In case you haven’t been following closely lately, we’re currently in the “let’s attack a decorated war veteran and retired astronaut” portion of the collapse of Republican morality.

And in this latest round of collective Conservative cultism, the Right Wing outrage machine is breathlessly targeting Senator Mark Kelly, a man who tangibly embodies what it means to be a patriotic American.

For correctly reminding members of the Military that they are not required to obey illegal orders, Kelly has been labeled seditious and threatened with death by a president whose election a year ago is quite literally the only thing keeping him from a prison cell for his high crimes against this nation.

Trump’s sycophantic footsoldiers, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Congressional Republicans, Fox News hosts, MAGA influencers, and your unhinged, conspiratorial uncle, have all thrown themselves into performative histrionics, calling for Kelly’s court-martial, imprisonment, and execution—all for having the stratospheric audacity to ask our servicemen and women to honor their oaths and not the whims of a cognitively failing, revenge-addled narcissist directing one of the largest and most violent examples of racial profiling we’ve witnessed in our lifetimes.

The juxtaposition of these men is almost beyond belief.

Mark Kelly flew combat missions in the Gulf War.

Donald Trump dodged military service due to non-existent bone spurs.

Mark Kelly retired from the Navy and NASA to care for his wife, Gabby Giffords, in her recovery following an attempted assassination.

Donald Trump had sex with a porn star while his third wife was with their four-month-old son.

Mark Kelly is a decorated war hero.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon.

Mark Kelly piloted four space shuttle flights, travelling over 4.8 million miles, orbiting the Earth 186 times.

Donald Trump was in Home Alone 2.

Mark Kelly has received two Defense Superior Service Medals, one Legion of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, four Air Medals, two Navy Commendation Medals, one Navy Achievement Medal, two Southwest Asia Service Medals, one Navy Expeditionary Medal, two Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, a NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and an Overseas Service Ribbon.

Donald Trump incited an insurrection on our Capitol in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election and commandeer our Government by force.

Despite having lived through the last decade and watching tens of millions of Americans abandon critical thinking, moral convictions, and working empathy in real time, moments like this remind us once again, (in case we’ve forgotten) just how widespread Conservative brain rot is and how far gone so many people around us are.

Mark Kelly is the absolute best of this nation. His sixty-one-year body of work is marked by the kind of courage, sacrifice, and decency that MAGA’s platitudes claim to value.

Donald Trump has left a 79-year-old slime trail of bankruptcies, financial improprieties, hush payments, indictments, felony convictions, sexual assault allegations (one affirmed in court), broken marriages, acts of treason, and the cultic indoctrination of people we loved, respected, and have lost for good.

Kelly is the patriot, leader, husband, father, and human that Donald Trump will never be, the kind his supporters tell us they respect and aspire to.

At every turn, Conservatives traffic in flag-waving, firework showy patriotism, but when the rubber meets the road, they will always side with the snarling, barely coherent, treasonous career criminal and serial predator in whom they have placed the entirety of their identities.

They are simply incapable of parting with him because doing so would mean confronting their culpability in the irreparable harm he has done to our nation.

And so they denigrate an astronaut and defend an ass.

God bless America…

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It’s tempting to view gratitude only through the filter of what’s pleasant, as if only comfort and ease are worth appreciating.

Today, here are a few surprising places you might look for unexpected abundance; some terrible things to be thankful for…

GRIEF.

This is the necessary tax on loving people and being loved by them. The magnitude of our mourning is proportionate to the depth of connection we had with someone who is now gone. The tears that come are a tangible tribute so welcome them. Even as you grieve the absence of someone you loved, be grateful for their past presence. It is a blessing to have had someone worth missing.

SADNESS.

Suffering is a reminder that your heart, though badly broken, is still working. Your capacity to be wounded is a sign that you care deeply, and as treacherous as this life can be, this is no small feat. There is something cathartic about the crying, the way it cleans house of all that is unimportant, so fully feel everything and be grateful that you are truly alive.

ADVERSITY.

