Jimmy Kimmel said MAGA was the opposite of Christianity. Here’s why he’s wrong

The comedian and former late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel has argued that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is the antithesis of Christianity.

Speaking on Michele Obama’s podcast, Kimmel said, “The cardinal rule of MAGA is to never admit when you are wrong. First of all, it’s the opposite of Christianity. I mean, it’s the basis of the whole faith you know, is asking for forgiveness. And that seems to be cast aside.”

As a pull quote, his comments could be read as simply more progressive scorn of hypocritical conservative Christians. But, taken in context, his intent is much milder. He is commending the conservatives who have recently walked back their indomitable support of Donald Trump, and suggesting such gestures of humility and penance should be applauded instead of derided.

The sad truth is that most of us believe the biggest problem is other people

Granted, it’s a sad state of affairs when our public intellectuals are now influencer buffoons and armchair philosophising celebrities, but we work with what we’ve got, and Kimmel’s comments are at least coherent and charitable enough to be interesting.

MAGA does seem to have a humility and penance problem. Asking for forgiveness, while not the basis of the whole faith (that would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ), is a core habit of the faith called Christian.

But is Jimmy Kimmel really the person to explore it?

Holy war

America is in a culture war that many consider holy. This is inevitable in any place where vastly different stories narrate our lives, but the American cultural holy wars tend to run hotter than most, largely because we are an especially spirited people.

But the great paradox of cultural holy war, at least from this Christian’s perspective, is that the only way to approximate something like winning it is to refuse to fight it.

I have no particular MAGA sympathies, but the cardinal rule of MAGA is not to never admit you’re wrong. I have not been able to get my hands on a MAGA constitution, but I’d assume the cardinal rule of MAGA would actually be something like: “American supremacy should be America’s chief priority because even after conceding certain qualifications and fallibilities, American supremacy is best for the rest of the world.”

I do not agree with this sentiment, but I can understand it. And, most importantly, it is a truthful rendition of the story MAGA tells about itself, instead of a story told about MAGA by someone so impatient to critique it that he cannot tell it honestly.

Kimmel’s comments, while comparatively measured and charitable, still end up only adding to the noise. To those who might actually need to hear and heed them, they sound like propaganda - because they are propaganda.

Pointing the finger

We love to confess other people’s sins, and while we might call it “prophetic”, it is usually just confessing other people’s sins, which is neither prophetic nor helpful.

Jimmy Kimmel is not the right person to criticise MAGA, both because he is too contemptuous of it to understand it, and because MAGA is not listening to him anyway. If Kimmel wants to be a political prophet, perhaps next time he could talk about how the liberal story becoming overly determined by critical theory made the MAGA story compelling to so many Americans.

America, like all pluralist societies, is in a culture war that many consider holy

A recent Pew Research survey of 25 of the world’s largest countries found that America was the only one in which the majority of citizens said the majority of their fellow citizens were immoral. This is symptomatic of a rot deep in our civic culture.

The sad truth is that most of us believe the biggest problem in our country is other people. To be fair, such a belief is utterly understandable and achingly attractive.

It is also nonsense, non-Christian, and maybe heresy. The biggest problem in our country (or at least the one for which you are most responsible) is not ‘them’ but you. That goes for Jimmy Kimmel, for MAGA and for all of us.