MAGA churches are flouting the law with impunity: report

President Donald Trump and his supporters are engaging in “more overt” defiance of laws prohibiting nonprofits like churches from explicit partisan activity — and this is because, one journalist alleges, MAGA is run by Christian nationalists.

“People not attuned to the evangelical world may have missed the growing prominence of hyper-politicized churches such as Mercy Culture, which have become a key wing of the MAGA coalition,” wrote The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe. “Compared with the religious right of previous generations, this cohort of pastors, influencers, and self-described prophets offers up a version of worship that’s at once more mystical, with an emphasis on supernatural powers, and more militaristic, with heightened political rhetoric.”

Monroe added, “Many adopt a Christian-nationalist framework, arguing that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed as such.” They do this in spite of the Johnson Amendment, which outlaws precisely this type of overtly political activity from churches and other religious institutions that wish to claim nonprofit status.

“Houses of worship aligned with both political parties have long flirted with defying the rule, but, after Trump was first elected, that defiance became more overt,” Monroe wrote, highlighting the Texas nondenominational evangelical megachurch Mercy Culture as one example. “Mercy Culture’s pastors hung a candidate’s banner behind the pulpit, endorsed politicians during Sunday services, said that people who vote for Democrats weren’t truly Christian, and described Kamala Harris as a demonic Jezebel taking the form of a snake encircling the White House.”

Monroe is not alone among journalists to notice the literally militant tone of the Christians in the White House under Trump. The Hill's Jos Joseph, a Marine Corps veteran who now writes about the military, reported that some of the brass in the military are explaining the war in Iran in bluntly religious terms.

"There is messaging that this war with Iran is somehow a religious war tied to the Book of Revelations, the second coming of Jesus, and the end of the world," Joseph wrote. "One of the stories was of a military commander who told his non-commissioned officers that Trump was 'anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.' It would be easy to write this off as a single military commander off his rocker, who shouldn't be in command of a U.S. military unit. But the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said they received more than 200 complaints in a couple of days from service members being told in separate instances that their military mission was key to fulfilling Christian prophecy."

He added, "Add the fact that Israel is also at war with Iran, along with several high-ranking Trump officials being ardent Christian nationalists or devout evangelicals, and you have to ask yourself: What is the reason for this war?.... This is a cause of concern, because as the war evolves, there is a good chance that the objectives will change in a way suited to Christian nationalists' beliefs."