They say that the roots of a tree grow deeper in the winter, when provisions are not as plentiful, that its stability actually grows with this deeper reaching into the ground. There are lessons we learn when we go through difficulty that we could never learn any other way, riches that only come in the scalding crucible of hardship. Even in the struggle of these moments, you are being renovated, so be grateful.

FEAR.

Sometimes the terrors aren’t just tricks our minds play on us, not just distorted shadows. Sometimes the monsters are real and close. Fear is not a welcome presence, and we shouldn’t keep it around forever, but it can be the impetus for us to find the reservoirs of courage we didn’t realize we had and to discover our outside voices.

CHANGED PLANS.

Humility comes when we are surprised by life, when the path we thought we would be walking turns out not to be the one we’re on. Though this can come with bitterness, fear, and uncertainty, try to see your unexpected road as a reminder of your smallness and vulnerability, a chance to jettison the need to control life and simply step into it.

REGRET.

So you blew it. Welcome to the club. Whatever bad decision you’ve made, or however you feel like you screwed up or dropped the ball, take heart because your story’s not over. Now you get to go forward; to be wiser, kinder, more gentle, more grateful. Now, you get to course-correct and craft something redemptive out of the glorious mess you’ve made. Don’t linger in regret, just let it move you.

DIFFICULT DECISIONS.

If you have a tough choice to make right now, celebrate this. You have something many people don’t have: you have options. As stressful and as fraught with anxiety as these days may be, they come with the promise that something new is coming. Weigh carefully, choose with as much wisdom as you can, and be grateful for the presence of possibility.

LONELINESS.

Times of chosen or forced solitude, as heartbreaking as they are, can also be an incredible gift. When we are alone, we learn to mine the strength we didn’t realize we had, we discover gifts we may never have unearthed, and we find a new peace with the person we see in the mirror. Let that lonely space teach you all it can right now about what you’re made of.

FAILURE.Sometimes dreams die. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, our deepest convictions, and greatest efforts, there are moments when we are faced with the reality that a relationship, business venture, or creative endeavor has reached its logical conclusion. But these aren’t stops, merely purposeful pauses until we find a new dream.

OUTRAGE.

The holy discontent in your spirit at the injustice around you is a gift. It is your soul’s alarm at what seems so not right about the world; the belief that there is better and more loving and more healing work to be done, and that you are fully equipped to do it. Let your anger remind you that good people still walk the planet—and that you are one of them.BONUS: AGING.

There’s nothing all that appealing about facing our physical attrition; about our bodies breaking down, our aches and pains increasing, and our maladies multiplying—not to mention the shifts and creases and follicular migrations we see in the mirror. But, these can all be trophies of time; reminders that we’ve been fortunate to be here this long and made our mark, even as the marks have been made on us.

Friend, these days may be filled with a whole lot that seems unworthy of gratitude, but try anyway.

Yes, this current season might be overwhelming, but it is also the stinking manure out of which beautiful things will grow, so keep going.

For all you see and feel and experience today (even the stuff that seems and even is quite terrible), give thanks.

What terrible things have you found gratitude for? Let me know in the comments.

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(Warning: Satire… NSFW or sensitive constitutions.)

On Friday night, as part of the Remove the Regime rally weekend in DC, I was asked to give an opening blessing for a gathering called Comedy Church. It was a night of subversive anti-Christian nationalism, pro-democracy stand-up featuring Cliff Cash, Father Nathan Monk, and Larry Fulford held at a beautiful downtown sanctuary.

I told the 600 passionate folks gathered that, since many of them were likely already familiar with my writing, they didn’t need to hear from me, but I told them I’d called in a favor as a former pastor and was honored to read a very special guest blessing.Here it is…

Hey, Comedy Church, it’s me… God.

I’d hoped to be with you tonight, but, as the song goes, I’ve got the whole world in my hands. (Incidentally, I’m not a fan of that song, since I’m not actually male and don’t have hands, but that’s another story).

Things here are absolutely bonkers, what with climate change, ICE raids, Epstein files, rising fascism, and Taylor Swift’s latest album, which was a bit tone deaf, if you ask me.

