When Rome Wears the Skin of Christianity

See if you recognize this political movement I've been reading about. Their core beliefs are pretty straightforward:

• The poor deserve what they get. If people are struggling financially, it's because of their own bad decisions, laziness, or moral failures. Helping them just enables their weakness.
• Immigrants and foreigners are inherently dangerous to our way of life. They bring crime, disease, and foreign ideas that corrupt our pure culture. The wise response is to keep them out or, at minimum, keep them in their proper place.
• Empathy is actually weakness. Feeling sorry for people's suffering makes you soft and clouds your judgment. A strong leader doesn't get distracted by bleeding hearts—they make the hard decisions that weak people can't stomach.
• The sick and disabled are burdens on society. Resources spent caring for them could be better used on productive citizens. While we shouldn't be cruel, we also shouldn't pretend they contribute much value.
• Social programs create dependency and undermine personal responsibility. True charity comes from individuals, not governments. Public welfare corrupts both the giver and receiver.
• The lower classes need to know their place. Society works best when everyone accepts their natural station. Equality is a dangerous fiction that leads to chaos.
• Traditional values and cultural purity must be protected at all costs. Mixing with outsiders or accepting foreign ways weakens the community and threatens everything our ancestors built.

Oh and I should mention this political movement existed two thousand years ago.

I'm talking about Rome.

The empire that crucified Jesus for being a threat to exactly these values.

What's awful is I very well could have been describing large swaths of American Christianity in 2025, and you wouldn't have blinked. The fact that you probably nodded along, thinking "Yeah, sounds about right for the MAGA, Christian Nationalist crowd," tells us everything we need to know about how far we've fallen.

Because Christianity was supposed to be the radical opposite of all this. When Jesus showed up, he wasn't trying to tweak Roman values—he was (non-violently) obliterating them. The idea that you should help the poor, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, treat slaves as equals, show empathy to the suffering? This was revolutionary. This was new. This was dangerous enough to get you killed.

Roman philosophy said the poor deserved their poverty.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor."

Rome said foreigners were threats.

Jesus said, "Welcome the stranger."

Rome said empathy was weakness.

Jesus wept.

And now we have a form of Christianity that has hollowed out the gospel, scooped out its heart and soul and blood, and put on its husk like some demonic skinwalker. It calls empathy sin. It blames the poor for poverty. It treats immigrants like invaders. It abandons the sick and disabled as burdens. It opposes the very social programs that early Christians pioneered.

The early Christians didn't merely practice individual charity—they revolutionized civic life. Basil of Caesarea built the first hospital. Fourth-century Christians created systematic welfare programs within each polis. They understood that following Jesus meant transforming not just hearts, but systems.

For modern Christians to oppose welfare, public healthcare, education, immigration, international aid, and care for refugees is to abandon the faith our ancestors died for. This betrays our tradition. It's choosing Caesar over Christ, Rome over the kingdom of God.

When Rome looked at a suffering person, they saw someone getting what they deserved. When Jesus looked at suffering people, he saw the image of God being crushed by systems that needed to be transformed.

We know which side built hospitals. We know which side fed the hungry. We know which side welcomed the stranger. And we know which side is currently wearing Christianity's skin while serving Rome's spirit.

Are we awake enough to tell the difference? Because if we can't distinguish between the empire that killed Jesus and the movement that follows him, we're well and truly lost.

Jesus didn't come to make Rome nicer. It came to make Rome obsolete. The fact that Rome is back, wearing Jesus' name tag, should enrage every single one of us.