Curious Christian

What most concerns me about MAGA preachers is not simply their political posture but the theological weaknesses and distortions beneath it. Political distortions are rarely the cause. They are the symptom. When theology loses its centre in the revelation of God in Christ, it quietly makes space for power, fear, and cultural grievance to take its place. Here’s a brief summary of problems I see:

Theology Proper (the study of God)
At the root is a doctrine of God in which sovereignty is defined independently of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. God’s rule is imagined primarily in terms of control, dominance, and unilateral will, rather than cruciform self-giving love. Yet the New Testament insists that God’s definitive self-disclosure is found not in abstraction but in the person of Christ: “The Son is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), and “the exact imprint of God’s being” (Heb 1:3). Divine sovereignty is most fully revealed not through coercion but through the cross, where God reigns by faithful suffering rather than violent domination (Phil 2:6–11). Any account of God’s power that cannot be reconciled with the crucified Christ risks projecting human ideas of power onto God rather than allowing Jesus to redefine what it means for God to reign.

Anthropology (the study of Humanity)
This distorted theology of power predictably shapes how human relationships are understood. In many MAGA-influenced churches, male dominance over women is treated as a divine ordering of creation rather than as a symptom of the fall. Yet Genesis presents domination as a tragic consequence of sin, not God’s original intention: “he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16) names brokenness, not blessing. The redemptive movement of Scripture presses in the opposite direction, toward mutuality, shared authority, and restored partnership. In Christ, the hierarchies produced by sin are not sacralised but relativised and healed: “There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). Where patterns of control, silencing, or fear persist, they bear the marks of the fall rather than the freedom of new creation.

Christology (the study of Christ)
A further weakness appears in how Jesus himself is valued. Christ is affirmed as a substitute who saves us from sin, yet his life and teaching are treated as secondary or optional, particularly when they conflict with cultural instincts around power, violence, or wealth. This creates a functional separation between Jesus the Saviour and Jesus the Lord, a division the Gospels never allow. Jesus consistently binds redemption to discipleship: “If you would come after me, take up your cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34), and “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46). The New Testament knows nothing of a Christ who rescues us from judgment while leaving us unformed by his ethic, his teaching, and his way of life.

Soteriology (the study of Salvation)
When Christology is thinned, salvation is inevitably reduced to narrow individual terms. Salvation becomes primarily about personal forgiveness and post-mortem destiny, with little attention to the transformation of social relationships, economic practices, or the wider creation. Yet Scripture presents salvation as far more expansive: in Christ, God is reconciling “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:20), forming a new humanity marked by peace, justice, and shared life (Eph 2:14–16). A gospel that saves individuals while leaving systems of domination, exclusion, and exploitation untouched is not the full gospel Paul proclaims. Redemption, in biblical terms, is personal but never private.

Pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit)
This individualism also shapes how the Holy Spirit is understood and invoked. Prophetic language is often framed in intensely personal terms (“God told me”) without the disciplines of communal discernment, accountability, and testing that Scripture requires. Yet Paul is explicit that prophecy belongs to the gathered body and must be weighed collectively (1 Cor 14:29), and John warns that spiritual claims must be tested rather than assumed (1 John 4:1). When spiritual authority is detached from the community, charisma easily replaces character, and the Spirit is subtly repurposed to sanctify personal certainty. We shouldnt be surprised when spiritual abuse is the fruit of this. Yet the Spirit poured out at Pentecost did not create isolated authorities but a discerning, Spirit-filled people learning together how to follow Jesus (Acts 2:42–47).

Ecclesiology (the study of the Church)
These theological weaknesses converge in an ecclesiology that struggles to maintain any meaningful distinction between the church and the state. Political power is not approached with cruciform suspicion but embraced as a tool for securing Christian ends. Yet Jesus explicitly refuses to align his kingdom with the mechanisms of worldly power: “My kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36). The church’s calling is not to baptise national ambition but to bear witness to an alternative polity shaped by self-giving love, enemy-love, and faithfulness unto suffering (Matt 5–7). When the church trades its prophetic distance for political access, it may gain influence, but it loses its soul.

Eschatology (the study of Last Things)
Finally, there is an impoverished eschatology that either collapses God’s kingdom into present political victories or postpones it entirely to the afterlife. Both moves empty Christian hope of its ethical force. Jesus teaches his followers to pray for God’s future reign to shape present reality—“on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10)—and Paul insists that resurrection hope fundamentally reorders how believers live now (1 Cor 15:58). Christian eschatology is not escapism or triumphalism, but faithful anticipation: living in the present according to the values of the future God has promised. Where the church fails to embody that future, its hope becomes rhetoric rather than witness.