Anyway, I was hoping to send my son Jesus in my place tonight, but with so many people anxiously waiting on his second coming, we (you know, the Trinity), kinda felt like that would be squandering the big moment. No offense intended; we assure you.

We’re with you in spirit, though…which admittedly isn’t as grand a gesture as it sounds, since we’re everywhere already anyway.

So, instead, you’ll have to settle for a 56-year-old social media pastor who was fired ten years ago and decided to spend the days leading up to his golden years screaming into the void, incessantly doomscrolling, and arguing with bots originating from the bedroom of a Russian middle schooler.

Honestly, I confess that I’m not exactly sure what Comedy Church is, and I’m supposed to know everything, which is more than a little embarrassing. I’m assuming from the title you’ll be laughing at Christians, and if so, I’m more than happy to bless that, as the last decade has been super bad for the brand, as you can imagine. I can remember when I thought Pat Robertson prattling on about gay-hating storms was gonna be rock bottom. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Before you all get started there, I’d like to sincerely apologize for the conduct of some of my followers, because if not for them, you wouldn’t have to be in DC to begin with. If I had a face or hands, I promise you I’d be facepalming continually. Seeing what’s transpired there recently, I gotta tell ya, I’m seriously rethinking that whole free will thing. Would love a redo on that one, for sure. Watching these Fox News-addled fearmongers creating this chaos in my name makes me want to come down there and flip a few tables, not to mention sue the Religious Right for identity theft.

I guess I should have seen this coming. I mean, there is precedent. I can still remember a few thousand years ago, when professed religious people ended up abandoning me and mindlessly worshiping a golden calf… so it doesn’t surprise me that so many are now bowing down to an orange jackass. Still, this sequel is super disappointing.

I’m sure many of you are looking at me and waiting for me to send highly localized floods, famines, or maybe a nice pox on their House (or the Senate), but that’s not how I operate. We’ve always been securely in the love camp here, despite what MAGA Churches tell you, and the thing is, you’re the delivery system of that love.

I know you’ve all heard the saying ‘love wins,’ but contrary to the t-shirts and memes, Love will not win on its own, simply because. Courageous, empathetic, pissed off people like you, fully participating in the political process and engaging the broken systems around you, will win. Wherever compassionate human beings like you spend yourselves on behalf of other people, when you keep going despite being exhausted, when you refuse to tire of doing the right thing, when you will not be shamed into silence—then love will be winning.

Love isn’t some mysterious force outside of your grasp and beyond your efforts that exists disconnected from you. It ain’t supernatural magic, it’s hard ass work. It is the tangible cause-and-effect of giving a damn about your families, neighbors, strangers, and exercising that impulse in measurable ways. Love is ornamental and worthless until it moves from aspiration to incarnation. What I’m saying is, I’m not going to magically make things right, but fortunately, you’re here to do that.

So, welcome in. Exhale. Make yourselves comfortable.Here, you don’t have to earn or achieve or make or do or impress.No one cares how many followers you have. (Trust me, followers are overrated anyway.)You can rest here.Like all gatherings where I’m present, no one has to sit outside; everyone gets a seat, and nobody is illegal.This is a beautifully odd congregation of the common good, and it gives me great joy.We need all people of faith, morality, and conscience to flip this script here. So, let laughter heal the wounds the last twelve months have caused you.Allow the tears to flow freely, whether of joy or grief, gratitude or regret.And if you feel like taking off your shoes, go ahead. This place is holy ground.So, let Comedy Church begin.And all the rabble-rousers, good troublemakers, and bleeding-heart liberals say “Amen.

P.S. Love your neighbors, impeach Trump, and f*ck ICE. Thus sayeth Us…

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Over the weekend, I gathered with thousands of people from every corner of this nation for ‘Remove the Regime,’ a rally calling for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Donald Trump.If you couldn’t be with us, you can see the full event here:

Here are the words I shared from the podium…

Good afternoon, America.

My name is John Pavlovitz, and I come to you from Raleigh, North Carolina.

I’m grateful to be here today, but I need to tell you that I am not well, my friends. I am sick today.

I’m sick to my stomach of Constitutional crises, of human rights atrocities, and acts of treason.

