The Inauguration of Imperial Christianity

At noon today, Donald Trump placed his hand on what was hopefully not a Trump-branded Bible and swore an oath to the Constitution he has no intention of keeping. Surrounded by political mercenaries, sycophants, and billionaires, the convicted criminal, conman, and sexual predator returned to power through the unwavering support of white evangelical Christians. The ceremony, and his pending presidency, is a case study in blasphemy. White, straight men with no other agenda than to make themselves great again will quote Scripture all the way to the bank as they deport immigrants, strip civil rights from women and LGBTQIA individuals, and implement Project 2025. The entire farce is enough to make you lose whatever faith you have left.

As we mourn the ongoing corruption of Christianity at the hands of white evangelicals and their demonic pursuit of power, remember every empire from Rome to America requires a legitimizing narrative (American Exceptionalism) and a legitimizing religion (White Evangelicalism) to sanction its activity and existence. Rome had their pantheon of gods. America has white evangelicalism.

Throughout history, imperial powers have used religious ideas and institutions to legitimize their rule, consolidate power, and suppress resistance. The Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity and his subsequent Edict of Milan in 313 CE, which legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, marked the beginning of Christian imperialism. Since then, Western Christianity has been more than willing to provide empires like the United States with the moral and spiritual justification for dominance, conquest, and the subjugation of marginalized people.

The version of Christianity witnessed today has exchanged Christ’s message of suffering love, self sacrifice, compassion, and humility with the will to power, where Christian teachings, institutions, and communities are enlisted as legitimizing forces for the American empire.

The genesis for the Christian exculpation of empire is demonic, dating back to the Satanic temptation to bring about God’s good ends through evil means, and even Jesus wasn’t immune to the provocation. Immediately following his baptism, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness where the devil tempted him.

“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.’”

Satan parades all the kingdoms of the world before Jesus and offers to grant him jurisdiction over them—as a vassal king, of course. He promises protection and power by any means necessary. Instead of suffering, he offers domination. From this first testing in the wilderness to his last temptation in the garden, Jesus’ unceasing enticement was to bring about God’s kingdom through coercion instead of invitation, to force himself on a world powerless to resist Him. In short, Satan is seeking to inaugurate imperial Christianity.

Imperial Christianity believes that if Christians aren’t in charge, culture will go to hell in a handbasket. However, the exact opposite is true. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, chattel slavery, the Holocaust, and colonization were launched by imperial Christianity. In 1637, imperial, Puritanical Christians surrounded and burned a sleeping Pequot Indian village, killing 700 inhabitants—mostly women and children. Following Colonel John Chivington in 1864, imperial Christian soldiers went to Sand Creek, Colorado, where they massacred and mutilated around 150 Cheyenne Indians—primarily women and children. Today in Texas, imperial Christians are killing women via abortion bans.

Imperial Christianity is slaveholder religion. Imperial Christianity is sending missionaries to Central America to “convert” heathens while building a wall to keep those same people out of the country. Imperial Christianity is the prosperity gospel. Imperial Christianity is January the 6th. Imperial Christianity is the religion of Franklin Graham, Mike Johnson, Eric Metaxas, Albert Mohler, James Dobson, Mike Pence, Mark Driscoll, Liberty University, Focus on the Family, The Southern Baptist Convention, and The Heritage Foundation. It is a religion of domination, white supremacy, patriarchy, oppression, and exclusion. Imperial Christianity is installing Jesus as a puppet king controlled by demonic forces.

Today is a celebration of imperial Christianity. However, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, something else is on offer.

In a subversive twist of fate, the universe has willed the convergence of imperial Christianity embodied by Trump and his minions with prophetic Christianity as witnessed by the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Day.

As the world watches, two versions of Christianity are on full display.

Instead of a powerful, nationalistic Christianity, we need a prophetic Christianity—a Christianity that calls into question the very empire in which we live and move and have our being. In a nation ripe with domination, divided by racism, entrenched in patriarchy, and ruled by oligarchs at the expense of “we the people,” our role is not to seek power, but to be prophetic.

Modeled by Dr. Martin Luther King and his earnest pursuit of civil rights, prophetic Christianity is the spirituality of the disinherited, the downcast, and the disenfranchised. It is authentic faith, one that emphasizes God’s radical allegiance to the poor. Focusing on justice, truth-telling, and confronting systems of oppression, prophetic Christianity challenges the status quo while calling for a radical reordering of public life based on reciprocity, love, equality, and peace. Instead of cozying up to the president, prophetic Christians speak truth to power. Prophetic Christianity picks sides; it defends the fatherless, lifts up the lowly, scatters the proud, and sends the rich away hungry. Prophetic spirituality is active resistance to empire. It is Isaiah’s vision of justice when the nations finally “beat their swords into plowshares,” and Amos’ call to "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Prophetic Christianity is the spirituality of Sojourner Truth, James Cone, Howard Thurman, Dorothy Day, Stokely Carmichael, and Daniel Berrigan. It’s the “Beloved Community” instead of “America First.” Instead of walls, it builds tables of inclusion.

Prophetic Christianity is not simply a spiritual call to personal piety; it is the radical embrace of social change. It challenges injustice, resists oppression, and demands God's kingdom come here and now, where the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized are lifted up. Prophetic Christianity directly opposes and resists empire by challenging the structures of power, wealth, and domination that are central to imperial life. While imperial Christianity is hyper-focused on private sin, prophetic Christianity recognizes deep-rooted, widespread injustices embedded within our nation that perpetuate inequality, discrimination, and harm. These "sins" are not just individual acts of wrongdoing but are part and parcel of the American way of life, embedded in our institutions, reinforcing negative patterns of behavior and belief that lead to exploitation and marginalization.

Prophetic Christianity worships the crucified God, not a powerful president. Inaugurated in weakness, prophetic Christianity brings about God’s Kingdom through suffering love, not Christian nationalism.

If you can stomach watching the inauguration today, don't be surprised by all the prayers and Christianese employed as absolution for empire. Don’t be dismayed by the larger Christian community in America and their allegiance to imperial religion. We've seen this before and we will see it again. Imperial Christianity will always be comfortable at Mar-a-Lago and aghast in Springfield, Ohio. Which is yet another reason why we not only resist the devilish conflation of God’s Kingdom with the American empire, but why we continue to deconstruct this fraudulent variant of faith.

Gary Alan Taylor