Monday, Nov. 6, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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“As an attorney who is also a Christian.”
Those are the words of Jenna Ellis, a woman who helped former President Donald Trump perpetrate a lie about the 2020 election that has threatened our democracy like little else in modern times. Which begs the question: Does declaring oneself Christian mean much of anything these days? Has it ever?
I was born and raised on the buckle of the Bible Belt, in rural South Carolina. My mom made sure my siblings and I were in church before we even understood what church meant, from Bible study, to the children’s choir and delivering Easter speeches, and listening to the pastor and believing what he — it was almost always a he — said the Bible wanted us to believe.
I’ve been baptized and “born again,” had my kids christened, been a member of an all-Black Holiness church when young and a mostly white nondenominational evangelical church as an adult, and have visited countless others. I’ve publicly declared Christ as my savior.
When I went off to college, I studied religion from an academic standpoint. When I was a senior, a freshman told me his wavering faith was renewed when he spied me unapologetically saying grace over my food in the cafeteria. If anyone should know what Christian means, I should. But I don’t.
It’s not a superficial question, for in this country, and especially in the South, declaring yourself Christian is essentially a prerequisite for holding public office, with only a sprinkling of exceptions, despite the principle of a separation between church and state. Ask an atheist, Muslim or Jew if you doubt me.
We are about to enter a time of the year in which the U.S. economy, work and school schedules are gerrymandered around the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. No other deity gets that type of treatment in the United States. You’d be accused of conducting a “war on Christmas” if you don’t go along with the festivities or remain silent about your unease about that truth.
That’s why the question is so important. Yet, day by day, it feels more performative than substantive to declare one’s Christianity, like playing dress-up for Halloween.
Ellis made it a point to declare not only that she was one of Trump’s former attorneys who helped the leading contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination perpetrate a fraud on the American public, but that she was Christian. She said so while pleading guilty in that ugly episode, one that has tens of thousands of Americans convinced that an election that wasn’t stolen was. Because much of Christianity isn’t about Christ. It’s about fitting in, about a shortcut to respectability. There’s no need to be ethical, to actually love fellow human beings as Christ called us to, to sacrifice for the greater good the way he sacrificed for us. All that’s required is saying the magic words.
I’m a Christian.
There’s no need to check your biases about people who seem foreign or who don’t fit neatly into a supposed gender or sex binary, no need to check the facts or avoid following obviously arrogantly immoral men like Trump. Just say “I’m a Christian,” and your work is done.
That sentiment isn’t new; it just shows up in new clothes depending on the decade. It was the get-out-of-jail-free card for enslavers who raped and beat men and women for the sin of wearing the wrong skin, and for those who looked the other way during a century of lynchings.
I’m a Christian.
Self-declared Christians have participated in the world’s worst evils, or stood silent while others suffered. Men of Christ have written and voted for laws making women second-class citizens.
Declaring one’s Christianity has become less about faith, more of a political declaration. Maybe it’s always been that way, and more of us Christians are only just now noticing.
Issac Bailey is a columnist for The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer.
