How 'Hell Bent' Evangelical Theology Fuels America's Cruel Politics
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We stand on the brink of a fundamental transformation of our country. President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is the most sweeping legislation in a generation, and it is not only a triumph for his administration—it is the culmination of American evangelical political aspirations: the fulfillment of Project 2025—a theocratic, authoritarian vision for America.
This bill, now law, is also historically cruel. It will deepen inequality, gut health care and food aid for needy families, and escalate Trump's war on vulnerable immigrants.
Then-Republican presidential candidate and now President Donald Trump speaks at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton on June 24, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Then-Republican presidential candidate and now President Donald Trump speaks at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton on June 24, 2023, in Washington, D.C.Yet by and large, evangelical Christians are celebrating its passage. Christian ministry Intercessors for America released a prayer guide listing "10 Things to Rejoice About in the PASSED BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL." They praised cuts to Medicaid and SNAP as cracking down on "fraud and waste," and prayed that billions for ICE and detention centers would keep the border "protected ... from evil pouring in."
Many of my secular friends are confounded. How could Jesus-loving people support a bill so harsh and regressive? "What exactly is Christian about this?" they ask.
As someone who was not only raised in this world, but spent over eight years as an evangelical pastor, I'm sorry to say it makes perfect sense—once you understand the spirituality that shapes evangelical politics.
In my upcoming book, Hell Bent, I describe how the evangelical belief in eternal punishment distorts their spirituality. Evangelical politics rest on the same punitive, exclusionary foundation—a politics of division and domination, fixated on the end of the world rather than the flourishing of the Earth. Their politics are "hell bent."
Division
Evangelical politics thrive on dividing the world into "us" and "them," "in" and "out." Citizen vs. non-citizen. Straight vs. gay. Their theology rests on heaven and hell, saved and damned, Christian and non-Christian. An evangelical recently told me, "If you think border walls are cruel, just wait until heaven—it's a gated community, and God won't let a single 'illegal immigrant' break through from hell!"
When you believe God sends people to hell for simply not believing the "right" thing, it's not hard to justify "Alligator Alcatraz." When your spirituality is about borders and binaries, your politics will be too.
Domination
Evangelical Christians believe their way is the only way—every other way leads to hell. To many of them, advancing Christian dominance matters more than human compassion. Even many evangelical leaders who initially resisted Trump eventually embraced the power he offered their movement.
For centuries, Christian colonizers justified conquest and slavery by claiming it advanced the gospel, no matter the human cost. That same logic animates evangelical politics today.
When your spirituality is about the supremacy of your belief over others, your politics will be too.
The End of the World
Evangelical politics are fixated on the end of the world rather than its flourishing. One reason justice for Palestinians is brushed aside is that many evangelicals believe Israel must play its role in the end times—an idea shaped more by apocalyptic fiction novels, Left Behind, than the Bible. To them, ushering in the second coming is a more important geopolitical duty than world peace.
One of my pastoral mentors' favorite phrases was, "It's all gonna burn." This mindset is common in evangelicalism: the next world is what truly matters. Yet in a very real sense, the world is already burning. Global temperatures are rising, wildfires and climate disasters threaten lives, yet I was raised being told climate change didn't matter because Jesus was coming back soon.
The theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote that by reducing salvation to the afterlife, Christians have "unconsciously abandoned nature to its disastrous exploitation by human beings." If this world burns, it's because we let it.
The Politics of Jesus
The good news is that the priorities of Jesus are the opposite of evangelicalism's.
His way is not about division, but solidarity. Not domination, but compassion for the vulnerable. Not fixated on an apocalyptic fantasy, but on the flourishing of real human lives here and now.
Jesus subverted the divisions of his day. When asked about the limits of neighbor-love, he told the story of the Good Samaritan—casting a despised outsider as the hero. Jesus did not seek greatness or dominance; he healed and served "the least of these," the most vulnerable in our midst. When Christianity cares more about cultural dominance than people, it stops reflecting the spirituality of Jesus.
Thankfully, there's a long tradition of Christians who have resisted politics of division and domination, who can show us a way forward. Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest public theologians of our time, did not envision an eternal future where we are separated into heaven and hell, but where an interconnected humanity experiences a shared destiny, which he called "the world house."
"We have inherited a large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace," he wrote.
Jesus invites us to a world house of shared dignity—not a gated kingdom built on fear and punishment. American Christianity must reclaim this vision, before the hell-bent politics of evangelicalism create hell on Earth.
Brian Recker is a public theologian, speaker, and writer exploring Christian spirituality beyond exclusion and fear. The son of a Baptist preacher and a graduate of the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, he spent eight years as an evangelical pastor before deconstructing his faith and embracing a more inclusive vision of God. His debut book, Hell Bent, releases September 30 from Tarcher. His Instagram is @berecker.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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