"Forgiving each other as God has forgiven us, and letting God settle our accounts, is the beating heart of Jesus’s ministry; of late, though, white evangelicals have not been in a very forgiving mood. In 2023, Trump told a thrilled conservative audience, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” One might ask: is this doctrine not a root-and-branch repudiation of the ministry of Jesus?"

I don't think so. I think they are just rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's--which isn't tough for them right now because Caesar is, superficially at least, on their side.

Anyway, evangelicals are analytical and calculating only up to the border between rationality and mysticism. It's extremely easy to see what's going on here: Trump is not a good man, or even really a mortal figure at all. He's a mystical force, a divine deliverance, one of the mysterious ways in which God works in this brutal and God-less world.

It's not that he gives power to them--the little people in the West Texas oil fields etc.. It's that he wields it on their behalf so they don't have to bear the moral burden of it.

Which is *exactly* what Jesus called upon his believers to do in their relationship with God.