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"Silence is supporting this abuse of these members of God's family," one Chicago pastor told his congregants on Saturday.
As demonstrations against an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois have ramped up in recent weeks, several local priests have joined in the protests to call attention to what they say are affronts to Christian teachings.
Father Larry Dowling, pastor at the St. Agatha Catholic Church in Chicago, wrote a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday in which he described his experience in trying to gain access to the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility to offer communion services to detainees.
Dowling began his post by praising the work of the Maywood and Broadview Police Departments, as well as the Illinois State Police, who facilitated his and his congregants' procession to the ICE facility on Saturday.
He was far less complimentary, however, about the reception he got after arriving at the ICE facility.
"There were no ICE or federal representatives there," he explained. "When requesting to talk with a representative from Homeland Security and ICE, the state police reached out on our behalf to make the request over the phone. After a brief wait, the answer came back very clearly: No, you cannot bring a hint of compassion and prayer into this place!"
Dowling called this response outrageous, and he encouraged his followers to pray for "the children, for the mothers and fathers who are being treated inhumanely" at the ICE facility.
"Please step up and speak out," he concluded. "Silence is supporting this abuse of these members of God's family."
In an interview with NPR published on Sunday, Rev. Quincy Worthington of Highland Park Presbyterian Church explained why he has become more involved in the ICE facility protests over the past few weeks.
"What I've experienced is that some people feel that God has abandoned Broadview, and they're looking at signs of hope," he told NPR reporter Ayesha Rascoe. "Having a member of clergy there standing with them is a reminder that God stands with them as well."
Rascoe then asked him if he'd witnessed incidents of violence during the demonstrations at Broadview, and he mostly pointed the finger at ICE officials.
"What I've seen every time I've gone is ICE's response to the protests has continually escalated," he said. "At first, they would come out of the gates, shove people to the ground, push people out of the way in order to make room for vehicles to enter and exit the facility. Then it started turning into they would shoot pepper balls at us. And then tear gas started coming out, and then flash-bangs and rubber bullets."
Worthington emphasized that he hadn't seen any actions taken by the demonstrators that "would provoke this response."
Rev. David Black, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, has also recently been making headlines for participating in demonstrations at the ICE facility, and last week he filed a lawsuit alleging that the government was infringing upon his First Amendment rights by using excessive force in response to his peaceful protests.
"I extended my arms, palms outstretched toward the ICE officers, in a traditional Christian posture of prayer and blessing," he alleged in his complaint. "Without any warning, and without any order or request that I and others disperse, I was suddenly fired upon by ICE officers. In rapid fire, I was hit seven times on my arms, face, and torso with exploding pellets that contained some kind of chemical agent. It was clear to me that the officers were aiming for my head, which they struck twice."
Video of Black getting shot in the head by pepper balls at the Broadview ICE facility went viral last week, he told CNN host Erin Burnett that he could hear ICE agents laughing as they opened fire on him.
"It was deeply disturbing," he said. "We've gotten to witness a few things against these ICE agents operating in Broadview, and really what it has shown us is how disorganized they are and how poorly supervised and trained they are."
“When poor families are stripped of healthcare and lifesaving resources—when the vulnerable are sacrificed for greed—we cannot remain silent," said Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome.
As the United States faces looming Republican government shutdown and as harmful impacts of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July by President Donald Trump begin to affect millions of Americans, clergy and impacted people and rallied Monday in eight states "to expose how leaders are twisting and warping Christianity to push policies that hurt poor and vulnerable communities."
The latest round of Moral Monday rallies—led by Bishop William J. Barber II and Repairers of the Breach—took place across the US South to highlight the deadly impact of the OBBA, which organizers are calling the "Big Ugly Destructive Deadly Bill."
The law, which was signed by Trump on July 4, made the deepest cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in history while slashing billions from other essential social programs to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. The OBBA ends health coverage and food assistance for millions of Americans at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 US children—are living in food insecure households.
