I Underestimated the Religious Right

This isn’t what I thought I’d be writing in 2025. 

Four years ago, after the horror of Jan. 6, I believed our nation had reached a turning point. I thought we would see the floodwaters of the "Make America Great Again" movement start to recede, making way for a new reconstruction of our nation in which the promise of “liberty and justice for all” could finally be made real for all Americans. I hoped we would finally be able to forge long overdue bipartisan solutions to fix our broken immigration system and push through reforms to heal our democracy, including ending gerrymandering, limiting the corrupting influence of money in politics, and restoring the Voting Rights Act.

But here we are four years later: Despite many good faith efforts to foster dialogue, build bridges, and combat division, our nation seems to have fallen even deeper into the quicksand of toxic polarization and a politics driven by an often-racialized, zero sum, us-versus-them mentality. Real economic stress tied to rising inflation and inequality, anger over immigration, and backlash to protests pushing for racial justice served as powerful wedges in our body politic.

When I reread the prologue of my 2021 book, A More Perfect Union, I’m reminded just how badly so many of us underestimated the backlash that followed the racial awakening of 2020 — and how durable the forces of grievance, fear, and economic dislocation have become. I wrote about my hope that Trump’s Big Lie and his corresponding efforts to overturn the 2020 election results would serve as a wake-up call to protect and strengthen our democracy. Yet that lie only got worse and our urgent calls to save our democracy failed to break through. I hoped that lessons from the pandemic would inspire a greater commitment to build a more equitable economy, yet the backlash against shutdowns and vaccines seemingly exacerbated our culture wars and individualism.

I also underestimated the Religious Right’s unscrupulous thirst for power and the extent to which Christian nationalism has become woven into the fabric of so much of the American church. And though I’ve been a keen observer of the last few decades of U.S. history, what I failed to fully see is the degree to which a resurgent Christian nationalist movement nearly 50 years in the making was growing, thanks to massive funding from oil and tech billionaires. This movement, which supercharged support for Trump, grew stronger in part through local and state level campaigns to censor and ban books, scapegoat transgender kids, and undermine religious liberty.

We must continue to resist the temptation to make this all about President Donald Trump. The truth is, what we are facing right now is about far more than a single president or even the MAGA movement. It’s a struggle that is rooted in the tug of war that has taken place throughout our nation’s history around who “We the People” includes and whether the rights granted by the Constitution and the promise of “liberty and justice for all” ever becomes real for all Americans.

But one thing I recognized then — and that remains true now — is this: The majority of Americans still believe in pluralism and the ideal of liberty and justice for all. I know this because people still nod when I speak and preach about the message of my book. Polling backs me up, showing most Americans still support the principles and ideals of fairness, equal justice under the law, and the rights and freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Four years ago, I posed a series of questions in my book that feel even more urgent now: How can America be remade, even reborn, in ways that repair our democracy? How can we root out a politics of fear and division and replace it with a politics that prioritizes truth, justice, and the common good? If I were writing the book today, I might sharpen these questions this way: How do we build exit ramps out of Christian nationalism and into the Beloved Community? And how do we resist the dangers of authoritarianism while casting a bold alternative vision of a healthy democracy that enables thriving for everyone?

As I look around today, I see many answers to those questions: To repair and transform our democracy, we’ll need strategic, moral resistance that helps people see how presidential abuses of power — such as the illegal dismantling of federal government agencies and freezing vital funding — negatively impact people’s real lives and fundamental freedoms. In March, one way Sojourners has been doing this is by hosting a series of vigils at the U.S. Capitol with Washington Interfaith Staff Community. At these gatherings, we call on Congress to exercise greater courage in this moment to prevent the abuse and consolidation of power by the Trump administration.

We’re also in a time in which people of faith and conscience must protect those who are being made vulnerable by the policies of the new administration including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and Black and brown communities who will likely face increased racialized policing and brutality.

But I also think we desperately need a more hopeful and unifying moral vision that taps into our deepest civic and religious values. I still believe that countervailing vision could be a reimagined version of the Beloved Community, which as I write in A More Perfect Union is building communities and a nation in which neither punishment nor privilege is viciously tied to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, where our nation’s growing diversity is embraced as a strength rather than a weakness, and where everyone is equally valued and is enabled to thrive. I see this vision as a north star that includes actionable principles and commitments that I call beatitudes and unpack in the book, including imago dei equality, radical welcome, ubuntu interdependence, environmental stewardship, nonviolence, and dignity for all.

Why a moral vision? Because moral visions have the power to tell a deeper story and tap into something greater. Moral visions can awaken our sense of what ought to be, even in the face of the ugliness of what currently is. Moral visions have the power to foster solidarity, bridge divides, deepen empathy, and incite a sense of a shared and higher purpose. A deeper moral vision will be essential for building the big-tent inclusive and just democracy movement that is needed in this moment. 

The project of pushing our nation up the mountain of becoming a just, inclusive, multiracial democracy is much steeper and longer than I had hoped. But I’m convinced that despite setbacks we must keep climbing, we must keep pushing, we must keep ascending, together. So let us not be weary in doing good, because in due season we will reap a good harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9).

Editor’s note: The author’s book A More Perfect Union is now out in paperback, wherever books are sold.