Protestants in the U.S. are no strangers to factional debates. More than 100 years ago, members of my faith waged an intense theological battle with one another in what religious historians call the Modernist/Fundamentalist controversies. My religious ancestors wrestled over differences on Christ’s virgin birth, resurrection, scriptural authority, and other core theological issues.
Today’s split among Protestants, though, is less concerned with what the Bible says and more concerned with political loyalties—especially loyalty to Donald Trump.
Current factional disputes within the Southern Baptist Convention illustrate this well. Major brawls have riven the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. in recent years, but many of these fights are not between theological conservatives and theological liberals. They’re between MAGA and non-MAGA Southern Baptists.
The latest casualty is Brent Leatherwood, who recently resigned as head of SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). His entire tenure was marked by criticism from pro-MAGA evangelicals. His departure, coming on the heels of the ERLC almost being disbanded, highlights how much political purity tests are fracturing the Baptist community and undermining its public affairs work.
Some historical context is helpful. After the conservative takeover of the ERLC in the 1980s, it was led by Richard Land (who is also executive editor of The Christian Post, where I used to work) for 25 years. During his tenure, the ERLC was a strong voice for racial reconciliation, a humanitarian response to immigration, and opposition to religious persecution.
That same voice continued under his successor, Russell Moore, who served a tumultuous eight years, not because of any controversial theological positions or support for lefty policies, but because he said truthful things about President Donald Trump.
“His personal morality is clear,” Moore wrote about Trump in a September 2015 op-ed for the New York Times, “not because of tabloid exposés but because of his own boasts. His attitude toward women is that of a Bronze Age warlord. He tells us in one of his books that he revels in the fact that he gets to sleep with some of the ‘top women in the world.’ He has divorced two wives (so far) for other women.”
When Moore left that position he left the SBC altogether, but that hasn’t stopped attacks from his critics, who fear there might be Southern Baptist pastors who still respect Moore.
An April 22 post at Founder’s Ministries, which represents SBC’s MAGA wing, urged pastors to publicly disavow Moore, who is now editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. “Moore took a hard ‘never Trump’ stance, denouncing candidate Donald Trump,” author David Mitzenmacher complained in the post.
Leatherwood, Moore’s successor since 2021, was left with the impossible task of leading the political advocacy arm of a denomination deeply divided over political partisanship. Even as Leatherwood stayed consistent with policies the SBC had long held. Just recently, he praised a Planned Parenthood defunding bill, and Supreme Court decisions on gender ideology and pornography. But it was never enough for his MAGA-aligned critics. He was even fake-fired for a short time last summer.
All of this is happening, keep in mind, while Christians who fled persecution in their home countries and sought asylum in the U.S. are being deported, pregnant women are denied medical care while in federal immigration detention and in some cases have lost their babies, and foreign aid programs (some administered by evangelical nonprofits) are being cut. Where is the outrage among Southern Baptists? None of this passes the “If Obama had done it … ” test.
I tell you this story about the SBC not because it’s unique, but because it’s typical. This same sort of split is happening across and within evangelical churches and denominations all across the U.S.
As executive director of American Values Coalition (AVC), I have unfortunately witnessed this fracturing first-hand. AVC was founded in 2021 to address the problems of political extremism, hyper-polarization, and misinformation on the right side of American politics. We operate from a theologically and politically conservative point of view, as conservatives speaking to fellow conservatives about the problems on our side of the political spectrum. This from-within-our-own-tent approach has a rich history that includes Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther’s “Ninety-five Theses,” and the Apostle Paul’s first letter to church in Corinth. We do this, as our mission statement says, by “growing a community of Americans empowered to lead with truth, reject extremism and misinformation, and defend democracy.” To accomplish this mission, we talk about issues like journalism biases, social media algorithms, conspiratorial thinking, nationalism, political violence, the perception gap, and hyper-partisanship. These discussions are grounded in truth, our concern for our families, communities, and churches, and our desire to be more like Jesus.
In 2023, we created J29 Coalition to help pastors with political discipleship so they can better address the effects of these society-wide issues on their own congregations and communities. Through this work, we seek to connect local church pastors with seasoned pastors, theologians, and scholars from a broad spectrum of evangelicalism for coaching and encouragement. We address issues such as avoiding partisan use of Scripture, engaging civic leaders with integrity, navigating political divisions within their congregations, and more. None of these topics will turn a pastor into a theological liberal. And unlike the pastor networks created by MAGA groups, like TPUSA Faith, J29 Coalition doesn’t urge pastors to endorse any political party or candidate. Indeed, we think the groups doing that are one of the main sources of the problems we’re addressing.
So, it was no surprise to me when a MAGA-evangelical started attacking us.
Starting in late June, right-wing evangelical influencer Megan Basham launched a smear campaign targeting our J29 work. She started with online attacks, and when we offered to speak with her privately, she said she needed time to deal with some personal issues first. We both agreed to wait until August to speak. The next week, she published an article in First Things filled with numerous falsehoods and slanderous statements surrounding our work at J29.
