Faith without compassion: Exposing the false religion of America’s right-wing Christianity – Milwaukee Independent

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Posted by Mitchell A. Sobieski | Oct 12, 2025
Across much of the United States, a movement calling itself Christian has grown louder, richer, and more politically dominant. It drapes the cross in the flag, crowns partisan loyalty with divine approval, and treats cruelty toward others as moral courage.
Yet within the framework of Scripture itself, the same Bible this movement claims to revere, the foundations of right-wing American Christianity collapse under their own contradictions. Measured by the tests laid out in the New Testament and the prophets, the fusion of White Nationalism, greed, and judgment that defines much of this religious current is not faith, but its counterfeit.
THE BIBLICAL TEST OF TRUE VS. FALSE RELIGION
The letter of James offers the simplest diagnosis. “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God … is to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
That verse, rarely quoted from a pulpit of political zeal, defines authentic religion not by profession or piety but by compassion and integrity. It points away from domination and spectacle, grounding faith in service to the vulnerable.
By that standard, the loudest voices in America’s right-wing Christianity fail their own test. Their public witness exalts strength over mercy, punishment over grace, wealth over sacrifice.
The biblical metric is not how many times one declares Jesus’ name, but whether love and justice flow from that confession. “By their fruits you will know them,” Jesus warned in Matthew 7. The fruit of this movement is not the reconciliation and compassion that Scripture associates with divine life, but division, fear, and disdain for the marginalized.
FALSE RELIGION MASQUERADING AS RIGHTEOUSNESS
In the Gospels, Jesus reserves his fiercest criticism not for outsiders but for the religious insiders who mistake control for holiness. His rebukes to the Pharisees in Matthew 23 — “Woe to you, hypocrites” — expose the pattern. It is a false religion that disguises ambition as moral purity. It builds platforms of judgment while ignoring “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”
Modern parallels are hard to miss. Preachers bless political rallies as if anointing sacred warfare. Lawmakers quote verses about obedience while defunding programs that feed the poor. Congregations cheer when immigrants are expelled or queer people condemned, convinced such cruelty defends righteousness. Yet Christ’s own pattern was the opposite — defending those labeled sinners, challenging power, and welcoming those cast aside.
This inversion of the Gospel into an instrument of power is what theologians once called “the sin of the Pharisee.” Loving the law more than the people it was meant to serve. In American politics, that spirit merges with a secular thirst for dominance, producing what the early church would have recognized as idolatry in religious costume.
NATIONALISM AND IDOLATRY AS SPIRITUAL ADULTERY
The Bible’s central command — “You shall have no other gods before me” — stands as a warning against every form of allegiance that rivals God. When churches wrap the cross in national colors, elevate political leaders as messianic figures, or declare one nation uniquely chosen above others, they commit the ancient sin of Israel’s kings. They turn covenant into conquest.
Prophets from Isaiah to Amos condemned precisely this substitution of patriotism for piety. “Your festivals I despise,” God says through Amos. “Take away the noise of your songs; let justice roll down like waters.” In prophetic language, national arrogance masquerading as worship is spiritual adultery — betrayal of divine love for the idols of power.
American right-wing Christianity repeats that betrayal in modern form. Its sermons praise “Christian nation” myths, its rallies chant patriotic liturgies, and its media empires preach that opposing political movements is equivalent to fighting evil itself. The result is not devotion but idolatry. It is the worship of nation, race, and wealth in God’s name.
The early Christians who faced the Roman Empire would have recognized this immediately. They refused to burn incense to Caesar. Not because they hated their country, but because they would not call the empire divine. Today’s nationalist Christianity, however, does the reverse — sanctifying empire as if it were the Kingdom of God.
CRUELTY AND EXCLUSION AS ANTI-CHRIST BEHAVIOR
The New Testament’s moral center is unambiguous: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” The letter of 1 John makes love the criterion of truth. By that measure, hatred and exclusion are not mere moral errors but evidence of spiritual falsehood.
When American Christians demonize the poor, vilify migrants, or legislate against sexual minorities, they echo the behavior Scripture attributes to those who claim God’s name while denying His character.
Jesus’ parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 defines judgment not by doctrine or patriotism but by compassion — feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked. The ones who neglect mercy are the ones Christ calls accursed, even as they protest, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty?”
