MAGA Christian Nationalists and Unconditional Love:

A Set-Up for Assaulting and Raping Women

“I give my family members unconditional love,” she said.

We were part of a Facebook conversational thread asking if a person opposed to Trump could be friends with a Trumper.

She was alarmed that so many responded that they no longer could be friends with a Trumper, including family. She was an anti-Trumper married to a Trumper and opposed her husband’s politics, but stayed with him because she believedin unconditional love and was proud she wasthat kind of person who extended it.

Biblical Origins

The concept of unconditional love is Biblical. Unlike its contemporary meaning, the Old Testament spoke about people loving God no matter the circumstances or what God asked of them.[1] “Unconditional” love (though the phrase is not used in the Bible) referred to the kind of love we were expected to extend to God. In the New Testament, the flow was reversed and used to describe God’s love through Jesus for humankind.[2]

Secular Meaning

In 1934, Erik Fromm (via Carl Rogers in the 1960’s[3]) transmuted unconditional love through the therapeutic concept of “unconditional positive regard.”[4] Rogers said non-judgmental acceptance of at patients would eventually encourage a patients’ self-acceptance and make…