This article is dedicated to all those who felt the political and theological dialectics over this election cycle. As I write this, the small potential of excommunication is looming overhead ominously. But, I feel as though it ought to be written.

I was raised in a conservative household, and when I was in high school, it was interesting hearing the voices of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, all spouting their ideas and how awful the political left was. Fast-forward a few years, and in the middle of the election, I am a bit older, a bit more mature, feeling dialectics from my faith, and from my political paradigm. You see, I really am, at the heart, a political moderate, with maybe a slight lean to liberalism. I openly embrace egalitarianism when it comes to gender roles, and I personally feel as though it counter-productive to shove a Christian agenda through the halls of Congress. However, there are some more right-wing ideals that I am open to embracing, such as trying to not be government-dependent on resources and to be more autonomous.

In any case, when the primaries started to gain speed, I was somewhat optimistic a decent Republican could grab the nomination. And then political reality set in. Living in California, we vote so late in the primaries that our vote really doesn’t count, and to Trump’s advantage, he really did not need to step foot in the Golden State. Two choices were given to me: on one hand, I had Trump who really was a repulsive choice, and HRC, who was the symbolism of corruption on a personal level and a partisan level, where Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was treated horribly by the national party – nomination wrongfully taken away.

On the national level, it seemed as though the evangelical church was all aboard the Trump train. Franklin Graham was opening up and pushing for the Christian body to embrace the idea of Trump, regardless of his many faults and unfitness for presidency. I understood why, as a believer, they did this – I really do. However, it felt like the Church was largely dismissive of Trump’s many flaws. I have a diverse Facebook friend list, with radicals on both sides of the political spectrum, but I noticed one group that was largely silent about the election: liberal/Democrat Christians. I have a couple hypotheses as to why.

First, as a preface, the statements made on this article are not meant to be taken as statistical fact, or as an overall generalization. The statements made are made from my personal reading, experience with these groups, so my assertions ought to be taken with some relativity.

Liberal Christians are put in a tense dialectical situation. Liberalism, on a general level, embraces Sexual Revolution notions that many evangelicals oppose (on a broad scale): abortion, homosexual marriage, transgenderism as a legitimate concept, and the list goes on. If a Christian were to raise these notions in a religious gathering, they would probably be looked down upon with some disdain, and maybe called out for embracing “worldly” ideals.

Truth of the matter is, any political ideology could quote scripture out of the Bible to further their own opinions. Right-wingers could quote Leviticus to condemn homosexuality, and left-wingers could quote Hebrews to embrace the idea of taking care of the foreigner and refugee. I personally feel if the Church as a whole championed social issues (like the church body I belong to now) like literacy, race relations, and orphan care, the status quo might be different. Typically, Democrats are more active, by nature, to fix social injustices.

I did my absolute best to keep silent my opinions of fellow Church-members who were decidedly on the Trump train, and seemed largely dismissive of the flaws and scandals surrounding him. On the same token, many were condemning HRC and her lies and immunity from any accountability.

I ultimately knew a Trump presidency would be more tumultuous in reality than one with Clinton in the Oval Office – but I could not bring myself to endorse a candidate who was surrounded by controversy and a disdain for the law. Thankfully, since I live in a very blue state, I was able to put my vote where my mouth was and voted third party, hopefully absolving myself of any fault in the outcome.

Now that Trump is elected, and with many problems in the young administration, the conservatives who voted for Trump are victim of all the civil unrest by the dissenters, who happen to be in majority since Trump had an EC victory, and not a popular one. Conservative journalists are painting the whole movement of anti-Trump people as leftists, who want to see America burn to the ground.

The rhetoric coming from figures such as Judge Jeanine Pirro is repulsive, and makes anyone who is against Trump as insignificant as the dirt we walk on. Conservatives as CPAC did not address the factions within their movement who see Trump as a threat to democracy with his disregard for the judicial system, or the mainstream press. Not only democracy, but Trump, depending on his performance in his term, could leave the Church with diminished reputation.

Liberal Christians need to champion the social justice issues forgotten by the conservative movement, and emphasize that even though they might not approve of Trump as president, they (hopefully) will be willing to give him a chance. I will do my best, but I do look forward to voting in 2020, and the witty SNL clips to come presently.