Rev. Dr. Stephanie Rutt is founding minister of the Tree of Life Interfaith Temple in Amherst. She lives in Nashua.

At his recent address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump said, “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Many in his MAGA base also believe that. Some Evangelical Christians even exalt him as a prophetic figure, divinely appointed to be here at this time to save the lost. However, I, as a woman of faith, have difficulty reconciling that prophetic belief with President Trump’s actions over the years. In fact, I would argue that most are clearly antithetical to the Christian life.

Can we imagine one who truly follows Christ mocking the disabled, the one who stutters?

Can we imagine such a person describing the violence and destruction and the threats to hang his own vice president on Jan. 6th as a “day of love,” and then calling the perpetrators the true victims and pardoning them?

Can we imagine such a person showering accolades on Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the world’s most notorious dictators, while publicly chastising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a courageous leader desperately trying to defend his country from an unprovoked takeover?

Meanwhile, as Elon Musk parades like a rock star with his chainsaw, tens of thousands of federal workers are being sent home with little notice, some wondering how they’re going to pay the rent or mortgage next month or put food on the table or how to tell their children their favorite activities have to stop — all challenges the world’s richest oligarchs couldn’t possibly imagine. And who knows what the inevitable fallout of services will be to many of us who rely on them daily. Could we imagine one who follows Christ casually dismissing and justifying all such collateral damage as simply a small price to pay for cleaning up the nation’s waste and fraud?

In my view, perhaps the most egregious anti-Christ-like example was conveniently made silent and invisible by the stroke of an executive order on day-one, the “Executive Order Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” Among an array of former immigration policies Trump rescinded in conjunction with this order was President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14011, which previously established a task force to reunite families separated by Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy.

On Dec. 19, 2024, The Latin Times cited a joint 135-page report by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) and Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic highlighting the over 4,600 children who were deliberately separated from their parents between 2017 and 2021 and the lasting harm incurred as a result.

The report states that children were held in overcrowded conditions and often lacked adequate food, hygiene supplies and supervision. Guards often ignored crying children or subjected them to verbal abuse. No doubt, as many health professionals warned, such separations could cause severe, lifelong psychological harm.

Today, the report cites, as many as 1,360 children still remain separated from their parents. Think about that. 1,360 children who may never know where, or perhaps even who, their parents are.

Images of the separations and the separated children are well documented. I often think about the very young ones, those just old enough to feel it all but not yet old enough to know what’s happening or to understand. If you are strong of heart, take a look. See their faces. We did this.

“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Matt. 19:14

No one argues that we need immigration reform. No one disputes that we need to target the most violent criminals attempting to cross into our country and that we need to stem the flow of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. No one. But to have perpetrated such violence on innocent children and their parents, many of whom came here to escape horrendous conditions, is not only far from Christ-like, it’s indisputably inhumane and cruel.

But on day one of his second term, Trump took it a step further. He doubled down on the cruelty to ensure that those remaining 1,360 children would no longer have any governmental support to find their parents.

There’s a clear and present danger here. Perpetrators, domestic and foreign, are praised. Victims are ignored or blamed. Unloading our national debt has been transferred onto the backs of tens of thousands of everyday Americans, while the oligarchy running our country celebrates numbers on the national spreadsheet. And gangs haven’t paid the price at the border. Children and families have.

If Trump was sent to save America, I would say it is we who are now living in the land of the lost.

But I still believe, as John Newton wrote in the well-known hymn, Amazing Grace, that with just a little true Christ-like care for one another, we too as a nation may one day be able to say, “I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see.”