The Evangelical self-betrayal: Trump
81% of White Christian evangelicals who voted did so for Trump in 2016, and they’re likely to do similarly this year. While this does not represent all Evangelicals, especially minorities, it is a vocal majority. For them this election will be about fear and power. Fear because of the persecution anxieties politicians like Trump have stoked, portraying the country as against Christians, and power because they see their ability to impose their beliefs, inextricably married to conservative politics, upon others as slipping away. Outlets like Fox News have worked hard to stoked those fears, perversely portraying victories of the gay marriage, abortion and black lives matter movements, as defeats for white Christians, and attacks on their freedoms.
In 2016 Donald Trump told a roomful of Christians in a small church in Sioux, Iowa with an overwhelmingly white audience:
“I will tell you; Christianity is under tremendous siege… Christianity will have power,” “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.”
That’s the false narrative that has won many evangelicals, “you are under attack, the other side hates you and seeks to destroy your religion and this country, I am the only candidate who can save you.” This foreshadows what was to come, a president who has painted fellow Americans, and even moderate and Catholic J. Biden, as radical socialist liberals who hate your values and want to destroy the country. History has long shown that fear and desperation are two of the great tools of tyrants and despots.
But Christian evangelicals perhaps have made a deal with the devil, vocally siding with a man who couldn’t be farther from their own moral values, but who promises to deliver political wins. Trump is not just a philanderer tycoon who made his money with the gambling industry, he’s a divisive and hateful figure, eager to sow fear and loathing towards the disenfranchised such as refugees desperately seeking our help. Can any of his faithful base really imagine Trump as a moral, admirable, and faithful Christian?
Some Evangelicals deflect, claiming not to support Trump, rather to simply be making a calculated decision for a lesser-evil. But do such believers really see Biden or H. Clinton as that greater evil? Would these candidates work to discredit mail-in voting, insult and bully anyone who disagreed with them, and tell the country a daily string of vain and easily disproved lies? Would we be facing a worse outcome now under H. Clinton, a country paralyzed by an out of control pandemic, one that still separates families at the border, still supports the Saudis in their genocidal Yemen war, and still sustains many more atrocities from the Trump administration?
What evangelical Christians have done is tipped their hand, showing the cynical and hypocritical way they are ready to faithfully support and defend, no matter how deeply immoral and un-Christlike, a man who promises them power and victories on their narrow interests like abortion. Evangelicals justifying Trump support with their religion or morality don’t understand how they undermine their own belief system. Christianity and church attendance in the U.S. have been in rapid decline and there are many stories of Christians walking away from the church because of its current direction.
Support for Trump and acceptance, if not endorsement of his actions, have shown the real values of that church, hold on to power and don’t bite the hand that feeds. The betrayal of many of their own values by siding with him will only cost the church dearly, as hypocrisy and lies eventually do.
