“Anyone who harms these good men is going to burn. God Bless our Agents. Glad to see brave young men defending Christian values!”
Those are the words of my religious education teacher, whom we shall call Mrs. X. Her strongly worded sentiment was in reaction to a Facebook post of protestors in Minneapolis resisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, one of many similar reactions circulating among right-wing Christian nationalists amid heightened attention to immigration enforcement in Minnesota.
But what does it mean to burn, biblically at least?
The bible offers two interpretations. According to Acts 2:1–4, when the Day of Pentecost had come, the Holy Spirit filled the apostles of Jesus with divine power, and tongues of fire appeared above them, bestowing zeal, courage, and the authority to proclaim liberation and covenant in Jesus Christ. As described by the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), Pentecostal fire is transformative, not punitive. The Bible, however, offers a second meaning of fire: Hellfire. Revelation 21:8 warns: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” It is clear which Biblical interpretation of fire Mrs. X is referring to.
While it may seem like a casual outburst, Mrs. X’s language is a part of the longstanding tradition of American Christians, especially White Evangelicals, conflating religion and politics. From the nation’s founding onward, American Christians, particularly White Protestants, have routinely overstepped the bounds between religious righteousness and political loyalty, framing worldly conflicts as cosmic battles between God and Satan. As Professor Mark Valeri of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics has shown, during the American Revolution, colonial preachers routinely cast the English monarchy as a satanic force, likening King George III to Pharaoh or the Antichrist. Biblical imagery of fire, judgment, and divine wrath was deployed to manufacture moral urgency. Revolution was holy, as political resistance became a religious obligation, and violence was sanctified as obedience to God.
Revelation 21:8 warns: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
Mrs. X’s condemnation of ICE protestors follows the same logic. By invoking hellfire, she assigns eternal moral status to a contemporary political conflict. The protestors are spiritually corrupt, aligned with evil, and deserving of punishment. What is at stake, then, is not about the legality of immigrants or the actions of these immigration enforcers, but the imagined survival of a Christian nation under siege.
This logic helps explain why religious rhetoric has become increasingly visible in American politics, even as religious affiliation declines. On February 6, 2026, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Donald Trump boldly announced, “Religion is back now, hotter than ever before.” A widespread belief among conservative Christians, primarily White Evangelicals, is that the United States is undergoing a religious revival, particularly among Gen Z, and they ae not delusional for thinking this way. News headlines are feeding into this belief: one article by USA Today reads, “Not just at Easter: Gen Z is returning to Christianity. Data proves it.” Vanity Fair claims that young adults are taking communion, albeit sacrilegiously, at a D.C. dive bar. Axios announces, “Young men are leading a religious resurgence.” Newman Centers are packed, according to the National Catholic Register. “It’s Here: Gen-Z Revival Hits Campuses This Fall” heralds The Gospel Coalition, an Evangelical organization. The list of such headlines continues. Yet a closer look at the data undermines these claims. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of U.S. adults who identify as Christian has declined from 78 percent in 2007 to 62 percent in 2025, a 16-point drop in less than two decades, using some elementary level arithmetic. Since 2020, that number has remained relatively stable, hovering just above 60 percent, with no discernible uptick following Trump’s re-election in 2024. The narrative of religious resurgence, then, is less a demographic reality than a political aspiration.
The problem in the U.S. is not a “return” of religion, which, even if it were true, is not a problem; it is the political weaponization of a specific Christian imaginary.
Still, while Christianity itself is not growing, Christian nationalist ideology appears to be gaining greater influence within American politics, a trajectory can be traced at least to Ronald Reagan in the modern era, who helped cement the alliance between White conservative Evangelicals and the Republican Party through “family values.” In the present moment, the Republican Party under President Donald Trump has increasingly embraced a more explicitly White Christian nationalist orientation through platforming various Conservative Evangelical leaders, as well as using Christian language in policymaking. As political scientist and statistician Dr. Ryan Burge describes, there exists a pronounced “God Gap” between the two major political parties. White Christians are disproportionately conservative and tend to vote Republican, while Democrats draw support from more religiously diverse, urban, and non-white populations. With the current administration, it is hardly shocking that there has been so much fiery religious rhetoric in the news. To be clear, the problem in the U.S. is not a “return” of religion, which, even if it were true, is not a problem; it is the political weaponization of a specific Christian imaginary, one that frames power as persecution of minorities, dominance as morality, and violence as salvation, while demonizing anyone who is not Straight, White, American, and Christian. In other words, like my teacher, the Christian right is not using Pentecostal fire, but rather borrowing hellfire.
