Donald Trump’s return to the White House is “the absolute worst case scenario,” according to religion scholar Matthew Taylor.
“We’re in an epochal shift in American history of the worst sort, and while it does not spell the absolute end of American liberal democracy, MAGA is a fatal illness,” Taylor wrote on X after the Tuesday election.
Zach Hunt, a California-based author and former youth pastor, sounded a related alarm via his Substack column: “I don’t think the conservative white evangelicals who have thrown their support behind Trump comprehend or even care about the irreparable damage they have done both to the church and the relationships in their own lives with people who are not MAGA.”
Hunt is the author of Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong. Taylor, who is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, is the author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that Is Threatening Our Democracy.
Matthew Taylor
In a lengthy X thread, Taylor quotes Founding Father John Adams: “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It’s in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It’s not true in fact and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men under all forms of simple government and, when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty.”
Then he adds: “We’re living in the moment the American founders feared most: A populist authoritarian (they used the term “demagogue” — same difference) has gained power through a legitimate election. Worse, Trump has the most concentrated, anti-democratic coalition since the Confederacy.”
“We’re living in the moment the American founders feared most.”
Taylor predicts there will be two divergent views of American history in the future: The Elon Musk-driven narrative of Trump as America’s savior versus “the complicated story of America’s yet-to-be-perfected union, of growing pluralism since the 1960s, of the derailment of that trajectory through a white majority and Christian majority backlash.”
There is no parallel to the current moment in American history, Taylor says.
“It’s as if Stephen Douglas had won in 1860, except Douglas was more centrist and pragmatic. This is something new.”
As for what to expect in the days ahead, apart from Trump pardoning himself and all the January 6 rioters, there will be “a surge in Christian nationalist and Christian supremacist rhetoric and identities around Trump,” Taylor warns. “Trump’s seemingly ‘miraculous’ re-election on the heels of his ‘miraculous’ survival of the two assassination attempts will pour jet fuel on the already popular idea that Trump is ordained and anointed by God for office.”
Sadly, he adds, “Christians who choose to resist that theology will be castigated and alienated by many churches.”
Zach Hunt
That’s the point Hunt picks up in his Substack: Evangelicals in their support for Trump and Trumpism are destroying the church but can’t see that.
“I grew up a conservative white evangelical and I know how insulated and effective the evangelical bubble can be, particularly when paired with the belief that any and all criticism is actually persecution and therefore a sign that you’re doing something right,” he wrote.
“Their belief that their faith alone has saved them and set them apart from the world creates a sense of self-righteousness that inoculates them from self-reflection, from even conceiving of the possibility that they would ever be complicit, let alone actively engaged in evil. And, to be fair, few if any of us — Christian or otherwise — seek to do evil or harm others. But evangelicals have spent generations demanding others search their hearts for sin, yet now refuse to do the same themselves.”
“Evangelicals have spent generations demanding others search their hearts for sin, yet now refuse to do the same themselves.”
The result, Hunt warns, is that evangelicals “support a man who is anti-Christ in every conceivable way while celebrating the white supremacist agenda he’s promised to enact, deflecting criticism of those facts as the hyperbole and partisan overreaction of sore losers.”
Trump’s stated agenda of vengeance and revenge, of mass deportations and reshaping the federal government in his image creates more than a difference of opinions among Christians, he said.
“We have an irreconcilable difference of morality, faith and what it means to be a decent human being. Which is why things can never go to back to normal, not in the church or in our relationships.”
To evangelical Trump supporters, he says: “You have made it clear over, over and over again who you are and what you support. The world outside the church has seen how you sanctify racism, bigotry and oppression and they want nothing to do with you or your faith. Neither do those of us who call the church home. It has become clear that while we may speak the same theological language, we have a fundamental and irreconcilable understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We still love Jesus. It’s your apostasy and cruelty we reject.”
The celebration of Donald Trump has created an irreconcilable rift in the church, Hunt asserts. “The wounds you’ve caused are deep and the sense of betrayal to the faith we claim to share is strong, but ultimately we must part ways because we cannot be a part of, we cannot condone, we cannot normalize the racism, bigotry and hate you have chosen to embrace.”
This is not being sore losers in an election, he adds. “This is much bigger than Harris or Trump. We’re disappointed in you and disgusted by the racism, bigotry and hate you’ve chosen to embrace in the name of Jesus. We’re shaking the dust off of our sandals and moving on (if we haven’t already).”
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