Mary Ellen Klas: Christians, you can stand up to Trump

Vote to love your neighbor. That message on a lawn sign created by Dorothy Shank, a member of the Ridgeway Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia, belongs to one of the most encouraging and under-appreciated movements to emerge this election season.

Long before the dark, racist and vile rhetoric erupted from Donald Trump and his allies at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, “love your neighbor” had become the message of a growing group of Christians working to fight the Trump-embracing Christian nationalism that is dividing their churches, and America.

It was echoed on the “Christians for Kamala” livestream held in August, with more than 100,000 viewers. It’s the message of the $1.4 million digital ad campaign by Evangelicals for Harris. It’s reinforced on the “See It. Name It. Fight It,” website, created by a Texas couple to educate about Christian nationalism. And it’s the theme of Vote for Common Good, a growing movement of ecumenical Christians who are reviled by Trump’s vitriol, violence and worship of authoritarianism.

“If we believe that God is love, then Christian nationalism must be the oxymoron of oxymorons,” Catholic Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, said Oct. 17 in a keynote address at the annual assembly of the Kentucky Council of Churches.

“Nationalism, like fascism, requires an enemy to survive,” he continued. “And so, Muslims, or nonwhite Christians, or Jews, or gays, or transgendered persons or anyone who is different or outside of the mainstream will suffice.”

It is a courageous act of conscience for religious faithful to call out fellow Christians, mostly Republicans, for trying to use the government to remake America in their own fundamentalist image. Most Christian traditions eschew partisan policies and tiptoe around the fact they must contort their religious values to justify voting for Trump.

But these groups were among the first to warn that Project 2025 was a blueprint for how political leaders would use the government to push a Christian nationalist agenda. Now, they not only condemn the new strains of Christian nationalism, which rely on a rhetoric of violence, they warn that the Christians who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were motivated by false prophecies and today are sowing the seeds for more violence.

Faithful America, a Christian group that accuses the religious right of “hijacking Jesus’ message,” called out Christian nationalist leader Lance Wallnau, who appeared with vice presidential candidate JD Vance at a town hall in September, as a “false prophet” who was “spewing fear and hate in the name of Jesus.”

These pastors, scholars and church leaders are campaigning to defeat Trump because they believe he is actively and aggressively working to undermine Christian teachings.

“Jesus welcomed the stranger; Trump wants to deport them,” said Zack Hunt, a former pastor and bestselling author who spoke on the August livestream. “Jesus lifted up the poor; Trump only helps the rich. Jesus empowered women; Trump treats them as sexual objects to control. Jesus proclaimed the truth; Trump is a pathological liar. Jesus humbled himself; Trump exalts himself as the chosen one.”

These church leaders are urging their congregations, many of which have been conditioned to vote Republican for a half century, to not just reject Trump but to embrace Harris.

They point to Harris’ career devoted to public service, her upbringing as a Baptist and, as the daughter of a Hindu mother and a Christian father, who married a Jewish man, the embodiment of a multifaith and pluralistic America.

They don't agree with Harris on every policy, but endorse her because of her character, integrity and family-focused policies, such as the reestablishment of the expanded child tax credit; the expansion of paid family leave; subsidized and affordable child care, health care and elder care; and measures to protect children from gun violence, pollution and the climate change that threatens their future.

“We're not trying to convince people to change their political views,” said Doug Pagitt, a Minnesota-based pastor and executive director of Vote for Common Good. “We're trying to help people whose political views are already changing to act on those.”

Pagitt has reviewed the polling and demographic data and is convinced that the evangelical vote helped bring Joe Biden a victory in nine counties in five swing states in 2020. His group is determined to expand on that for Harris.

By conducting training sessions about the dangers of Christian nationalism and holding rallies in pivotal counties in swing states, their goal is to give people permission to leave the Trump fold, he told me.

For those who can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, often because Harris supports abortion rights, their ask is simple: “Leave it blank.”

Traveling on a bus emblazoned with the words “Faith, Hope, and Love,” Vote Common Good spends most of its time in rural and red counties, encountering Christians trapped in a political identity crisis, Pagitt said. An important catalyst for their argument has been former Vice President Mike Pence, a conservative Christian whom Trump selected to be his running mate in 2016 to energize the evangelical vote.

Since Jan. 6, Pence has said he won’t vote for Trump, giving millions of people permission to do the same, Pagitt said.

Elections are about the will of the people, not the will of God. But for too many Americans their faith identity has become entwined with their political identity. Thankfully, these Christians are showing us it doesn’t need to be that way and they’re taking the threat to Christianity, and democracy, seriously. If enough Americans join them and push back, Christian nationalists will remain in the minority.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.