The Church in America didn’t just lose its way—it helped pave the road.
The Crisis Has Come Home
There are moments in history when the soul of a nation is laid bare—when all the rhetoric, politics, and pageantry can no longer disguise the truth. These moments serve as a divine audit, forcing a confrontation with what we truly worship. For the Church in America, H.R.1 is one of those moments.
The passage of a bill that strips human dignity from those who do not "belong," that criminalizes compassion, and that codifies exclusion with the blunt force of law is a profound moral failure. The prophet Isaiah’s warning echoes across millennia: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people” (Isaiah 10:1-2, NIV). Yet, this bill passed with the backing of a party whose platform is increasingly indistinguishable from pulpits nationwide. The president who championed it—cheered on by millions—claims to follow the same Jesus who delivered a stark and unforgettable metric for judgment.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that on the final day, the King will separate the nations as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The righteous—the sheep—are welcomed into His kingdom because, as He explains, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:35, NIV). When the righteous ask when they did these things, the King replies, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, NIV). The president and his supporters claim to follow this Jesus, even as they champion policies that do the opposite of welcoming the stranger.
How did we get here?
How did the Church in America—once known for sanctuary, for mercy, for sacrifice—become a co-signer of cruelty? How did a faith founded on the radical welcome of God become so comfortable erecting the barriers He sent Christ to tear down? (Ephesians 2:14).
This is not merely a political crisis. It's a spiritual reckoning. It is the inevitable outcome of a long and tragic exchange. For decades, the American Church has traded its prophetic witness for proximity to power. It has preached a gospel of personal salvation while remaining silent about public injustice, forgetting the Lord’s clear requirement “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8, NIV). It has dangerously mistaken national identity for divine favour.
As policies like H.R.1 take hold, the Church must ask itself not simply how this happened, but what role it played in bringing us here. This is not a partisan screed; it is a lament. It is a warning, and it is a plea. Because if the Body of Christ does not awaken now—if it does not repent of its complicity and return to the heart of the Gospel—it will not only forfeit its moral credibility, but risk becoming unrecognizable to the very Christ it claims to follow. It risks hearing the most devastating words from its Saviour: “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:23, NIV).
A Long Compromise
The Church's crisis did not begin with H.R.1, Donald Trump, the Moral Majority, or the culture wars of the 1980s. It began much earlier, with small compromises that slowly reshaped the Church's understanding of power, purpose, and presence in the world. Each compromise was a step away from the narrow road of discipleship and onto the broad path of cultural acceptance.
From the founding of the United States, American Christianity has wrestled with a contradiction at its core: proclaiming a gospel of liberty while blessing the chains of bondage, preaching grace while practicing exclusion. Enslavers twisted Scripture to justify oppression, citing passages taken out of context while ignoring the Bible’s overarching trajectory toward liberation, culminating in the declaration that in Christ “there is neither slave nor free” (Galatians 3:28). Churches were built on land taken by force, their steeples rising over a history of injustice. Pews were segregated by race and class, and pulpits that should have thundered with the prophetic fury of Amos against injustice remained silent during lynchings, internment, and mass deportations. At every turn, the institution often chose the comfort of the powerful over the courage required to stand with the oppressed, forgetting the command to "defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:9).
But the most dangerous compromise has always been this: trading the prophetic witness of the Gospel for the political promises of Caesar. In the wilderness, Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for a single act of worship to Satan. He refused, declaring, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only” (Matthew 4:10). The American church has often been far more willing to negotiate.
In the postwar years, Christianity became dangerously entangled with American exceptionalism. Faith was nationalized—folded into a civic religion, paraded at inaugurations, and invoked to bless wars. Presidents quoted Scripture with the same breath they used to authorize bombings. Churches waved flags higher than crosses, and slowly, the distinction between being a good Christian and being a good American blurred. This syncretism created a form of idolatry, where allegiance to God was conflated with allegiance to the state, forgetting that the people of God are called to be “foreigners and exiles” on earth (1 Peter 2:11), with a primary “citizenship in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).
This fusion became formalized in the 1980s, when evangelical leaders aligned with political operatives to form what they called the "Moral Majority." In reality, it was a partisan bloc organized around fear—a spirit the Apostle Paul explicitly contrasts with the Spirit of God: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7, NKJV). This movement was animated by fear of cultural change, racial progress, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ visibility. They found in politics what they believed they had lost in the pews—relevance, influence, control.
But control comes at a cost.
The Church muted its voice on the issues central to Jesus’s ministry to preserve political access. It grew quiet on poverty and war, ignored the suffering of the immigrant, rationalized racial inequality, and excused behaviour in its political champions that it would never tolerate in its own congregants. The message was clear: as long as the ends were deemed righteous, the means didn't matter.
