This week,
Christianity Today, a deeply respected Christian magazine (the analogy is imprecise, but think of it like an Evangelical version of
National Review, but focused on theology and church life) ignited a days-long firestorm when it published an editorial declaring, “
Trump Should Be Removed From Office.”
The piece directly referred to the magazine’s stand against Bill
Clinton in 1998, and then ended with these direct and unsparing words:
We
have reserved judgment on Mr. Trump for years now. Some have criticized
us for our reserve. But when it comes to condemning the behavior of
another, patient charity must come first. So we have done our best to
give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their
point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political
decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump. To use an old cliché, it’s
time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we
win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of
gross immorality and ethical incompetence. And just when we think it’s
time to push all our chips to the center of the table, that’s when the
whole game will come crashing down. It will crash down on the reputation
of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.
And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose
welfare is also our concern.
The president has
responded, falsely calling it a “far left magazine” (it’s theologically
orthodox and relatively centrist). Pro-Trump Christian leaders have
responded.
Christianity Today’s web servers were strained by the traffic. Think pieces are flooding Christian media, and all-out Twitter brawl is under way.
But why? Hasn’t all this been litigated before? Didn’t the failure of the “Against Trump” issue of
National Review
show that magazines should stop telling people how to think? Hasn’t the
Evangelical rank-and-file moved on from hand-wringing about Trump, and
aren’t they all aboard the Trump train? And, if so, why did virtually
all of Trump’s big Evangelical defenders train their fire on
Christianity Today? That’s the conventional wisdom, at least.
In
fact, however, the alleged Evangelical monolith is more conflicted than
outside observers understand, and Donald Trump’s unique presidency is
placing more strain on theologically serious Evangelicals than most
Americans perceive.
I added theology as a qualifier because not
all self-described “Evangelicals” share the same beliefs or the same
faith habits. Exit poll questions about religious identity are far too
imprecise to provide true insight into a complex community. Many people
who describe themselves as “Evangelical” simply because it’s the best
option in a limited exit-poll menu don’t go to church often and don’t
subscribe to all the key tenets of Evangelical belief. When they hear
“Evangelical” they often interpret it as “politically conservative
Christian.” To understand the malleability of the definition, look at
this chart, from an NPR story collecting data on
different definitions of Evangelicalism:
Christianity Today
is not a magazine for the 35 percent. It’s a magazine for the 6
percent, and its editorial is article aimed like an arrow at that
audience. Many of the 35 percent not only don’t share the same
theological beliefs as that smaller cohort, they’re completely
indifferent to Evangelical documents like the Southern Baptist
Convention’s 1998
Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials.
If you ask them if they believe (to quote the resolution) that
“tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the
culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society,
and surely results in God’s judgment.” They’ll have a one-word answer:
“Nope.”
But the 6 percent is different—and Trump’s more savvy Evangelical defenders know it.
Christianity Today’s audience represents their colleagues and peers. The 6 percent represents the Americans who tend to
affirm all nine conventional theological criteria of Evangelical orthodoxy:
They
say they have made “a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still
important in their life today,” that their faith is very important in
their life today; believe that when they die they will go to Heaven
because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as
their Savior; strongly believe they have a personal responsibility to
share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; firmly
believe that Satan exists; strongly believe that eternal salvation is
possible only through grace, not works; strong agree that Jesus Christ
lived a sinless life on earth; strong assert that the Bible is accurate
in all the principles it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing,
all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it
today.
These Americans—who possess a very high view
of God’s sovereignty and are disproportionately engaged in the ministry
of the church—look at the language from the Southern Baptist resolution,
take a deep breath, and worry. In fact, they worry about a lot of
things. They worry about abortion, about religious liberty, about racial
reconciliation,
and the church’s public witness. Also, the 6
percent isn’t all “white Evangelical.” It’s multi-ethnic, and when the
views of non-white Evangelicals are taken into account, the gap between
Trump and Clinton
narrows significantly.
Moreover,
the Trump administration is putting this 6 percent in a continual,
relentless, and escalating bind. It would be one thing if Christians
held their nose in 2016, voted for a man with a checkered past, and then
he not only delivered on judges but also behaved like a decent human
being in office. Trump has delivered on judges, to be sure, but he has
behaved abominably (it’s not just “mean tweets”; I don’t take seriously
anyone who boils his misconduct down to mere “rudeness” or “bad tweets”)
even as he also demands extraordinary and effusive public loyalty from
his allies.
In normal circumstances, Christians could clearly and
consistently call out Trump’s misdeeds while they applaud his good
decisions. But those who consistently seek his ear often feel like they
cannot do that.
They must circle the wagons around Trump. So at best, they’ll remain
silent when he does plainly terrible things. At worst, they’ll become
like those who the Prophet Isaiah condemned: “Woe to those who call evil
good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
The
pressure is substantial. To make Trump’s election “worth it,” it’s
necessary to secure policy victories. To keep securing policy victories,
one may stay close to Trump. Staying close to Trump all too often
forces Christians to defend the indefensible.
While Christians
can in good conscience vote for Republicans or Democrats (or for a third
party), it’s simply wrong to condemn actions in the other party that
you rationalize from your own president (or worse, to condemn actions
from others even as you excuse or ignore more egregious conduct from
your own side). It’s wrong to conveniently adjust your theology to meet
the political needs of the moment. Yet that’s what many members of the 6
percent have done. They’ve compromised to a point that would be
unrecognizable and offensive to the person they were even as recently as
2015, and many of those individuals are deeply uncomfortable with their
decision.
Trump’s most zealous Christian defenders feel no such conflict. But they know something that most readers of the
New York Times
don’t. They know that the heart of the church is torn, and that many of
the faithful—especially those middle-aged and younger—who show up to
worship services every week, who perform the lion’s share of the
ministry and work of the church, and who are most likely to interact
with non-Christians at work and in school, see the cost of the Trump
alliance, and despair.
In that context, each public Christian
voice who declares he or she is not afraid to face a future without
Trump—and that there is a spiritual aspect to political choices that
can’t be measured in statute books or judicial nominations—encourages
other Christians who share the same concerns. Ever-so-slightly, it
shifts the terms of the debate. It decreases the perceived isolation of
the Trump-skeptical Evangelical, and it reinforces the idea that one can
oppose Trump while not compromising one inch on underlying theological
and cultural commitments to life, religious liberty, and the family.
As I read the
Christianity Today
essay, I was reminded once again of the words of Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn: “You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let
your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even
triumph. But not through me.” Donald Trump is bringing an avalanche of
lies into this world. It’s time for Christians once again to consider
whether they want those lies to come through them—through their votes
and their voices.
A preview of coming attractions ...
Before
Christianity Today blew up the internet, I was intending to take this newsletter in a very different direction—how
Harry Potter
author J.K. Rowling’s online plight illustrated why Christians are
right to be concerned about the future of public discourse. It’s still
an important story, and I’ll explore it later this week. Stay tuned.
One last thing ...
I
got a fantastic reader response to the song I attached at the end of my
last newsletter. So, here’s my church’s worship band again. They’re
called “We the Kingdom” if you want to find them on iTunes/Spotify/etc.
It’s a very different song from last week. Enjoy!
Photograph of Donald Trump by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
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