Kristin Kobes Du Mez doesn’t need my help. She’s doing perfectly fine on her own. Still, I can’t stop myself from rising to her defense after reading Bonnie Kristian’s mostly negative review of Du Mez’s new book Live Laugh Love (“Intrigue, Insinuate, Ignore”) in the September/October issue of Christianity Today. Kristian is the deputy editor of CT and author of the book In Defense of Evangelicalism, in which she critiques Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne. Having Kristian review Live Laugh Love is like asking my late father to review a hip hop album. His mind would have been made up long before he heard a single song.
Kristian is certainly entitled to her opinions, which should have been expressed in an opinion piece, not a review. Reviewers should be objective. But CT is puzzling these days—they are in a tough place, defending evangelicalism during the reign of Donald Trump. I am reminded of an occasion when I heard Charles Colson, not long before his death, speak about the dangers of postmodernism. I felt like I was watching a dinosaur shortly before the asteroid hit.
What I want to say to Bonnie Kristian is “Don’t you understand? You did this!”
The two presidential terms of Donald Trump, the most disastrous in U.S. history, have been given to America by Evangelical voters. You may defend evangelicalism all you want, but the brand is broken. Not only that, but evangelicalism has broken the nation.
Kristin Du Mez has gained hundreds of thousands of followers by truthfully explaining how we got here. Her message reverberates especially with women who have been wounded by the complementarian jerks who exercise power in many churches. As terrible as that is, the political shock waves of what evangelicals have done are even bigger.
The fact is Donald Trump never should have gotten out of the Republican primaries early in 2016. Evangelicals did that. His candidacy never should have survived the release of the Access Hollywood tape in the fall of 2016. Evangelicals did that. Evangelicals have made a Faustian bargain with a devil named Trump. They got what they wanted: a packed Supreme Court and the implementation of the culture war agenda of Project 2025. What has the nation received in return?
The destruction of democracy in favor of authoritarianism. Hostility towards NATO. Record deficits. Tax cuts for the richest Americans. Cruel, inhumane, and criminally violent ICE deportations. A pointless war with Iran. Unnecessary trade wars with friendly nations like Canada spurred by unneeded tariffs. Measles. Spiraling inflation from the one-two punch of tariffs and gas price hikes from the Iran war. January 6. Willful ignorance of the climate crisis. Cyclospora. The unmitigated disaster of DOGE. A government that kisses up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. The list goes on. (Yeah, but at least boys aren’t playing girls’ sports!)
Everything Trump is trying to achieve with Iran had once been guaranteed, but Trump’s narcissism led him to destroy our nuclear agreement during his first term. (The problem with that agreement was that it was done under the Obama administration.) We are now locked in a war with no way out. Trump and his cronies fully expected Iran to roll over after a week or so of bombing. After all, that’s what Venezuela did. When that didn’t happen, we were told “a deal” would be reached soon. (Aren’t there any adults around who can insist on diplomacy instead of transactional “deals”?) But no deal is coming. $40 billion later, Iran has won the war without needing to do much more than absorb bombing. I don’t know how we get out of this other than backing down. Can Trump’s ego handle that? It remains to be seen.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get worst, an almost unthinkable scenario happened. We should be screaming about this from the rooftops. The heads of the top companies developing artificial intelligence asked that the governments of the world work together to put some guardrails on AI. Without those, the leaders of these companies said, there is a 10% chance AI will destroy humanity by the end of the decade.
I quote the President’s response because it has to be seen to be believed:
The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,” like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Remember “I alone can fix it”? It’s back, in spades (so to speak). The world is in real trouble. How does this end well?
Hey Bonnie, evangelicals did this.
