Michael Luo, in a June 14, 2026 article for The New Yorker magazine, asks the question: "How Did American Christianity End Up Like This?" You can read his answer in the article.
The answer according to me is both complex (because this nation's white Christian leaders fought long and hard to build a capitalist system that would reward wealthy landowners with increasingly larger shares of national wealth and power while maintaining a compliant worker class and finding new ways to subjugate the poor and vulnerable) and simple (because Christianity is organized fantasy).
The fantasy began centuries ago in the minds of people who were disowned by and dissatisfied with Judaism and its multiple extremist sects. Jesus was a man with a message about peaceful resistance to oppression; however, his followers and the next generation quickly caught on to the power of organized resistance. Which would have as it did among a few Christian sects fueled peaceful resistance everywhere -- had schemers and shysters not found personal advantages in writing fantasy, fueling grievances, and building political power.
The fantasy evolved from believing that Jesus' simple message of love and forgiveness and peace was truthful and honorable to believing that the Jesus as Christ Movement was unique in a world of many religions and based on a powerful triad of political, social, and tribal identities.
Christianity was always authoritarian in nature. From the day that Jesus as Messiah was the central tenet to a new religious movement to this day when Christian Nationalists have enormous politcal influence and power, every new Christian movement and sect organized in a male-dominated hierarchy. Prove me wrong.
Why are we here? Because the national backlash to the rising influence of Black and minority voices, women, agnostics and atheists, a generation opposed to wars, progressives and liberals -- as personified in the new Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws in the 1960s and early 1970s -- appealed to the conservatives in the Republican party and energized the True Believers in white evangelical fundamentalist churches. In the 1970s, the national resistance to these civil rights' laws organized as Christian Nationalists and millions of Democrats switched their political allegiances to the Republican party. White Christian male supremacy built a new more respectable empire. The Republican party willingly under Reagan welcomed the white supremacist extremists as influencers in exchange for their loyal votes. It was a Quid Pro Quo unlike any other in modern history.
American Christianity was never something we should proudly look upon. It embraced and fought for the slavery of Africans and Indigenous peoples. It began the Civil War and wouldn't surrender to the Union until hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their lives. It built and supported the southern plantation system and the systematic theft of lands and livelihoods across the western continent known as Manifest Destiny. It prevented full citizenship rights for women and minorities for as long as possible. And more...so much more. American Christianity was at least as destructive a force as it was constructive.
If we lie to ourselves and each other about Christianity's role in our horrendous behaviors, we cannot honestly discuss how American Christianity helped us do good things as a fledgling democracy and growing world power. We are here because America's Christianity was rarely ever about Jesus' message of love and peaceful resistance to oppression. And especially now we should recognize that America's Christianity -- the majority that identifies with Christian Nationalism, MAGA, Donald J Trump, evangelicalism, white male entitlement, and wealthy people's entitlement -- do not exist to preach or practice Jesus' teachings. They are the oligarch's Useful Idiots and the defenders of brutality towards everyone and every ideology that is not their own. They must face accountability.
American Christianity created a fantasy: Christian men with a Christian education and a powerful work ethic built this nation. Everyone who is not entirely White, Christian, or Male, is subject to the control, rules, and largesse of white Christian men. Now, American Christianity will do anything to defend that fantasy and create the nation they want.
#PeacefulResistance