Vice President-elect JD Vance takes the oath of office with his hand on a Bible that once belonged to his great-grandmother, held by his wife Usha Vance, during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20. (Chip Somodevilla/The Associated Press)

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Rochelle Olson’s Feb. 26 column “ ‘Exvangelical’ warns: Christian Nationalism a looming threat” reflects another serious divide in our country.

As U.S. Christians enter the six-week Lenten season beginning on March 5, a neutral observer might be excused for wondering what in the world is going on within American Christianity. We Christians find ourselves with deep divisions and greater polarization than most of us have seen or read about since the era of slavery in America, when some churches supported slavery and others opposed it.

Some Christian conservatives today seem to undercut the very core teachings of Christianity, which has long taught compassion and care for the least among us, the poor, the homeless, new immigrants and all those lacking what are required for their basic needs.

Instead, today we find Christians debating whether we are called to compassion or not. In many cases these Christian conservatives and Christian nationalists argue for limits to compassion and support efforts to codify restricted compassion.

Minnesota state Sen. Erin Maye Quade noted in Olson’s column: “It’s an incredibly dangerous ideology that seeks to create a racial and gender hierarchy and rejects secular laws, including the U.S. Constitution, in favor of a strict interpretation of the Bible.” As Olson notes, research by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) suggests that up to one-third of U.S. residents qualify as adherents or sympathizers to Christian nationalism. That research suggests the same percentages here in Minnesota. This is not a small movement of outliers.

Efforts by faith communities to respond to the needs of new immigrants are dubbed “Toxic Empathy” by Allie Beth Stuckey in her October 2024 book of that title. Charges of selfishness and malignant organizational self-interest are cast against church organizations funded by the federal government to assist new immigrants in the United States.

Many conservative Christians support the Trump administration’s efforts to defund federal support for new immigrants, including defunding the national church-based social service organizations dealing with immigrant needs. These conservative Christians find biblical justification of their opposition to new immigrants. They offer defiant resistance to providing services to immigrants within our society.

Christians find that their efforts to respond to the needs of immigrants are not only questioned but denigrated by some of these conservative religious spokespersons. These religious leaders on the right, at least some of them, seem to be arguing that we should limit our response to what we can only assume are the deserving — and legal — recipients of compassion, seemingly contradicting a widely accepted view of traditional Christianity that our compassion should extend to all in need.

Our neutral observer would not be far from the truth in noting that one group of today’s Christians seem to view the Bible through an American lens, basing their biblical witness to some extent on political ideologies in today’s America.

Another group of Christians view America through a biblical lens (an insight offered by lay theologian and activist William Stringfellow in the early 1970s), basing their response to the needs of Americans on the traditional Christian teaching calling for compassion.

These differences seem deep and irreparable. The anti-immigrant attitudes from some parts of the conservative Christian churches are seen and heard in social media, church pulpits and in the voting booth. Vice President JD Vance has chosen to lecture American bishops and other Christians, arguing that compassion for all is not theologically or biblically justified.

Meanwhile, on the other side of this division there are Christians who wonder if some type of Barmen Declaration is needed within American Christianity, a modern-day Confessing Church statement. This would be a statement from the larger Christian community opposing what Brandon Robertson in “The Sin of Empathy” has said is an “authoritarian morality of modern conservatives.”

The Barmen Declaration, for those of us who might have forgotten this history, was the 1934 statement of some church leaders in Germany expressing their opposition to the German Nazi ideology which claimed authority over the Christian church. On our recent Inauguration Day, Lutheran Bishop Mariann Budde appealed to soon-to-be President Donald Trump in the National Cathedral of Washington, D.C., for compassion and mercy. She was later attacked mercilessly by some Christians on the right for words that seem almost out of the mouth of Jesus himself.

One can only hope, as futile as it might seem today, that during this 2025 Lenten time of prayer, fasting and personal spiritual growth in the American Christian church all of us Christians can heal our differences, return to an understanding of Christianity as a way of compassion and care. Together then we could celebrate Easter Sunday as truly a time of new life and reconciliation. To do otherwise seems a to be a source of scandal for any of us who claim to be Christian.

David Gagne is retired and lives in Minneapolis. He’s a member of the Community of St. Martin.