Faith and Politics
To Defend Trump
Must Christian supporters of Trump defend him as a person?
“When I’m looking for a leader who’s going to fight ISIS and keep this nation secure, I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek. I’ve said I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation. And so that’s why Trump’s tone doesn’t bother me.” — Robert Jeffress
Late in December 2020 as Donald Trump’s time in office neared an end — though he insisted it wasn’t — I was convicted that I had done much complaining and cringing over the previous four years but little in the way of seeking his good, which is foundational as a follower of Jesus Christ. Admittedly, as a single citizen with no influence, power, or connections, there was not much I could do. I could have at least prayed for him, but I didn’t. Perhaps I did once or twice when prompted by others, but it was done begrudgingly.
So I prayed for Donald Trump, but I also had an idea for doing something else. At the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, I learned that he received letters from private citizens and read a few each day. Looking into it, I found this was common practice for presidents, so I wondered if President Trump would read a letter from me. The chances were slim, but I considered that this was one tangible action I could do to seek the good of Donald Trump and, potentially, others.
The crux of my message is summed up in a statement I repeated twice in the letter: “you don’t have to live this way”. Donald Trump appears to be a man who has mostly lived based on what his gut tells him. His gut — or what the biblical writers might have called his “flesh” — is often selfish, prideful, unkind, and reckless, not unlike my own when left unchecked. In the letter, I tried to present to him that a life lived in the way of Jesus Christ is better as it contains love, kindness, humility, patience, and so on. I told him that this moment in his life, having lost the election, is one for reflection, an opportunity to stop and to decide what kind of life he wants. Even as a man in his seventies, I encouraged him to consider a different way than his own, that is, the way of Jesus.
I don’t know if he read it. Most likely not. If he had, all the evidence of his life and demeanor points to the conclusion that it would have had no effect, but I felt that I was allowed some amount of hope.
Looking back at it, I think the letter came out of a desire to do something, anything, but it was also an attempt to give Trump something similar to what I’d seen the vocal, conservative evangelical leaders in America give Trump that both confused and frustrated me: a defense. I thought I could find some defense of this man if I thought about him as a broken person in need of salvation, a wayward man lost in a corrupt world, someone who had never truly heard that he had another option in life. This defense — at least for my own satisfaction — was about seeing him as a real person.
With Donald Trump’s name on the ballot again in November, I think it is worth returning to the past defenses of a man who serves the purposes of many American Evangelicals but does not necessarily serve their professed way of life.
Note: “Evangelical” can be a broad term, and when I discuss “the way of life” for evangelicals, I am mostly referring to the life, teachings, and practices described by Jesus and the New Testament writers.
Robert Jeffress is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, as he was in 2016. He was an early and vocal supporter of Donald Trump that I first heard on NPR.
In the interview, Jeffress made a case for why we were seeing such strong evangelical support for Donald Trump over someone like Ted Cruz. At least in his own community, he saw a division between “the idealist and the pragmatist”.
“The idealists are the ones who are supporting Ted Cruz and would say if we could just get a strong Christian in the White House, perhaps we could return our nation to its Judeo-Christian foundation. But then there are the pragmatists who say as much as we would like to have a faith-centered candidate, perhaps our country has moved too far to the left for that to happen, and so let’s get the most conservative candidate who is electable.” — Robert Jeffress
Extending this idea that faith is not central to voting for evangelicals, Jeffress compares the 2016 election to 1980 which pitted the devout, moral Democrat Jimmy Carter to the twice-married, Hollywood Republican Ronald Reagan. Jeffress seems to be saying that despite the perception that evangelicals only care about their biblically-defined morality and the necessity of it for the greatness of America, it is not the preeminent factor in choosing a presidential candidate, especially when certain policies are at play, such as abortion. These evangelical voters are too pragmatic for that, and they should be. If the morality and greatness of America is to be restored, if the kingdom of God come to earth is to be realized here in America through the workings of the political system, that may require the services of someone who doesn’t quite meet all of the standards.
Cut to October 2016 and the surfacing of the Access Hollywood tape. What does Robert Jeffress have to say? Again, he appeals to Reagan. In the same way that evangelicals endorsed Reagan’s policies but not his previous lifestyle, they too could endorse Trump without affirming the way he has lived and acted. At the end of it all, Jeffress remarks, voters have to make a choice for themselves, and that decision does not and maybe should not be based on strict personal morality. Politics is a different game. The defense of Trump here is that it’s about the issues, the policies, the agenda, and nothing more. A faith-based voter should not lose sight of that.
Another supporter of Trump swirling around at the time was a smaller figure than Jeffress, but I don’t want to miss her. Vicki Sciolaro was a member of the Kansas Republican Party who had the opportunity to appear on CNN to discuss Trump and the Access Hollywood tape following one of the Clinton/Trump debates.
Sciolaro was not the same type of public figure that Jeffress was and still is. She was a person of the moment who did not make regular appearances in national interviews and who I do not believe deserves the same level of criticism that someone might give a person like Jeffress. I think it is important to put the viral nature of her video aside and focus on what she said and how she acted, separate from her as an individual, for the sake of analysis.
