White evangelicals fear the future and yearn for the past. Of course Trump is their hero.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump is about to name his second conservative Supreme Court justice now that Anthony Kennedy is retiring. Conservative evangelicals are celebrating. They have been waiting, to quote the Old Testament book of Esther, “for a time such as this.”
For the last year I have been thinking deeply about why so many of my fellow evangelical Christians support Donald Trump.
I have wondered why they backed his zero-tolerance immigration plan that separated families at the border. I have tried to make sense of why some of them give him a “mulligan” (to use Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’ now famous phrase) for his alleged adulterous affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Why did so many evangelicals remain silent, or offer tepid and qualified responses, when Trump equated white supremacists and their opponents in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer?
What kind of power does Trump hold over men and women who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ? Evangelical support for Trump goes much deeper than simply a few Supreme Court justices.
Steve Helber, AP
'If this is evangelicalism — I am out'
Like most Americans on Nov. 8, 2016, I sat in front of my television to watch election returns, fully expecting that Hillary Clinton would be declared the country’s first female president. When this did not happen, I was saddened and angry. But my emotions were less about the new president-elect and more about the way my fellow evangelicals were using their social media feeds to praise God for Donald Trump’s victory.
I sent off a quick tweet: “If this is evangelicalism — I am out.”
Five days later, I could barely muster the will to attend services at my central Pennsylvania evangelical megachurch. As I stood singing Christian worship songs, I looked around the room and realized that there was a strong possibility, if the reports and polls were correct, that eight out of every 10 people in that sanctuary — my brothers and sisters in my community of faith — had voted for Trump.
I eventually calmed down and decided that, at least for now, I would still use the word “evangelical” to describe my religious faith. The word best captures my belief in the “good news” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have experienced the life-transforming message of this Gospel and I have seen its power in the lives of others.
My raw emotions gave way to my training as a historian and my study of American religion. My distress about Trump’s election did not wane, but I should have seen this coming. Trump’s win was just the latest manifestation of a long-standing evangelical approach to politics.
Ever since World War II, white evangelicals in the United States have waged a desperate and largely failing war against thickening walls of separation between church and state, the removal of Christianity from public schools, the growing ethnic and religious diversity of the country, the intrusion of the federal government into their everyday lives (especially as it pertains to desegregation and civil rights), and legalized abortion.
In the 1980s, Jerry Falwell Sr. and other conservative evangelicals concerned about this moral drift devised a political playbook to win back the culture and restore America to its supposedly Christian origins. It is a playbook that has too often led its followers toward nativism, xenophobia, racism, and intolerance. It is a playbook that divides rather than unites.
The social and cultural changes of the Obama administration — particularly regarding human sexuality — sent conservative evangelicals into a state of panic. They saw Donald Trump as the GOP candidate best suited to protect them from the forces working to undermine the values of the world they once knew.
But these anxieties extend even deeper into the American past. They are the logical result of 300 years — from the Puritans to the American Revolution, and from nativism to fundamentalism — of evangelical fears about the direction in which their “Christian nation” was moving.
The politics of fear inevitably results in a quest for power. Clergymen and religious leaders have, at least since Billy Graham, regularly visited the White House to advise the president. Like members of the king's court during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, who sought influence and worldly approval by flattering the monarch rather than prophetically speaking truth to power, Trump’s “court evangelicals” boast about their “unprecedented access” to the president and exalt him for his faith-friendly policies.
Evangelical support for Donald Trump is also rooted in nostalgia for a bygone Christian golden age. Instead of doing the hard work necessary for engaging a more diverse society with the claims of Christian orthodoxy, evangelicals are intellectually lazy, preferring to respond to cultural change by trying to reclaim a world that is rapidly disappearing and has little chance of ever coming back.
Trump is partial to dark historical moments
This backward-looking approach to politics can be seen no more clearly than in the evangelicals’ embrace of Trump’s campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again.” This mantra is, at its core, a historical one: it assumes that there was a moment in the American past that was indeed “great.”
Of course, national “greatness” is often in the eye of the beholder. A bygone era that may have been great for one group of people may have been oppressive for others. Sadly, whenever Trump turns to the past, he usually alludes to some of the nation’s darkest moments. He looks back fondly on those times in American life when our leaders privileged divisiveness over the common good and discrimination over the celebration of diversity grounded in human dignity.
When Trump speaks to his followers in the mass rallies that have now become a fixture of his populist brand, he loves to use the phrase “believe me.” The Internet is filled with video montages of Trump using this signature catch phrase even more frequently than “make America great again.”
“Believe me, folks, we’re building the wall, believe me, believe me, we’re building the wall.”
“I love women. Believe me, I love women. I love women. And you know what else, I have great respect for women, believe me.”
“So let me say this right up front. A Trump administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended — like you’ve never seen before. Believe me.”
Why do so many evangelicals believe in Donald Trump? Because they privilege fear over hope, power over humility, and nostalgia over history.
John Fea, professor of American History and chairman of the Department of History at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa., is the author of the new book "Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump." Follow him on Twitter: @JohnFea1
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