Experts say the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other social safety net programs will lead to 17 million people losing healthcare and 51,000 deaths. To highlight this staggering figure, faith leaders delivered 51 caskets to lawmakers' offices across the South.
Speakers at Moral Monday rallies also underscored how GOP policymakers and right-wing commentators "are increasingly pushing a warped version of Christianity to advance policies that hurt the poor and vulnerable."
"In just the past few weeks, especially following the horrific death of Charlie Kirk, our nation has seen an even greater surge in this weaponization of faith," said Repairers of the Breach. "Left unchecked, leaders will continue to use the banner of 'Christianity' to consolidate power and pursue their deadly agenda."
Barber said: "Nearly every senator who voted for Washington’s big, deadly, destructive bill identifies as a Christian. But when I read the Bible, I see nothing that would support stripping people of basic healthcare or food. I see words that tell us to love our neighbors and uplift the vulnerable."
"Policymakers have made clear that they are willing to sacrifice the poor for the consolidation of power," he added.
Speaking in Montgomery, Alabama, Repairers of the Breach national director of religious affairs Rev. Dr. Hanna R. Broome said that “when poor families are stripped of healthcare and lifesaving resources—when the vulnerable are sacrificed for greed—we cannot remain silent."
“My faith calls me to love my neighbor, not abandon them to suffering," Broome added. "Nations will be judged by how we treat the poor and vulnerable, not by our military might or [gross domestic product]."
The Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references.
It was a moment somewhat like this, 30 years ago, that turned me into a biblical scholar. In the lead-up to the passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, political and religious leaders quoted scripture to justify shutting down food programs and kicking mothers and their babies off public assistance. Those leaders, many of them self-described Christians, chose to ignore the majority of passages in the Bible that preached “good news” to the poor and promised freedom to those captive to injustice and oppression. Instead, they put forward unethical and ahistorical (mis)interpretations and (mis)appropriations of biblical texts to prop up American imperial power and punish the poor in the name of a warped morality.
Three decades later, the Trump administration and its theological apologists are working overtime, using Jesus’ name and the Bible’s contents in even more devastating rounds of immoral biblical (mis)references. In July, there was the viral video from the Department of Homeland Security, using the “Here I am, Lord. Send me” quotation from Isaiah—commonly cited when ordaining faith leaders and including explicit references to marginalized communities impacted by displacement and oppression—to recruit new agents for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, a job that now comes with a $50,000 signing bonus, thanks to US President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s former pastor went even further in marrying the Bible to anti-immigrant hatred by saying, “Is the Bible in favor of these ICE raids?… The answer is yes.” He then added: “The Bible does not require wealthy Christian nations to self-immolate for the horrible crime of having a flourishing economy and way of life, all right? The Bible does not permit the civil magistrate to steal money from its citizens to pay for foreign nationals to come destroy our culture.”
A month earlier, during a speech announcing the bombing of Iran, President Trump exhorted God to bless America’s bombs (being dropped on innocent families and children): “And in particular, God, I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
And in May, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican congressional representatives formed a prayer circle on the floor of the House as they prepared to codify the president’s Big Beautiful Bill. Of course, that very bill threatens to cut off millions of Americans from lifesaving food and healthcare. (Consider it a bizarre counterpoint to Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 and providing free healthcare to lepers.)
And if that weren’t enough twisting of the Bible to bless the rich and admonish the poor, enter tech mogul Peter Thiel, cofounder of Palantir and the man behind the curtain of so much now going on in Washington. Though many Americans may be increasingly familiar with him, his various companies, and his political impact, many of us have missed the centrality of his version of Christianity and the enigmatic “religious” beliefs that go with it.
In Vanity Fair this spring, journalist Zoe Bernard emphasized the central role Thiel has already played in the Christianization of Silicon Valley: “I guarantee you,” one Christian entrepreneur told her, “there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.”
