IMO the two fairly sensible approaches to Christianity would be either viewing it as being a follower of Christ and therefore applying his teachings and example to one's life, or viewing it as a set of cultural traditions and community to be adapted as needed rather than treated dogmatically or religiously.
Most of Christianity to greater or less extents, but American Evangelicalism in particular, have gone almost as far in the opposite direction to Jesus' actual example as it is possible to go: Whereas Jesus commanded his followers to give up all their possessions to help the poor, stop working for money to work for God instead, and have faith in him for their daily bread as well as for 'eternal life,' Christians have frequently insisted that you don't have to actually
do a damn thing to be 'saved' and these days on top of that it's pretty common for preachers to declare that God wants you to be filthy rich! So when these guys are trying to pretend that these are legitimate doctrinal beliefs, obviously there's a fundamental contradiction there that's going to cause major problems.
It's really quite scary when you look at how many Christian preachers and 'prophets' declared that Trump was God's chosen one, right up to January 2021 and beyond. Even over here in Australia I've got some religious relatives and a pastor friend who've apparently been dragged into that whole bubble, and it's a constant struggle to understand how and why - some of them have been generally pretty sensible people in the past. Obviously there's various factors which play into it from a political angle (nativism/unease of declining demographic dominance), from the Qanon/conspiracy theory angle (desire to be 'in the know' and algorithms recommending increasingly fringe content; to which Christians who believe the world is under the implicit and soon to be explicit control of the devil are particularly susceptible): But also, from the religious angle specifically, I suspect that the tension between the 'religious truth' vs. 'cultural tradition' ways of viewing Christianity are coming to a head now moreso than ever before for several reasons, but one surprising one being that if Jesus were ever going to return (as many of these folks believe), it would have been pretty much now, 2021-22ish. For several fairly
obscure reasons - some of them obviously absurd, such as 1 Cor. 15:52 saying that the end would happen at "the last trump" in the KJV - there's literally never been a time since the 1st century and never will be again when the 'signs' of the end seem so good as they had over the past decade. I think on some level most evangelicals know that, even the ones who preach against date setting, and so there's a real desperation to see the kind of chaos and conflict which they're expecting to happen beforehand. It's difficult to think of a leader who might be better expected to unleash chaos than Trump.
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