The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump
by John Fea, 2018
Excellent book by an Evangelical who is an American history professor and chair of the history department at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He dedicates the book, “To the 19 percent.” He seeks to explain how 81% of evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump. He starts with the politics of fear: First, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio played the politics of fear in their campaigns, and it worked so well, Donald Trump was seen as the only one who was strong enough to save them from the fear of rapist, drug-dealing illegal immigrants; Muslims coming to murder us; evil Liberals taking over our country.
Regarding fear, he quotes Old and New Testament verses in which we are told to “fear not:” Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Also other Psalms, 1 John, Luke, Hebrews: “…The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?” He writes: “What might these passages mean for American evangelicals who have turned to political strongmen to save them from the anxieties of this world?”
Here’s a wonderful quote from his pastor as regards fear:
We are operating more out of fear than out of trust in God. We are afraid, and there is no good result from engaging the world from a place of fear. . . . It causes us to trust in the wrong people and the wrong things to protect us. I see it in us. Wea are turning to the wrong saviors. We think our salvation lies somewhere where it does not….
from page 45 in the chapter called ‘The Playbook’
Another good quote:
…Ralph Reed, who in 1998 said, “Character matters, and the American people are hungry for that message,” quickly dismissed Trump’s words about grabbing women’s genitals and redirected the conversation to corruption in the Hillary Clinton campaign. Franklin Graham responded in a similar fashion, condemning Trump’s words and then turning attention to the “godless, progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” The playbook was clear on this point: character simply didn’t matter as much as the opportunity to seize a seat on the Supreme Court.
There is very little that Donald trump says or does that would exemplify Christian character, but Trump’s actions and behavior also fail to demonstrate the basic character traits that we have come to expect from any president of the republic, regardless of personal faith commitment.
from page 68 in the chapter entitled ‘The Playbook’
This regarding Hillary Clinton:
Many of these values voters had been so deeply influenced by the political playbook of the Christian Right that they were incapable of seeing Hillary Clinton, a devout mainline Methodist, as anything but the enemy. Fear of a Clinton victory blinded them to the fact that, not only did she have far more experience than Trump did, she also championed a position on paid leave that would have strengthened families, had a humane immigration policy, and defended the rights of women, children, the poor, and people of color. Many Christians see plenty of biblical themes at work in her positions, but they are not the themes long championed by the Religious Right. History–and the playbook–held; she was the enemy to be defeated.
from page 71
This in the chapter, ‘A Short History of Evangelical Fear’ discussing slave-holding, Southern evangelicals:
Southern evangelicals also feared the mixing of the races (even though the races mere mixed mainly because of the long history of masters raping slaves).
In the chapter called, ‘The Court Evangelicals,’ he describes the main evangelicals that cling to Trump: Paula White, Franklin Graham, Wayne T. Jackson, Robert Jeffress, Richard Land, Gary Bauer, James Dobson. They “learned from the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others that politics is the best way of “reclaiming” the country for Christ.”
The court evangelicals come from three primary streams of American evangelicalism: The Christian Right, the followers of what has become to be known as the “prosperity gospel,” and the Independent Network Charismatics (INC).
Robert Jeffress is particularly hypocritical when it comes to Trump because only a short time ago he wrote a book called Twilights’ Last Gleaming: How America’s Last Days Can Be Your Best Days, in which he states America cannot be saved by electing the right candidates and we should spend more time reading our Bibles rather than watching cable news. He now appears on Fox News regularly and invited Sean Hannity to speak to his Dallas congregation.
I like this sentence with regard to Robert Jeffress lamenting the decline in new converts and attributing it to weak church members who are afraid to open their mouths about the gospel: “But the possibility that the decline in baptisms is related to the fact that most Americans now associate the gospel with partisan politics does not appear to have even crossed his mind.”
