There is a moment when a faith stops belonging to the people who claim it and starts belonging to the people who fight for it. American Christianity crossed that line a long time ago. It did not happen in a single election or a single scandal. It happened in the quiet, ordinary years when the people who called themselves Christians decided that silence was safer than truth.

This is addressed to them.

Not the zealots. Not the abusers. Not the men who built their power on fear and cruelty. This is for the Christians who believed they were good because they were not the ones doing the harm. The ones who volunteered at food drives, prayed for the hurting, donated to missions, and then let their entire religion be hollowed out by people who did the opposite of everything Jesus taught.

You thought your kindness would speak for itself.  

You thought your intentions were enough.  

You thought your silence was neutral.

But Scripture has never been gentle about silence.

James wrote that anyone who knows the good they ought to do and does not do it sins. Not doing harm is not righteousness. Not doing good is sin. And for decades, the American church perfected the art of not doing good.

When survivors begged to be heard, you looked away.  

When racism poisoned your pews, you changed the subject.  

When nationalism fused itself to your pulpits, you shrugged and said you were not political.  

When cruelty was carried out in the name of Christ, you whispered your discomfort to each other and called it discernment.

You were not the villains.  

But you were not the resistance either.

You were the insulation.  

The buffer.  

The quiet majority that made the loud minority possible.

And now, when the world looks at American Christianity and sees cruelty, racism, authoritarianism, and abuse, you want to say that this is not who you are. You want to say that this is not real Christianity. You want to say that the extremists hijacked your faith.

But the world is not judging you by your theology.  

It is judging you by your silence.

Jesus said you will know them by their fruits. Not their prayers. Not their donations. Not their intentions. Their fruits. And the little fruit this tree has produced in recent years has been rotten because it was never pruned. Its branches were heavy with blossoms, bright enough to distract from the sickness underneath. People mistook the beauty for health and waited for fruit that never came, warning anyone who reached for pruning shears that touching the tree would ruin it. All the while, the tree kept blooming only to hide the rot consuming its core, until many began to see it as the Bradford pear of American faith, beautiful when at its best yet carrying far more problems than anyone wanted to talk about.

Ezekiel condemned the shepherds who protected themselves instead of the flock. And that is still happening in America today. The Southern Baptist Convention spent decades moving accused pastors into new communities, leaving behind more than seven hundred victims and a leadership determined to bury the truth. The Catholic Church did the same, shifting priests from parish to parish while calling it protection of the flock. And even now, in churches across the land, from matchbox‑size buildings to sprawling megachurches, abuse continues in plain sight, guarded by people who would rather invoke religious freedom than admit what is happening in their own house.

Revelation warns that the lukewarm will be spit out. That is the quiet Christian. The conflict averse Christian. The Christian who believed that being nice was the same as being faithful. The Christian who thought neutrality was righteousness.

You did not lose your religion because extremists stole it.  

You lost it because you refused to defend it.

You let the worst people speak for you until they became the only ones anyone could hear. You let your faith be defined by cruelty because you were too polite to confront it. You let your religion be taken from you because you would not risk your comfort to protect its soul.

And now you want to say that MAGA is not Christianity.  

But it is.  

It is the Christianity you allowed.  

It is the Christianity you protected with your silence.  

It is the Christianity you handed over by night.

If you want a different Christianity, you are going to have to fight for it.  

Because the one you have now, the one that bears your name in public, belongs to the people you refused to confront.

This is not a call to guilt.  

It is a call to ownership.

If you want to reclaim your faith, you must begin with the truth.  

You let this happen.  

You let others define you.  

You let harm grow in your name.

You thought this was not your fight, and because you refused to step in, those outside can only hear whoever was willing to fill the silence. And anyone paying attention can see their reach was never going to end at the sanctuary doors. And until you admit that to yourselves, nothing will change.