For those who do begin to question, the challenge is not to nudge them leftward or toward some ideologically approved alternative. The challenge is simply to stay in the discomfort long enough for something more honest to emerge.

Every movement that trades in certainty eventually produces a subset of disillusioned former believers. The MAGA movement, particularly its Christian nationalist variant, is no exception. What began for many as a confident reclamation of “Christian values” has, for some, become a site of discomfort or even regret. The flags are still waving, but the quiet questions are growing louder: What, exactly, did we sign up for?

This phenomenon, call it MAGA buyers’ remorse, presents both a cultural and moral problem. Not only for those experiencing it, but for the broader Christian community still reckoning with the movement’s legacy. For those who bought in early and are now uneasy, the experience is not just political disappointment. It is cognitive dissonance between professed beliefs and observed outcomes.

In therapeutic circles, this kind of internal conflict is a key site of change. Motivational interviewing, a counselling method developed to help people explore and resolve ambivalence, offers a useful framework for understanding what’s happening. Its basic premise is deceptively simple: people are more likely to change when they feel heard, not judged; when they discover their own reasons for change, not when those reasons are imposed.

This is worth bearing in mind for anyone hoping to have a good-faith conversation with a former MAGA adherent. It’s tempting to seize on their uncertainty as an opening to win an argument. But motivational interviewing suggests that a better approach is to ask, “What did you hope for?” and “How does that compare to what you’ve seen?” The goal isn’t to punish someone for getting it wrong; it’s to help them articulate what still matters to them. In other words, you don’t dismantle a belief system by tearing it down. You let it collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

But what of those who experience no such contradiction? What of the Christians who remain untroubled by the movement’s authoritarian tendencies, its hostility to outsiders, its casual relationship with truth? Here the question becomes more pointed: Were they ever operating within a recognisably Christian framework at all?

It is not a new observation that Christian nationalism often functions as a form of cultural identity rather than religious conviction. It’s concerned less with the teachings of Jesus than with the preservation of a mythic national past. It values strength over mercy, loyalty over conscience, dominance over humility. Whatever else it is, this is not Christianity in any meaningful theological sense. It’s a civic religion with a thin Christian varnish.

There are obvious historical precedents for this kind of fusion: Franco’s Spain, certain strains of Afrikaner Calvinism, even American Civil Religion more broadly. But the fact that it’s familiar doesn’t make it any more coherent. Theologically, the MAGA-inflected Christian nationalism lacks the self-critical capacity that is central to Christianity. There is no notion of sin as shared condition. No sense of the cross as a critique of power. No space for repentance, except by outsiders. In this version of faith, the other is always wrong, and the tribe is always right.

This is why buyers’ remorse is such a fragile and interesting space. It suggests that, somewhere, a conscience is still functioning. That a person is trying to reconcile what they hoped to find in MAGA with what it became. That is not a moment for derision, but for clarity. The question is not whether they were ever “real Christians”, as if faith could be audited like a bank account. It’s whether the movement they once followed ever reflected the values they claimed to hold.

For some, the answer is now becoming obvious. For others, it never will. But for those who do begin to question, the challenge is not to nudge them leftward or toward some ideologically approved alternative. The challenge is simply to stay in the discomfort long enough for something more honest to emerge.

And perhaps, eventually, something better.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.