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Even granting the framing that progressives are anti-Christian and MAGA are bad Christians, I'm not sure where that implies that Christians shouldn't challenge MAGA bad Christianity, attempt to drag it towards better Christianity, or even simply warn Christians against imitating MAGA? Christians can be in a tactical alliance with MAGA while also needing to maintain a sense of why MAGA is bad and they must not become MAGA.
Arguably under those circumstances, it's more important for Christians to clearly articulate criticisms of MAGA. Progressivism is obviously an enemy and there is no temptation to imitate it. But Christians might be tempted to imitate MAGA. So that path must be guarded more fiercely.
Christians are used to being the junior partner in a coalition with the big bully that can protect us from scary progressives. We don’t like musk’s or Trump’s personal behavior but we shut our mouths because the alternative would be to have our institutions forced to support abortion and push retarded gender ideology.
It does not seem Christian, to me, to excuse or justify what is evil? What you've said reminds me of the "we need our own Putin" argument from conservative Christians circa 2016 (criticised here). The last I checked Christians were not supposed to act out of fear. When Musk or Trump behave badly, it seems entirely appropriate, to me, for Christians to say that behaviour is bad and to issue a call to repentance.
Christians are supposed to be signs of contradiction to the world. As that blogger says, "the idea that we should keep our mouths shut instead of "dividing"... is an insidious falsehood that is totally off the mark".
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What's your evidence that they aren't doing any or all of these three things?
The chain of inference here seems quite long. Is Musk MAGA? When he claimed that massive "skilled" immigration was a good thing and got immediately hammered by the grassroots, were the people hammering him rejecting MAGA? Is MAGA bad, and if so, why?
From the inside, the proper way for Christianity to interact with politics is a very interesting question. Let's presume that "MAGA" stands for right-wing politics not explicitly guided by Christian principles; that seems to be your general intent here, though if you'd disagree I invite you to offer a more fitting definition.
Christianity tried right-wing politics explicitly guided by Christian principles during the Bush administration, and it seems to me the result was disaster, even from a Christian perspective. The reasons for this disaster seem pretty straightforward to me: first-order Christian ends can't really be secured by Government power, second-order Christian ends mostly can't be secured without social consensus, and the Christians (along with everyone else, for the most part) were sufficiently blind to the realities of their situation that prudence in the exercise of power never materialized, and their political capital was entirely wasted.
As I see it, Christianity's interaction with MAGA has abandoned pursuit of first- and second-order Christian ends through the exercise of Government power, and are aiming exclusively for prudent exercise of power. That is, Christians are spending their political capital in an attempt to prevent rule by people who hate them, to secure some modicum of political and social stability, and to attempt to preserve and maintain peace and plenty. The hope is that if prudent exercise of power can be obtained, first- and second-order Christian ends can be pursued outside the arena of political power, as individuals and as churches.
Let's leave aside MAGA for the moment. What does "Challenge Bad Christianity" look like? To me, it seems like this involves preventing people from pushing non-Christian values and positions while claiming the mantle of "Christianity". An obvious example would be Pope Francis's various shenanigans. But neither Musk nor Trump are making any credible claim to be Christian, nor indeed any claim to speak for Christians. Both are very clearly pagans, and never made any notable attempt to claim otherwise. And indeed, this is how most Pro-Trump Christian discourse has gone: Trump is compared to Nebuchadnezzar, say, a pagan monarch with no claim to righteousness who can nonetheless serve as God's instrument. There hasn't been nearly as much discourse on Musk, but I'd expect it to evolve in a similar fashion.
I see no evidence that Christians have endorsed the paganism of either Musk or Trump. What I see is Christians accepting the evident reality: we no longer have the power to impose our values through law, even were it desirable to do so, and we no longer have the consensus necessary to impose our values on society, even were it desirable to do so. We cannot compel, but can only attempt to persuade, and those unwilling to be persuaded will do what seems right in their own eyes. Our fight now is centered on what Christianity actually is within itself, not on how best to impose Christian values and rules on the pagans without. It seems to me that people arguing for a Christian broadside against Musk's or Trump's paganism come mainly in one of two varieties: Christians who haven't grasped the scale of the change in our society and of Christianity's position in it, and non-Christians who for reasons of mental habit or momentary expedience prefer the Christianity of the past to the Christianity of the present. Neither, it seems to me, really has a coherent argument here.
If people actually want Christians to start policing non-Christians again, they should present a general case for when and why this is desirable, and also for why the desirability of such policing was not evident in the past. Absent such a case, it is difficult to take their arguments seriously. "Family Values" as a going concern died with the introduction of ubiquitous internet porn; people appealing to it now as though it were a live political entity are either deeply confused or lying.
I think they are doing most of those things, and I commend them for it. My top-level post here was in fact about a conservative Christian attempting to both issue a call to reform and repentance to MAGA and warn Christians away from being influenced by MAGA.
I'm not sure I'm arguing for a broadside, or for any kind of concerted political campaign. I'd hold that Christians ought to, where possible, speak the truth and call people to better behaviour. That may take a different form when it is issued to other Christians as when it is issued to secular society (and Christians should of course try to improve secular society), but either way I don't see a valid argument for Christian quietism.
It is, incidentally, worth noting that Trump himself claims to be a Christian, and Elon Musk, though stopping short of saying he's a Christian himself, identifies as a 'cultural Christian' and says that he's 'actually a big believer in the principles of Christianity'. For Christians to issue a call for Trump and Musk to live out Christian values more fully is not actually a call to pagans in the first place. Trump claims to be inside the tent; Musk has at least one foot in. So Christians asking Trump or Musk to behave in more Christian ways is by no means "policing non-Christians".
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This is an excellent take. I have tried to explain these things to people I know, but not half as well. A couple of points, though:
I think that Bush sincerely wanted this to work, but his personnel decisions did not reflect that. He largely chose neocons associated with his father’s administration, and they didn’t care about this at all. He also didn’t account for resistance from the permanent bureaucracy that has become so conspicuous since. So I think that there are some approaches left untried here, even if Christians no longer have the political power to attempt them.
Trump has occasionally expressed the fig-leaf level of Christian pretense expected of U.S. politicians, but this is even more transparent than it was with Obama. I do think that that, combined with outgroup homogeneity bias, has sincerely confused a few people on the left.
This is the heart of the matter.
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