And this hellfire often disproportionately scorches minority populations in the United States, which includes, but is not limited to, non-white, LGBTQ+, women, immigrants, and disabled people. Coincidentally (or not), these are also people who tend to be less conservative politically. Regardless, the consequences are visible: the overturning of Roe v. Wade stripped millions of women of a constitutional protection for abortions that had stood for nearly half a century; across numerous states, legislation targeting transgender youth, particularly bans on transgender athletes and restrictions on gender-affirming care, has proliferated; questionable actions for immigration enforcement by agencies such as ICE and supported by the Republican Party have intensified fear and instability in immigrant communities. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has made opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives a central plank of its platform, framing such programs as divisive or un-American despite the marginalized communities that argue they are essential for equal opportunity.
For many critics, this political posture stands in tension not only with pluralistic democratic ideals but also with the Christian scripture itself: verses such as Matthew 22:39 (“love thy neighbor”) and Leviticus 19:33-34, which command that immigrants be treated as native-born citizens. Yet the underlying message is clear: these groups are portrayed as threats to the United States and its presumed Judeo-Christian moral order. Their suffering is not incidental but, to an extent, necessary for the preservation of a White Christian nation.
This narrative is closely tied to strands of Christian nationalism that assert the United States was founded explicitly as a Christian nation and must be reclaimed as such. Influential figures such as Douglas Wilson and Mark Driscoll, along with allies within the Trump administration, have echoed versions of this claim, arguing that America’s identity is inseparable from a particular interpretation of Protestant Christianity. However, many historians dispute this reading of the founding era, pointing to the Constitution’s secular nature and the absence of explicit Christian language in its text. Public opinion data suggests that this belief nonetheless resonates widely. According to another study from the Pew Research Center, within the broader American public, “Most adults (60%) say the founders of the United States originally intended for it to be a Christian nation. And more than four-in-ten Americans (45%) say the country should be a Christian nation,” with White Evangelicals being the most likely group to say that America was founded to and should be a Christian nation (81% for both questions). The recent confirmation hearing of Jeremy Carl on February 12th, President Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department post, further illustrates how such ideology is permeating American national politics. Carl, known for his strong views on “White erasure” and critiques of multiculturalism, represents how the federal government treats the presence of minority groups as a civilizational threat.
A state that governs through hellfire no longer needs citizens; it only needs sinners to burn.
This raises the question: why the need to “defend” Christianity from these “attackers” within Evangelical spaces in the first place? Historically speaking, White Evangelicals have never been a persecuted group in the U.S. to begin with. From the colonial period onward, Christianity has enjoyed both social legitimacy and institutional power: churches shaped public education, and Judeo-Christian moral codes permeate laws. In other words, for much of U.S. history, to be White and an Evangelical Christian was not a marginal identity but rather the cultural default. Political leaders swore oaths on Bibles, public schools opened with prayer, and national myths framed America as a divinely favored nation. The modern rhetoric of persecution, then, does not emerge from actual marginalization, but from the slow erosion of the Evangelical Christian monopoly. As American society has become more religiously diverse, more secular, and more willing to challenge Christian dominance, through civil rights, feminist, LGBTQ+, and pro-immigration movements, some White Evangelical Christians have come to interpret this increasing equality for minority groups as hostility towards Christianity, as these minorities challenge certain passages from the Bible condemning homosexuality, abortion, and more.
Fire in Christianity has always carried two meanings: it can illuminate, purify, and empower, or it can scorch, punish, and destroy. In the United States, however, Christian nationalist rhetoric increasingly draws from the latter tradition. As the reaction of Mrs. X to ICE protestors illustrates, hellfire is no longer a metaphor for spiritual accountability but a political language used to sanctify state violence, delegitimize dissent, and render entire groups morally disposable. A state that governs through hellfire no longer needs citizens; it only needs sinners to burn.
Angeli Nguyen ‘29 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at a.m.nguyen@wustl.edu.