And with each compromise, the Church's prophetic imagination withered. It began to resemble ancient Israel demanding a king, crying out, "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations" (1 Samuel 8:19-20). They wanted a ruler they could see, a strongman to fight their battles. By the time Donald Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015, promising to make America "great" again by excluding the very people Christ called "the least of these," much of the white evangelical Church was already primed to see him not as a warning, but as an answer to prayer.
They saw in him a vessel of restoration.
What they didn't see—or refused to see—had already been lost. They had traded the birthright of a prophetic voice for a bowl of political pottage.
When the Gospel Becomes a Weapon
The Gospel was never meant to be a weapon. It was never intended to be used as a bludgeon against the vulnerable or as a shield for the powerful. In the Apostle Paul’s description of the armour of God, the only offensive tool is the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). Critically, this spiritual weapon is meant for warfare against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms,” not against flesh and blood. Yet, in the hands of a Church desperate to preserve its cultural dominance, God’s Word has too often been wielded against the very people it was meant to save.
What we have witnessed in recent years is not just the politicization of Christianity, but its weaponization. We see politicians quote Scripture to justify policies that separate families and cage children, mirroring the way religious leaders in Jesus’s time used the Law to condemn those he sought to heal. We see pastors defend candidates whose platforms demean the poor, target immigrants, and deny the dignity of entire communities. Entire denominations have been reshaped around the belief that righteousness is best expressed at the ballot box, not through lives marked by the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
Behind it all is a chilling theological lie: that the people most in need of grace are somehow the ones who least deserve it. This lie is the antithesis of the Gospel. The Bible’s testimony is that grace is unmerited by its very nature. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this,” Paul writes, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Grace is not a reward for the worthy, but a rescue for the perishing.
This lie, however, gives moral cover to cruelty. It is how Christians can cheer for a border wall while ignoring the suffering it causes. It is how ICE raids can happen in church parking lots with little outcry from the broader Christian community. It is how Iranian Christian asylum seekers can be deported and Haitian believers denied refuge, while churches that sent missionaries to those same countries remain silent, if not complicit.
When the Gospel becomes a tool of exclusion rather than an invitation of grace, it loses its power to save.
Even more insidiously, this weaponization has allowed for the emergence of a counterfeit Christianity —one that prizes nationalism over neighbour, law over love, and loyalty to party over allegiance to Christ. This is not the faith of the early Church, which harboured outcasts and defied the empire. This is not the Gospel preached by Jesus, who broke bread with sinners, touched lepers, and told the self-righteous that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of God ahead of them (Matthew 21:31). This is not the kingdom of God, where the last are first and the meek inherit the earth.
This is a religion of power dressed in the language of piety, what Paul warned of as a form of godliness that denies its power (2 Timothy 3:5). And the damage it inflicts is both personal and collective. It drives away the very people the Church is called to reach. It teaches a watching world that Christianity is about control, not compassion. And it reinforces the lie that faith is incompatible with justice, when in fact, the two are inseparable.
If the Church is to reclaim its integrity, it must lay down its weapons. It must heed Christ’s command to Peter in the garden: “Put your sword back in its place” (Matthew 26:52). We must return to the Gospel not as a means of enforcement, but as a message of liberation. Because a Gospel that cannot speak life to the oppressed is no Gospel at all
Who Is My Neighbour?
At the heart of the Gospel is a question Jesus was once asked by a religious lawyer who was trying to “justify himself” (Luke 10:29). He wanted to find a loophole, a way to narrowly define his responsibility. The question was, “And who is my neighbour?”. Jesus taught that the entire law of God hangs on two principles: loving God with all your heart, and loving your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). The lawyer’s question was an attempt to shrink the scope of this second great commandment.
Jesus responded not with a definition, but with a story. A man is beaten, robbed, and left for dead. A priest and then a Levite—both religious leaders, men who would have been seen as pillars of the community—see the man and walk by on the other side. But a Samaritan, a member of a despised and ethnically "other" group in the eyes of the story's audience, stopped. He saw the broken man not as an inconvenience, a threat, or a member of an opposing tribe, but as a fellow image-bearer of God. He bandaged his wounds, gave him shelter, and paid for his care. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour?” Jesus asked. The lawyer could not even bring himself to say the word “Samaritan,” replying only, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus’s command was simple and devastatingly clear: “Go and do likewise”.
If that parable were told today, who would be the Samaritan? And who would be the one left for dead?
Perhaps it is the Haitian mother fleeing gang violence, only to be told her presence is an “illegal” act. Or the Iranian convert seeking asylum after leaving Islam, only to be detained in the very church parking lot where he was baptized. Or the young boy sleeping under a foil blanket in a detention centre, separated from his family, while American Christians sing worship songs just miles away.
