In my former conservative life I once thought that you could not be a Christian and a Democrat. In my mind abortion was the primary reason for this but it was much more than that.
I grew up in a largely purity driven Evangelical culture. In this environment staying away from sin was most important, but not sin as Christ taught it. American evangelicalism is focused on the traditional family structure, and anything that veers outside of that is sin. So two of the biggest threats were feminists and the LGBT community. As what I see now as progress was achieved the church began to feel more and more fearful thinking that Society was falling away from God. So they became more and more militant which led to support for Trump.
To me the church began to look less and less what I knew about Jesus in the early church. Amongst all the dangerous Dogma I was ultimately taught to prioritize love, and I found so much more love and forgiveness in these Progressive communities than I ever found in my church. I mean Jesus was pretty clear, love your God, how, by loving your neighbor. But in this crazy world we always have a tendency to try and control the chaos. This is where legalism comes from. Legalism meaning is strict adherence to what they consider biblical law.
Part of what led me out of conservatism was understanding that love was the new law. A philosophy centered around working hard to achieve something for yourself is the opposite of what Jesus taught.
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