I’m sick of my Latino and immigrant neighbors being indiscriminately and violently assaulted by masked thugs.

I’m sick of food being taken from the mouths of hungry children,

I’m sick of people having to choose between paying their mortgage or their medical bills.

I’m sick of my LGBTQ neighbors being persecuted for simply existing.

I’m sick of people of color being gerrymandered out of the political process

I’m sick of women having to travel to another state just to have autonomy over their own bodies

I’m sick of the reality that the greatest border crisis we face is the one separating Church and State.

I’m sick of desperately appealing to public servants to do the decent, humane, and legal thing and seeing them again flatly refuse.

Are you sick of this all too?

And it’s not just we who are gathered here today who are sickened. This entire nation is not well, because in the highest position of leadership, we have one of the most amoral, lawless, vile, hateful human beings to ever walk the planet; a man devoid of decency, bereft of empathy, and allergic to truth. For a decade, he has been a pervasive moral cancer feeding off the body of our Republic: trafficking in tribalism, stoking division, pillaging its resources, preying upon the vulnerable, and inciting people to revel in the worst of their instincts.

Now, I don’t know a lot about medicine, but what I do know is that when a body is afflicted with cancer, you do everything you can to remove it. You don’t simply let it destroy everything around it without resistance. You don’t allow the malignancy to metastasize unimpeded. You don’t give it carte blanche for two years to ravage whatever is in its path and hope for the best.

For the sake of preserving life, you move heaven and earth to get the cancer out.

We gather here today to say that for the sake of the health and existential life of our great nation, and the well-being of our planet, Donald Trump must be removed.

And just so Right-wing media doesn’t twist this, let me say that, unlike the president’s supporters who gathered here on January 6th and so many times since then, we assemble here as a non-violent people in a non-violent movement. We seek a peaceful, legal, Constitutional remedy to this national heart sickness, and it comes in the form of impeachment, conviction, and removal—and this is what we are demanding today. We must get this cancerous president out.

And to my Conservative friends, this is your fight, too. We are tethered together in one interdependent community; our destinies are intertwined because we are all closer to being beggars than billionaires. You need to understand that we aren’t just in this for ourselves. We are for you, which is why we oppose him, because you are not immune to the destruction he is sowing and the damage he is doing any more than we are. Your elemental freedoms and liberties are being taken away as well. You, too, are losing access to education, security, and opportunity. Your children and grandchildren are also facing a future that is less safe, less compassionate, and less free. The sovereignty of our nation is in the balance in these moments, and with every day of inaction, the cancer takes more of what we might never get back.

As long as this president is allowed to remain, our nation will never be well, and we so easily could be well. It could all be so very simple. Impeachment, prosecution, removal. And once he is gone, we can come to the table for meaningful conversations on the challenges we face, find our commonalities, navigate compromise, and once again lean on the systems our Constitution put in place to work for the common good.

And that is why we stand on this hallowed ground today, to bring the healing that can only come once the historic malignancy of this president is removed.

For our Latino and immigrant neighbors, we need to get the cancer out.For survivors of sexual assault, we need to get the cancer out.For our beloved queer neighbors, we need to get the cancer out.For people living in food scarcity and at the edge of poverty, we need to get the cancer out.For Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Agnostics, and Atheists, we need to get the cancer out.For the vulnerable, the oppressed, the marginalized, the sick, and the hungry, we need to get the cancer out.For Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we need to get the cancer out.For Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals, we need to get the cancer out.

For the America that could be, we need to get the cancer out.

We must impeach, convict, and remove Donald Trump, and then we can get well.We will get America well.We will all be well.

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Some days, I’m afraid that I’m losing faith in Faith.

I look around at the damage done in the name of God, and the grief comes like a flood.

As a deeply spiritual person, lately I find that I persist almost defiantly, all the while pushing back the nagging questions always nipping at my heels of my belief:

Isn’t spirituality supposed to be a balm for humanity?

Isn’t God supposed to be that beautiful, invisible force that compels us to bring healing and hope and light?

Shouldn’t religion, if it’s worth having, make things better?