Indeed, his theological beliefs grimly complement his political ones. “When you don’t have a transcendent religious belief,” he said, “you end up just looking around at other people. And that is the problem with our atheist liberal world. It is just the madness of crowds.” Remember, this is the same Thiel who, in a 2009 essay, openly questioned the compatibility of democracy and freedom, advocating for a system where power would be concentrated among those with the expertise to drive “progress”—a new version of the survival of the fittest in the information age. Such a worldview couldn’t contrast more strongly with the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus demonstrates his preferential option for the poor and his belief in bottom-up strategies rather than top down ones.
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
More recently, Thiel has positioned himself “right” in the middle of the Republican Party. He served as Trump’s liaison to Silicon Valley in his first term. Since then, he has convened and supported a new cohort of conservatives (many of whom also claim a right-wing Christianity), including Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s Director of Policy Planning Michael Anton, AI and crypto czar billionaire David Sacks, and Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected the second time around. Thiel is also close to Curtis Yarvin, the fellow who “jokingly” claimed that American society no longer needs poor people and believes they should instead be turned into biofuel. (A worldview that simply couldn’t be more incompatible with Christianity’s core tenets.)
Particularly relevant to recent political (and ideological) developments, especially the military occupation of Washington, DC, Thiel is also close to Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of Palantir and founder of the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank behind a coordinated attack on the homeless now sweeping the nation. That’s right, there’s a throughline from Peter Thiel to President Donald Trump’s demand that “the homeless have to move out immediately… FAR from the Capital.” In July, Trump produced an executive order facilitating the removal of housing encampments in Washington, a year after the Supreme Court upheld a law making it a crime, if you don’t have a home, to sleep or even breathe outside. And Thiel, Lonsdale, and the Cicero Institute aren’t just responsible for those attacks on unhoused people and “blue cities”; they also bear responsibility for faith leaders being arrested and fined for their support of unhoused communities and their opposition, on religious grounds, to the mistreatment of the poor.
On top of this troubling mix of Christianity and billionaires, however, I find myself particularly chagrined that Thiel is offering an oversold four-part lecture series on the “antichrist” through a nonprofit called ACTS 17 collective that is to start in September in San Francisco. News stories about the ACTS 17 collective tend to focus on Christians organizing in Silicon Valley and the desire to put salvation through Jesus above personal success or charity for the poor. That sounds all too ominous, especially for those of us who take seriously the biblical command to stop depriving the poor of rights, to end poverty on Earth (as it is in heaven), and defend the very people the Bible prioritizes.
For instance, Trae Stephens (who worked at Palantir and is partners with Thiel in a venture capital fund) is the husband of Michelle Stephens, the founder of the ACTS 17 collective. In an interview with Emma Goldberg of the New York Times, Michelle Stephens describes how “we are always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized… I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”
In an article at the Denison Forum, she’s even more specific about her biblical and theological interpretation of poverty and the need to care for those with more rather than the poor. She writes, “Those who see Christ’s message to the poor and needy as the central pillar of the gospel make a similar mistake. While social justice movements have done a great deal to point out our society’s longstanding sins and call believers to action, it can be tempting for that message to become more prominent than our innate need for Jesus to save us.” Such a statement reminds me of the decades-long theological pushback I lived through even before the passage of welfare reform and the continued juxtaposition of Jesus and justice since.
Of course, such a battle for the Bible is anything but new in America. It reaches back long before the rise of a new brand of Christianity in Silicon Valley. In the 1700s and 1800s, slaveholders quoted the book of Philemon and lines from St. Paul’s epistles to claim that slavery had been ordained by God, while ripping the pages of Exodus from bibles they gave to the enslaved. During the Gilded Age of the 19th century, churches and politicians alike preached what was called a “prosperity gospel” that extolled the virtues of industrial capitalism. Decades later, segregationists continued to use stray biblical verses to rubber-stamp Jim Crow practices, while the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell, Sr., helped mainstream a new generation of Christian extremists in national politics.