In the edited video above, she begins with a defense of Donald Trump not unlike Jeffress. She describes his words on the Access Hollywood tape as “offensive” but, ultimately, “irrelevant”. She makes points that many of us remember from that time. That the conversation took place a long time ago, the words they used would have been different if they knew they were recorded, and that men do talk like this and act in a certain way when women are not present.
After then pushing in further to say that no one is perfect, she heads to the issues, namely, the single issue of abortion. The host tries to bring Sciolaro back to the main point concerning Trump’s words and alleged actions — his morality — and she again agrees that what he said is wrong but “he’s not running to be the Pope”. Sciolaro wanted to make it about the policies of Clinton and Trump. She wasn’t concerned with his morality, at least not at the expense of the issues she really cared about. She was one of Jeffress’ pragmatists.
But here’s where the defense changes in a significant way. She evokes the power of God to use anyone, even someone like Donald Trump.
“And that’s the thing. It’s all about what God can do. God can do this. God can use this man.” — Vicki Sciolaro
The Bible contains several stories of God using people you wouldn’t expect to do amazing things, which is an oversimplification of what many of those stories are about, but Sciolaro isn’t wrong. It is about what God can do. I also believe that, no matter who is elected. My concern, though, is that to in any way present the idea that Donald Trump and his actions and his words can be defended by declaring that God can handle it and that God will do what he wants and that God will accomplish great things through the person of Donald Trump is to offer Trump something he does not deserve and to put God in a place that he certainly is not. Essentially, the defense here has moved away from “faith and morality are not as important as the issues” to “God is on the side of Trump”. Sciolaro did not say that exactly, but her sentiment represents an idea that took hold within the conservative evangelical community that sought to defend Trump. That idea being that God wants Donald Trump to be president of the United States, which is a near impenetrable defense that vilifies anyone who opposes it.
There is a serious problem with Christians defending Trump. Note that I did not say a serious problem with Christians voting for Trump. Although some might say that is just as bad, I am not saying that. Perhaps you are truly the pragmatist. Perhaps you think about the world, this country, the issues, and people differently than someone who wouldn’t vote for Trump. You have come to your conclusion, and you will receive no shame from me, as I hope I would not receive from you.
However, my conclusion is this: you can vote for Donald Trump, but you do not and should not have to defend him as a person.
This might sound like Jeffress. Put your faith and morality aside to vote for Trump to get what you really want politically. I am not saying that. I am saying you should engage deeply your faith and morality for who you vote for. Put none of it aside. Frankly, I don’t think it is possible to put it aside. Yourself in the political realm is not any different than yourself in every other area of life, and it shouldn’t be. Step confidently to the voting booth as a Christian, not as a member of some political party or the camp surrounding a political figure. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you should vote based on how you understand his teachings and how he leads you in life.
So how do you vote?
I don’t have a strong enough conviction to say that any particular faith of a follower of Jesus is going to lead that person to vote in one way, especially because our human-made political system is not really something of eternal significance. I think a deep engagement of our faith does not create a uniform thought or worldview for absolutely every issue under the sun and therefore cannot lead us all to vote for the same person. No one can tell you how to vote, but we can help each other think, encourage each other in our faith, and offer wisdom and truth in love as we strive for unity and peace.
Having said that, I believe the defense of a political figure and who they are, in this case Donald Trump, is a different issue than voting. As mentioned above, my letter to Trump was me defending Trump to myself with a view of him as a real, sinful, broken person. I do not think this has been the majority defense of Trump from his most vocal evangelical supporters.
What many of the evangelical supporters of Trump require of us is not to see him as he really is but rather to see a caricature of him that distorts the truth just enough to give other Christian voters what they need to put long-held appeals to morality aside in favor of political goals. They paint a picture of Trump that is not true or, at the very least, refuses to address the serious problems in his life, both past and present. We looked at two — Jeffress and Sciolaro — that only begin to present the glossing over of Trump’s life. You can easily research plenty of others.
The problem with defending Trump, as a Christian, is that we know he is not anything like what we expect of each other. He may do things that you think are good for this country, maybe even for your individual life because there are certain issues that are important to you, but he is not a good man. He would be for me the easiest no-vote in any church leadership position, based on the way of Jesus, based on what we know about what God cares about our lives and how we are and how we live and operate together as people. Is he actively pursuing the way of Jesus in his life? Does it look like that to you?
You say, “he’s not trying to live like Jesus and you can’t expect him to”. You are right. You say, “there’s none good, not one”. You are right. You say, “nobody’s perfect”. You are right. But the followers of Jesus Christ are called to be perfect. To be complete and whole as God intended for us. We are called to submit to the work of the Holy Spirit, to experience the formation of our souls and hearts and minds into the way of Jesus, living like him in every way. That is reality for a Christian. We believe every aspect of our lives is meaningful, and that Jesus shows us the best way to live in it all. So when you defend the character, behavior, and words of Donald Trump as something other than what they are, which is often counter to the way of Jesus, you diminish what we understand about the life Jesus calls us to.
To defend Trump as a person requires a distortion of reality, and it is a defense that will always fail. If it makes sense to you to vote for Donald Trump, do so without excusing him for his blatantly un-Christlike life. The same can be said for anyone voting for any political figure of any kind.
