Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Apparently, we are living through a thrilling new chapter of Christian theology—one not found in the Gospels, but apparently revealed via cable news chyrons, rally stages, and red baseball caps. In this revised edition, Donald Trump is not merely a deeply flawed man with a fondness for gold toilets and grievance-fueled monologues; he is The Chosen One. The anointed. The Messiah, but with worse hair and a much looser relationship with the Ten Commandments.

These self-styled “Christians” assure us that nothing about this is strange. It is perfectly normal, they insist, to worship a man who lies as easily as he breathes, who revels in cruelty, who boasts about wealth as virtue and vengeance as justice. After all, didn’t Jesus famously say, “Blessed are the ruthless, for they shall own the libs”?

And ICE—oh, ICE—is simply law and order doing its wholesome, God-fearing work. Families torn apart? Children caged? People disappeared into detention centers with no meaningful due process? Totally fine. Completely natural. Definitely not reminiscent of anything ugly from history. How dare anyone mention Germany in 1933, or Hitler’s brown shirts, or a state apparatus that used “security” and “homeland” rhetoric to justify terror against the “undesirable.” That’s different, they say. This is Homeland Security, which is obviously just about safety and apple pie, not nationalism wrapped in fear and uniforms.

The word homeland, we’re told, has no historical baggage whatsoever. Pure coincidence. No echoes. No warning signs. Just an innocent term used by a government increasingly obsessed with purity, loyalty, and enemies within. Anyone who hears alarm bells must hate America—or Jesus. Possibly both.

What makes this theological gymnastics routine truly Olympic-level, though, is how completely it ignores the actual story of Jesus Christ. You know, the undocumented Middle Eastern Jew. The one born into poverty. The one whose family fled state violence. The one arrested by an occupying empire, denied due process, publicly humiliated, and executed—with enthusiastic cooperation from his own people who preferred order and comfort over inconvenient compassion.

By modern standards, Jesus would be stopped at the border, detained, interrogated, and deported—assuming he wasn’t first labeled a threat to public order. He preached love for the stranger, mercy over law, and care for the least among us. Which, in today’s political theology, makes him dangerously woke.

The irony, of course, is so thick it could be spread on communion bread. The very people who claim to worship a crucified refugee see no resemblance between Rome’s treatment of Jesus and America’s treatment of undocumented immigrants. None at all. To suggest otherwise is “offensive.” History, after all, is only relevant when it flatters us.

So here we are: a movement that drapes itself in crosses while cheering policies that would have nailed their own Messiah to one. A faith that preaches love, wielded as a club. A Christianity so unrecognizable that if Jesus himself showed up, they’d call ICE—and congratulate themselves for defending the homeland.

Amen.