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Even Before MAGA Had a Name . . .
. . . all of those people, all of my abusers, were MAGA to their core
January 15, 2025
The semester has begun. This is my fourth semester, so I’m halfway through my second year. So many of my cohorts are in their first or second semesters. I’ve noticed a progression in those students that is clearly evident. I can tell within the first couple of meetings where each falls on this imaginary “spectrum of Christianity” I’ve developed in my mind’s eye, which ranges from ultra-conservative evangelical to atheist.
There are the fundamentalists and the biblical literalists at one end. Those folks are immediately challenged. No one is challenging them, not the professors, not the other students, but the material immediately feels heretical.
It’s not — it’s simply study of the history of Christianity and the development of theological belief systems over time. To chart the progression of the Christian religion and to study the belief systems of its leaders is not heretical per se. No matter how strongly MAGAs believe studying Marxism makes you a Marxist, that’s a false equivalency. It’s equally ludicrous to think that being exposed to a variety of theologians means you must embrace their ideologies as your own.
