Religion and Politics

The Struggle for a New American Gospel

For The New Republic, Bryan Mealer writes about the difficulties of being a liberal evangelical in the Trump era, when many white evangelicals stand by the president. Mealer, who recently reconnected with the liberal side of the church after growing up in a conservative evangelical household, writes, “What hurt the most is watching our family and fellow church members not just vote for Trump, but continue to support him through his racist, xenophobic rhetoric, his ramped-up policy of separating children along the border, his tax cuts for the wealthy and proposed cuts to Medicaid, and, most recently, his pandering to a Russian regime that jails gay people and actually persecutes Christians.” Mealer adds, “No matter how angry people like me get at white evangelicals or how many calls to arms we put forth, on its own, it will get us nowhere in the end. To defeat hatred and creeping fascism and begin the healing of this nation, we—all Americans—need a new social gospel.”

Read at The New Republic

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