I was in Memphis, TN this weekend and saw this bumper sticker – God, Guns & Trump – on the back of a small, older pickup truck with Mississippi tags. 
The sad reality is that I could have seen this sticker many places; they are just more common in that part of the country. I live in St. Louis which is not what I would call a particularly liberal or progressive area, but it is an island of sanity in the red cesspool of MAGA Republicans of rural Missouri and southern Illinois. I see many bumper stickers of a similar ilk around here too.
God, Guns & Trump…To me this encapsulated the sickness that is currently inflicting our country.
God: While I understand people’s need for religion, I am not a big fan. My personal opinion is that religion has done much more harm than good, but I do not need to detail that here. What bothers me about the God part is the adherer of this slogan to his vehicle means the God as defined by his particular religion. Without a doubt it is a very conservative fundamentalist religion of the Bible Belt South. In theory we are a nation based on freedom of religion which also means freedom from religion. The Religious Right is waging a cultural war to impose their brand of religion on the rest of us. The Republicans cynically bought into this to gain their support. Religious persons can follow what they see as their moral duty without forcing the rest of us into their religious straitjacket. And yet they seem to feel that they have a religious duty to force everyone in their particular religious paradigm. God save us from the religious!
Guns: This country is absolutely sick with the cult of guns and gun ownership. There is a pandemic of gun violence in this country that has been going on for decades now. Last figures I saw 35,000 souls every year were losing their lives to gun violence, a figure that includes gun suicides. The gun cultist would have you believe that the solution is more guns, everyone armed and open carrying. In my universe that is the same as an unmasked COVID case coughing in a crowded movie theater. Unlike more than a few practicing Christians I know, I have read the Bible… all of it, twice. The God of the Old Testament was a hard God smiting and slewing left and right. The Christ of the New Testament is not such a being. He is a more compassionate figure, a more forgiving deity.The Christ figure I see in the Bible would not be toting an AK-47 or AR-15, a very popular meme right now. 
The God and Guns mentality strike me as worshiping two deities simultaneously.
Trump: What can I say? There is decidedly nothing good to be said about this man. He would, given a chance, dismantle a 250 year old democracy. Why? Satan only knows. I absolutely cannot get my mind around the fact that so many Christians support and promote the most unchristian President of our history. The only time God and Trump should be in the same sentence should be as a profanity. There have been many things that have put nails in the coffin of my religious belief, but the Christian Right’s support of this atrocious individual drove in several.
I do not want to live in a religious theocracy. I do not want to live in a nation of gun toting madmen. And I certainly do not want to live in the autocratic, fascist regime that Trump and his supporters would have.
And so it should not go.
Amen.