Shouldn’t faith leave in its wake a trail of goodness and peace and hope for this hate-weary world?

Shouldn’t it yield equality, decency, and justice for every human being?

Shouldn’t something truly made of whatever God is made of leave people more whole than when it found them?

Because, by and large, that doesn’t seem to be happening here.

Objectively speaking, I’m not so sure religion as an experiment is working on this planet.

At best, the results are decidedly mixed for those who claim faith.

As often as we are the peacemakers, we have been the warmongers.

As many times as we bind up the wounded, we inflict the wounds.

As often as religion has bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice, it has violently pried it away.

For every time religious people have led the way out of bigotry and discrimination throughout history, we have just as often dug in our heels to perpetuate them.

We who claim to be followers of Jesus either have suffered extreme mission drift here, or the whole damn system is faulty.

Many people of my religious tradition will say that Sin is the reason for the brokenness, dysfunction, and sickness in the world, and that this is why we can claim faith and still be terrible people. We are inherently sin-flawed, and so we follow Jesus, but we will still do all kinds of reckless, vile, and hateful things in the process.

I’ll be honest, that answer doesn’t cut it for me anymore.

It feels like sanctified buck-passing and cheap spiritual scapegoating.

And even if sin is the answer, I guess I want a better one.

I want a God that is bigger than any broken system, bigger than the flawed people inhabiting it, bigger than my own personal demons.

I want a God whose perfect love actually infects imperfect people until they become violently allergic to contempt for others.

I want the people of Jesus to be hopelessly hate-intolerant.

Ultimately, I’m praying for a religion that does no harm in the world, and the fact that I can’t have it frustrates me in the depths of my spirit.

It shifts the tectonic plates on which my soul wants to stand, and trying to steady yourself on something shaky is exhausting—and I guess I’m just pretty tired.

I’m tired of seeing the people most loudly claiming faith in Jesus acting the least like him.

I’m tired of religious people who insist on wielding theirs like a weapon.

I’m tired of trying to share the message of Christianity with people while simultaneously helping repair the damage done to them by professed Christians.

I’m tired of always feeling like this faith thing isn’t working like it should be: in me, in my country, in the world.

And you’d think that this would all be enough for me to wash my hands of the whole thing and walk away, but somehow it isn’t.

Despite all my frustration and mourning and anger at what faith doesn’t seem to be doing in people of faith, I still look up expectantly.

In fact, I find in that very unrest within me, the evidence of what right now is only aspirational: that better thing that I believe is still possible, for myself, for my homeland, for the planet.

Maybe one day I will be swallowed up too completely in doubt to resurface, but right now my soul still desperately reaches for what could be, and I find some strange solace in the reaching.

Jesus said that if one has faith the size of a mustard seed, they can move mountains.

Despite everything then, I may have just enough left to do something bold and miraculous...

... but just barely.

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Every church welcomes everyone. Just look at their website, it says so, clear as day.

Every church is an “all-people church”. There it is on massive LED screens in their pristine lobby as proof.

Every church loves its neighbors. It’s in vibrant bold type on their volunteer t-shirts, so it must be true.

There isn’t a Christian faith community in this country that doesn’t profess to be committed to caring for everyone in their path in a way that emulates Jesus.

But often, something happens in the journey between aspiration and incarnation, when platitudes and slogans and scriptures need to be embodied, when the rubber of our creeds meets the jagged road of national crisis.

Moments of consequence often reveal when words are the extent of our religious convictions.

ICE arrived in our state this week, and the responses of our churches have ranged from inspiring to heartbreaking to infuriating.

Some have made bold statements from their pulpits and platforms, unequivocally denouncing the unlawful violence against our Latino and immigrant communities as the sin that it is.

Some have rushed to become organizational hubs for members of the community looking to lawfully and peacefully make their faith tangible by standing between their neighbors and the outside oppressors.

Others have chosen a quieter but beautifully subversive path, creating below-the-radar networks for providing vulnerable people with food, transportation, childcare, and legal assistance.

Still others have leaned into the intimate relational fabric of their diverse communities by supporting at-risk human beings whose lives they were already fully invested in before ICE ever arrived.

