Once-and-future President Trump and evangelicals: Don’t get me started. (Actually, I
started in his previous term. See the links below.)
Mr. Trump’s friends and foes agree on at least one thing about him, however, which is
that much, even most, of what he says is bluster. Utterly ephemeral. “Vapour,” one
might say (in the spirit of Daniel Treier’s brilliant translation of “vanity” in Ecclesiastes
1:2–14).
As in the case of less flamboyant people—and that means almost everyone else—what
matters is not what President Trump says but what he does: whom he appoints, what
policies he pursues, what alliances he makes (or abandons), and what (ab)use he
makes of his office.
Let’s agree, then, shall we, to beware the “side quests” of checking that claim or
worrying about that threat or smarting over that insult. Windbags as such don’t deserve
attention. But American presidents do—as they act.
Despite the many checks and balances the Founding Fathers put into the American
Constitution, American presidents remain unimaginably powerful—and especially when
their party not only controls both houses of Congress, but when that party has (for the
first time in its storied history) so abjectly subjected itself to the predilections and
preferences of a particular person.
Let’s see what actually happens and respond accordingly.
Trump and the GOP: Far more informed pundits than I, on both the left and the right,
bemoan what has happened to the Republican Party. When conservatives as disparate
as Dick and Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, David French, and David Frum all bewail its
metamorphosis (I do not say “metastasis”) under Donald Trump’s influence, I’ll leave it
to them to sort out the good from the bad in the recent Republican victories.
Those of us with a nodding acquaintance with American history, however, continue to
shake our heads at the party of Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Condoleeza Rice
and—my personal favourite—Bing Crosby.
Christian Politics: Okay, so I will in fact return to my particular tribe of Christians,
evangelicals, and talk more generally about Christian politics in the U.S.—and beyond.
I am a scholar, so I normally trade in solid evidence to ground my musings. I will put you
on your guard, therefore, that I haven’t yet seen poll data to support my anecdotally
based impressions.
Still, I found my Facebook feed overwhelmed during this election campaign with a
narrow range of issues that seemed to dominate the political agenda of white evangelical pastors and seminary professors. Abortion was prominent, yes, but so also were drag queens reading to children in public libraries and trans kids being induced into sex changes before puberty.
A few did moan about how much worse off they were economically, but those were
invariably middle-class folk who generally were only slightly worse off, if at all. And they
won’t be by next quarter, while the economy generally did better and unemployment
dropped significantly under the current administration. One wonders why middle-class
Christians feel free to focus on relatively minor changes in their own financial situation in
the teeth of Biblical concerns for the needy.
Still, one might gather from the brackish Facebook flood that white American
evangelicals—and a fair number of Catholics and even some Orthodox, again to cite
just my own Facebook streams—were preoccupied by questions of sexual diversity that
directly effect but a tiny, tiny minority of American citizens.
The normalization of cross-dressing in library readings? I wonder about that, also. For
one thing, it forces parents and kids into conversations too complex for most
people—adults or children. One such reading and now we have to talk about differing
views as to what constitutes healthy and unhealthy sexual diversity. About the
differences among people lumped together as the “T” in “LGBT” (transsexuals are
drastically different from cross-dressers, formerly called transvestites). About
accommodating various viewpoints in public institutions such as libraries. About these
and more thorny questions on which our society clearly has not yet arrived at
neighbourly answers.
As for trans kids, we certainly ought to accommodate everyone as best we can. Why
not? But “as best we can” means at least two things.
First, keep everyone’s interests in view. We should be eager to help any child and any
family facing issues around sex and sexuality. That means most kids and families, of
course, even as a fraction have unusual challenges and warrant unusual support.
Second, don't run ahead of the actual science, as activists on both ends of the political
spectrum keep urging the rest of us to do.
The package of issues around gender dysphoria, counseling, transitioning, and parental
permission is deeply complex—and deeply contested among the experts. Politicians,
including the politicians who run school boards and individual schools, should beware
getting ahead of themselves, of the people they serve, and of the actual evidence
supporting or not supporting the policies they prefer.
Focusing on these vivid but tiny minorities, therefore, seems a very odd focus for
political concern in an election with so much else at stake. (In the Canadian census of
2021, roughly 1/3 of one percent identified as “transgender” or “nonbinary.” According
to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of Americans identifying as neither “male”
nor “female” is 1.6%.)
Curiously, no one on my Facebook pages talked about the leading issue in Trump’s
own rhetoric: immigration. Perhaps white evangelicals don’t worry about immigration.
Maybe they like having friends and fellow church members from various parts of the
world. Maybe they rejoice in American wealth, or at least the opportunity to earn some
of that wealth, being extended to so many of the world’s needy. Maybe they all quietly
disagree with this campaign’s numerous racist remarks, jokes, and policy proposals
about immigration.
Perhaps, however, these evangelical Christians are just as worried about immigration
as the rest of the political right. They worry about jobs, they worry about wages, they
worry about ethnic enclaves, they worry about affirmative action, they worry about
strange customs, they worry about imported violence.
They worry, but they can’t think of a way to talk about their immigration concerns
without sounding racist. So they don’t. Not, at least, on Facebook.
They talk instead about sex and abortion. And they leave it to Messrs. Trump and
Vance to do the talking about immigration for them.
If I’m at least partly right in my suspicion, then such evangelicals end up profoundly
distorting the Bible’s own ethical priorities and focus.
Yes, sexuality is a genuine and significant concern in both Testaments. But most
people’s sexual morality and wellbeing is not threatened at all by library readings or
someone else’s child transitioning.
Meanwhile, the weightier matters of God’s instruction go undiscussed: “justice, mercy,
and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23). Justice for the many deserving immigrants not yet
properly processed. Mercy for families victimized by coyotes and now threatened with
separation. Faithfulness to the Bible’s central command to love your neighbour as
yourself and particularly to care deeply and practically for the needs of fellow Christians,
which a large fraction, and probably a majority, of America’s recent and would-be
immigrants are.
I do not support a “throw the doors open” policy on immigration. We have had foolish
sentimentality—and political showboating—up here in Canada that has resulted in some
severe social and individual problems, as has been the case in many European
countries as well. What I do support is an immigration policy in keeping with Biblical
priorities, so far as is politically possible.
What I support even more centrally is the church focusing on the priorities given to us
by the Lord, not by our political party or leader and not by what we think will upset
enough other people to provoke them to vote as we prefer.
The woke mainstreaming of sexual diversity is not an insignificant matter. But as someone somewhere has said, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Christian worship, fellowship, discipleship, and mission: these must be the priorities of Christian teaching, including teaching about politics.
What political party and what political policy will best protect the freedom and integrity of the church’s worship, rather than co-opting it for the nation, the state, the party, or the president?
What are the mortal threats to loving Christian fellowship posed by belligerent engagement in political contests?
What political values conduce to following Jesus more closely and what instead pull us away into the trains of very different heroes?
And how is political engagement idolatrously substituting for the church’s central
mission to the poor, the lonely, the oppressed, and the lost?
A new Trump era dawns, therefore, in which we should pay more attention to what the
President does rather than what he merely says.
Likewise, the world is watching to see where we, too, spend our attention, money, and
time as well, whatever we say our values are.
Let’s make sure we have our theological and ethical ABCs in good order.
There’s quite a lot of the Christian alphabet to work out in the world with the help of the
Holy Spirit before we ever get to “T.”
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PREVIOUS POSTS (on ThinkBetter Media and elsewhere) on Donald Trump
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