You are not a Christian.

And that should feel really good.

I put this on Facebook earlier today, so I’m going to share it here in its entirety. My dad was an Air Force man, and I was an Air Force brat, so I always heard: “Give me the BLUF: bottom line, up front.”

So here’s the BLUF:

You cannot call yourself Christian if you want to be seen as something different than the MAGA Christians. They commandeered the name. You need a new one.

Now, onto the post:

This post can be read by anyone, but is specifically written to white, American progressive and non-MAGA Christians by a former white, American Christian, now atheist. Just for context.

Growing up, in conversations between Church of Christ folks, there would be a call for unity using the phrase “we’re all under the same tent.” The idea was “hey, we are all (the right kind of) Christians here, let’s not argue about things that we disagree on, and just agree that we all believe in Jesus and that’s all that matters.”

(The Church of Christ has a lot of nifty sayings they don’t *actually* practice, like “don’t major in the minors” and “Christian only, not the only Christians.” For a while there, the CoC tried to cast itself as the paragon of unity. Go to Nashville and see how many CoCs litter the streets, and it’ll be clear that it’s more of a “do as we say, and not as we do” type of situation.)

But enough about the Church of Christ. The point of this post is the concept of the same tent.

I had a very good discussion with my still-Christian best friend about the Christian crisis our country is facing. There comes a point where staying under the “same tent” is the same as complicity.

I get criticized a lot for lumping Christians in the same box. “Don’t generalize! I’m not like that! Say “some,” not “all”!” But I refuse to parse out the good apples from the bad as long as you all stay in the same barrel. I also refuse to do any kind of caveating as long as you stay in the same tent.

There comes a time when you cannot share space with bigots and violent people and people perverting whatever it is you believe and still claim “well, I’m still a Christian.”

Hi. I’m so sorry to tell you this, but you’ve been victims of a coup. You are no longer running the tent. You are no longer even near the microphone. You are being pushed to the fringes and still trying to stand your ground so these guys don’t push you out. And I have to wonder, what is it you’re protecting?

I don’t consider you a Christian if you believe in empathy and compassion and people over tradition and Church credo and God. I mean, you can call yourselves that all you want, but the fact is, MAGA Christianity is not the same religion as non-MAGA Christianity.

Yes, it sucks they’ve commandeered the name. But you can’t call yourself a Christian anymore without tying yourself to that kind of Christianity. You can’t.

You can say, “They are the ones who should leave the tent, not us,” but y’all, they are the ones who aren’t going to leave. And a lot of you refuse to make them because you don’t want to say, full chest-edly, that they aren’t Christians. Because you don’t want to sacrifice unity.

In my opinion on the outside looking in, you have two options: stay or leave.

As long as you and they keep using the same name, no one is going to do the gymnastics to make the distinction every time they talk or think about you. You’re a Christian? Great, we know exactly who you are. And that person is a person who is fine staying in the tent with people giddy to destroy the world to get their mansion.

Words change, cultures shift, meanings develop. Sometimes, you don’t get to keep your group identity when that identity has been abused to persecute, harm, demean, and dehumanize. Throw it away. Get a new one.

Every group has the ability to misuse power or become a shadow of what it was intended to be. If you change your name from Christian to, I don’t know, the Jesus Humanists or The Way or New Traditional Christianity, that doesn’t mean the religion or sect will be free from harm.

But y’all. Most people will not spend time parsing out whose theology is safe and whose is not, especially when all your churches include MAGA Christians and non-MAGA Christians. I have seen too many posts by “Christian” ministers hemming and hawing over whether or not to preach what they believe is the truth because they are worried about how it will divide the Trump voters.

At that point, you are not practicing the same religion and it’s kind of silly to pretend.

Personally, I am an atheist, not because I think the “practice” of Christianity has been corrupted but because I think the theology and philosophy itself is corrupted. And if I describe that theology and philosophy to you, one that is rooted in the Church Fathers and Tradition and Decorum, and you say, “No, that’s not what I believe,” then, loves, you are no longer Christian.

And that’s a good thing.

Believe in Jesus, whatever that means to you. Believe in humanity and kindness and fairness and equity and believe that love wins and universalism and a fallible Bible, but know, that in 2025, white American Christianity is not represented by these things.

So you can either stay in the tent with them, trying to take back the microphone and repaint it and give it a new sign, but all of us outside the tent see how it is old and ugly and crumbling and structurally unsound.

Get a new tent.

You *must* divorce yourself from these folks in a big, Lutheran type of way. You *must* leave loudly and say, “If you want to use the word Christian to describe yourself, I don’t want to share the name.”

They’ve taken it already.

Mourn the loss. Feel the grief.

And pick up your kindness and move on.

The Protestants did it.

The Amish did it.

The Mormons did it.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses did it.

And I think all of those groups are problematic but at least I’m clear on their beliefs.

Quit mixing with the shit. It eventually leaves you just as unrecognizable and smelly.

I will continue to generalize Christians as long as they stay yoked together. When you make a new religion or faith system, I promise, my generalization will no longer make you mad because you no longer belong to that group.

And my hunch is that will be incredibly freeing for you.