratic candidate.

I get it. I see you. I hear and I feel you.

Our choices for President often feel like choosing between two massively less than ideal options. South Park, in its classic brand of envelope pushing satire guaranteed to make most people cringe, has been naming this phenomenon for more than 20 years.

But what that episode of South Park illustrates (through a story about a school needing to choose a new mascot and the options are either a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich) is what happens when you stare at both options and you know that neither are great—let alone perfect. You know both have flaws. You know both will let you down in important ways.

In such situations, when you do finally cast your vote, you do so with just a hint of shame. You hold your nose voting for the Turd Sandwich. No, it’s not ideal, and you’ve got all sorts of reasons why you’re not thrilled with it, but in the final estimation you’ve deemed it the lesser of two evils.

But when 80% of white evangelicals—in both 2016 and 2024—cast their vote for their version of a Turd Sandwich, very (very) few did so with shame, embarrassment, or pinched noses.

And THAT is the thing that has been scrambling my brain for the last ten years.

I get it, you couldn’t vote for Clinton or Harris… but you could vote for Trump?

And do so proudly?!

As I said the other day on Instagram,

If you’re going to vote for Trump and support some of his policies then fine. Go for it. But if you make the claim that “it’s your Christian faith leading you to do so,” then show your work. Because I don’t see it.

No Caesar or King, Please

As a Christian I have a vested interest in what Jesus called the Kingdom of God being made manifest on earth as it is in Heaven. Since that was his goal, it is therefore mine as well.

The kicker being, the values and aims of the Kingdom of God don’t always (if ever) translate well in to the political domain. As I see it, the Kingdom kind of sits between two extremes: Empire and Theocratic Monarchy.

The original Jesus movement began as an oppositional posture against the powers of Rome (aka, Empire). The Kingdom’s origin story was rooted in anti-Empire language and ethos.

If on one end you have Empire, then the other end seems to be what it looks like when the State is run by and married to the church. This is what I mean by Theocratic (aka, when the government is run “in the name of God”) Monarchy (aka, a single ruler governs). And this is not good either. That ends up devolving into atrocities like the Inquisition—or in today’s flavor, Christian Nationalism.

I admit that it’s not always clear to me how Christianity operates within the political arena, but I do think that these two extremes (Empire and Theocratic Monarchy) represent the south stars that we, as Christians, should strive to move away from. However the teachings of Jesus ought impact the ways in which a society is governed, and however it may look for the Kingdom to be revealed on Earth, it probably sits somewhere between Empire (where church is outlawed) and Theocratic Monarchy (where church is mandated).

Christianity teaches me to reject a Caesar who uses the cross to punish Christians, and also reject a King who wears the cross to privilege Christians.

How I’m Coping

As mentioned above I’ve been struggling to confront the ways in which the religion of my youth, the religion of my training, the religion of my current vocation and personal affiliation has aligned itself with the aims of an individual who not only seeks to rule as a King, but to do so in some twisted name-of-God.

Not that Trump has any relationship to Christianity or to God, mind you. He clearly has no relationship with Jesus, and is not at all led by the Spirit. But he knows how to use the religion of Christianity for his purposes, and Christians just keep on falling for it. It would be embarrassing and hilarious if it wasn’t so disastrous and destructive.

Rather than move away from a Theocratic Monarchy, far too many Christians are content or even cheering on a rushing toward it.

But anyway, as I said I’ve been rocked by the hypocrisy of Christians (especially evangelicals), and I haven’t always known what to do about it.

Then five months ago I had this moment of clarity.

If you’ve been subscribed or followed me for a while then you know what I’m about to say, but back in January there were two events that transpired within a 24 hour period: 1) the Inauguration of Trump, and 2) the National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral.

At the Inauguration, Franklin Graham gave a prayer that sounded very Christian to me. The next morning, at the prayer service, Rev Mariann Budde gave a message that sounded very Jesus-y to me.

And the fact that those two things sat in different buckets was astonishing. Yet it perfectly encapsulates what I’ve felt for ten years.

Since listening to these contrasting messages, the thought “How can something sound “Christian” but not sound like Jesus,” echoed in my mind over and over and over again. As both a stupefying mystery, and, like the culmination of the last ten years of head scratching.

With the rise of Trumpism and the ascendancy of the MAGA movement, the person/teachings/ways of Jesus have slowly been removed from the religion of Christianity.

And THAT is the core issue as I see it.

Keep the “Christ” Part in Christian

One of the ways that I’ve tried to process this removal of Jesus from Christianity is to create at 10 part podcast called, Keep Christ in Christian.

The name pretty much says it all, but myself (along with two dear friends and colleagues) recorded ten episodes in which we break down a variety of ways in which we are imploring the church to keep a teaching or a practice of Jesus in their expression of Christianity.

So far we’ve talked about topics such as:

I’m really proud of how this project (from The Better Fruit Project) has turned out.

So if you, like me, have felt a sense of disillusionment these past several years about what happened to the Christianity you once knew and loved, then I invite you to head over to Keep Christ in Christian and either listen/subscribe right here on Substack, or check it out on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And then do me a favor and share it with the people in your life. Because the more people talk about this stuff then the better chance we have at returning to a version of Christianity that is actually rooted in and looks like Jesus.