Ex-GOP rep unleashes on pro-Trump evangelicals: 'You don’t understand your own religion'

In response to former President Donald Trump's bizarre Christmas Day rant in which he openly hoped his political opponents would "rot in hell," a retired Republican congressman called on evangelical Christians to reconsider their support of the ex-president.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), who was one of the two Republican members of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, seized on Trump's Truth Social post to make the argument that pro-Trump Christians couldn't choose to follow both Jesus and the former president.

"I’m going to go out on a NOT limb here: this man is not a Christian. If you are a Christian who supports him you don’t understand your own religion," Kinzinger posted to X (formerly Twitter). "Trump is weak, meager, smelly, victim-ey, belly-achey, but he ain’t a Christian and he’s not 'Gods man.'"

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Kinzinger, who himself is a member of the Baptist Church, is joining a growing chorus of evangelicals who are calling on their fellow Christians to reject Trump. On Christmas Day, author and journalist Tim Alberta wrote that the looming threat of Christian nationalism — in which adherents of far-right ideologies want to seize the levers of power to institute a Christianity-based hierarchy in society — was too grave to be opposed by Christian believers alone.

"It is incumbent upon [evangelicals] to stand up to this extremism in the Church," Alberta — the son of a megachurch pastor who identified as an evangelical since childhood — wrote in The Atlantic. "Yet the responsibility is not theirs alone. No matter your personal belief system, the reality is, we have no viable path forward as a pluralistic society — none — without confronting the deterioration of the evangelical movement and repairing the relationship between Christians and the broader culture."

In a November interview with Baptist News promoting his new book Renegade: Defending democracy and liberty in our divided country, Kinzinger said both his political party and his faith had been "hijacked by extremists who represent a real danger to our democracy."

"The devil’s greatest trick has been to convince my fellow Christians to basically destroy their own reputations," Kinzinger said.

READ MORE: 'Incumbent' on Christians to condemn 'extremism in the church' for democracy's sake: evangelical