Since the early 1980s, with the rise of the Moral Majority Movement and the Religious Right, much of the American political and cultural landscape has been dominated by a very specific type of Christian, commonly known as conservative evangelicals (though I think this is a misnomer).

This wing of the Church has successfully taken over much of American media – including radio, television, and the Internet. They have successfully lobbied in politics at every level of government. They were a major force behind the elections of several presidents – Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, and now Donald Trump. Their version of Christianity and its connections with power and money are all throughout American society. Even in the small town where I grew up, I was once active in a conservative evangelical church in which pamphlets were handed out instructing their congregants how to vote, and I recall another instance at another local church in which the local Republican Party came by for signatures after worship.

This partnership between American big business, politics, and conservative churches seems like it has always been the case. For many of us, the last 40 years feel like a lifetime (and as someone born in the early 90s, it has been a lifetime). However, we must remember that this has not always been this way.

While we like to imagine the founders of the United States as pious, Christian men, the reality is far more complex. Many of them were deists, nominal Christians, or occasional churchgoers rather than people with a sincere faith. For example, Thomas Jefferson famously created his own version of the gospels in which he omitted all the miraculous or divine elements of Jesus’s message. In addition, the Declaration of Independence refers to “Nature’s God,” a commonly used phrase from deism.

Throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many areas of the country were frontiers without a strong church presence. It was not uncommon for people to be unchurched and for clergy to travel on circuits in order to minister to those in rural areas. As the country became more settled and industrialized, this changed. We saw the rise of cities and suburbs and the rise of mainline churches.

With this change in American Christianity, there was also an increasing involvement of the Church in American public life. In response to social injustice as a result of the Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age, many churches advocated for the Social Gospel, which included supporting labor rights and world peace. This Social Gospel later gave rise to civil rights leaders such as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Simply put, American Christianity is not destined to be the movement for right-wing authoritarianism that it is today. In fact, American Christianity has a far longer history of advocating for peace and justice. It is this history that needs to be reclaimed.

One prominent Social Gospel pastor and author, Charles Sheldon, popularized the phrase, “What would Jesus do?” He urged American Christians to think about the moral teachings of Jesus Christ and how they would apply to American policy and economics. I believe the time has come for us to ask this question again.

We live in a time in which the moral teachings of Jesus Christ seem to be almost completely forgotten by many Americans, Christian and non-Christian alike. We have spiritualized Jesus as someone who provides personal salvation from hell rather than as the Lord, Savior, and Liberator he is. As a country and a church, we are backsliding towards another Gilded Age like the one the Social Gospel helped bring us out of.

We need to make America Christian again. Jesus very explicitly told us to love strangers and foreigners, and yet we are treating them as pests to be exterminated. Jesus tells us to care for the sick and the hungry, and yet we make food, water, shelter, and healthcare into for-profit industries. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and neighbors, and yet we are threatening and bombing much of the world, including close allies like Canada. We live in a time of record wealth inequality, but the early church held property in common. I could go on, but I think these examples are enough to show that American Christianity is in a deeply fallen state.

For those of us who take Jesus seriously and want to see the gospel of Christ proclaimed and lived throughout the world, it is time to be more evangelical than ever. I understand that this is difficult. Words like “evangelical” and “evangelistic” have become tainted by the work of conservative evangelical churches, but we must reclaim the good news. We must share the real good news with our neighbors and people in power. We must bring the United States back to Christ, the real Christ.

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Rev. Kevin Daugherty is a bivocational priest and new monastic in Phoenix, AZ. He serves as a pastor/priest at Solomon’s Porch and abbot at the Companions of the Holy Spirit. Kevin can be contacted at kevin@pcpj.org.

Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is a multicultural, gender inclusive, and ecumenical organization that promotes peace, justice, and reconciliation work among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world. If you like what we do, please become a member!