The False White Gospel

Two years ago, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential elections, in my weekly space of the Tallassee Tribune I reviewed a book by Christianity Today editor Russell Moore titled LOSING OUR RELIGION.  In the nearly 25 years of writing for the Tallassee Tribune and its related publications, I have never been attacked for having a glass-is-half-full outlook on politics, but people really piled on about this one. 

Moore is an evangelical Christian, Baptist preacher, podcast host and journalist. Yet, he became hated by the MAGA movement because he dared to say that politics and religion shouldn’t mix.  In his book, he wrote that “the political fusion with Trumpism, Christian nationalism, white-identity backlash, and the dismissing of issues such as abuse as ‘social justice’ secularism, are dividing almost every church, almost every family, almost every friendship I know.” He went on to call out the idea of President Trump being “anointed by God” as an abomination. 

A more recent book by pastor and policymaker Jim Wallis takes these points even further. THE FALSE WHITE GOSPEL, which came out in early 2025, encourages readers: “don’t go right, don’t go left; go deeper” into the Gospels and into the teachings of Jesus. Wallis is outraged by the fusion of Christianity with a single political party and the guilt-tripping that comes from so many faith leaders about how they should be voting for a particular candidate. 

Jim Wallis uses language and expressions with which most of us would be familiar: altar calls, prayer meetings, taking up your Cross to follow Jesus – this guy has an evangelical background. However, within the first few pages, Wallis hits the reader hard: “Jesus is a victim of identity theft in America,” he says. “Instead of wearing a bracelet that says ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ or WWJD, it’s time to ask what did Jesus say and what did he do.”

He goes on to argue that the American church made an “immoral bargain” by becoming President Trump’s religious warriors, defending his honor time and again despite what he calls a crude, crass manipulation of the church for his own purposes. “Morality doesn’t matter. Character doesn’t matter. Values don’t matter. The treatment of women and the poor don’t matter. Only power matters.”

“We are able to love our neighbors because God first loves us – all of us,” Wallis goes on to say, as he frames each chapter around many Bible stories and the parables taught by Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry. Throughout the book, Wallis gives great analysis (and, I must say, overstates his points a time or two, but I’m not the author) to various decisions made over the past decades and places them on a time line showing that yes, the United States is indeed a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. What he points out repeatedly is the hypocrisy of how religious leaders continuously make excuses for President Trump’s abhorrent behavior, looking past things being said and done that would have disqualified or destroyed any previous president.

I especially thrilled to the retelling of some truly great salvation stories. Wallis writes about a particular church service in Kansas City, with racial tensions at an all-time high, and members of two rival gangs showing up one Sunday morning at the invitation of a pastor. They behaved well  in church despite their intense hatred and rivalry, but a “gang summit” was born and, in time, street crime was driven down thanks to the influence of the church. 

Wallis points out the dangerous irony: Christians express fear and complain that society is secularizing, but some of that is due to the extremely defensive posture taken by leaders of this Christian Nationalist movement the past few years who have actually pushed believers out of their ranks. The hardened posture on both sides is not a symptom of the problem, it is the problem! 

“There is no ‘white’ Christianity,” Wallis writes, “only Christian faith for all and every race.” He continues this point of preachers hitching their congregational wagons to Preisdent Trump as “nothing less than idolatry, the worship of a false God.”

THE FALSE WHITE GOSPEL ends on a hopeful note, encouraging honest dialogue whether at work, school, church, or in our neighborhoods to bring back what truly makes our Judeo-Christian country great. Using six key Biblical texts from Genesis, Matthew, Luke, John, and Galatians, Wallis also calls for what he has named a ‘remnant’ church shaped by repentance, return, and restoration – and nothing to do with politics or politicians.  He concludes with, “a remnant church must not only be known for what it is against, but what it is for.”

Wallis doesn’t have all the answers, and I don’t agree with every point he makes. But, THE FALSE WHITE GOSPEL is a great read for those who feel adrift in this strange time of our American history, and points at a possible path forward for Christianity in our culture. 

Michael Bird is an assistant professor at Faulkner University.