An Open Letter to Christian Conservatives Who Think I’ve Lost My Mind

 By Kelly Hamren - Posted at Truth-Seeking Together:

Published September 25, 2026

"What has surprised me as well is that there seems to be a blindness, among Trump supporters, to the fact that Trump and the movement he has inaugurated is not even conservative, as it’s traditionally been defined."

Over the last ten years, I’ve gotten the impression that to some of my oldest friends, my posts about politics make absolutely no sense. This confusion seemed to peak around this time last year, with the death of Charlie Kirk, when I made a statement about how much his politics bothered me. I thought long and hard about whether that post was appropriate, especially given the timing (I even lost sleep praying over it), and I believe it was. I’ll explain why shortly, but I wanted to start out by trying to explain how I got where I am and why. I’m going to be honest about parts of my story that I haven’t shared publicly before.

*As a caveat, if you’re reading this as one of my friends on the left, you’re welcome to keep reading; just know that you’re not my primary audience. This is for my friends on the right.

In 2004, I started attending Liberty University as a freshman at 19. I was particularly excited about politics and the university’s focus on conservative political causes. I joined the College Republicans, worked voter drives, and campaigned for George W. Bush, even attending the inauguration. I believed, at that time, that the Republican party aligned best with certain principles consistent with my Christian faith (opposition to abortion, etc.). After graduating with my BA, I returned to LU in 2009 as a graduate student. I was less focused on politics, partly because I was too busy, but I still believed that the Republican party had the right idea about most things. When I graduated with my MA in 2011, I was hired by the university as an adjunct, then the following year as a full-time faculty member.

What followed was a gradual disillusionment with certain aspects of the university and its politics, which became less gradual with the rise of Donald Trump in 2016. Interestingly, it was my studies at the university which first laid the groundwork for that disillusionment, since I explored, among other things, how certain Christian principles intersected with political, social, and humanitarian issues in a depth that I hadn’t explored before. This was not a “liberal, left-wing” education; it was steeped in the Bible and theological conservatism. But I was forced to ask hard questions I hadn’t asked before, such as, “How is civic religion (the watered-down acknowledgement of God in the public square) actually different from real religion?” Or “Is inviting Christian leaders to pray at the White House a way of really seeking God’s direction or a way of ensuring that Christians will vote for you because you’re ‘one of us’?” Or “Is publicly acknowledging God before announcing a political move a way of indicating that we are on God’s side or a way of signaling that God is on our side, whatever we decide to do?” I could explore these questions in more detail here, but for now, it’s sufficient to indicate that I became more skeptical of the performative aspects of religion in politics, not because I didn’t care about either but precisely because I did care.

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