Christmas Eve Without a Church: What Trump Means for Evangelicals Like Me
I have joined the ranks of Christians whose MAGA church no longer reflects our values.
December 23, 2024
When I decided to leave the only church I’d ever really known, I carefully scripted my breakup speech. I envisioned a heartfelt conversation with my pastor, respectful and devoid of drama. It’s me, not you, I’d tell him. There’d be no hand-to-hand scriptural combat. I wanted the ending to be amicable and considerate. Even better, perhaps I’d receive an invitation to stay.
None of this happened, however. In the moment, I chickened out. I merely walked out the door and never came back.
By leaving my evangelical church in my hometown of Casper, Wyoming, I unwittingly joined the nebulous ranks of disaffected, discouraged and/or defeated Christians who, after years of confusion during the Donald Trump era, finally called it quits, unable to theologically reconcile our churches’ hard-right stances on political and social issues such as immigration, same-sex marriage and gender identity with scripture that teaches us to love the “foreigner” as our own and that we are all made in God’s image.
While we try to figure out what our faith looks like without a church to attend, an immediate problem presents itself: Where do displaced Christians go on Christmas Eve?
It’s a complicated question as we struggle with our detachment from a community we loved dearly but from which we willingly separated. Isolation is the displaced Christian’s new resting state. When we are desperate for community and need the church the most, it’s the last place we seek solace. The irony is painful.
Church was once a safe spot for me. The evangelical model emphasizes a prayer culture in which someone can deepen relationships through weekly meetups and studying scripture together. Evangelicals place a high emphasis on community, a body of people who support each other while still calling one another to account. As a religious seeker frustrated with the confines of traditional denominations, my evangelical church’s homey, “better together” mindset was appealing. The church didn’t pay attention to politics. Or to things like face masks or vaccines. It was just us, unified with a simple task to love God, walk humbly and serve one another. This was my fit.
Things began to change in 2016 with the rise of Donald Trump. I couldn’t figure out evangelicals’ wholesale embrace of this man, someone who is the antithesis of a follower of Christ. I was rattled by the church’s response to COVID-19, in which concern for others took a back seat to personal rights in direct contravention of our Biblical promise to care for the “least of these brothers and sisters of mine,” and to wear masks to protect those who might be immuno-compromised. Then came the fervor for building a wall along the southern border. A current of racism within the congregation was palpable beneath the surface, difficult to articulate but manifesting itself in subtle ways – a roll of the eye, a shrug of the shoulder, a reluctance (or perhaps fear) to serve or acknowledge our minority populations.
Parishioners also began to take sides as to whether the LGBTQ+ community was welcome in the church. In short order, our mission statement went from a tidy, one-paragraph “About Us” to a dense, multipronged manifesto primarily focused on sexuality, revealing the chinks in our “come as you are” invitation. The LGBTQ+ community was very definitely not invited to hear the Good News. Congregants with LGBTQ+ family members wondered, if God represents universal love, how can we cherry-pick those worthy of that love? How could they attend a church where their child, brother, sister or parent is unwelcome?
I had no dog in the fight, no close LGBTQ+ family members who brought this issue to my doorstep. Yet the fracas revealed an institutional hypocrisy I could not ignore. The Apostle Paul calls us to be perfectly united in mind and thought. But in order to become a unified body, we must first poke, prod, tug and pull at scripture. I am unbothered by scrutiny. I am confident the journey will strengthen our faith, not undermine it. What troubled me was my church’s unwillingness to dialogue – or even entertain – the hard questions.
“In order to become a unified body, we must first poke, prod, tug and pull at scripture. I am unbothered by scrutiny . . . What troubled me was my church’s unwillingness to dialogue – or even entertain – the hard questions. What was my church so afraid of?”
What was my church so afraid of? Though former criminals, thieves and prostitutes were embraced, same-sex relationships were a sin set apart. My church grappled with whether to be an “affirming” church that welcomed all sexual orientations and gender identities into its house. A pastor who suggested doing an all-church study on scriptural affirmation was given the choice to resign or be fired. The church planted its flag, drew its lines and endorsed sermons that were a study in rigidity and legalistic attrition.
A sorting was taking place, a narrowing of a gate through which fewer people could pass, revealing curious fissures in our supposed community. Rather than choosing unity, we were choosing sides.
I am not alone in this exodus of disaffected Christians redefining what it means to be a part of a church. Though many have abandoned their faith altogether, others like myself have found their faith strengthened. We’ve long been taught to expect struggle in our lives, to draw strength from scripture in times of doubt. As Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, is said to have put it, “None get to God but through trouble.” She would know. I too have chosen a quiet path, with a party of one, to a more meaningful life.
For now, I’ll forgo the midnight mass, the sunrise service, the music, the live nativity scene, the Christmas story read from the pulpit. Though some friends have made half-hearted plans to meet up on Christmas Eve to share communion and sing carols, it’s not the same as the pageantry of the Big Day that I so loved. If it feels wrong to celebrate the birth of Christ in your living room in your pajamas, a conference room at a Ramada hotel with a bunch of misplaced Christians is worse, so I’ll pass.
Though my heartache is unyielding and unresolved, this is my angle of repose. I am not angry, and I am without judgment for those who remain. After the holidays, I’ll continue to cloister with my fellow outcasts, meeting weekly around a kitchen table. In our doldrums, we read scripture, we grieve, we disagree – a lawless band of faith orphans, clinging to one another as we reorient ourselves to this new path. It is a rutted, lonely journey best traveled together.
