To the white evangelical base back home in the heartland, the pastor in Maryland and the Coptic pope in Egypt were out of line. How dare they question the integrity of God’s servant and the vice president of the United States? But to most churches in the world — and to a great many Christians here in the United States — Pence’s week unveils the hypocrisy of a movement that has promoted white identity politics in the name of God.

This is not new. Since plantation owners paid preachers in the early 19th century to defend slavery against the clear moral arguments of abolitionists, American Christianity has been infected by slaveholder religion.