While watching “Repossessed,” a little-known spoof of “The Exorcist,” I saw two antagonists meet a poetic and deserved fate and had an epiphany. To fight Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies and Christian nationalism, we must start with the Lehigh County flag.
Christian nationalism is on the rise in America, and it is trickling down to the Lehigh Valley. We need to fight back.
The precipitating event, in my mind, is the latest atrocity by an ICE agent in shooting Renee Good. ICE is an organization that uses white nationalist and xenophobic propaganda to recruit.
One cannot separate Christian nationalism from ICE’s violent hatred of both (a) immigrants and (b) those who support immigrants. By tying white supremacy to their radical interpretation of the Bible, President Trump and the MAGA movement are weaponizing ICE to simultaneously purge America of immigrants they deem undesirable and in the process force their brand of Christianity on everyone else.
One way to take a stand against this, I strongly believe, is to reassert the primacy of the United States Constitution. That is where the Lehigh County flag, which prominently features a cross of gold, enters the picture.
The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
When Lehigh County added that cross to its flag and seal in 1944, without consulting the citizenry either at the time or since, it did so to represent “Christianity and the God-fearing people which are the foundation and backbone of the County,” according to the seal’s designer. While the longevity of that cross of gold demonstrates that Christian nationalist impulses have long existed in America, at the time such impulses were thankfully limited to First Amendment-averse locales like Lehigh County.
When they go national, that is quite another matter. Since Lehigh County stood out in 1944 by slapping the Constitution in the face, why not raise the gauntlet in 2026 on our Founding Fathers’ behalf? They would have been as appalled by Trump’s Christian Nationalism and the Lehigh County flag as myself. President Thomas Jefferson, who chiefly co-authored the Declaration of Independence 26 years earlier, famously wrote to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists in 1802 that “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
While I don’t live in Lehigh County today, I previously resided there, and have consistently counted either it or adjacent Northampton County as my primary residence since 1997. For the most part, I felt welcomed here as a Jew, but when I discussed the Lehigh County flag and Jeffersonianism at the Applebee’s across the street from my apartment complex, I noticed a strange chill in the air. A nearby restaurant patron glared at me; when I apologized for my loud voice he grumbled “Go Trump!”
I don’t think this man sensed my Jewishness, but he definitely picked up on my hostility to breaching Jefferson’s “wall of separation between Church and State” or the Constitution’s prohibition against “respecting an establishment of religion.” More importantly, he identified my democratic secularism as a threat to Trumpism — and that’s precisely why we must assert it.
It is strategically shrewd, morally just and psychologically cathartic to highlight an opponent’s most indefensible point and then corner them with it, respectfully but ruthlessly, so they have no choice but to defend it. When implemented effectively, this tactic not only rolls back injustice … it discredits the oppressors by forcing them to reveal themselves for who they really are.
Because I’m a professional film critic, my mind is inclined to frame narratives in cinematic terms, which is why I was inspired by “Repossessed.” In the movie, starring Leslie Nielson and released in 1990, the MAGA equivalents (Ned Beatty, Lana Schwab) are finally exposed as charlatans the whole world sees before they are met with a grotesque, humiliating fate.
“They became what they deserved to become for eternity,” director/writer Bob Logan later told me for Dread Central. Indeed — and that doesn’t only have to apply to the world of spoofs.
Because frankly, if America’s constitutionalists don’t start standing up to its Christian nationalists, a profoundly unfunny joke will be on all of us.
This is a contributed opinion column. Matthew Rozsa is a longtime Easton resident and journalist. His journalism can be found at Salon, his film reviews as a certified critic can be found on Rotten Tomatoes, and he currently writes primarily for Democracy at Work. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author, and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. Do you have a perspective to share? Learn more about how we handle guest opinion submissions at themorningcall.com/opinions.