Authentic Christianity that lives the love, grace, and compassion teachings of Jesus, like “do for others what you want them to do for you”; like “love your neighbor as you love yourself” with every person understood as your neighbor; like “welcome the stranger”—is indeed not a threat to the nation.

However, claimed Christianity that puts lives in danger due to expressed hatred that leads to threats of or actual violence is a dangerous threat to all persons thus the entire nation, and authentic Christianity stands up and speaks out against hatred that demonstrates a mean-spirited, nasty, ugly racism against people of color, or anti LGBTQ+ persons, or immigrants, i.e. strangers, just as Jesus stood up and spoke out against the scribes and Pharisees and Temple priest religious leaders of his day who did all their deeds to be seen by others, and did not practice what they taught.

Tens of millions of Authentic Christians supported vaccinations and wearing masks to save lives in order to live the compassion of Jesus, because 5,000 were dying some days in Jan. and Feb. of 2020, with nearly 351,000 dying in 2020, with nearly 1,175,000 total dying in the USA, with over 70,000 deaths from COVID expected in 2024. Vaccines provenly prevented millions of cases and deaths.

At least one who sued the sheriff about the immigrant situation stated he did so because Jesus said “welcome the stranger”.

Authentic Christians accept the teaching of Jesus to love all persons, that includes trans human beings.

Authentic Christians do not support anyone having an AR-15 or any other weapon designed to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible out of compassionate love for children in our schools, and people at concerts and other large gatherings, and in Church, Synagogue, Mosque or any other places of religious services. Many authentic Christians do own hunting rifles and handguns, but support common sense gun regulations for the protection of human lives.

Authentic Christians do support regulating hate speech or any attempt to lie, disinform, and/or misinform because of the demonstrated actual factual reality that it can lead to violence against others which violates the love, grace, and compassion teachings of Jesus.

Authentic Christians do not support any authoritarian, dictatorial, fascist, Nazi, “strongman”, totalitarian rule of any kind whatsoever, whether it is labeled right or left, period! It is demonstrated daily that it is the conservative ultra-right claiming to be Christians in this country, who are actually overwhelmingly more “nationalists” than Christian, who are supporting an authoritarian, dictatorial, fascist-like agenda.

Authentic Christians do not see “christian nationalism” as some kind of bogeyman but as a demonstrated danger and deeply serious threat to the authentic freedoms and rights of the democratically elected republic of the United States of America. Authentic Christians being called authoritarian leftists is the real false bogeyman. All the above is the opinion of this United Methodist Pastor, Retired.