All of these approaches have merit. They each have their place and their wisdom, and each is a collective expression of the mission of Jesus.

But far too many local churches across this country are not choosing to leverage their pulpits or offer their buildings or open their doors or do anything beyond making carefully-worded statements that are little more than t-shirt slogans and lobby sign platitudes. They are staying in the perceived safety of ambiguity and hoping the storm will pass without hitting too close to home or bringing too much turbulence.

The Church was never meant to be a place to avoid the world; it was meant to be a people that transforms it.

Christians, what is happening right now isn’t about God.

God isn’t going to stand in the street and document gross abuses of power against strangers with a phone.God isn’t going to escort a family to school so they can have a bit of normalcy in abnormal days.God isn’t going to magically chase away armies of masked thugs preying upon God’s people in the streets around your campus.God isn’t going to make it clear that violence against anyone, regardless of their immigration status, will not be tolerated.God isn’t going to stand in front of dozens or hundreds or thousands in your church this Sunday and remind them why your community exists.No, Christians, you need to do these things because what you believe compels you to.

So, in a way, this isn’t about God.

This is about the people of your faith community deciding what they stand for and what they will not abide; it’s about you deciding what your faith in Jesus calls you to do and be, personally.

It is about a clear policy and tactic from a political power that is unlawfully and violently targeting Latino people and immigrants, one that you either specifically name and condemn or tacitly approve.

What ICE is doing under the direct guidance of a political party is an abomination and a sin and an act of violence against the least of these, and if that can’t be said because many in the community support that party, people are choosing political tribalism over spiritual convictions.

Prayer isn’t worthless, but it isn’t an excuse to merely pray. Prayer includes the invitation to be moved.

There is a turbulent, terrifying space between ICE agents and immigrants, between prejudice and the Latino community, between a sinful political force and the diverse human beings made in the image of God.

You are called to stand bravely in the space.

May Christians throughout this nation and the churches they call home find themselves there.

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The President of the United States called a woman a pig.

Can we all just take a minute and try to let that sink in?

I know we’ve all gradually been desensitized over the last ten years, grown accustomed to his repugnant, sneering vulgarity; so used to his prolific indecency that it almost becomes white noise.

But we need to remind ourselves of how very abnormal this all is.

Faced with a question regarding one of the most expansive human trafficking investigations in our nation from a respected journalist, America’s Commander-in-Chief, its representative in the world, the person in its highest seat of power, stood before cameras and reporters and said, “Quiet, piggy.”

Watching this, I was almost tempted to ask the question, “What kind of person does this, on any level, in any professional capacity, in any other setting?” but I know the answer. It’s the same kind of person who says they are so powerful they could grab a woman by the genitalia. The same kind of person who has been credibly accused by dozens of women of abuse, harassment, and sexual assault.

The same kind of person who was declared in court to be liable for raping a woman. The same kind of person whose body of work is littered with misogyny and dehumanization of women. The same kind of person who has spent years leveraging his power and position to prevent the release of documents of an investigation of unfathomable sexual violence, which likely implicates him.

Donald Trump has always been a pig.

He has always been an amoral, vile, vulgar creep who lacks a single noble impulse.

That is an indisputable, objective, quantifiable fact.

The question that needs to be asked once again is, “What kind of person supports a person like this?”

How morally broken does someone need to be to affirm this unrepentant ugliness, to vote for it, to double down on it, to defend it, to celebrate it?

How addled by prejudice, perverted theology, and political tribalism does a human being have to be to declare alignment with a man who is this bereft of simple humanity?

What kind of heart finds affinity in the absolute worst of our species?

Sadly, I think we know the answers to these questions, as well.

For years, we’ve tried to give his supporters the benefit of the doubt, to see them as victims of political, religious, and familial indoctrination; otherwise good people manipulated by bottom-feeding partisan media, duped by cunning power-hungry charlatans, and woefully misled by trusted voices in their lives.

We’ve all worked incredibly hard to craft a story in our heads that removes any responsibility or culpability from his sycophantic disciples—because the alternative would be to admit that people we know, love, and once respected have not been tricked by him but released by him.

