It is a most disturbing conundrum.
In the 2020 Presidential election, 85 percent of white, evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump. They cheered his MAGA perspective on America, and participated – and in many cases promoted – the idolatrous “Trumpism” which surrounded, and continues to surround, him.
In regard to having their support, it did not matter to white, evangelical Christians that Donald Trump is an amoral, unrepentant, and thoroughly unfit person to hold elected office. It did not matter that Trump’s personal life has been a constant overturning of everything evangelical Christians teach. Evangelical leaders – in spite of revealed truth about Trump – gave Trump “a pass” (who gave them such authority?) on personal behavior and formed one of the largest blocks of his key supporters.
If this were not troublesome enough, many political prognosticators are claiming that in 2024 Trump’s support among evangelicals will be the same or even stronger.
How is this possible? How is this disconnect between stated values, beliefs, and advocated practices by evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican Party to be understood?
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One of her areas of interest and research is the history of the close relationship between Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party.
A scrupulously researched description of that relationship can be found in Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. I have found her book to be so very helpful in getting at least some perspective on Evangelical Christian support for Trump. I have also found insight into what is even more confounding. Namely, the culture war being waged and won by white evangelicals supporting MAGA Republicans across our country today.
Consider this historical perspective on the presidential election that took place 50 years ago.
Kobes Du Mez reports that in 1972 there was the same overwhelming white, evangelical support for the re-election of Republican Richard Nixon as there was in 2020 for Donald Trump. She writes:
Nixon won re-election handily, capturing 84 percent of the evangelical vote. The alliance between the Republican Party and evangelical Christians seemed secure. It would later be revealed that Explo ‘72 (Campus Crusade for Christ’s national jamboree targeted to and attended by 80,000 young evangelicals from all over the nation in Dallas’ Cotton Bowl) took place during the week of the Watergate break-in. When news of the scandal broke and the extent of Nixon’s corruption was revealed, (Billy) Graham came to regret his unabashed foray into partisan politics.
In this historical perspective it is obvious that the support level among white evangelicals for Republican Presidents is not new. But this perspective also reveals a most troubling change in regard to our current evangelical Christian support for the Republican Party and its national candidates and office holders. Today, the capacity for “regret” such as the late Billy Graham expressed all those years ago, seems to be completely buried by a theological self-righteousness.
Billy Graham’s “regret” finds no parallel in leaders of white, evangelical Christians today. It would be more than unthinkable for Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son), for instance, to “regret” support for Trump in light of Trump’s disregard for everything from election law to The Ten Commandments. And indeed, here-in lies one of the great dilemmas of our modern times.
Evangelicals on the present Christian right seem to have lost the capacity for feeling and expressing regret for views and support held and voiced even when facts and history reveal those views and support to have been misplaced and wrong. Rather than regret, the current position among evangelical leaders is to claim alternate facts, deny truth, and claim to be on God’s true path. This idolatrous theological self-righteousness is destroying our country and, as it always has done, corrupting what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
There is no humility in espousing political views on social behavior or advocating a narrow perspective on what loving relationships are to look like or defining relationships which they are certain God condemns.
So, white, evangelical, religious arrogance in Republican office holders who have passed the litmus test of “correct” doctrinal and social views, are putting forward laws to restrict everything from the bedroom, to the school room, to the obstetrician exam room, to the ability to find room in this country.
If this were not outrageously troublesome enough, is it not also troubling that the school board rooms and election board rooms across the nation are being filled with evangelical zealots who look in the mirror only to see a reflection confirming their own self-righteousness beaming back at them? NO REGRETS.
All of his adult life Jesus taught by his example that religious restriction is a very dangerous thing. Jesus was a grace-filled force against those who claimed to be able not only to know God, but also – as a consequence of that believed exclusive knowledge – entitled and empowered to legislate what God wants all people to think, how to love, and who to love. Such self-righteousness by religious zealots then elicited from Jesus his strongest rebukes.
Should we not call out the same type of religious arrogance today?
The current white, evangelical, culture war waging, ‘no regret’ theological and political perspective today is nothing more than ancient pharisaism in modern dress. Jesus showed us – not who – but how God loves…UNCONDITIONALLY. Jesus called upon followers to model that unconditional manner of loving one another. There is no way to give any one or any political party a pass on that way of living life.
To do otherwise will result in consequence and loss we will all regret.