Over the past decades, the use of the Bible to justify what passes for “law and order” (and the punishing of the poor) has only intensified. In Donald Trump’s first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border with a passage from the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Romans: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea soon after in this way: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.” And in his first speech as speaker of the House, Mike Johnson told his colleagues, “I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority,” an echo of the New Testament’s Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul writes that “the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”
We must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so.
Over the past several years, Republican politicians and religious leaders have continued to use biblical references to punish the poor, quoting texts to justify cutting people off from healthcare and food assistance. A galling example came when Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), rebutting a Jewish activist who referenced a commandment in Leviticus to feed the hungry, quoted 2 Thessalonians to justify increasing work requirements for people qualifying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). And that was just one of many Republican attacks on the low-income food assistance program amid myriad attempts to shred the social welfare system in the lead-up to President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history and a crowning achievement of Russell Vought’s Project 2025. Arrington said: “But there’s also, you know, in the Scripture, tells us in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3:10 he says, uh, ‘For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ And then he goes on to say, ‘We hear that some among you are idle’… I think it’s a reasonable expectation that we have work requirements.”
And Arrington has been anything but alone. The same passage, in fact, had already been used by Reps Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Stephen Lee Fincher (R-Tenn.) to justify cutting food stamps during a debate over an earlier farm bill. And Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) used similarly religious language, categorizing people as deserving and undeserving, to argue against a healthcare plan that protects those of us with preexisting conditions. He insisted that only “people who lead good lives” and “have done the things to keep their bodies healthy” should receive reduced costs for healthcare.
Such “Christian” politicians regularly misuse Biblical passages to blame the impoverished for their poverty. There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
Such interpretations of biblical texts are damaging to everyone’s lives (except, of course, the superrich), but especially the poor. And—though you wouldn’t know it from such Republicans—they are counter to the main themes of the Bible’s texts. The whole of the Christian Bible, starting with Genesis and ending with the Book of Revelation, has an arc of justice to it. The historical equivalents of antipoverty programs run through it all.
That arc starts in the Book of Exodus with manna (bread) that shows up day after day, so no one has too much or too little. This is a likely response to the Egyptian Pharaoh setting up a system where a few religious and political leaders amassed great wealth at the expense of the people. God’s plan, on the other hand, was for society to be organized around meeting the needs of all people, including describing how political and religious leaders are supposed to release slaves, forgive debts, pay people what they deserve, and distribute funds to the needy. The biblical arc of justice then continues through the prophets who insist that the way to love and honor God is to promote programs that uplift the poor and marginalized, while decrying those with power who cloak oppression in religious terms and heretical versions of Christian theology.
My own political and moral roots are in the welfare rights and homeless union survival movements, efforts led by poor and dispossessed people organizing a “new underground railroad” and challenging Christianity to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christ. Such a conviction was captured by Reverend Yvonne Delk at the 1992 “Up and Out of Poverty Survival Summit,” when she declared that society, including the church, must move to the position that “poor people are not sinners, but poverty is a sin against God that could and should be ended.”
Delk’s words echo others from 20 years earlier. In 1972, Beulah Sanders, a leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest organization of poor people in the 1960s and 1970s, spoke to the National Council of Churches. “I represent all of those poor people who are on welfare and many who are not,” she said, “people who believe in the Christian way of life… people whose nickels and dimes and quarters have built the Christian churches of America. Because we believe in Christianity, we have continued to support the Christian churches… We call upon you… to join with us in the National Welfare Rights Organization. We ask for your moral, personal, and financial support in this battle for bread, dignity, and justice for all of our people. If we fail in our struggle, Christianity will have failed.”
In a Trumpian world, where Christian extremism is becoming the norm, we must not let the words of Beulah Sanders be forgotten or the worst fears of countless prophets and freedom fighters come true. Rather, we must build the strength to make a theological and spiritual vision of everybody-in-nobody-out a reality and create the capacity, powered by faith, to make it so. Now is the time. May we make it so.