The era of the American Confessing Church, which began when Trump ran for office in 2015, is over. The era of faithful believers pushing back by speaking against the collective compromise of American Evangelical Church ended this morning when Trump was re-elected.
Now begins the era of the Christian Maquis.
It is now time to reject the overtures of the Vichy regime, in thrall to authoritarianism, that claims to stand for Christ ... and actively work to sabotage every effort they make to enact their will and corrupt desires.
When Trump first announced his run in 2015, the American Evangelical Church was in the midst of a decades-long process of assembling a machine built for culture war and fulfilling their policy lust. It was designed to run over their opposition or culture war targets, and grind them beneath its wheels. On the side of it, they painted scripture and slogans to bolster the compromised who would walk beside it, and to hide the blood stains of those trampled beneath it.
During the first Trump admin, the machine was still being fine-tuned, and it did a little less damage than expected. Now however, they've had 4 extra years to calibrate and arm it, and they have put a rapist in the driver's seat, smiling all the time, as they did.
We are no longer standing in simple moral opposition to a corrupt entity or party. Now we must become active focused opponents. We must be willing to place ourselves between the machine and those the machine wants to destroy. We must be willing to hurl ourselves like rods into the spokes and gears of the machine. We must become Maquis. Furtive, yet intentional, focused on one goal and one goal alone ... the destruction of the machine, before it crushes any more of the innocent. We must focus on saving the ones helpless in front of it, and then point them to a faith unburdened by the disease of compromise or the vile trappings of the rapist the compromised chose as their idol.
Every part of the machine is a valid target. Every policy that attacks those they call "animals” must be broken. Every attempt to subvert the faith in the name of the orange rapist they serve, should be called out publicly and those involved named. Every opportunity to demonstrate Christ without the taint of policy lust should be gladly taken advantage of. Join the board of a Trumpgelical org or entity to be sand in the gears. At every public gathering ask Trumpgelicals “How long have you supported rapists, all you’re life or just since Trump?” If a local minister attacks migrants, befriend as many new ones as you can, and bring them to their church. We cannot fight an entire administration nor the combined Trumpgelical ecosystem at one time … but we can name oppressors as they stand in their pulpit, and we can sabotage the machine.
Every bridge the Trumpgelical machine would use must be destroyed. Every pretense of holiness uttered by the compromised must be named publicly and called out. The standard those compromised believers raised in 2015 is now stained with the blood of those hurt or killed by their earlier support for a vile man. Let us prevent them from dipping that flag into the blood of more innocents.
The Maquisards opposed to the Vichy regime and its authoritarian ally were a motley bunch. Their membership spanned every system of belief. Yet, they banded together with a single purpose. Likewise, the Christian Maquis, if it is to have any effect against the machine bearing down on the innocent … will have to be as varied and possessed of a similar singleness of purpose.
The machine roars and hungers for its victims. Can you hear it?
Je suis Maquis. Et toi?
And don't dismiss any little thing. We can't all do the big gestures. Sometimes it's as little as memorizing information so it can't be written down, suffering from selective blindness that thwarts evil, keeping the backyard chickens healthy so that there's always a ready supply of eggs. Hobbits are as integral as riders.
Yes. May we live to see an end to what we must fight.