On one level, I understand the support evangelical Christians extend to Donald Trump. Many of the explanations provided to Washington Post reporter Julie Zauzmer appear legitimate so long as I’m willing to grant legitimacy to opinions and beliefs that strike me as reactionary and anti-scientific. I get that some people who see marriage as a sacred institution have trouble accepting same-sex marriage and don’t want to see the White House lit up in rainbow colors. I can empathize with business owners who want to be able to deny service to anyone for any reason. I understand that people want to protect their ability to impart their values to their children without government interference or widespread social or political condemnation. I can see why they saw that Obama administration as a threat and why they see Trump as a defender. But I am not sure that these things really get to the heart of Trump’s standing with evangelicals.
Trump ran stronger with conservative Christians than either John McCain or Mitt Romney, and I can see a partial explanation for that. McCain famously denounced the Christian Right back in 2000 after his failed primary bid for president. Romney comes from a rival proselytizing faith. Trump isn’t an evangelical so he’s not a true member of the team, but at least he’s not an enemy or a competitor. Yet, why did he do better than George W. Bush who actually was a member of the team?
Trump is transparently a fraud, and this very much includes his ludicrous professions of personal faith. His relationship with evangelicals in completely cynical and transactional and not many right-wing Christians are unaware of the true nature of this arrangement. They used to tell us it was important to them that Dubya restored dignity to the office of the presidency, but although they continually profess personal discomfort with Trump’s personal morals and much of his behavior, they say they’ll take the bad in order to get the good.
What I suspect is that Trump’s popularity with the Christian Right is actually tied to his behavior, and his policies are comparatively less important.
Consider that Barack and Michelle Obama are model church-going Christian parents who appear to have a happy monogamous relationship. They’re generally honest, and spectacularly honest for a political family. The values they emphasize are consistent with biblical injunctions against theft and dishonesty, as well as biblical exhortations toward charity and care for the poor. They want us to do unto others and we would have them do unto us. But if these types of considerations are important to evangelicals, they appear to be negotiable when it comes to Trump.
If they like Trump, as some say, because he’s reducing the number of abortions in the country, it’s hard to see how his policies on reproductive freedom are different from any other Republican presidential candidate of recent vintage. The same is true for the kinds of judges he is appointing. I think what distinguishes Trump and makes him an evangelical champion is actually his habit of insulting and demeaning his enemies, because Trump’s enemies are frequently the same people who evangelicals see as the enemy. In other words, he’s popular precisely because he’s a bully:
Interviews with 50 evangelical Christians in three battleground states — Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — help explain why. In conversation, evangelical voters paint the portrait of the Trump they see: a president who acts like a bully but is fighting for them. A president who sees America like they do, a menacing place where white Christians feel mocked and threatened for their beliefs. A president who’s against abortion and gay rights and who has the economy humming to boot.
“You’ve just got to accept the bad with the good,” [Defense Department employee Rickey] Halbert said.
I don’t need to have any personal respect for some of their beliefs to accept that many “white Christians feel mocked and threatened” for holding them. I can understand why they enjoy having the world’s most powerful man mock and threaten right back at those they fear and resent. What I find harder to accept is that they’ll take this help when it comes tied to a man whose entire life has mocked and disrespected the values of the Christian faith.
I would think that biblical literalists would be particularly unforgiving of Trump’s disrespect for the sanctity of marriage. They would not approve of the way that he defrauds vulnerable people out of their money by offering bogus services or refusing to honor contracts with small businessmen. They might even object to the way he seeks to deny asylum to those in need. When it comes to the Ten Commandments, Trump is in comical violation, as all he does is covet and build idols and bear false witness and commit adultery. He takes the Lord’s name in vain quite a bit, too.
It’s not perplexing to me that Christians have a multitude of beliefs that don’t all come together as a uniform and internally logical system. But I do notice what is negotiable and what is not. With evangelicals, not much is supposed to be negotiable, but it turns out that the truth is almost the complete opposite. You can be the worst, most disrespectful person towards the actual tenets of the faith so long as you insult and belittle the people who don’t share the faith.
I’m not one to say what Christians should and should not believe or how they should feel, but we pretty much teach our children not to behave like Trump. We don’t need our leaders and representatives to be saints, but if we’re saying we’re concerned about other people’s personal morals, a good place to start is with having a leader who exemplifies what we want to impart to our children: be honest, be kind, be humble, help those in need, set a good example. The Obamas would be popular with evangelicals if these were the things that were most important to them. Instead, their number one priority is having someone willing to lie and be mean working on their behalf.
I have a much easier time respecting the Christian Right’s religious views than their political decisions, so I guess they’ll love it if the president singles me out for mockery.
I cannot imagine that _any_ large group of voters, right or left (except a few Vulcans), want anything more than a president who fights for them, a president who sees America like they do, as a menacing place where they are threatened, a president who bullies the powerful interests who represent those threats. We want that even more than we want policy victories! Incredibly, we want that more than detailed funding proposals for M4A or endless scolds about what’s not worth fighting for.
In many ways, I think the right is more mature about this shit. Why should they care about Trump’s personal life or moral grotesquery, any more than they’d care about heart surgeon’s personal life? They care about the results. And sure, they lie about their concern for Bush, or Clinton, or Obama’s personal lives–but they lie for the same reason. Because they care about the results. They understand that this is a team sport–or possibly an ethnic conflict–that is increasingly winner-take-all. They’re deadly serious and we’re playing pattycake.
I disagree. Most Democrats I know don’t want leadership that rains fire down on their political enemies. Singling out groups or segments of the population for harm, is not what Democrats i’m around want. They do want someone to promote their interests, however. I’ve noticed that Liberals are far more interested in listening to what Conservatives have to say, then Conservatives are to return the favor.
