Why Trump’s MAGA evangelicals are much worse than past 'Christian conservatives'

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2016, Wikimedia Commons

Liberal Georgia-based journalist Zaid Jilani, who was raised Muslim, has a long history of criticizing the Religious Right. Jilani, back in the 1990s and 2000s, often argued that while there's nothing wrong with faith and religion, "theocracy" has no place in a constitutional democratic republic like the United States.

But in an op-ed published by the New York Times on September 26, Jilani lays out some reasons why he finds 2025's MAGA Christian nationalists much more troubling than the fundamentalist evangelicals he criticized in the past.

"As the George W. Bush years rolled on," Jilani recalls, "I joined my fellow liberal activists in watching documentaries like 'Jesus Camp,' which warned of an impending Christian theocracy. I argued vigorously for separation of church and state, and I waited on pins and needles for the end of a movement I viewed as stifling freedom of religion and freedom of expression. But I'm starting to miss the Christian conservatives I grew up with. Unlike the Christian Right of my childhood, today's variations — some of which see President Trump as a religious figure — seem incapable of being compassionate toward outgroups like mine."

Jilani recalls that after al-Qaeda's 9/11 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush was careful to make a distinction between jihadist and non-jihadist Muslims. Bush described Islam as a "great religion," making it clear that he didn't blame all Muslims for 9/11.

"I think back to the days right after September 11, when Mr. Bush — the politician most closely associated with the 21st-Century Christian Right — visited a mosque in Washington, D.C., to emphasize that Muslims were just as American as anyone else," Jilani explains. "It's easy to laugh this off, given what happened afterward — he set off a bungling war on terrorism that included an unnecessary war in Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Yet Mr. Bush set the tone for the millions of devout Christians who voted for him."

MAGA's "Christian nationalism," Jilani laments, "can be distinguished more by cruelty than kindness."

"These new Christian conservatives are represented by people like Matt Walsh, a popular right-wing Catholic commentator," the Georgia-based journalist warns. "Conservatives spent years working across the aisle on criminal justice reform. Mr. Walsh has floated the return of whipping and amputations as punishments and said that by resisting Mr. Trump's militarization of law enforcement in Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson had committed treason and should be 'given the requisite punishment for a capital offense'…. There is no issue where the current crop of Christian Right politicians departs more from the old than immigration."

Zilani, who is Pakistani-American, adds, "Christians like Mr. Bush condemned nativism. These new activists embrace it."

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