They wanted protection

I remember the moment, about 25 years ago now, when I realized I had spent most of my life in the UK, but I still felt American. I was in a bus heading past Green Park Station and despite the beauty of Bath, it struck me that I still had a feeling of roots belonging in America.

I have always had this strange, mixed up sense of identity because my American parents brought me to the UK as a baby, because of Christian ministry.

Apparently the (Christian country of the) UK was godless, and needed the outreach of American fundamentalism. The faith they brought me up in did somewhat soften into an evangelicalism that spanned continents, and it lulled me into the belief both sides were the same. Sadly, the presupposition that women were somewhat inferior to men was the same in the UK and the USA, in my evangelical, mostly Baptist upbringing.

This led me to several conclusions I reject now, about gender in general, and ultimately my own worth or lack thereof. It may take a lifetime to unravel the damage some teachings did to me, Anglican (and later, Lutheran) inputs notwithstanding.

My upbringing has given me an affinity with refugees and immigrants more than with mono-cultural persons, whether of British or American descent. I haven't suffered what many others have, but I do know a bit about what it is to go through immigration as a permanent resident. I do understand that identity can be complex and nuanced and not limited to one place or time or state of being. I am glad of my upbringing and thankful to my parents for it, because I have had some amazing life experiences as a result. I would not speak extra languages, perhaps, if I had not had this life.

And all that said, I would not maybe understand the horrifying implications of American Christians abusing foreigners, if I hadn't been a foreigner, myself. I might not see the evil in excusing such abuse as "He's like Cyrus, protecting God's people," if I hadn't been raised in evangelical churches. But I do. Because I was. And that's not to mention the German history of the twentieth century I studied at university.

I remember, as a child, learning in Sunday School or homeschooling about how God raised up the prophet Samuel, and how he then led the nation until the nation demanded a king. I remember how he warned the nation that a king would demand from the people more than they would want to give. I remembered a message in that about how we should obey God rather than man, and an implication that having kings limited freedoms.

I think that Trump is a lot like Herod, the king, in his cruelty and evil, but maybe he's also a bit like King Saul. Not always in character perhaps, but in positioning. The evangelicals, too, wanted a king; they wanted protection for their unrepentant white supremacy, with its misogyny and inequalities, and many of them have sold their souls to keep their sins.

As I write, there are people who came into my country and got legal protections or worked towards them, who have been abducted by the Trump administration, to be shaved and enslaved in an El Salvadorian prison, cheered on by the silence of the ProLife evangelical voters.

Our nation is now responsible for concentration camps and slavery, fueled by literal abductions of people who trusted our country, more than their own, to care for them.

They wanted protection from real harms, and they have had only abuse from us instead.

Deportation of people with legal rights to be resident would have been bad enough, but instead this government is disappearing people and threatening its own citizens, while the evangelical show goes on. Based on their banners and advertising, the American evangelical church intends to worship Jesus this Sunday, as if the resurrection blots out their unrepentant xenophobia and ignorance. They do not seem to care that there are legal residents, innocents, being disappeared or incarcerated stateside for no reason; they just want to sing their worship songs and have their fellowship with like peoples.

Evangelicals do not care their Cyrus is a Saul, jealous of attention and unwilling to admit a fault, so vindictive he abuses anyone who speaks truth plainly, and works to create a culture of fear.

In all those years of coming out of evangelicalism, one of the main reasons is this belief I must obey God - what is right and light and true - and not man, because evangelical men have resoundingly dropped the ball. They aren't standing up for abuse victims; they cover for abusers, and they would rather minimize abuse than repent of it. They lord it over; they do not love. Evangelical support for Trump is honestly no big surprise. This is who they are. What's worse is how hardened their hearts are to the very Scriptures they taught me.

American evangelicals have hardened their hearts against the heart of God.

There is a massive hatred of humility implied in their rejection of empathy. Not only do they elect a man whose administration smears immigrants as rapists, they elect a rapist and call it God's will. Not my God, but still. There are many of us who have spoken the truth to them about what they have done, and they have hardened their hearts against us, rather than repenting, and yet they see US as the lost. There is no Jesus without "He humbled Himself" to identify with us, human beings. Jesus is not in the evangelical churches that sing praises without grace this Easter, but rather in the prison with the falsely accused and abused, as with us, who have been betrayed and used.

The American evangelicals I grew up with have replaced Jesus with something else, a longing for protection from persecution, while they persecute everyone else. They baptized a rapist as Cyrus their protector, while ignoring his Herodian cruelty and the warnings of Samuel against King Saul.

American evangelicals betrayed not only those of us who trusted them to be loving; they have betrayed their country with their lovelessness. We have concentration camps and slavery in our name now, all because of their lust for a king, in America. of all places, where we have no kings. One reason I never took British citizenship, despite growing up there, is simple: I have no king. I love my American freedoms. The First Amendment means a lot to me. I appreciate the blessings of a separation between church and state. After the kinds of spiritual abuses I've seen in evangelicalism, why would I want people like that to lord it over my country?

We are coming to a place where just having opinions and being female or foreign is enough to get us locked up. The Christians who got US here do not have a god worth worshiping or praising, and they have lost all sensitivity, all in their lust for a rapist wannabe king. They have made it plain they would rather have Barrabas than be set free by the humble king.

They voted for Cyrus, but he's just Saul, and even they had taught me God, not man, is king.

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If Christians truly worship a good God, the show cannot go on; they must protest evil.

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How could we glibly celebrate resurrection while they crucify innocent character?