To be honest with ourselves would force us to reckon with the unthinkable reality that he has given them permission to fully embrace the darkness in their hearts.

But as we witness Catherine Lucey, a respected, experienced professional (not to mention a human being), treated with such sickening disdain by a sitting president, it’s another reminder that this is not normal, that he is not normal, and that standing with him is not normal—or at least, it shouldn’t be for people of faith, morality, and conscience.

The president is a pig.

That is a national disaster, a planetary disgrace, and a historic farce.

But the far greater tragedy is why so many Americans see him as a hero.

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Well, it turns out, the Evangelicals were right.

The pulpit-pounding preachers were right.Franklin Graham was right.The Republicans were right.Donald Trump was right.Fox News was right.The Religious Right was right.Every single one of them was speaking gospel truth all along.

They’ve all been warning me for years, and I didn’t want to believe them, lest hopelessness set in. But the proof is unavoidable now, and I need to confess they were correct and I was mistaken. I once was blind and now I see it clearly.

There is a war on Christmas in America.

They told me Christianity was under attack here. It is.They told me Jesus was being rejected. He is.They told me a brazen mockery was being made of his birth. It is.They told me the Gospels were being perverted. They are.They told me decent people were being deceived. They are.

The only thing they neglected to tell me in their bombastic, sanctimonious, sky-is-falling sermonizing was the source of the offense.

The brutal yuletide assaults haven’t come from Atheists or Agnostics, not from Humanists or Muslims, not from coffee franchises or the Liberal Media or Progressive Christians or the mythical Woke Mob.

The very white Conservatives who’ve been loudly sounding the alarm are the incessantly advancing hordes.

They’re the only ones warring with Christmas because they’ve disregarded their own story.

Christmas was a child of Palestinian Jewish parents desperately fleeing politically ordered genocide.Christmas was a dark-skinned child, born amid the smell of damp straw and animal dung, because no human-worthy welcome could be found.Christmas was a poor, itinerant, street-preaching rabbi, living off the generosity of those around him.Christmas was a compassionate caregiver; feeding, clothing, and healing whoever crossed his path.Christmas was a liberal activist fighting for the poor, condemning violence, shunning material wealth, and calling the world to live sacrificially for the common good.

The white Evangelical Church in America has no use for this Christmas. In fact, worse than that, it has open contempt for it.

Because this Christmas is antithetical to its arrogant supremacy.This Christmas is incompatible with its rabid Christian nationalism.This Christmas is counter to its ravenous capitalism.This Christmas is resistant to its closed borders and erected walls.This Christmas will not consent to its heartlessness, its callousness, its myopic America First hubris.

And this Christmas, it is now hiding here in plain sight among the “least of these:”

It is the Latino father brutally assaulted and kidnapped at his workplace by a gang of masked thugs wearing badges.It is the third grader whose plate and belly are continually empty in a land of abundance.It is the grievously ill toddler whose parents have exhausted their resources trying to keep him breathing.It is the terrified young woman having to traverse three states to have autonomy over her own body.It is the transgender teenager trying to feel at home within their own body, while being terrorized from without by lawmakers and preachers.It is the exhausted mother in Atlanta waiting for hours to cast her vote while being gerrymandered into silence.It is the homeless veteran starving to death on the corners of opulent megachurches who pretend to care for the poor.It is the young black man terrified during a traffic stop, because he has seen this viral body cam video a hundred times before.It is the poor, sick, hungry, and marginalized of this nation who exist on the razor-thin line between living and dying.

This is the Christmas these professed Christians are assailing.

And so this season, while they hide behind ceremonial religion, armed with recklessly wielded Bible verses, dressed in ornamental piety, drenched in flowery prayers, and singing sweet songs, these religious people wage their war on Christmas.

With every social media diatribe, every Fox News nationalistic rant, every piece of legislation, every racist cell phone complaint, every anti-immigrant press conference, with every homophobic distortion, every manufactured crisis, every incendiary Sunday sermon.

