The church in America—though not all congregations or believers—has given itself over to an idol in U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA: the ruinous gospel of power. In fact, recent data from the Pew Research Center underscores this alignment: white evangelical Protestants continue to be Trump’s most steadfast supporters, with more than seven in 10 saying they view him favourably, despite criminal convictions and anti-democratic rhetoric. This suggests neither incidental support nor mere political preference but that a deeper, more damning surrender has taken place. The church has traded the gospel for grievance, discipleship for domination, and the Sermon on the Mount for cultural warfare.

The church’s alignment with political power is also increasingly institutional. As the New York Times reports, Trump has re-fashioned 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a kind of “White House of Worship,” where evangelical leaders now relish heightened influence and direct access to the president. Gathered for prayer and to influence strategy, these leaders are not guests but collaborators in a political project clamouring to claim and hold power.

Of course, the church has long courted power and has been a vessel of dominion. Slavery, residential schooling and even Manifest Destiny, for example, reveal such intention in the church. And the temptation of political power is ancient. When the church forfeits care for conquest, as Ukrainian Orthodox priest and theologian Cyril Hovorun writes, “political Orthodoxies” are revealed. Where and when revealed, the church ceases to be a........

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