We have so easily forgotten the radical breadth of the Gospel’s call. Many American Christians have allowed "neighbour" to be narrowly defined by borders, language, culture, and legality. We have been trained, politically and theologically, to see people in crisis not as neighbours to love, but as problems to solve—or worse, threats to neutralize. In doing so, we have not only misread Scripture, we have misrepresented Christ. We have ignored the explicit command given to God’s people for millennia: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).
The early Church understood this. It was a sanctuary not just in name, but in practice. Believers “had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need” (Acts 2:44-45). They welcomed the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, sharing food, shelter, and dignity. They were persecuted not because they were powerful, but because their counter-cultural love for the outsider threatened the social and political order of the Roman empire.
Today, the Church risks becoming the empire it once resisted. We deploy theological language to justify systemic indifference. We speak of "law and order" while ignoring unjust laws, forgetting how Jesus healed on the Sabbath, declaring that human need supersedes rigid legalism. We fund missions overseas while criminalizing those same people when they show up at our border in desperate need.
All the while, we forget that Jesus Himself was a refugee. Before he could even walk, his life was threatened by a violent political ruler, King Herod. An angel commanded his father, “Get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt... for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him” (Matthew 2:13). The Saviour we worship began His earthly life as a child fleeing political violence, seeking asylum in a foreign land. Mary and Joseph would have been stopped at the border today, detained for papers, and likely deported.
"Who is my neighbour?" is not just a question for the ancient world. It is the question for our moment. And the answer will reveal not only what kind of country we are, but what kind of Church we have become.
A Gospel Without Witness
A Gospel proclaimed without witness is a Gospel betrayed. The Apostle James puts it bluntly: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? … In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:14, 17). Throughout Scripture, belief is inseparable from embodiment. The good news is not merely a set of doctrines to be affirmed—it is a reality to be lived. It is practiced. It is costly. And when the Church fails to live what it preaches, it empties the message of its power and credibility.
That is precisely what has happened in the American Church. We speak of grace, yet ration it by race, by citizenship, by politics. We proclaim mercy, but endorse laws that brutalize the already broken. We sing of love, but vote for cruelty, then call it faithfulness. We offer a dead faith, one that says to the shivering and hungry stranger, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs (James 2:16). When we preach salvation but fail to practice compassion, the Gospel becomes background noise.
When churches endorse political leaders who mock the vulnerable, demonize the immigrant, and persecute the oppressed, the world takes notice—and not in the way we pretend. We lose our moral credibility not because we are too political, but because we have become too partisan to be prophetic. The prophet of God speaks truth to power, regardless of party. He doesn't act as a court chaplain who sanitizes injustice.
Here is the sobering truth: a Church that remains silent in the face of state-sanctioned cruelty does not look like Christ. It looks like the empire He resisted. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, defined by service and sacrifice (John 18:36). Empire is defined by power, control, and dominance.
For many watching—especially immigrants, refugees, people of colour, and younger generations—this dissonance has become too great to bear. They are not leaving the Church because they reject Jesus. They are leaving because the Church no longer resembles Him. Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). When that love is rationed, the witness is broken. They are looking for a faith that does not flinch at injustice, that is not allergic to lament, and that knows how to wash feet and tear down walls.
We have an opportunity—perhaps our last in this generation—to reclaim that kind of faith. But to do so, we must repent not only of what we have done, but of what we have allowed. In Jesus’ parable of the final judgment, the goats are condemned not for their evil acts, but for their inaction—for what they failed to do for the hungry, the stranger, the naked, and the prisoner (Matthew 25:41-46). Our silence is a sin. A faith that does not witness to the heart of God in a time of suffering will not be remembered for its orthodoxy, but for its absence.
What Must We Do Now?
If the Church in America is to have any moral credibility left—if we are to be more than a cultural relic or a partisan tool—we must choose repentance. And not the shallow kind. Not scripted statements or PR apologies. We must pursue the repentance of Zacchaeus, who, upon meeting Jesus, immediately pledged to give half his wealth to the poor and pay back anyone he had cheated fourfold (Luke 19:1-10). It must be a repentance that costs something. It must change how we live, how we vote, how we speak, and how we welcome.
Here is what that repentance must look like:
1. Return to the Margins.
Jesus never led from the palace; his ministry was centred on those society deemed disposable. He began his mission by declaring he was anointed to "proclaim good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18). If we are to follow Him, we must re-centre the Church not around political influence, but around humble presence, reflecting the Christ who "emptied himself, by taking the very nature of a servant" (Philippians 2:7). This means intentionally building relationships with immigrants in our communities, listening to their stories, supporting asylum seekers, offering legal aid, and opening our homes, our wallets, and our churches. It means becoming sanctuary again, in practice and not just in name.