White Evangelical Christianity in America cannot peaceably coexist with the Jesus of the scriptures; with the truth of the poor baby in the center of the Nativity; with the gritty, non-white, non-American reality of Christmas, which is why it is choosing to remove him.

We cannot let this happen.

We who seek to emulate Jesus and guard humanity need to speak this truth. We need to oppose their perennial act of aggression and their annual victim rhetoric.

We need to fight for the sick child, the migrant family, the transgender teenager, the homeless veteran, the young black man; because when we do, we are perpetuating the heart of the Middle Eastern child, born under duress in the place where livestock dined—the one who turned the world upside down in the name of a compassion that knew no borders and a love that had no walls.

Yes, there is a war on Christmas.

And the good people left here need to fight to save it.

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If you’re a professed Christian currently still supporting this President and this Administration, and you’re on your way to church on Sunday, here are a few things you might talk with God about in between the songs and sermons:

Pray about the tens of millions of sick, elderly, and poor who are slowly being suffocated, driven to poverty and illness and starvation, as your President sabotages the Affordable Care Act and SNAP programs; literally taking life-giving, life-saving care from those least able to procure it.

Pray about Latino human beings who are being violently and indiscriminately persecuted by this President for no other reason than their appearance or their nation of origin or their language; mothers ripped from their children, fathers disappeared from their workplaces, college students abducted from their campuses.

Pray about survivors of sexual assault, who have to be reminded every day by this President’s presence and his party’s obstruction, that predators often are rewarded for their unthinkable behavior with unmerited position and undeserved riches.

Pray about the LGBTQ men and women, and for their brothers, sisters, parents, spouses, and best friends, who are being pushed deeper toward marginalization, further from safety, and ever closer to depression, self-harm, and suicide because this President is aligning himself with those most responsible for their persecution.

Pray about Muslim families in America who daily face the insults and isolation and violence, simply because their faith tradition has been vilified by your President; that they have been fashioned into a convenient enemy in order to leverage the irrational fears of those who are easily baited, and made to be pariahs in the place they rightfully call home.

Pray about the millions of women whose healthcare, access to birth control, and protection against assault are being chipped away by a President who has proven over and over again that he has contempt for women.

Pray about the hundreds of terrified migrant children still wondering what happened to their parents and siblings and families, and for the distraught parents still separated from their daughters and sons.

Pray about those with dark skin, those for whom English may be a second language, those for whom America may have been an adopted home or a place of refuge or the desire of their desperate parents’ hearts—those who are made to feel unwelcome or threatened or unwanted because of this Presidency’s malice and vitriol.

And yes, pray about this President.

Ask God specifically how his life and body of work align with the Jesus you’ve known all your life; the one you find hope and joy in, the one you read about in the Gospels, the one whose voice you recognize as peacemaker, forgiver, lover, healer, helper.

Ask God if his vile words about women, his cruelty toward those suffering, his vicious social media tirades, his neglect of hurricane victims, his siphoning of funding from public school students and healthcare from cancer patients—if any of it feels at all like the Jesus who talked of loving the least, of caring for the poor, of loving their neighbors as they love God, of the last being first, of the righteous turning their cheeks, of the meek inheriting the earth, of the good Samaritan showing mercy.

Ask Jesus if this President is someone worth a follower of Christ emulating, celebrating, empowering, amen-ing—if he is someone living in God’s image, and precisely how.

Ask Jesus about saying that the way we treat the lowest and the vulnerable is the way we treat him—and how this President is treating him.

Ask Jesus what the world is specifically learning about his heart for the world, his character, his compassion, his gentleness, by the man you elevated to our highest human platform.

Ask Jesus about the kind of world he was trying to usher in when his feet were on the planet, and how this President is doing anything to make it a reality in these days.

And if you can walk out of that worship gathering into another Sunday afternoon, completely unchanged and without sensing the slightest conflict between Jesus Christ of Nazareth and Donald Trump and without a trace of discomfort at the disconnect between your inner convictions and his tangible actions—pray for yourself, because you have clearly lost the plot of the one who brought the world a Good News that is now completely inaudible in these days because of this man and because of a Church that refuses to stand against him.

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