The American church, once a force that championed the marginalized, has forfeited its moral authority. Its capitulation to political power, its silence in the face of extrajudicial killings, and its complicity in policies that devastate the poor have rendered its witness hollow. When the church chooses power over principle, it becomes just another political action committee draped in scripture—a lobbying firm that begins meetings with prayer.

I know this loss personally. Growing up Catholic, I found joy in the church—a sense of community, purpose, and belonging. I learned about charity, about loving your neighbor and caring for the least among us. But as a teenager, I watched the priest sexual abuse scandals unfold, and worse, I watched the systematic cover-ups that protected predators and abandoned victims. I left the church then, and I have stayed away because of its full-throated embrace of MAGA and a political doctrine that runs so fundamentally counter to the teachings of Jesus that it borders on blasphemy. The institution that once taught me about compassion now preaches cruelty. The church that spoke of the poor now worships at the altar of money and power.

The embrace of Donald Trump by evangelical Christianity represents not merely a political miscalculation but a theological crisis. This is a man who bragged about sexual assault, had sex with a porn actress while his wife was pregnant, mocked the disabled, separated families at the border, and demonstrated such contempt for truth that pathological lying became his brand. Yet white evangelicals supported him at rates exceeding 80 percent—not in spite of his cruelty, but often drawn to it, mistaking brutality for strength. The church traded the Sermon on the Mount for a seat at the table. Pastors who once thundered about "character" now perform Olympic-level mental gymnastics explaining why character suddenly doesn't matter when the strongman promises to hurt the right people. The gospel has become a Google Doc that gets edited hourly to accommodate whatever political sewage the moment demands.

Where are the priests? Where are the pastors? Why haven't the supposed men and women of God denounced the politics of 2025 with the fury of Old Testament prophets? The answer is as craven as it is predictable: they fear losing donors at any whiff of criticism toward the MAGA movement. So they choose silence. They choose their opulent buildings, their budgets, and their influence. The pulpit has become a platform for political appeasement rather than moral courage.

Even more damning is the church's silence—or worse, its celebration—when the powerful kill with impunity. When human beings in boats are gunned down without trial, without evidence, without even the pretense of due process, where is the church? Where is the "pro-life" crowd that claims to champion the sanctity of every human life? How is it conceivable that they remain silent when living, breathing human beings are slaughtered without trial, yet they cannot be silenced when it involves embryos? The same religious leaders who wept over abortion now shrug at the slaughter of migrants, as if "Thou shalt not kill" comes with an asterisk: "Unless they're brown and on a boat that might have drugs." Jesus, who fled political violence as a refugee infant, would be appalled.

Perhaps most grotesque is the church's silence on poverty—or worse, its active support for policies that grind the poor into dust. Jesus said, "Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." Yet when politicians propose slashing SNAP benefits that feed starving children, when they gut Head Start programs, when they dismantle the social safety net to fund tax cuts for billionaires—where is the church? Where are the sermons? Where is the righteous indignation?

Instead, Christian leaders have become cheerleaders for an economic theology that would make Jesus vomit. They preach a "prosperity gospel" that baptizes greed, a twisted doctrine that blesses Jeff Bezos's $400 million superyacht while children go hungry. They peddle the lie that tax cuts for billionaires will "trickle down" to the poor—a con so transparent it insults both economics and theology. Would Jesus really insist that Mark Zuckerberg deserves another tax break while SNAP benefits are cut? Would the man who said, "Sell all you have and give to the poor" cosign a budget that transfers wealth from hungry children to hedge fund managers?

The church has lost its credibility because it has lost its soul. It preaches a Jesus who looks suspiciously like a Republican congressman—white, wealthy, and merciless toward the vulnerable. This is not the Jesus of the Gospels, who overturned tables in the temple, who told the rich to give everything away, who promised that the last would be first. The Jesus of American evangelicalism is a golden calf, an idol fashioned to bless billionaires and protect the privileged.

Until the church rediscovers its prophetic voice—until it stands with the poor against the powerful, until it defends the innocent, until it demands that children be fed before billionaires are enriched—it will remain what it has become: irrelevant, hypocritical, and morally bankrupt. The gospel demands more. The poor deserve more. And Jesus deserves a church worthy of his name.