An Open Letter to all the Conservative Christian Friends I’ve Unfollowed During the Coup

Dear friends and family that I’ve unfollowed recently,

You won’t be reading this directly off of my social media pages, but perhaps it will show up on mutual friends’ feeds and you’ll see it there. You may have wondered where I’ve gone. Well, I haven’t gone anywhere, we just won’t be crossing paths on the web anymore because I’ve unfollowed you. I didn’t want to unfollow you. Many of you go way back in my life, some to childhood. Some of you are family. I used to enjoy keeping up with what was going on in your lives through your social media posts. That was before the coup began.

It all started during the tail end of the Obama administration. I saw many of you, my conservative Christian friends and family, become very uneasy with President Obama. I saw you take talking points from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and post them as your statuses. When Justice Scalia died early in 2016, I watched you defend the actions of men like Mitch McConnell in the early days of the coup as they illegally blocked the attempt of President Obama to appoint Scalia’s replacement and delayed the process for over a year until after President Trump was in office. Later, I watched you defend Trump’s choice of Brett Kavanaugh despite all the accusations of sexual assault against him. I watched you belittle Kavanaugh’s accusers just as I had watched you belittle the many accusers of Donald Trump. I never would have believed it of you, but there I was, watching so many of the people I grew up thinking so fondly of standing up for simply awful people. I couldn’t figure it out then, but with the passing of time, I began to see what was going on.

I didn’t get too bent out of shape when you pilloried Hillary. After all, I wasn’t much of a fan of her, either. I was very disappointed in the crop of candidates the Democratic Party came up with to run against Donald Trump. But I never in a million years would have thought that anywhere near enough people would vote for Trump to give him a chance to win the White House. When it became clear that, with the help of the unbalanced Electoral College, Trump was going to steal the election, I never dreamed I’d see so many of the people I grew up loving and respecting become overjoyed that such an unqualified and unscrupulous charlatan had ascended to the top office in the world. How could I have misjudged you so much? How did we grow so far apart?

Still, I didn’t cut social media ties with you. I was still confident that as Trump’s daily lies and scandals began to pile up, you’d see that you’d been had and would come to your senses. So I waited. I waited for three years. And now Trump’s impeachment is upon us and still you continue to be convinced that he was sent by God to somehow guide this nation in the right direction. That is the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to wrap my mind around. I was once convinced that you were intelligent and reasonable people and yet, here you are supporting the most embarrassing excuse for a leader this nation has ever produced.

Then, I began to piece together your motives. I have realized that you are a part of the coup. You don’t really support Donald Trump, you just support his handlers, some of whom have been planning this for decades from far behind the scenes (watch The Family). I sense that you are licking your chops at the potential of a future President Pence. The coup to which I refer is the once clandestine but now obvious attempt to turn this nation into a Christian nation. Until now, the Constitution has prevented that from happening. But men like Mitch McConnell, who laugh about how they trampled on the Constitution as they blocked Obama for the last two years of his presidency, have become so emboldened that they aren’t even trying to be sneaky about it anymore. So, we will go on with the impeachment trial and we will watch as it becomes a mockery in the Republican controlled Senate. McConnell and others have already shown their hands as to how this is going to play out. Trump will emerge unscathed and you all will laugh at the majority of the country that you hold power over due to ridiculous gerrymandering and our antiquated and inequitable electoral process. You will proudly watch with pride as the coup succeeds with Trump’s reelection. Between 2020 and 2024, you will puff out your chests and jut your chins in the air as, step-by-step, our Constitution is rewritten with the vile ink of pseudo-Christianity. You will think you have gotten your way. You will think you have won.

Then you will slowly begin to come to the sickening realization that the real winner was greed. You will finally begin to see that the Christianity you thought you were supporting was nothing more than a Trojan Horse that you allowed into our government. Then it will be too late. You will suffer the same shame felt by Judas on the night he betrayed Jesus.

I hope that I am wrong about this. I pray to God that I am. The fact that you can somehow see the light of Jesus in this greedy, power hungry, conniving den of vipers you support is beyond my comprehension. They got to you a long time ago and you bought in so fully that you might as well have been lobotomized. It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever witnessed, to be honest.

So, to those loved ones who won’t be seeing me on social media anymore, I owe you this explanation. I didn’t unfollow you because we disagree about some political issues. I unfollowed you because you support the coup that threatens to destroy my country and has already done irreparable damage to the Church. I don’t want to feel the way your posts make me feel. I don’t want to think the thoughts they make me think about you. I don’t want to know what you’ve become. I don’t want to remember you that way. I look around and see the despicable humans who call you their teammates and it tears me to pieces to envision you wearing the same colors–uniforms you don’t even understand you are wearing. I’d rather remember you for the people I once knew.

May God help us.