A year and a half ago or so, I wrote an essay about something I called “Trumpamentalism.” I wasn’t really trying to invent another clever political insult. I was trying to describe something I recognized.
Recognizing Fundamentalism in MAGA
I spent most of my early life around religious fundamentalism. I grew up in it, preached in it, defended it and eventually began asking difficult questions about some of the things I had been taught to accept as unquestionable. That experience taught me that fundamentalism isn’t simply about believing something strongly. It happens when those beliefs become so intertwined with identity, community, authority and belonging that questioning what you believe begins to feel like questioning who you are.
That was what I recognized in MAGA, particularly in the way many Christians had come to relate to Donald Trump. The slogans were different, and the church services of my childhood had been replaced by rallies, conferences, podcasts and social media feeds, but some of the machinery felt remarkably familiar: certainty and charismatic authority, clearly defined enemies and persecution narratives, loyalty tests and an increasingly sharp distinction between those inside the movement and those outside it.
When I wrote that first essay in March 2025, Trump had only recently returned to the White House. Now, as we approach the 2026 midterm elections, I find myself returning to Trumpamentalism with a different question. I’m no longer as interested in why it is so difficult to leave as I am in what people have had to surrender, excuse or reinterpret in order to stay.
Trump himself will not be on the ballot this November, but his movement certainly will be. More importantly, the movement that spent years telling us what it would do with power has now been given power. At some point a political movement has to be evaluated not merely by what it promises or what it says about its enemies, but by what it actually does when entrusted with authority. For Christians who have been among Trump’s most loyal supporters, that raises an uncomfortable question: What exceptions have we been required to make to support this movement?
When Political Loyalty Requires Moral Exceptions
I’m old enough to remember when conservative Christians talked constantly about character in political leadership, and I don’t mean that sarcastically. I was part of that world. We talked about integrity, humility, sexual morality, personal responsibility, telling the truth and limiting government power. We insisted that moral standards could not simply change according to political circumstances.
What fascinates me now is how principles described as absolute gradually acquire exceptions. Character still matters, but perhaps not in this particular case because the stakes are so high. Truth still matters, but exaggerations have to be understood in context. Government power should be limited, except when extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary measures. Christians should care about immigrants and strangers, but first we have to protect ourselves. We should love our enemies, but surely Jesus wasn’t talking about these enemies. After enough exceptions, it becomes difficult to determine what the principle means anymore.
Some of these tensions appear to be emerging among evangelicals themselves. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this summer found Trump remained considerably more popular among evangelical Christians than among Americans generally, but his approval among evangelicals had fallen from 61 percent in August 2025 to 52 percent. Fifty-four percent of evangelicals surveyed disapproved of his military actions in Iran, while 51 percent criticized his approach to immigration. Only about half believed those policies were consistent with their understanding of Christianity.
I don’t think those numbers demonstrate some great evangelical revolt against Trump. What they suggest is something subtler and perhaps more interesting: the tension is being felt inside the house.
Immigration, Religious Freedom, and the Limits of Loyalty
Immigration provides a particularly revealing example because Christians cannot discuss it only as an abstract question of border security. Nations have borders, governments have immigration laws, and reasonable people can disagree about how those laws should be enforced. But Christianity also inherited a stubborn collection of teachings about strangers, prisoners, neighbors and vulnerable people that refuse to disappear simply because immigration policy is complicated.
That tension recently became remarkably literal when the Archdiocese of St. Louis sued the federal government over restrictions it says prevent Catholic clergy from adequately ministering to immigration detainees in Missouri. According to the lawsuit, priests have been unable to celebrate Mass, privately hear confessions or freely administer sacraments to detainees. Whatever one concludes about the legal questions, there is something worth noticing when Christians who spent decades warning about government interference with religious practice confront clergy who say an immigration enforcement system is doing precisely that.
When Protecting the Institution Becomes Protecting the Truth
This is one of the things fundamentalism taught me. Fundamentalist systems rarely announce that their values have changed. The principle remains rhetorically intact while exceptions accumulate around it. When something contradicts the narrative, another explanation is added. When a leader behaves in ways that once would have been condemned, the behavior gets placed into a larger context. When someone raises uncomfortable questions, attention shifts from the question to the loyalty of the person asking it. Eventually, protecting the institution can become indistinguishable from protecting the truth.
None of this is exclusively a Republican problem. Democrats are perfectly capable of rationalizing the failures of politicians they support, and churches across the theological spectrum protect leaders and institutions they have invested too much in to question easily. Tribalism is a human temptation, not a Republican gene. But “everybody does it” cannot become another escape hatch. If my response to criticism of my political leader is always to tell you about something your political leader did, I haven’t answered the criticism. I have changed the subject.
Has Our Politics Changed Our Christianity?
For Christians there is another layer, because many of us spent decades insisting that our faith should shape our politics rather than our politics shaping our faith. That makes the Trump era an unusually revealing moment. The question that interests me isn’t whether Trump is the worst president in American history or whether Democrats are morally superior. Those conversations quickly become predictable. The question I keep returning to is much closer to home: Has our politics changed our Christianity?
I ask that with less judgment than some readers may assume because I know what it feels like to discover that things I once considered eternal truths were also connected to culture, community, authority and belonging. When you begin questioning one belief, you quickly discover that it is connected to ten others, and suddenly you aren’t simply reconsidering an idea. You are reconsidering relationships, memories, institutions and perhaps even the story you have told yourself about who you are.
That is also why ridicule is such a poor tool for changing people. People rarely leave communities of certainty because someone outside those communities humiliated them. Shame often drives us deeper into the places that promise to protect us from it. What sometimes creates change is permission to ask questions without immediately being treated as a traitor. In my own religious journey, one of the most transformative realizations wasn’t that someone had finally given me all the answers. It was discovering that I was allowed to ask the questions.
What Would Jesus Recognize in Our Politics?
So, as we approach another election, perhaps we should examine what our political identities are doing to our moral imaginations. Are there behaviors we now excuse that would have outraged us ten years ago? Is there cruelty we have learned to rename as strength? Have principles we once considered nonnegotiable become negotiable because our side holds power? Would we describe the same behavior differently if the politician responsible had a different letter beside their name?
Those are questions Democrats should ask, Republicans should ask and Christians certainly should ask. For Christians, though, the question eventually reaches beyond politics: What would Jesus recognize in the Christianity we have built around our political identities? Jesus doesn’t provide a convenient voting guide for the 2026 midterms, but he did talk quite a bit about enemies and neighbors, strangers and prisoners, poor people and powerful people, mercy and peacemaking. When his disciples became preoccupied with power and greatness, he had an irritating habit of pointing them toward children, servants and crosses instead.
That doesn’t tell anyone exactly how to vote in November, but it ought to complicate the ease with which Christians baptize political power. Christianity should make us skeptical of Caesar, not eager to find a Caesar we can call our own.
You Are Allowed to Reconsider
There are people who enthusiastically supported Trump who now have questions, others who continue to support him while feeling uncomfortable with particular actions of his administration, and still others who remain convinced that supporting his movement is the best political choice available. I don’t imagine one essay can resolve questions tied this deeply to identity, faith, family and community.
But I can say something I wish more people had said to me when I began questioning the religious world that shaped me: You are allowed to reconsider. Changing your mind about something you once defended does not make you weak or dishonest, and asking difficult questions does not erase every good thing you received from the community that formed you.
Perhaps that is the question worth carrying into another election. Not simply which side we are on, but what our allegiance to that side has required us to excuse along the way and, ultimately, who we are becoming in order to stay.
Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash
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