Author's Note

I did not set out to write a book about religion. I set out to understand why the Christianity I saw on television, at rallies, and in political speeches looked so little like the Christianity I read in the Bible I was given as a child.

I am not a theologian. I do not have a degree in biblical studies, and I have never stood behind a pulpit. I am a person who was raised in a Christian home, who learned the Ten Commandments before I learned long division, and who believed, for a long time, that the people who talked the loudest about Jesus were the people who followed him the closest. I no longer believe that. What I have seen, over and over, is a movement that uses the name of Christ to justify cruelty toward the poor, hostility toward the stranger, pride in wealth, and silence in the face of obvious deceit. That is not the faith I read about in the Gospels. It is not the faith I see in the Prophets. It is not the faith described in the letters of Paul. And I am no longer willing to pretend otherwise.

This book is not an attack on Christianity. It is an argument for Christianity. It is an attempt to separate the actual teachings of the Bible from the political ideology that has been wrapped around them in American life. I write as an onlooker: someone who reads the text, watches the behavior, and refuses to look away from the gap between the two. If you are a believer, I ask you to read with an open mind and an open Bible. If you are not a believer, I ask you to read with the understanding that the people claiming to represent God are not necessarily the people who do.

I have tried to be honest, specific, and fair. Where I quote Scripture, I have done so carefully and in context. Where I describe behavior, I have done so from public record and observable action, not rumor or speculation. I have not named every politician or figure I could have named, not out of fear, but out of conviction: this is not a book about one man or one moment. It is a book about a pattern that has been growing for decades and that now threatens to replace the actual faith with a nationalism dressed in religious language.

My purpose is simple. I want readers to ask themselves a question that too many people have stopped asking: does the Christianity I practice, or the Christianity I support, actually look like the book it claims to follow? If the answer is no, then what are we going to do about it?

That question is the center of this book. Everything else is preparation.

Ramon Lyles