Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:10 pm
In The Evangelicals and the Great Trump Hope, Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, looks at Evangelical support for Donald Trump. The question that lies at the heart of Jones’ column is, “Can the era of white Protestant dominance in America be recovered?”
Dominance being another way of saying “privilege.” In other words, a place where Fox News’ “white Christian Americans” have all the cards. These days, white Christian Americans like to accuse others who demand equal rights of wanting “special rights” but what is really going on is that these Evangelicals don’t want to lose their special rights.
And so they have turned to Donald Trump.
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The other question is, how do “values voters” square their support for a guy who is obviously not one of them? I think this is the wrong question to ask. Because, in every way that matters, Trump is one of them.
Trump, of course, stands opposed to everything these Evangelicals say they believe in. The story is that many of them are willing to make excuses. The consensus seems to be that they’re trying to find ways to pretend Trump is one of them, but that’s only pushing the lie that Evangelicals are genuinely Christians themselves.
The evidence emerges that Evangelicals really don’t like other people. They have that in common with Trump. And they’re both hypocrites. Demanding the right to persecute others, they feel they’re the ones being persecuted. And we’re supposed to believe that Trump isn’t one of them?
Jesus is notable by his absence from Evangelical rhetoric, which is fine, because Trump certainly doesn’t quote Jesus. How can he? He’d be condemning himself. Certainly Jesus never complained about gay people or abortion, but he did complain about rich people.
It is telling that Jesus warned his followers about the unlikelihood of rich people entering the Kingdom of God: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” Woe unto the rich, Jesus said. Blessed are the poor.
Yet the Evangelicals’ greatest ally is a rich guy whose religion is defined by “little wine” and “little crackers,” and who, far from condemning rich people, wants to give them more tax cuts and make the poor Jesus loved, pay more instead.
It is true that Evangelical hopes and Donald Trump’s rhetoric coincide. Making America great again is making America white again. Trump has been very clear about that. It also means making America Christian again, whatever Americans’ own views of religion or the guarantees of First Amendment.
Trump even thinks he can even force Americans to say “Merry Christmas,” ending a war on Christmas as imaginary as Smaug the Dragon, and promising Evangelicals will “have plenty of power.” That’s the key word here, in this unholy alliance: power.
There are not 12 articles in the Constitution and it is alarming that Trump does not know this, but more alarming yet is his ignorance of an Amendment that is in the Constitution, and that is the First, which guarantees freedom of religion, which means nobody can be forced to say “Merry Christmas.”
It means Evangelicals can’t be given “plenty of power,” no matter how much they hate people who aren’t white, or don’t speak English, or don’t believe in whatever god it is they claim to worship.
And let’s face it: the America they want to go back to never really existed. Their Protestantism is not the Protestantism of most Protestants (those are the people Rick Santorum says are “gone from the world of Christianity”).
It is not even certain the religion of Evangelicals can be called Christianity when it lacks Jesus. It is more a means to sanctify bad behavior and bigotry based on a cherry-picked text it is evident most of them have never read.
There is nothing good and pure about the hopes of these “white Christian Americans.” In their hatred of true religious freedom, there is nothing even particularly American about them, let alone “real” American.
In every way that counts, they look more like those fascists wrapping themselves in an American flag we were warned about. And in their unholy alliance with the rich man Jesus warned them about, their gospel has been revealed to be anything but good news.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
