Is There Hope for MAGA Evangelicals?

Also, our journey through Apple Music's Top 100 Albums of All Time continues with Nina Simone, Massive Attack and Mary J. Blige.

I watched a very minor but interesting little internet clash this week between a group of people I generally like and agree with. 

It started with Elizabeth Bruenig’s piece at the Atlantic titled “If Only People Actually Believed These Trump-as-Jesus Memes.” In the wake of Trump’s criminal conviction, a lot of MAGA evangelicals started analogizing him to Jesus in a “You know who else was found guilty of crimes?” faux-youth pastor meme-posting way.

I’m sure you’ve seen a few of these. I did, and I found them too dumb to bother engaging. But Bruenig argues that evangelicals making this analogy ought to carry the argument to its logical conclusion. She writes: 

Members of Trump’s religious contingent should embrace a broader and more radical vision of their memes. …If they believe what they say, they should press their electoral weight behind complete prison overhauls, shifting the intent of incarceration toward rehabilitation and reentry. They should take up urgent projects such as restoring voting rights for prisoners, as well as those of ex-prisoners. They should make criminal-justice reform a top priority in the way that they have so-called culture-war issues.

I co-sign all of that, and have always admired Bruenig’s single-minded focus on applying her Christian faith towards prison reform and death penalty abolition. So I was a little surprised to see other writers I admire react so negatively.