In the article, Basham accused us of “inject[ing] progressive politics into the church” and being a “Democrat front group.” She falsely claimed we’re faking our nonpartisanship and really just exist to help Democrats. But her real complaint, peppered throughout the article, is that we’re not partisan enough for Republicans. She uses words like “Biden,” “Obama,” “Democrat,” “Trump,” and “Republican”/”GOP” 11 times, all to suggest that any complaint about Trump or Republicans makes one a progressive or a Democrat. Here’s a smattering of such examples:
- “AVC’s YouTube channel is brimming with anti-GOP videos …”
- “Democrat organizer …”
- “Former pastor and Obama advisor … endorsed Biden …”
- “Edwards said in 2021, ‘Trump’s still the rockstar of people who feel threatened by brilliance like Obama’s.’ … He has also said Trump is linked to Nazism …”
- “… endorsed Biden in 2020 and 2024.”
- “… served on Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”
Basham only brought up one core theological issue—whether theologian, pastor, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman denied the divinity of Christ—and fuddled it by citing evidence that doesn’t support her claim. (As The Dispatch has noted before, it’s not the first time Basham’s reporting has erred.)
It’s true that I’ve been an active “Never Trumper” outside of my work for AVC, but not because I’m a closet progressive, as Basham suggests. I opposed Trump because of my theological conservatism. Due to my belief in biblical authority, I maintain that all of us are made in the image of God, and therefore we should treat all humans in ways that respect this inherent dignity. Trump violates this belief when he demeans the value of women, immigrants, and minorities.
Trump has bragged about sexually assaulting women, and more than 20 women have accused him of doing so. One of them went to a civil trial, which Trump lost when the jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. He lied about a porn star payoff, and his attempts to hide it led to a felony conviction. Reporting indicates his administration has already committed human rights abuses against immigrants. He praises dictators and betrays democracy-loving allies. He meets with neo-Nazis and has energized white supremacist groups. Any one of these should be reason enough for a conservative Christian to oppose Trump. Before Trump, conservative Christians were known for denouncing these things.
Some conservative Christians may admit these behaviors and views are wrong but still support Trump for strategic reasons. Sincere and thoughtful Christians can disagree on this. But it’s strange to argue that my opposition to Trump for all these reasons (and more) makes me a lefty.
To be clear, my opposition to the election of Trump is my personal stance, but that’s not what AVC or J29 were founded to do. Neither AVC nor J29 tell people who to vote for, or encourage pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit. As Christians seeking to revere the sacred, we warn against the temptation to use the pulpit for political power. Despite Basham’s accusation, her reporting doesn’t provide any evidence that we’ve done otherwise. In fact, except for a few phrases from our homepage, she doesn’t quote our content at all, even though it’s readily available in several places online.
Basham claims we have “been unable to find backers who share [our] Christian worldview.” This is false. I don’t know the worldview of all our donors, but I do know many who are Christian. Basham only correctly identifies two of our donors (out of more than 200)—the Hewlett Foundation and Stiefel Freethought Foundation. Hewlett has given to organizations that lean both left and right, including the conservative Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. In response to criticism from the left for donating to the conservative American Compass, the Hewlett Foundation noted that it supports “organizations across the political spectrum where our views align on a given issue. That doesn’t mean we agree with our grantees on everything, nor require them to agree with all of Hewlett’s positions.” But AVC does agree with Hewlett’s statement that “dialogue across difference is critical to our democracy, and our bedrock commitment to democratic principles remains unchanged.”
Todd Stiefel, founder of Stiefel Freethought Foundation, is neither a Democrat nor progressive. So neither of these funders support her claim that we’re progressive or a Democrat front group. But our funders don’t determine our content anyway. I decide what the content should be and funders can decide whether they want to support what we do or not.
Basham complains that “the leaders of both groups are exclusively Never Trump” and “none of the teachers associated with J29 and AVC share the outlook of the typical Christian conservative.” What outlook is that? Is it these teachers’ views on the virgin birth? The resurrection? Miracles? Biblical authority? No, none of those. The outlook she’s referring to can be found in the next sentence: “Even its least partisan coach posts exclusively negative or neutral comments regarding the president.” Basham’s formulation comes down to this: They don’t support Trump, so they can’t be conservative Christians.
Basham and her fellow influencers are not alone. You don’t support Trump, so you must: not understand the Bible … not be a true Christian … have Trump Derangement Syndrome … and more. I’ve heard this more times than I can count. Most of the time, it’s thrown at me as a convenient way to avoid engaging with my arguments. I know many other conservative Christians who’ve experienced the same.
But Jesus didn’t die on a cross to make Donald Trump president. Jesus’ mission was to reconcile humanity with the God of the universe (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). Let us Christians debate how we best serve this mission. But let us never tie the gospel to political loyalties.
