I regularly read the Substack posts written by Heather Cox Richardson. In response to the horrific shooting in Minneapolis of Alex Pretti, the thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse, on January 24, 2026, Richardson wrote a very heart-wrenching reflection, ending with a quote from Pretti’s parents:
Tonight, Susan and Michael Pretti, the parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, issued a statement:
“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said.
“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.
“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand, and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.
Trump and his cronies are disgraceful in the telling of “sickening lies,” some of the most egregious being promulgated about the illegal, immoral, and unchristian brutality of ICE. Reverend William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove likened the killing to a lynching: The masks. The lies. The celebration. These are the hallmarks of a lynching. They clarify what we are facing. The Editorial Board of the New York Times issued a scathing indictment under the title: The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act. (January 25, 2026) In fact, an unprecedented and consistent pattern of falsehoods shamefully marks Trump’s business and political careers, earning him now the reputation of being the “Prevaricator in Chief” or “Liar in Charge.” One of the saddest and most unforgivable traits of our nation at present is that too many have either believed and conspired with his lies or turned a deaf ear to them. We have even bought into the repeated admonition that we must not believe our “lying eyes.” However, with Pretti’s brutal death, perhaps we may be at a pivotal point in our national life, a point of profound self-reflection, a process that includes our Christian faith. Indeed. When J.D. Vance visited Minneapolis and made inflammatory false remarks, the National Catholic Reporter labeled him a ‘cafeteria Catholic’ who has chosen MAGA over Jesus and peddles a “twisted and wrongheaded view of Christianity.” John Grasso, the author of the piece, wrote:
Vance had the opportunity to call for peace and unity—to lower the temperature of the situation and express empathy for those suffering and mounting and could have chosen to share the Gospel message of healing and human dignity but instead he chose to offer the MAGA message of division and blame.
As Christian we must ask: Is this who we are, as represented by our cruel, foul-mouthed, and lying president and his administration? Are we doing what we must to get the truth out there about our Christian faith and what it requires of us? How long will we permit his lies to stand as the “alternate facts” his sycophants want us to accept as true?
I hope not for long! Tens of thousands marched in the streets of Minneapolis in protest of Trump’s militarization and his masked occupation of neighborhoods. Networks and social media have challenged and exposed the intentional and insidious practices of misinformation and outright cover-ups. Here again, the National Catholic Reporter published a very helpful and insightful article by Sunita Viswanatha titled: The ‘theology of showing up’ is making Minneapolis a holy place. Although Jay Caspian Kang recently questioned (New Yorker, January 2, 2026) whether American churches, with their dwindling numbers measured both in congregations and parishioners, could lead an effective protest, hundreds of clergy were among those arrested in Minneapolis, and from pulpits all across the nation has come a call for a national strike to support our common humanity, truth, and justice. Truly, a theology of showing up has become operational.
As we all know, world leaders met in Davos, Switzerland last week. Trump humiliated himself and our nation with his petulant and undisciplined rant, full of grievances and falsehoods. The genuine star of the conference was Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, whose address received a standing ovation at its conclusion. One of the most extraordinary parts of his speech involved his reference to Vaclav Havel. He wrote:
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. And in it, he asked a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: "Workers of the world, unite!" He doesn't believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this "living within a lie." The system's power comes not from its truth but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.
Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
We are “living within a lie,” the lie or lies associated with the MAGA signs still hanging in our windows and whose power comes not from the truth but from the millions willing to perform as if their belief system and behavior were true. And this is especially true as it relates to the complicity of Christians, the active endorsement by some and the complicity of silence by others.
In the transcript of a conversation among Lydia Polgreen, David French and Michelle Goldberg, (January 26, 2026) French confessed:
I’ll be completely honest. It’s a little harder for me to have hope when I know that the core political support for Trump’s aggression is coming from my own community. Without the lockstep (and seemingly unconditional) support of so many millions of evangelicals, Trump’s administration would crumble overnight. So I keep looking for signs of softening hearts and opening minds in Trump’s base— among the people who helped raise me, who taught me about faith, and who told me in no uncertain terms that politicians must demonstrate high character before they can earn your support. I feel a pervasive sadness about this moment.
Indeed, a pervasive sadness, not just generally about the moment but specifically about the pernicious movement of troops among us, evidenced yet again by the violent assault on Minneapolis and the execution of Alex Pretti. And Christian voices have defended ICE’s murderous brutality bringing a “moral stain’ to our identity. Amanda Gorman captured the essence of the tragedy with the profound poetic expression:
We wake with no words, just woe and wound. Our own country shooting us in the back is not just brutality: it’s jarring betrayal, not enforcement but execution.
President Ronald Reagan was celebrated for declaring in a famous 1984 commercial for his reelection it was “Morning in America.” Today, awakening to “no words, just woe and wound,” it is “Mourning in America.”
Peter Wehner is an American journalist who served as a speechwriter for three Republican administrations and is currently a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and an editor for The Atlantic. In his recent Opinion for The Atlantic, titled, MAGA JESUS IS NOT THE REAL JESUS: Trump is causing incalculable damage to the Christian faith, Wehner claims that secular and religious right-wing Christians are prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus. A particularly pointed paragraph reads:
America in 2026 is not Germany in 1936; far from it. But we would be mistaken to pretend that political movements that aren’t as malevolent as Nazism can’t still advance sinister ends. We should also acknowledge that over the course of history, Christianity, which has had glorious moments, has also taken some very dark turns.
Huge numbers of American fundamentalists and evangelicals—not just cultural Christians, but also those who faithfully attend church and Bible study sessions and prayer gatherings—prefer the MAGA Jesus to the real Jesus. Few of them would say so explicitly though, because of the cognitive dissonance would be too unsettling. And so they have worked hard to construct rationalizations. It’s rather remarkable really to see tens of millions of Christians validate, to themselves and to one another, a political movement led by a malignant narcissist—who is driven by hate and bent on revenge, who mocks the dead and who delights in inflicting pain on the powerless. The wreckage to the Christian faith is incalculable.
As Christians, if we cannot find our way to unite behind the real Jesus and validate ourselves in the true Gospel message of repentance and reconciliation, of healing and human dignity, of truth and justice and love, we are living within a lie, and it is time to take down our signs.
In the Gospel according to John, when talking about the essence of discipleship, Jesus said:
31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (NRSVU)
Let us join together and continue in His word, trusting in His promise that we will know the truth and that truth, His truth, will make us free. We will be free of the lies, the burden of jarring betrayals, the moral stains that mark our souls and the incalculable wreckage of our faith. Indeed, together we will be made new in His love.