Where fascism wears the face of Christian nationalism, churches in the United States must confront a hard truth: Silence is complicity. Many faith communities are being tested by Trumpism and the bolstered anti-LGBTQ+ policy proposals of his party. The question for the church is not only what we believe, but what we will do.
As a trans, queer pastor living in the rural United States, I’ve seen the damage firsthand. I’ve counseled youth who wonder if there is a place for them in the church—or in the world. I’ve heard the whispered grief of elders too afraid to come out in their pews. I’ve watched as drag bans, gender-affirming care restrictions, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws pass in rapid succession, even while some progressive churches remain caught in the paralysis of politeness.
This is not the time for silence and fear. Instead, it is the time for the church to embody a sanctuary imagination—a reorientation of our communities toward risk, truth-telling, and embodied solidarity. Drawing inspiration from Fred Moten, a sanctuary imagination is fugitive in nature and accountable to people on the run. A Christianity grounded in a sanctuary imagination attends to those who refuse capture and takes improvisational flight as curricular. It is those on the run who can teach the church new forms of togetherness. A church rooted in a sanctuary imagination thus dwells in the liminal, what Gloria Anzaldúa describes as nepantla, and takes root by creating spaces of welcome and truth-telling, even if the cost is exile.
What might this look like in the concrete? Churches must speak with clarity. It is not enough to “love everyone” in vague terms. Anti-LGBTQ+ violence is not a generic hardship; it is a coordinated political strategy. The Trump campaign’s Project 2025, which includes deeply troubling plans to erase trans existence from federal recognition, is not theoretical. It is a roadmap for institutional harm. Naming the threat is part of our spiritual work. In the gospels, Jesus consistently names oppressive forces—the Roman empire, religious hypocrisy, legalistic violence—not to condemn individuals but to expose systems. Churches today must follow suit. Pastoral letters, Sunday sermons, denominational statements must move from abstract theology to grounded political clarity.
White Christian supremacy thrives on order, hierarchy, and the myth of neutrality. But we follow a Jesus who overturned tables and broke Sabbath laws in the name of liberation. If we are to be Christ’s body in the world, we must become less “respectable” and more unruly. To organize against anti-LGBTQ+ agendas, churches must therefore disrupt business as usual. This might look like becoming a public sanctuary space for queer and trans people in your region. This might look like refusing to cooperate with state policies that violate bodily autonomy or target LGBTQ+ families. This might mean preaching queer joy as resistance, not just once a year at Pride, but as part of our liturgical rhythm. This might look like funding mutual aid networks that support LGBTQ+ youth, elders, and others seeking sanctuary in more welcoming states.
Inclusion is not enough. The rhetoric of “all are welcome” without an actual redistribution of power or risk is hollow. What is needed now is “co-conspiracy”—a term from the movement for Black lives that invites deeper relationships, shared stakes, and collective action. Churches should be asking: Who is making decisions about safety, sanctuary, and justice in our communities? Are queer and trans people leading, shaping, and teaching in our spiritual spaces? How are we putting our buildings, budgets, and platforms in service of this work? Co-conspiracy means addressing these questions. Co-conspiracy means listening to trans-led organizations, resourcing queer spiritual leaders, and aligning with movement strategy rather than institutional self-preservation.
Christianity has often been co-opted as a tool of the state, but at its root, our tradition is a story of fugitivity and collective survival. Mary’s Magnificat announces a God who brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly. Jesus’s own body—wounded, resurrected, glorified—is a scandal to empires. Now is the time to return to those roots. Feminist theology teaches us that transparency is power. To tell the truth—of bodies, of policies, of harm—is to make visible what empires try to erase. Queer theology reminds us that God’s image is not fixed in binaries but dances in the liminal, the in-between, the becoming. This is not about defending “our rights” as individuals. It’s about reclaiming our responsibility as communities of faith who believe that another world is possible—and necessary.
Churches must organize. Sermons are not strategy. Good theology is not a substitute for direct action. We need churches that are willing to host community defense training, show up at school board meetings, fund bail and travel for trans people seeking care, that build alliances with other movements under threat. To organize is to say: We are not waiting for the state to give us dignity. We are practicing a sanctuary imagination now.
In the coming months and years, we will be asked—explicitly or implicitly—what side we are on. Let the church not be remembered as a slow-moving bureaucracy in a time of urgency, but as a body alive with fire and imagination. Let us be a sanctuary not only in proclamation, but in fierce form and function.
Roberto Che Espinoza has been a wandering nomad on the way, but is now a pastor, theologian, and cat dad nurturing visible and invisible ecologies for another possible world in Western New York.