“The court evangelicals have decided that what Donald Trump can give them is more valuable than the damage that their Christian witness will suffer because of their association with the president. So what do the court evangelicals want from Donald Trump? It is difficult to find a specific matter of public policy where Donald Trump and the court evangelicals disagree, but much of their support for this president focuses on three things: abortion, religious liberty, and Israel.”
I agree with his statement on abortion on page 139:
The taking of a human life in the womb via the practice of abortion is a horrific practice. I believe Christians should be working hard to reduce the number of abortions that take place in the United States–even working to eliminate the practice entirely….Conservative evangelicals and other pro-life advocates spend billions of dollars to get the right candidates elected because they believe that the Supreme Court is the only way to solve the problem of abortion in our society. In 2016, this belief led them straight into the arms of Donald Trump. But what if all the money to support political candidates were to be used in other ways?
from page 139 in the chapter called ‘The Court Evangelicals’
Here is information on Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson in the 1980s Moral Majority times:
But in 1999, Dobson and Thomas reflected soberly on their experience with Falwell and the Moral Majority in their book Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? They concluded that the answer to the subtitle’s question was a definitive “no.” Neither Dobson nor Thomas left evangelicalism or ceased their commitment to conservative causes; but they were forced to admit that the political strategy they helped to forge in the 1980s had failed. Despite their efforts, Roe v. Wade had not been overturned…
from page 148
Here is a good line about the nostalgia that people long for in the chapter called Make America Great Again:
“A politician who claims to have the power to take people back to a time when America was great stands a good chance of winning the votes of fearful men and women. In the end, the practice of nostalgia is inherently selfish because it focuses on our own experience of the past and not on the experience of others.”
Here is important learning material for me regarding America and it being a “Christian Nation:”
…For many conservative evangelicals, the past is only useful when it is carefully packaged to appeal to the fear and nostalgia of evangelicals worried about the moral collapse of their nation and the possibility that God might turn his back on America. Social decline is only possible when understood in relation to a previous utopia. America can only be made great again if it was great at some point in history.
While the Barton view of American history is both inaccurate and conducive to the kind of Christian political agenda that led evangelicals to vote for Trump; it is also problematic in a theological sense. The belief that the United States is a Christian nation is a form of idolatry. First, it is worth remembering that God performs his redemptive work through individuals, not nations. If this is true, then a Christian nation is impossible. As political theorist Glenn Tinder puts it: “Society cannot be formed in accordance with sacred norms . . . as some Christians have desired, and if the attempt to do so is made, the result will be less a sacralization of society than a degradation of the sacred.” The United States is not the kingdom of God, and it never will be.
from page 163 in the chapter called ‘Make America Great Again’
In the “Conclusion” chapter, he gives advice on what Christians should do in light of Trump being elected. We should pattern our behavior after the non-violent Civil Rights protesters such as Martin Luther King, Jr: “Most of all, though, the civil rights movement was shaped by people of humble means who lived ordinary lives in ordinary neighborhoods. Many of them never expected to step onto a national stage or receive credit for leading the greatest social movement in American history. These ordinary men and women fought injustice wherever God had placed them. And they offer us a beautiful illustration of what James Davison Hunter has called “faithful presence”…
Here are the last few powerful paragraphs:
Where does all of this reflection leave us? How might hope, humility, and history inform the way we white American evangelicals think about politics and other forms of public engagement? I hope that what I have written here might spur conversations and initiatives born out of possible answers to this question. Evangelicals can do better than Donald Trump. His campaign and presidency have drawn on a troubling pattern of American evangelicalism that is willing to yield to old habits grounded in fear, nostalgia, and the search for power. Too many of its leaders (and their followers) have traded their Christian witness for a mess of political pottage and a few federal judges. It should not surprise us that people are leaving evangelicalism or no longer associating themselves with that label–or, in come cases, leaving the church altogether.
It’s time to take a long hard look at what we have become. Believe me, we have a lot of work to do.
Believe me.
from page 190-191
Excellent book that enlightened me and made me realize how much wrong-thinking about Christianity, politics, and America, to which I was susceptible. Thank you, John Fea, for this book!