| During the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Post columnist Michael Gerson spied an incongruity that deeply unsettled him. "Christian banners mixed with the iconography of white supremacy, in a manner that should have choked Christian participants with rage," he writes in our latest Opinions Essay. "But it didn't." That disturbing reality raised a question for Mike, a lifelong evangelical Christian: How is it that today, much of what considers itself Christian America — those who identify with Jesus most loudly and publicly — has readily embraced a politics that is "a serious, unfolding threat to liberal democracy" and so obviously "inconsistent with Christianity by any orthodox measure"? Mike's essay is a meticulous examination of this paradox. He explained in an email to me that he was moved to write it because he values the tradition in which he was brought up, "not because I have disdain for it." He also underscored the urgent calling he felt to get it all down in words. "I have no intention of going anywhere soon," he said, "but intimations of mortality do focus the mind. And this essay constitutes a kind of summary statement for me."
By intimations of mortality, Mike was referring to his struggle with cancer, which he has mentioned, understatedly, in his regular column for The Post. By summary statement, he meant a culmination of years thinking and writing on what he calls "the proper role of religion in politics."
In the essay, Mike ingeniously draws parallels between the divisive social conditions that gave birth to Christianity in the first century A.D. and the trends contributing to our modern-day turbulence. In both eras, he observes, people were primed for a militant, populist uprising. But their chosen messiahs led them along decidedly different paths: in Jesus' case, toward a spiritual awakening grounded in acts of love, inclusion, sacrifice and peacemaking; in Donald Trump's case, toward a combative politics driven by fear, resentment, selfishness and anger. Mike argues that there is an alternative way forward, and his vision is a powerful summary statement indeed. I hope you will read it (or listen to the audio version, featuring Mike's own eloquent rendition) — and share it, especially if you, too, are a person of faith who believes this is a message the people in your community need to hear.  (Brian Stauffer for The Post) The MAGA faithful's resentments, malevolence and violence are a form of moral ruin. So why have so many American evangelicals signed on? The Opinions Essay ● By Michael Gerson ● Read more » |    | | | |
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