America is not a Christian nation. It never was a Christian nation. Christianity died, institutionally, when it became Christendom with its fourth-century marriage to Rome. It has remained Christendom to this day, especially in the nation that more than any other conflates its image with an imagined Jesus. 

Distinct from the Christians of Christendom, followers of Jesus: 

Know no borders. There are none in the kingdom of heaven. Every neighbor is to be loved exactly as the self. 

Do not go to war. No candidate and few Christians advocate this. Violence is central to the American myth, the rallying cry that unifies. 

Do not judge others. How many times have you heard, “Love the sinner but hate the sin”? Those are not the words of Jesus. They are a thin excuse for exclusion of the inconvenient or despised. 

Do not make, carry or export arms. America claims the moral high ground while arming the world. Eight out of nine parties complicit in the death of an estimated 5.4 million to 6 million Congolese in wars since 1996 used weapons supplied by the United States. We continue more openly in our proxy wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. 

Serve each other, not the bottom line. Christians, conservative and progressive, have accepted as the natural order an economy that demands the service of the poor for the benefit of the rich. Witness the undocumented immigrants, tacitly ignored when not openly despised. The economy of Jesus serves people. In America, people serve the economy. 

Empire and institutional religion quickly closed ranks against Jesus and his community of nonviolent love and inclusion. Nothing has changed. The conflation of Christianity with America has compromised the following of Christ. Jesus needs a new religion. 

Jerry S. Kennell, Taos, N.M.