2. Rebuke Dehumanizing Rhetoric—Loudly and Publicly.
When politicians use language that equates human beings with criminals, vermin, or an invasion, the Church cannot stay neutral or silent. Silence is not a spiritual virtue; it is surrender. Every person is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and to dehumanize another is to deface that sacred image. Scripture does not permit indifference; it commands us to "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute" (Proverbs 31:8). We must do so from our pulpits, in our communities, and at the ballot box, insisting on the Gospel truth that in the Kingdom of God there are no "illegals," only image-bearers.
3. Preach the Whole Gospel.
For too long, we have preached a truncated gospel concerned only with personal salvation and a future heaven. The Gospel of the Kingdom is far more robust. It is the good news that Jesus came to "set the oppressed free" (Luke 4:18). It is a Gospel that confronts the injustice that impoverishes people and the sin that oppresses them. Our God is one who demands that "justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (Amos 5:24). If our sermons cannot name and confront the injustice in our society, they cannot fully point to the Jesus of the Bible.
4. Break the Idol of Nationalism.
The Gospel does not bow to a flag, and the cross must never be treated as an accessory to a political party. The Church must repent of the idolatry that confuses Christian faithfulness with a specific national identity. The Bible describes God's people as "foreigners and exiles" on earth (1 Peter 2:11), whose true "citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20). Our primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, not to America or any other nation-state. We are called to seek the peace and prosperity of the city we are in (Jeremiah 29:7), but to confuse American dominance with Christian discipleship is to trade the cross for Caesar's sword. We must choose differently.
5. Be Willing to Lose Power.
The path of Jesus is the way of the cross. "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me," He commanded (Matthew 16:24). The early Church had no political clout, yet their sacrificial love turned the world upside down. Today, we chase political influence, believing it will lead people to Christ, but influence without integrity only repels. If standing with the vulnerable costs us seats at political tables, so be it. If advocating for immigrants means losing donors or members, let them go. The Church was not meant to preserve itself at the expense of others' suffering. It was meant to die to self, so that others might live.
A Word to Canada and the Watching World
To those listening from outside the United States—especially in Canada, where many observe these events with both disbelief and quiet recognition—this is not a uniquely American crisis. The same forces are at work in our own backyards. We have seen the political capture of Christianity, the rise of exclusionary rhetoric, and the subtle shift from a servant-hearted faith to strategic power-grabs.
We have seen the growth of movements like the Freedom Convoy, where Christian symbols and religious language were interwoven with anti-government sentiment and conspiratorial nationalism.
We have watched federal leaders like Pierre Poilievre echo "anti-woke" culture war talking points lifted straight from the American playbook to rally parts of the evangelical community under banners of grievance.
We have heard Canadian pastors preach about reclaiming a political dominion of conquest, rather than a biblical stewardship of creation.
We have seen Christian influencers downplay the importance of Indigenous reconciliation, oppose immigration to "preserve values," and treat diversity as a threat instead of a gift.
This spirit can be found in courtrooms where religious liberty is weaponized to deny rights to others, and in school boards where Christian voices attempt to erase inclusive curricula.
Let us be clear: we are not immune. If we fail to recognize these warning signs, we risk walking the same path, where the Church’s witness becomes entangled with political idolatry and indistinguishable from the state.
To the broader global community—in the UK, Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, the Philippines, and beyond—this crisis of Christian witness is not bound by borders. It is a global reckoning. May this not be a time for smug detachment, but for sober reflection. It is a time for asking hard questions in our own churches, denominations, and communities. We must resist the urge to baptize nationalism, echo populism, or scapegoat the vulnerable in the name of cultural preservation. Let us remember that Jesus did not die to make us powerful, but to make us faithful.
In Closing
The road ahead will not be easy. The Church has aligned itself with injustice for too long. But it is not too late to change course.
The question is not whether the Church will be remembered, but how.
Will we be remembered as those who loved our neighbours, even when it was unpopular? As those who welcomed the stranger, even when it was illegal? As those who feared God more than government? Or will we be remembered as those who stood by while families were torn apart, who confused patriotism for piety, who hardened our hearts behind walls and policies?
The time for confusion is over. The lines are clear.
What we choose now—how we live, how we lead, how we love—will echo far beyond our lifetime.
Let the echo be mercy.
Let the testimony be justice.
Let the Church be known once more for looking like Jesus.
And let us be the kind of Church the world needs—and the kind of Church Christ demands.
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