One of the tragic ironies of white evangelical politics is the way that it has completely betrayed its own evangelism. You cannot win others for Christ in the biblical, cruciform, relational way if you’re trying to win your nation for Christ through political conquest.

The apostle Paul wrote that he became all things to all people so that by all means, he might win some. As a young white evangelical, I took that verse to heart.

In order to win people to Christ, I presumed that I needed to understand them and speak their language and not let anything about me be a stumbling block that would impugn the name of Christ.

Ultimately I came to the conviction that I can only evangelize with the right humility if I understand that Christ is always evangelizing me through the other person simultaneously.

Now I’m in a place where I’m completely uninvested in whether other people adopt my labels and doctrine to get to the field of grace that I’ve stumbled into; I simply live in a world where love opens me so I can be part of how love opens others.

The most visible feature now about white evangelical Christianity that will be its greatest stumbling block for decades to come is its 81% voting rate for a man whose political pitch was clumsily, nakedly racist and who displayed every mark of the sinful flesh in Galatians 5.

It’s no longer just that they hate homosexuality more than they love Jesus. Now they have shown statistically that they resonate with a man whose whole brand was to be an asshole troll more strongly than any other Republican president over the last 50 years, even Reagan.

Though American Christianity has consistently betrayed Christ throughout its history, the current self-sabotage of white evangelicalism is still breathtaking.

I’m hoping that God will bring the church to its knees in repentance and humility for the way that it decided winning a never-ending argument was more important than sharing God’s love.

I seem to be hearing from the Lord is that it’s time to start over from scratch. Maybe a new religion or something that doesn’t try to be a religion. Definitely not an institution but a pilgrimage of people who find sacred stories, practices, and tools for embodying divinity.