“…and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert…” ( Acts 20:29–31).

Before the cock crows, I’m happy to admit I was educated in the Roman Catholic tradition under the largely effective tutelage of the Dominican Fathers. Like the Jesuits, the Dominicans placed special emphasis on study, critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. As I slouch into my winter years, I’m still trying to think critically and pursue truth whatever that is and wherever it might take me.

For those of us still grappling with the problem of evil and the extent to which Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument might still hold in the context of quantum mechanics, the Trump/MAGA shameless appropriation of Christianity sits uneasily.

I accept Christianity is a broad church encompassing a range of traditions from Catholicism through to Pentecostalism. However, I don’t remember ever being taught that the commandment to love our neighbour excluded Mexicans, Muslims and Hispanics.

In the US, a nation founded in part on resistance to established churches, we are treated to the unedifying spectacle of a six-times-failed real estate speculator invoking God at every turn but scarcely able to quote a single verse from the Bible. Meanwhile, the MAGA faithful — faces upturned, mouths open, hands raised — perform a beautifully synchronised genuflection whenever Trump approaches a microphone. Unlike Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was gunned down at the altar in 1980 after denouncing human rights abuses, Trump’s complicit MAGA preachers don’t dare risk offending the dear leader for fear of losing their place alongside him on the rostrum.

It’s not all that much better in Australia. Aren’t we entitled to be a little disappointed at the muted responses of our church leaders and religious commentators to Trump misrepresenting Christianity so blatantly? Direct, unified and ferocious denunciations on the scale of those seen in the US are much less common here at home. If we were hoping for a savage, church-led refutation of Trump’s appropriation of Christianity, we have been disappointed. It’s as if any expressions of dismay are made tentatively so as not to cause discomfort to Australia’s religious conservatives and their political affiliates.

A case in point is Pope Leo’s recent, pointed statement about the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the US and his observation that support for the death penalty is hardly “pro-life”. Even then, the Holy Father did not name Trump specifically, though he had no need to. It wasn’t too long before “disappointed” conservative Catholics and others lined up behind the president, knuckle-dusters raised.

The tension between actual Christianity and the whole MAGA fantasy is patently clear to anyone with the vaguest idea of honesty, tolerance and compassion. Trump and his supporters seem to have forgotten that Jesus of Nazareth was a homeless Palestinian and hung out with some rough fishermen, a hooker, a tax collector, some lepers and other social undesirables. Jesus railed at the powerful, kicked the money-sellers out of the temple and told the rich they had Buckley’s of getting into heaven. For his efforts, he was executed as a zealot and an enemy of the state. It’s not hard to imagine a current-day Jesus being crash-tackled to the ground by a pack of masked ICE agents, shackled and shipped out of the country in the belly of a C-17.

The Trump/MAGA brand of Christianity seems to be less about Christ and more about Caesar. “Thy kingdom come” has been reimagined as “Make America Great Again”, a slogan so exquisitely hollow that it might have been scripted for “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”. Meanwhile, Donald and his evangelical supporters rage at the idea that America’s greatness, when recaptured, might be shared by anyone outside its largely white, resentful and profoundly ignorant base.

Despite all this, Trump and his rich, powerful collaborators present themselves as defenders of Christianity, baptised as they might be in the polluted waters of greed and sanctimony.

History is watching as Trump dismantles democracy and the rule of law and attempts to turn US forces against the very people they swore to defend.  While cruelty is characterised as toughness, greed as admirable ambition and revenge as justice, the response of Australia’s religious leaders seems as muted as that of our politicians. International diplomacy, however critical to our national interests, is replete with moral pitfalls.

With specific regard to Christianity and our contemporary “fidei defensorum”, the argument that this is a problem for Christianity in America only doesn’t hold up. Every news item in which Trump misrepresents Christianity and its core values undermines it and does it significant, long-lasting damage. All this at a time when pews are empty all over the country and vocations have dropped off the edge of a cliff.

Watching Trump vehemently deny climate change in his speech to the UN, I was reminded of the Dominican friar, Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for daring to suggest a new truth, that the cosmos was infinite. These days, in America, truth is reduced to whatever garners favourable coverage on Fox News.

The television series “The Chosen” reminds us that the Pharisees and the Sadducees happily interpreted God’s law to suit their own purposes. Trump and MAGA exhibit a 21st century version of the same behaviour – but with smoke machines, bunting, anthemic ballads and merch tables in the foyer.

The Bible is now little more than a campaign prop. For a little less than A$220, you can buy online your own Holy Bible marking the day of the attempted assassination of Trump as “the day that God intervened”. Some of us have yet to be persuaded that God’s will aligns with Trump’s business and political interests.

Trump’s appropriation of Christianity is so much more than a comic sideshow. Whether one is a believer or not, Christianity, as viewed through a secular lens, denotes values, principles and codes of behaviour that can help underpin a compassionate and just society. Trump’s appropriation of Christianity is not just unbecoming, it’s corrosive. It corrodes public trust, it corrodes truth, it corrodes justice and it corrodes the idea that religion of any sort can ever be a force for objective good.

If Aquinas, St Dominic, Bruno and Archbishop Romero stood together today looking out across the Trump/MAGA landscape, they’d see nothing but heresy and hypocrisy. It’s hard to think that their response would be as subdued as that of Australia’s religious leaders. Or, to be fair, our political leaders.

And thus endeth my application for a visa into the US.

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