By Ursula Werner
When I was thirteen, I joined a youth group at our local church. (Full disclosure as to my motivations: the youth minister was day-dreamingly attractive and impossibly kind.) Raised in a household of lapsed Lutherans who had drifted into agnosticism, I inherited some of my parents’ skepticism. One day, I questioned aloud whether I could call myself a Christian, because I didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was really God. The minister said, “Ursula, you don’t have to believe that Jesus was God. All you have to do to be Christian is believe in what Jesus taught.”
That was a mind-blowing statement to me. Not entirely convinced, I went home to what I considered the source of all truth: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. There, in black and white, I saw that the minister was right. Webster’s defined “Christian” as “one who believes in the truth as taught by Jesus Christ.” Forty-plus years later, the online Merriam Webster Dictionary (which touts itself as “America’s Most Trusted Dictionary”) echoes that definition: a “Christian” is “one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
But what are those teachings, exactly? For most of my life, I would have answered this question by echoing popular platitudes that most people know: “Turn the other cheek,” or “Love your brother as yourself.” Recently, however, I became fascinated with Mary Magdalene and decided to write a novel about her.
That meant I had to learn as much as possible about her walking partner, Jesus of Nazareth. I plunged into the ocean of books that have been written about the historical Jesus. Each historical biography gave me more insight into this Jewish preacher who lived 2000-plus years ago. Each one greatly increased my admiration for him and the doctrine he tried to spread. By the end of my research, I thought, “Huh. Maybe I really am a Christian.”
The historical Jesus of Nazareth was an itinerant preacher who roamed around the Sea of Galilee, from his base in the city of Capernaum. He gathered many followers, men and women, who were drawn to his message of peace and love and the creation of what he called a new kingdom of God on earth.
Radical equality and radical tolerance were constant themes in Jesus’s sermons, cornerstone principles of the new society he imagined. Again and again, in sermons and parables, Jesus taught that because all humans were equal in the eyes of God, they should treat each other with love and respect. He himself lived the truths he disseminated, embracing lepers, beggars and prostitutes as readily as merchants, rabbis, and Pharisees.
Equipped with this spiritual background, I watched the 2024 election unfold last year. To my dismay and disbelief, eighty percent of people who identified as conservative Christians voted for Donald Trump in that election. Crowds of Trump supporters included people wearing t-shirts that proclaimed, “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President.” I shuddered on Jesus’ behalf.
Because the slogan just seemed wrong. Because when I watched what Donald Trump did and said, he appeared to be the polar opposite of Jesus. Trump’s moral compass centered entirely on the acquisition of money, fame, and power. How was that compatible with the values of a penniless man who walked around the desert promising poor people that they would be at the front of the line to God’s kingdom?
“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” Jesus taught. Meaning be kind to others, forgive them, treat them with love. But Donald Trump spews hatred of “others.” Hatred of his political opponents (“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs who live like vermin within the confines of our country”); of immigrants (“They’re not humans. They’re not humans. They’re animals.”); of women (“You have to treat ’em like shit”). Where is the radical equality or radical tolerance in any of these statements?
And speaking of women, let’s take a moment to talk about Jesus’s views on that subject. Because if there had been a feminist movement in first century Judea, Jesus would have been its standard-bearer. Even though he was raised in a patriarchal society that treated women as inferior, Jesus always treated women as equals. Throughout the New Testament, he is shown giving women respect, admiration, and understanding, “seeing” them even when – or especially when – other men are ready to ignore them (or in one case, to cast stones).
There were women in Jesus’s group of followers, some of whom helped finance his efforts. Historians think Mary Magdalene was one of these wealthy women. According to several of the alternative gospels found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1947 (all of which the nascent Catholic Church excluded from the New Testament in the late fourth century), Jesus tapped Mary Magdalene as his “disciple of the disciples,” and told the other disciples to look to her for insight when he was gone.
Fast-forward to 2025 and our current administration. Vice President JD Vance, who proudly calls himself a Christian and claims to feel an “historical continuity” with Jesus Christ himself, has famously stated that all women should be wives and mothers. He has labeled women without children as “childless cat ladies” who are miserable and make bad choices. Mother Theresa would not be pleased.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been found legally liable for sexual abuse and guilty of paying $130,000 in hush money to a woman with whom he allegedly had an affair. He also shamelessly objectifies women. In a 2004 interview with Howard Stern about tennis champion Steffi Graf, Trump said of her looks, “You never get to the face because the body is so good.”
In 2005, when asked if he would stay with his wife Melania if she were disfigured in a car crash, Trump’s first response was, “How do the breasts look?” And in a notorious video publicized in 2016, Trump bragged that, because he was a reality TV star, women let him do whatever he wanted to them. “I just start kissing them. . . . And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. . . . Grab them by the pussy.”
How can any Christian – again, someone who by definition follows the teachings of Jesus Christ – support politicians like Trump and Vance, whose lives and values are antithetical to Jesus’s beliefs? They can’t. Because the two terms, “Trump-supporter” and “Christian,” are diametrically opposed. Such people could no more put swimming fins and a snorkel on and call themselves fish.
Sadly, the 2024 Presidential election also made clear that, for this category of voters, truth is a malleable concept. Dictionary definition be damned, they might say, we’ll call ourselves whatever we want and vote for whomever we want.
To which I would say, sure. You can choose to put your own personal needs and goals ahead of the values that Jesus espoused, when you support a Presidential agenda. Just be honest with yourself and the world around you, and don’t pretend that your position is connected to your faith.
Because Jesus and Mary Magdalene are rolling in their graves, wherever they are.
Ursula Werner has been writing for over twenty-five years. She has published one novel, ‘The Good at Heart’ (2017), and two chapbooks of poetry, ‘The Silence of the Woodruff’ (2006) and ‘Rapunzel Revisited’ (2010). She holds graduate degrees in English literature and law and works part-time as an attorney. She and her husband live in Washington, DC. Find out more about them at her website. You can also follow her Instagram.
ABOUT THE BOOK: What would Jesus do? Or, more importantly, what will Magda do? “Magda Revealed” (She Writes Press, April 8th, 2025) is a wry, irreverent, fictionalized account of his life and ministry—told from the perspective of disciple Mary Magdalene—that will implode everything you thought you knew.
Jesus Christ—Yeshua, to his friends—is not happy. Two thousand years after his death, he sees Earth heading toward oblivion. Ever eager to save humanity, he asks Mary Magdalene (Magda) for help. Still angry that she’s been called a whore for almost two millennia, Magda resists—but ultimately, out of love for Yeshua, agrees.
Magda’s evocative story revisits Yeshua’s life, depicting him as a man of flesh and blood, one wholly devoted to spreading his message of radical equality. Magda recounts her travels with Yeshua and his followers around Galilee, where they are menaced at every turn by Roman rulers. She weaves tales of miracles and murder, jealousy and acceptance, misogyny and female empowerment. She uncovers her relationship with Yeshua, clarifying centuries of speculation about whether or not they were in love. And, painfully, she reveals the truth about who orchestrated his death.
Magda’s life with Yeshua teaches her that she has more strength than she ever imagined, and she begins to tap into a spiritual power uniquely her own—the power to connect people. Magda’s true role in the history of humanity, it turns out, is just beginning to unfold.
