Gov. Bill Lee’s performative Christianity places political agenda over faith

Twenty-five years ago — in what could easily be described as another life — I was a youth minister in a Southern Baptist church. I knew every verse to cherry-pick to support my personal views on anything from abortion to same-sex marriage. 

That year, in the first presidential election in which I was allowed to vote, I voted for George W. Bush because…well, abortion and stuff. Four years later, I was completely out of the SBC and voted for John Kerry. 

What changed?

After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a proliferation of politics began to swirl from the pulpit at my church, a toxic mix of ideology and scripture. Until then, whatever naive political beliefs I had sprang from MY belief system. As misguided as it was, that system was my own, for better or worse — not something dictated to me verbatim from a lectern.

One Sunday, my pastor referenced Fox News to buttress a point about a specific social issue, and a line was drawn. The “compassionate conservatism” espoused by the Bush presidency had started to curdle. Something was spoiled. Fundamental Christianity had been weaponized, and I wanted no part of it.

Comparatively speaking, those were the good ol’ days.

Since Gov. Bill Lee was elected in 2018, he has consistently spoken of how his personal faith influences his decision-making. He has proudly made a grandstanding show of signing performative bills into law that reinforce his idea of Christianity (see the Adult Entertainment Act of 2023 and the Heartbeat Bill of 2020) while simultaneously discriminating against same-sex couples (see SB 1304 of 2020) and preventing LGBTQ+ children from being fostered by families if the families so choose in the Tennessee Foster and Adoptive Parent Protection Act of 2024. 

Recently, Lee may have committed his most damnable offense — a Faustian promise to support President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants by creating a Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division and vowing to be “supportive of his (Trump’s) strategies moving forward.”

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Did Lee envision a racial profiling dragnet in South Nashville when he made that promise? 

In early May, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, along with assistance from the Tennessee Highway Patrol, made traffic stops in an area of Nashville that is heavily populated with immigrants. Witnesses observed vehicles being stopped and people being detained. When the dust settled, nearly 200 suspected migrants without permanent legal status had been arrested. 

Mothers. Fathers. Children. Did all 200 people have violent criminal records? Was each person arrested a legitimate threat to their community? Anyone with common sense knows the answers to those questions.

When Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell denounced the ICE raids, GOP lawmakers at the state and federal levels attacked. House Republicans in Washington announced a federal investigation of O’Connell; Sen. Marsha Blackburn implored the Department of Justice to look into the matter. Based on O’Connell’s remarks, border czar Tom Homan threatened more raids. 

As he is prone to do, Lee remained silent, complicit in the chaos. 

After the Covenant School mass shooting tragedy three years ago, Lee called a special legislative session to address the lax firearm regulations in the state. It was one of the few times Lee has even slightly pushed against his supermajority of political bullies. Nothing happened other than Lee slinking from the public spotlight, muting himself out of righteous self-preservation. 

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I’ve met Lee twice. He spoke with students, genuinely listened to their ideas and posed for pictures. In my very limited time with him, I came away believing he truly cares for people on a personal level. People I have spoken with who know him say he’s a good man and I don’t doubt that. 

But when you hitch your political wagon to a brand of Christianity that has been bastardized by a powerful group of people hellbent on power, your personal witness automatically falters. When you pledge blind loyalty to a man like Trump and set up systems within your state that allow innocent children to be hurt, people to be discriminated against and families torn apart, it might be time to stop leaning so heavily on Christian rhetoric to advance your political causes. 

Recently, I’ve dipped my toe back into a faith community. Testing the waters, you could say. Ironically, most of my core beliefs about politics and humanity were formed by my time in church, by the actual teachings of Jesus Christ. He had strong thoughts about powerful political structures like the one we have in Tennessee. He also had very specific language about the way we should treat vulnerable people in society, specifically foreigners.

“For I was hungry and you put me in jail, I was thirsty and you confiscated my water,

I was a stranger and you arrested me…Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Wait. Sorry. That must have come from the Trump translation, not the King James Version.

Faith in anything is an extremely personal matter to be respected, but when that faith is used as a manipulative weapon to further a political agenda, it becomes blasphemous. 

Our leaders should act more like O’Connell and less like Lee, placing humanity above legalistic righteousness.