I’d like to say this is an aberration.

I wish I could tell you that the Conservative Christian canonizing of Charlie Kirk was unexpected; that the hundreds of thousands of professed followers of Jesus pouring into churches, local parks, football stadiums, and social media to engage in performative histrionics are temporarily caught up in some cultic fervor that will soon lift.

Yet, as someone who pastored in predominantly white churches in the South for nearly three decades, this is all sadly on brand.

To anyone paying attention for the past few decades, and particularly during the last ten years, seeing White Evangelicals build idols out of people whose lives and public work are the antithesis of Jesus is something we’ve grown accustomed to.

After all, these are people who have been largely responsible for elevating to the presidency one of the most vile, repugnant, amoral human beings on the planet and contending he is God’s chosen vessel of national redemption.

The White Conservative Church in America has slowly eradicated the compassionate, peacemaking, power-opposing, hypocrisy-confronting Jesus from its movement…