“What Would Jesus Do?”

Remember that slogan, those bumperstickers? You still see them around. It was a shorthand meant to prod the consciences of Christians, popular at first among young, Midwestern evangelicals, then increasingly adopted by many others, including many non-Christians, who protested the Iraq War and supported the Occupy Wall Street movement.

We now live in a country where an arrogant Christian Nationalist ideology has helped to elect Donald Trump twice. This ideology is part of the DNA of the MAGA movement, and has become a major source of political energy and government policy in the US in the second Trump term.

Somehow, today’s MAGA Christian Nationalists read the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to allow for all kinds of cruelty, greed, deceit, corruption and censorship in America. All in the name of God.

But there is a rising among people of many faiths against this Christian Nationalism, and against the Trump administration that is fueled by it. You see it in every protest and in countless congregations across the country. More and more Americans are being called into action by their faith commitments. They are finding each other and becoming a new kind of movement of conscientious objectors and resisters, grounded in the Gospels and other sacred teachings across faith traditions. This is powerful.

Pope Leo XIV is one of them.

The leader of the world’s more than one billion Catholics—and a Chicagoan by birth—has spoken out clearly and forcefully against the assaults on basic human dignity that the world is witnessing every day during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The Pope called what the treatment of immigrants under Trump’s crackdown “inhuman.” And he’s called for “deep reflection” about what is happening in our country.

Then, prodded by the Pope, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a remarkable “Special Pastoral Message On Immigration.” Their video statement has been viewed by millions.

Last month, I travelled to Chicago to report on how the city is responding to onslaught of federal immigration forces and how those forces are snatching individuals off of streets and out of day-care centers, conducting raids, and attacking protestors. You can find our full mini-documentary on YouTube here.

While I was there, I sat down with Chicago’s Roman Catholic Cardinal, Blaise Cupich, for an extended interview. He was strong in his critique of President Trump and his policies, centering his argument on one, central, essential concept: human dignity.

“We are a nation of laws,” Cardinal Cupich told me. “But we are also a nation that promotes human dignity. You can’t have one without the other.”

It’s a thoughtful conversation about right and wrong at this moment in our country. I hope you enjoy it.

Terry