Everyone wants to win. Only the right has decided to win by any means necessary. Thats not being “more mature” to me.
It’s true that they want someone who fights on their behalf and they’re fine with a transactional arrangement, but the racism overlapping with who “white evangelicals” are and their history as a “church” identification can’t be ignored in this. There was one time during the Republican race for the nomination that I thought Trump might be in danger of losing support and that’s when he defended Planned Parenthood. However, nothing happened. I view that as the clearest evidence abortion doesn’t matter, or the transactional nature isn’t so much transactional as they like the whole package rather than bits and pieces. Trump dominating the South Carolina primary should drive this point home. I’m sure Tarheel Dem would have lots to say on this if he was still around. White evangelicals are about the “white” part of their hierarchical understanding in the world. They could have had Ted Cruz for the same deal, he’s even a true believer and I think as much of a demo figure as Trump, but the racism wasn’t at the core argument even if it was still part of the package.
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There is also the fact that these people are not really Christians in any traditional sense. They are adherents of prosperity theology, which is a new religion of power, control, and dominance. In their religion, Trump is what the person chosen by God looks like. They could care less about the Sermon on the Mount, or the classical Christian values exemplified by the Obamas.
You’re hard pressed to call them Christians in any sense, considering how far from Biblical scripture and teaching they are. Many of those who wallow in the prosperity gospel, an abomination if ever there was one, believe in two key tenets of it, the rapture and speaking in tongues, neither of which have any support in the Bible, unless you twist the truth of God’s word to fit it.
On second thought, maybe that’s why they like Trump, because he’s rich and therefore prosperous and that to them is a sign he is a man of God.
But, then there’s the poor the Bible speaks of…
Mammonism isn’t new.
Mammon is wealth worship. Worshiping wealth itself, and those blessed by Mammon with wealth.
Southern Evangelicals worship Mammon dressed up as Jesus Christ.
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This just validates what I have long observed regarding these “evangelicals,” that based on scripture, they are not Christians, that “white evangelical” is a tribal marker for them, and some may not even realize it because they lack familiarity and even a cursory knowledge with the very doctrine they claim to profess.
Jesus is quoted many times in the Bible, regarding Christians, that you will be mocked and hated even for your beliefs. He also said it is not up to Christians to judge others who may not believe, nor should they be mocked in return. For these pastors to cherish having a crude bully who, if judgement by their works is the standard by which someone is determined to be a “man of God” smites and mocks their enemies, and justify it that way time and again, then they are not in alignment with God’s word. That’s putting it mildly.
The Bible is full of verses that run counter to literally everything these people not only believe but revel in. Take immigration:
Leviticus 19:34 KJV — But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Then there’s the second witness on the same point:
Exodus 23:9 KJV — Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
That second verse is extremely relevant, since there is no one here other than Native Americans who didn’t come from someplace else. These white evangelicals claim ancestry from other countries, sometimes even talking about their ancestors having come here as immigrants. They were fleeing oppression in some form to come here, and know what its like for those coming to the southern border seeking asylum for the same reasons. That they want to pull the ladder up for others, solely because they are non-white, doesn’t excuse or in any way mitigate their clear violation of the scripture that they claim guides their “faith.”
I read the other day that Trump, pissed at the video of the 11 year old girl, and other images of what he and Miller have wrought at the border, demanded that Pontius Pence find scripture that supports what they’re doing. He’ll be waiting in vain because its just not there, although another feature of these people is misinterpreting or outright lying about what the scriptures say in order to deceive. An honest man, let alone a real Christian, would tell Trump the truth.
What is a “true Christian”, really? Anyone across the entire spectrum of Christian belief will cite scripture to support their own particular flavor of Christianity. And by that particular, cherry picked “authority” they will claim the sanction of their God for whatever it is they believe they have been called to proclaim, enforce, and proselytize on the sinful masses. Sure, we have what is considered the traditional, often quieter side of Christianity in this country, which has dominated much of the religious sphere for a couple of centuries, but has now largely been pushed from the stage by the noisy fundamentalist stripe that has taken over the bully pulpit of the Christian faith, and which seems to be face of the opportunistic synthesis between religion and government that we are dealing with today, which has its roots in power and domination.
I know a whole lot of very good people who proudly wear the label of Christian. I also know some people whose views and opinions are repulsive to me, who also proudly wear the label of Christian, and feel as justified as anyone else to claim to be the correct iteration of their faith. This unresolvable conflict is a significant reason I walked away from religion a long time ago. We were simply “humans” long before we decided to invent gods to help us understand the mysterious ways of nature, to salve our fears about all the other unknowns our species encoutered in the wild, and to use as one of the first tools to create “The Other”. And thousand of years later we are still using it as a club to bully, intimidate, and to crush the perceived “Other”.
Ultimately, if a version of any religion does not put first and foremost the comfort, support, and welfare of their fellow sentient beings, then it’s really not something I would consider to be of any God or Gods with which I would wish to associate myself.
One of the few benefits of the trump ….. occupying the White House at the moment (i still refuse to call him the “P” word) is the destruction of the moral authority and power of the evangelicals. We all knew they were full of shit. Carlin talked about it all of the time. But to have them surrender their “moral superiority” so easily has been a delight.
A lot of bad stuff happened under the cover of the “Moral Majority” and that’s over now. This is not a minor thing. They’ll never get that position back. I remember many a time in the 90s concepts of, and people on, the left and left of center being thrown under the bus BY DEMOCRATS to cater to those fake bastards.
That was power.
And they gave it all away.
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