White Evangelicals in Support of Trump: Conflict Brewing in the Household of Zion

 White Evangelicals in Support of Trump: Conflict Brewing in the Household of Zion

My thanks to the East Hartford Gazette editor for publishing Steve Klinger’s excellent editorial, “If only right-minded Republicans would come clean” (03-05). Klinger, a community journalist from New Mexico, nailed it in linking Trump’s base to two major sources.  The one is the religious right which has “turned a blind eye to Trump’s vulgarity, immorality and blatantly un-Christian behavior” based on the dubious claim that our leader-in-chief “was chosen by God” to lead this nation at this particular time.  As proponents of this specious view argue, Trump is a later day Cyrus (see Isaiah 45:1-13) called to liberate the U.S. from the many sources of godless oppression. The other is the ever compliant “GOP,” particularly “its donors and elected leaders,” many of whom dislike a great deal of the president’s behavior and perpetually foul mouth, but are intimidated by his dominance over the Party to which they can offer only abject obeisance.  Previously, I’ve discussed the political sources of Trump’s support.  Here I will concentrate on the religious.

Klinger is on target in identifying the vast majority of white evangelicals as loyal to Trump.   Many polls were taken that identified the 81% of white evangelicals who voted in the last presidential campaign that supported Trump, which continues largely unabated.  Nonetheless, a firestorm of no minor proportion erupted when the Evangelical flagship magazine, Christianity Today, published an editorial in December, titled, “Trump Should be Removed from Office.”   While accepting the traditional evangelical trope that Trump’s critics had it out for him from day one, the editorial writer, Mark Galli, could not ignore the plain fact that “the president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” 

In making his case, Galli argued that Trump’s transgression “is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”  As he warned, continued support of the Trump presidency “will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion,” and more importantly, on the world’s understanding of the gospel” (CT 12-19-19).

The editorial raised the ire of the religious right among the president’s strongest evangelical supporters such as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and James Dobson, who doubled down in their contention that Trump was standing up for Christian values like no previous president.  These stalwarts contend that attacks on the president are largely coming from the secular left.  These enemies of the president have the express intent of destroying traditional moral values which are essential in making America great again as a nation uniquely called by God to serve as a beacon of light for the world.  The result is that “the left,” influenced by sources that are ultimately satanic, intentionally seeks to block Christian values from gaining influence in the public square.  Meanwhile, the flagship magazine for the Protestant mainline, the Christian Century and the magazine of record for progressive Christians, Sojourners, supports a more avowedly anti-Trump position on a wide range of policy issues in speaking up for the poor and oppressed (Matthew 25: 31-46) as well as what they interpret as the president’s profoundly impaired narcissistic character that has had a toxic impact on this nation’s public life. 

For a variety of largely understandable reasons, the pulpit ministry across the theological spectrum has not weighed in on addressing the contentious theologically related political problems associated with the many issues surrounding the Trump presidency. This is so among congregations who link core Christian values with the issues of pro-life, religious freedom, and strong support for the state of Israel as well as those concerned about the many social and moral issues related to responding with agape love toward the sick, the poor, and persecuted. 

Still, there is much brewing below the surface of routine congregational life where issues related to cultural and political identity often carry a great deal more of, at least, immediate emotional resonance than traditional issues of the “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Given the sharp polarities between the Christian right and left, as symbolically enacted out in the Trump presidency, there is a powerful conflict brewing in the household of Zion that can be ignored only at the peril of our solemn assemblies. 

How this issue should be addressed is a crucial matter in its own right to which I encourage the clerical and religious leaders of East Hartford to weigh in on.  To ignore this critical matter is to fail to address what the theologian, Paul Tillich, identifies as one of the major “ultimate concerns” of our times; one that requires of our public speech great discernment as well as forthright honesty.  

2020


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