Are the dominant voices of white evangelical Christianity in the United States destined to be angry and defensive? Is President Trump making sure they stay that way?
I found myself asking these questions after I read my Post colleague Elizabeth Bruenig’s revealing and deeply reported essay about her journey to Texas to probe why evangelicals have been so loyal to Trump and are likely to remain so.
Hers was a venture in sympathetic understanding and empathetic listening. What she heard was a great desire to push back against liberals, to defend a world that sees itself under siege and to embrace Trump — not as a particularly good man but as a fighter against all of the things and people and causes that they cannot abide. Even more, they believe liberals and secularists are utterly hostile to the culture they have built and the worldview they embrace.
“I think conservatives for decades have felt bullied by the left, and the default response was to roll over and take it,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist church and one of the very earliest and most vocal leaders of Trump’s evangelical bloc.I confess I don’t really see the “roll over” part. Conservative politicians, Fox News commentators and talk-radio hosts have engaged in plenty of bullying of their own. But I have no doubt that Jeffress was telling the truth about how he and like-minded folks feel.
This means that the nastiness that makes Trump so odious to many of us comes off to his evangelical Christian supporters (even when it makes them uneasy) as a hallowed form of militancy against what one evangelical whom Bruenig interviewed called “a den of vipers” engaged in what another called “spiritual warfare.”
Bruenig summarized the approach to politics she kept running into as “focused on achieving protective accommodations against a broader, more liberal national culture.” She wondered whether conservative evangelical Christians will “continue to favor the rise of figures such as Trump, who are willing to dispense with any hint of personal Christian virtue while promising to pause the decline of evangelical fortunes — whatever it takes.”What struck me in reading Bruenig’s chronicle is that the undoubtedly serious faith of those she encountered was less central to their embrace of Trump than a tribal feeling of beleaguerment — remember: Defending a culture is not the same as standing up for beliefs about God. Their deeply conservative views are not far removed from those of non-evangelical conservatives.
Above all, there was a Republican partisanship that has been around for a long time. In some cases, it goes back to 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson’s embrace of civil rights incited many white Southerners, including evangelicals, to bolt the Democratic Party. In other cases, Republican loyalties were cemented by Ronald Reagan in 1980.
We keep coming back to Trump’s white evangelical base because it seems so strange that religious people with strong moral convictions could embrace someone whose behavior violates so many of the norms they uphold. But party is a big deal these days, and there was nothing extraordinary about Trump’s share of the white evangelical vote. He won what Republican presidential candidates typically win. His 80 percentamong white evangelicals in 2016 was hardly a surge from Mitt Romney’s 78 percent in 2012.In the end, party triumphed over any qualms evangelicals may have felt about the “Access Hollywood” candidate. Long-standing conservative desires (for sympathetic Supreme Court justices) and inclinations (a deep dislike of Hillary Clinton) reinforced what partisanship recommended.
I get why those with strongly held traditional religious views feel hostility from centers of intellectual life and the arts. More secular liberals should consider Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff’s suggestion in “Religion in the University” that religious voices be welcomed at institutions of higher learning in much the same way the once-excluded perspectives of feminists and African Americans are now welcomed. One of the academy’s purposes is to bring those with different backgrounds and experiences into reasoned dialogue. Religious people must be part of that conversation.
But reasoned dialogue is far removed from what’s happening in our politics now, and the irony is that the Trumpification of the evangelicals will only widen the gaps they mourn between themselves and other parts of our society. In her recent book “America’s Religious Wars: The Embattled Heart of Our Public Life ,” Kathleen M. Sands, a University of Hawaii professor, writes of a long-standing conflict between “anti-modernist religion and anti-religious modernism.” Trump has every interest in aggravating and weaponizing mistrust that is already there. And judging from Bruenig’s account, he’s succeeding brilliantly.
Last Night’s Court Evangelical Tweetstorm
1/More #courtevangelicalism w/ Tim Wildmon & Richard Land on the Todd Starnes Show. Wildmon is head of the American Family Association– a long time Xtian Right organization. Land is the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and former SBC leader. https://radio.foxnews.com/2019/05/29/the-todd-starnes-show-may-29th-2019/
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
2/They are on Starnes’s show to talk about Franklin Graham’s June 2 call for prayer on behalf of Donald Trump. https://t.co/JhreR2mrh6
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
3/ Signers of Graham’s call for prayer include #courtevangelicals Robert Jeffress, Michelle Bachmann, David Barton, Gary Bauer, Mike Bickle, Tim Clinton, Kenneth & Gloria Copeland, James Dobson, Mike Evans, Jerry Falwell Jr, Jentezen Franklin, Jim Garlow, Jack Graham, John Hagee,
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
4/ Mike Huckabee, Harry Jackson, Tony Perkins Cindy Jacobs, Greg Laurie, Eric Metaxas, James Robison, Darrell Scott, Steve Strang, Lance Wallnau, and Paula White. In this interview w/Perkins, Graham notes that other evangelicals refused to participate: https://t.co/duqFFd5VtD
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
5/ Notice some of the names that ARE NOT on this list of supporters: Beth Moore, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, Joni Eareckson, Karen Swallow Prior, Anne Graham Lotz, Max Lucado, Rick Warren, Michael Gerson, John Piper, Al Mohler, John MacArthur, Tony Evans, TD Jakes, Andy Crouch
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
6/ Philip Yancey, the presidents of @CCCU Schools (such as Wheaton, Messiah, Calvin, or Westmont), the presidents of leading evangelical seminaries (such as Trinity, Gordon-Conwell, Southern Baptist, Fuller), and the leadership of the National Association of Evangelicals.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
7/ Graham’s call for prayer reveals the ever-growing divide in American #evangelicalism. The Wildmon/Land interview with Starnes is revealing in the way it captures the nature of this divide. These #courtevangelicalsengage in all kinds of fear-mongering.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
8/ Both Wildmon and Land (as well as Franklin Graham) believe that the criticism of Trump is a form of spiritual warfare. In other words, Trump is the anointed one. The forces of evil (“principalities and powers”) are threatening God’s will. We should obey authority and
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
9/ anyone who offers criticism–moral, Christian, or otherwise–of this POTUS is opposing the man God has picked to lead the country. In other words, to oppose Trump is sin. Of course, by this standard, Wildmon and Land would have been against the American Revolution.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
10/ They would have thought George III was God’s anointed and would pray for him against all those revolutionary patriots who wanted to remove him from his God-given place of authority. To take this even further, Land & Wildmon would have to believe that the patriots were forces
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
11. of evil–Satanic “principalities & powers” out to undermine the British Empire. Yes, let’s pray for our president, whoever it is. Christians are called to do this. But Graham is using prayer here as a political weapon. This is not a Christian view of prayer for our leaders.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
12/ But if one believes that Trump is indeed God’s anointed, then it makes perfect sense that the court evangelicals will pray that he might overcome his political and spiritual (they are one in the same) enemies.
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
13/ Land has long been the master of fear-mongering. In this interview with Starnes he suggests that the June 2 prayer for Trump will go a long way toward undermining the “deep state” that’s out to impeach the president. This reminds me of the section of my book *Believe Me*
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019
14/ where I wrote about the evangelical fear of the Illuminati in the 1790s. Land then tries to divert attention away from the call for impeachment by talking about how Bill Barr will uncover this so-called “deep state” and when he does it will be
— John Fea (@JohnFea1) May 30, 2019