Growing up, my parents — Evangelist Idella Cora Thomas and Leonard Thomas — guided me spiritually. They emphasized the importance of spiritual discernment in navigating the world and advocating for justice. They wanted me to understand where evil lurks within our political and social systems.
My mother, a commissioned evangelist, was one of the first women commissioned in the Church of God in Christ, one of the oldest African American denominations. My father, a member of Shiloh Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio (an American Baptist church rooted in the Black Church tradition), belonged to a community that emphasizes the importance of sound leadership in movements of justice and civil rights — leadership that necessitates healthy spiritual discernment to identify and confront evil.
TJ Hauger
Paula White and the sycophants who call her pastor, like Darrell Scott, a Pentecostal pastor from Ohio, are just a few examples. This article is not about them but rather the false ideology of white supremacy, terrorism and Jim Crow criminality megachurches have spawned — with Donald Trump as the face of a modern Aryan nation.
This began not with holiday greetings this Christmas season, but with airstrikes on Nigeria, justified through lies and the hidden agenda of those who guard the great white Replacement Theory. Could be a distraction from redacted Epstein list.
According to Al Jazeera News, this attack has a more sinister agenda: To hinder South Africa’s efforts to gain greater global influence at the United Nations and on the world stage. The article accuses Trump and white Western civilization of violating South Africa’s sovereignty and creating a humanitarian crisis, all under the guise of protecting Christianity.
“While a bomb may not have a name, it carries a collective destructive agenda.”
Airstrikes like this result in the loss of innocent lives, including Christians and Muslims. While a bomb may not have a name, it carries a collective destructive agenda.
Then there is the Trump administration’s drone attack against Venezuela, pursuing tanker trucks and engaging in pirate abductions. And there’s his bigotry against the people of Somalia and the entire continent of Africa. Oh, and the Epstein Files. None of this is becoming of a spiritual leader. Let’s examine Scripture.
Matthew 20:26-28 — Jesus said, “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Donald Trump is disregarding the reverence of elders and ancestors. Instead, he has compelled the Kennedy Center to be renamed for him. This is not driven by his affection for the people or public service; it’s a boost to his fragile ego. This is not spiritual leadership; it directly contradicts Matthew 20:26-28.
His kidding the president of the sovereign nation of Venezuela is not godly but anarchy. Trump himself is a war criminal and terrorist.
Let’s look at Amos 5:21-24, God’s rejection of worship divorced from justice. Trump’s pseudo-religious posturing that includes his 2017 photo op with a Bible at St. johns Church is the contemporary equivalent of Israel’s empty rituals while oppressing poor
1 Timothy 3:1-2 describes leaders as “above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.” Three wives later, threatening tweets to hang Democratic lawmakers who are holding him to political and moral accountability, Trump’s abuse of women through domestic violence and sexual assault — this is not what a moral leader represents.
Instead, his values represent every wife abuser, every perpetrator of sexual assault, every monster who has been a living nightmare to every woman who has navigated the horrors of domestic abuse. We are all affected by some form of Stockholm Syndrome.
“Trump’s policies … are not merely political failures but theological heresies.”
My mother used to constantly cite 2 Corinthians 10:3-4: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
I’m using the King James Version because it matters to hear the voice of the ancients, elders and biblical scribes gone before. The strongholds we must dismantle include white Christian nationalism, Islamophobia, patriarchy, gaslighting, the vile lies of racism, and sexual assault. We also must address the dismantling of health care for millions of Americans and the dismantling of USAID that already has resulted in more than 400,000 deaths worldwide.
Trump’s policies dismantling aid and health care, and dehumanizing immigrants, women and LGBT people are not merely political failures but theological heresies that deny the image of Christ and ignore the image of Jesus in the vulnerable.
Paul’s language of strongholds refers to ideological fortresses that resist God’s truth. James Cone’s conception of these principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12) as systematic evil demonstrates that white Christian nationalism is not merely individual sin but a demonic stronghold that has captured American evangelicalism.
The weapons of our warfare are truth-telling, prophetic witness and solidarity with those this administration is targeting.
While the strongholds are numerous, I firmly believe we can overcome them if we unite our voices and expose the lies propagated by modern-day Pharisees.
My mother used to say, “God will not be mocked.” This assertion remains as true as ever and has become my own rhetoric. We cannot allow them to mock God by elevating a demonic presence of dictatorship, fascism and terrorism. In this moment, we must listen the powerful voices who are the embodiment of the Black prophetic tradition of the Black Church.
TJ Williams Hauger is a Baptist pastor in Chicago, an activist and content creator. He earned a master of divinity degree from New York Theological Seminary and is a doctoral student.