This same blindness marks much of modern right-wing religion. It declares its enemies godless while embodying the very absence of love that Scripture equates with godlessness. To wield the Bible as a weapon against compassion is, within the text’s own theology, to stand against Christ himself.
PROPHETIC LANGUAGE OF JUDGMENT
Throughout Scripture, when religion allies with power and forgets mercy, prophets arise to declare judgment. Jeremiah warned the temple elite not to trust in their own sacred slogans: “Do not say, ‘The temple of the Lord,’ for if you truly execute justice, then I will let you dwell in this place.”
The prophet’s target was a people convinced that divine favor insulated them from moral consequence — a conviction strikingly similar to the rhetoric of American churches that preach exceptionalism while excusing corruption and cruelty.
Ezekiel accused Israel’s leaders of “whitewashing” their nation’s sins, describing priests who profaned God’s name and princes who shed blood for gain. Their prophets, he said, “saw false visions and divined lies for them.” The description could fit any age when religious figures baptize political deceit as a divine mandate.
Jesus inherited that prophetic voice, confronting the religious establishment that cloaked oppression in ritual purity. “You build the tombs of the prophets,” he said, “but you are the children of those who murdered them.”
In that line, he identified a recurring cycle. Faith movements kill their prophets, then later decorate their graves to prove piety. In America’s present moment, churches that once revered Martin Luther King Jr. now often vilify those who echo his call for justice.
If the prophets spoke today, their outrage would not focus on personal vice but systemic sin. The fusion of religion with nationalism, the sanctification of greed, the deliberate blindness to violence committed in God’s name. Their message would sound uncomfortably direct. God is not mocked by empty patriotism.
THE BIBLICAL VERDICT
Measured against Scripture’s own criteria, the religion that dominates American conservatism cannot claim the name of Christ. Its worship of power, its scorn for mercy, and its confusion of empire with faith all mark it as false.
The verdict does not come from modern ideology but from the Bible itself. In James, religion is judged by compassion. In Matthew, faith is tested by the fruits of justice and mercy. In Amos, worship divorced from righteousness becomes noise in God’s ears. And in Revelation, the beast demands worship through empire and deceit — a warning to every nation that crowns itself holy.
Right-wing American Christianity inverts those teachings. It preaches fear rather than love, hierarchy rather than humility, vengeance rather than forgiveness. It blesses wealth and punishes poverty, calls cruelty discipline, and claims that God’s favor rests on the powerful. It trades the Sermon on the Mount for the slogans of political culture wars.
The Gospel’s moral arithmetic leaves little room for such distortion. Jesus’ kingdom is not built through domination but service. Its citizens are not the self-righteous but the poor in spirit, the peacemakers, and those who hunger for justice. When religion forgets that, it ceases to be Christian.
What remains across much of America is not the faith of Christ but the faith of Caesar — a cult of strength, wealth, and vengeance, baptized in Scripture but alien to its heart. The cross in that system no longer symbolizes sacrifice; it functions as a logo for power.
The prophets called such worship “abomination.” The New Testament calls it “a form of godliness but denying its power.”
To expose this false religion is not an act of hostility toward faith but an act of fidelity to it. The same Scriptures that conservatives cite to condemn others contain the most damning rebuke of their own hypocrisy.
The Bible’s central story — from Moses to Jesus — is of liberation from oppression and the rejection of idolatrous power. Any religion that reverses that story, that blesses empire instead of confronting it, stands under the same judgment pronounced upon every nation that confused its flag for its god.
The question facing America’s Christian Nationalism is therefore not whether it can regain cultural dominance but whether it can return to the Gospel it abandoned. The prophets’ demand remains unchanged: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Until it does, the faith that flies beneath banners of nationalism and fear will continue to expose itself. It is not Christianity renewed, but as Christianity betrayed.
Cora Yalbrin (Photo AI)
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Mitchell A. Sobieski is a Wisconsin-based opinion and editorial writer who explores the intersection of community, policy, and culture. He believes in sparking thoughtful dialogue through honest, well-reasoned perspectives. The views expressed in any Op-Ed (opposite the editorial page) belong to Sobieski and are not necessarily endorsed by the editorial board of the Milwaukee Independent.
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