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“I can’t believe you call yourself a Christian when you support people who sacrifice children. You’re an idiot.”
It was mid-October 2020. Voting was well underway. Like many Christians who refused to commit idolatry to Donald Trump, every day I was waking up to more and more disturbing messages like this one from fellow believers, including from my own church.
At first, I assumed this was about abortion. It’s a hot-button topic that brings forward a lot of anger in Evangelical circles especially. Sadly, that anger often pushes some Christians over the line into disrespect and verbal abuse. As a Christian who is not politically conservative, I’ve been on the receiving end of that more times than I can count.
But this time was different. Statements like these were decreasingly Democrats support abortion and increasingly Democrats are directly killing children themselves. I was tempted to chalk up this violent shift in language to fear-based, controlling behavior, but the seething rage that accompanied such claims spoke to something darker.
In early November, I shared some of these messages during a video chat with an acquaintance who…
