Since more than 80% of evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump in 2024, when seeking folks to interview at the June 14 No Kings protest in Nashville, Tenn., I sought those bearing religious-oriented posters to explore their perspectives. With several thousand gathered on the plaza at the foot of a Bible Belt state capitol building, it didn’t take long to find folks.
The first, a woman dressed as a golden calf, bore a sign reading, “CHRISTIANS: TRUMP is your GOLDEN CALF / Nehemiah 9:16-21 / #NOIDOLS #NOKINGS.” (The passage describes how Hebrew people were saved from bondage of a king yet “presumptuously … stiffened their necks … cast an image of a calf for themselves … and committed great blasphemies.”
When I identified myself as a writer, she asked to remain anonymous. She said she grew up Roman Catholic, expanded her understanding to a more inclusive worldview and sees herself as more of an agnostic now. I asked her how she saw the relationship between Christianity and Make America Great Again culture.
She said the children of Israel gave credit to an idol for bringing them out of Egypt. “You remember the AI video Trump released of himself as a giant golden statue, that immediately made me think of Nehemiah 9:16-21. And the fact MAGA idolizes this guy who paints his office in gold, and everything he does has to be in gold; I mean how can you not make that relationship. And if they truly want to believe in the word of the Lord, I’ll tell you this much: God would not be demanding we put the Ten Commandments in every classroom; he’d be feeding every child in the classroom. So, the hypocrisy is real — 110% real. And I really, really hope Christians find it in their hearts to abandon their pride, abandon their ego and really examine what it is they’re following.”
I then saw a sign that, in Spanish, said, “Jesus was an immigrant.” Two of the women in the corresponding group were wearing witch hats. I overheard one of them say she grew up Southern Baptist, and I asked if we could chat.
Jessica is 31 and said, “I am a pagan; I walk that path.” She explained, “The correspondence between MAGA Republicans and evangelical Southern Baptists especially is that they are taught from a very early age that they are the only ones that’s right; there is no fault in them. All they have to do is pray to God, and they are absolved, and everything is hunky-dory. … That plays directly into the MAGA mindset of ‘we don’t care about nuance; everything is black or white; we’re right — you’re wrong, and there’s nothing you can say that will fix it.’”
I asked about her path from Southern Baptist to pagan.
She said, “My whole life, like from age 6, I can remember being like really devout in the church. Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, Tuesdays, mission trips two weeks in the summer, vacation Bible school, even summer camps. I’ve always been a spiritual person. My difference is: When I learned about empathy from Jesus, I very much took that to heart. I kind of started splitting (from the church) when I realized the empathy in the church was not the empathy that Jesus taught. It (became) a divide for me. Made me go atheist for a long time because I thought everything was a lie. Nothing that they were teaching was actually being followed. It was just a bunch of pretty words. … That’s when I was about 17 or 18.”
She explained that her parents stopped going to church and started doing home Bible studies with no room for questioning. She started meeting friends of other religions and found them to be talking about the same common denominators of “loving people and taking care of the planet.”
I observed that she seemed to have a sense that the new people she was encountering were “genuine.” She said, “Exactly!” I asked if there was a specific incident where Christians’ insincerity pushed her over a line. She said, “Absolutely! In 2009 I was in high school, and that’s when (there was a political measure related to marriage equality). I have lots of friends who are gay and trans. …. I bought an ‘equal sign’ sticker with my own money and put it on my car. Got home, went inside to change for work, came back out, and (two of my older male family members) had taken razors and ripped off all my stickers off my car. I asked them why, and they said, ‘We don’t support that f-slur shit.’ That really bothered me, because we’re supposed to love others. … Nobody’s forcing you to be gay.”
Later I met yet another woman holding a sign saying, “Jesus was an immigrant.” Sheila is a robust soon-to-be 75-year-old, practicing Catholic. Alluding to the long-running TV show MASH, she proudly said she was a real-life Hot Lips Houlihan who served as an Army nurse not in Korea but in Vietnam. She met a strait-laced doctor who proposed to her in the medicine closet. He became an obstetrician back in his hometown of Nashville, where, she said, he delivered a few of Dolly Parton’s nieces. She attributed mission trips all over the world, including six months in South Africa, with making a good man have an even more broadly focused and generous spirit. She said he sold his practice at age 55 and went to seminary. “Then the bishop of East Tennessee called him to serve at Stinking Creek at the base of Hog’s Breath Ridge. They also need a doc. We wore T-shirts that said ‘Veterans for Peace’ all the time. That was huge for us.
I asked about her view of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. She said, “Absolutely wrong.”
A little over a year ago, her husband died just days before their 50th wedding anniversary. Yet, she beamed with verve.
I asked what her message is to other Christians in general and Catholics like Vice President JD Vance in particular who support MAGA. Her tone shifted from bubbly to intense. “Oh my God, no. No. No. No. Support your love of God and your fellow man. That’s what you support. Stand up for equality. Don’t be quiet about it. Talk to your neighbors. Stand up.”