Christian Cowardice and Donald Trump

How American Evangelicals are Failing Their Country

By Stephen L. Fox

MAGA Evangelicals,

You know better.

As much as you malign God, by placing him even adjacent to Trump, the absurdity is obvious – even to you and especially to your children. You have your stack of excuses ready, though, don’t you? The world is eager to provide a steady mental-diet of listening, reading, and watching content designed to spin your support of this administration as an act of virtue; a collective proclivity for burying your heads in the sand makes unpleasant conversation nearly impossible. The confirmation tunnels have been building for decades. Your loyalty has entrenched alternative fact reporting within a thick quagmire of loud-mouthed commentary and pseudo-intellectual analysis. Outside your eyelids, the world is a tangle of liberal lies and you’re simply doing your best to keep all that unpleasantness out. Fox News isn’t news though¹; it’s an aggregation of poorly disguised punditry and opinionated idiots performing synchronously for your comfort. Super Bowl graphics and sound effects bombard you, soothe you, dizzy you, and distract you – all on the behalf of their chosen candidate. They toss in a token liberal and pretend “fair and balanced” is still their unspoken, and thereby not legally-actionable, mission statement.

I’ve struggled to determine how so many of you – family, friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans – have become Trump apologists. Your support for Trump isn’t timid. Most Christian Evangelicals I know didn’t just vote for him – they love him. Yet, he is entirely antithetical to your interpretation of Jesus. I originally began writing this article with an entirely different approach and perspective. I wanted to methodically list Trump’s obvious sins, overwhelming crimes, and disgusting behaviors. I began doing research and documenting all the times Trump had changed positions on foundational issues, how he uses this approach as strategy, and how his supporters typically agree with him no matter what his reasoning. I thought if I laid out a compelling case, I might convince a few of you to reconsider your stance on our president’s behavior and character. As my wife began reading that draft – she said it. “I just don’t know if these people even care – will ever listen.” She was right. The realization has been thundering through my skull since she said it. That truth riled the deepest rage I’ve felt in quite a long time.

You know better. You don’t actually care about Jesus’s mission; he’s much more useful as a mask. You love to talk through his plastic lips and pretend your hatred for liberals comes from a place of holiness and virtue. Now, though, you have what you’ve always not-so-secretly wanted. The thing men like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have conditioned you to seek – someone to unapologetically hate the right people. You’ve caricatured your opponents beyond redemption and daydream about how even Jesus wouldn’t sit at their tables. But he did, didn’t he?

Years earlier, most of the Republican party hated Trump’s crass, indefensible behavior. He was embarrassing and gross – until he started hating. No one hates like Trump. He turns insults, lawsuits, tweets, and government policies like turrets. It would have been reprehensible to you if the target hadn’t been liberals.

So much rage had been building over Supreme Court appointments, abortion law, school prayer, biased media, and a thousand other erosions of influence Christianity suffered within society and state. The term “liberal” became equal to “Christian-persecutor.” Conservative Christians watched helplessly as one Republican politician after another worked with liberals, apologized to liberals, and often caved to liberal demands. When Donald Trump appeared, he did so with unapologetic, unrelenting hatred. Many of you loved it. You’d pretended it was shocking and the shock of it shook out a laugh. Truthfully, though, it was giddiness fueled by the satisfaction of revenge.

Donald Trump’s hatred is what makes him “Teflon Don.” It doesn’t matter when he bypasses Congress to enact undeclared war². It doesn’t matter when he calls a frightened mom a terrorist³. It doesn’t matter when he unleashes para-military forces on American streets⁴. It doesn’t matter when he obliterates boats he “believes” are carrying fentanyl⁵ and does so with reckless brutality⁶. It doesn’t matter when he cheats on taxes, bank documents, and wives. It doesn’t matter when he stiffs hundreds of construction workers⁷. It doesn’t matter when he speaks about young women like a predator⁸. It doesn’t matter when he buys Miss Teen USA and judges underage girls in swimsuits⁹. It doesn’t matter when he mocks scripture and brags about “hating his enemies.”¹⁰ It doesn’t matter when he lusts after his own daughter on Howard Stern or brags about invading the dressing rooms of Miss America contestants¹¹. It doesn’t matter when he calls well-educated female reporters nasty, or stupid, or piggy¹². It doesn’t matter when his best friend was the world’s most famous pedophile¹³. It doesn’t matter when he brags about committing sexual assault¹⁴, threatens to kill his political opponents¹⁵, or when he is simply the dumbest human any of us have ever seen or imagined. He hates the liberals and that’s enough.

You’ve become intellectually fat and principally disinterested. Your favorite chant has become “BIDEN! CLINTON! OBAMA!” Your reliance on childlike “but what about what they did” is the most primitive form of distraction. Thank heavens Fox News is there to become your pacifier and cancelled right-wing news personalities your YouTube-shaped blanket. When you experience a spike of guilt-fueled fear, you run to whatever half-informed pundit you prefer. If that flavor of spin doesn’t quell the heartburn, there are a thousand more quasi-experts peddling almost-true lies. Eventually you hear the lullaby you need to silence that stupid conscience you used to call the Holy Spirit.

The only defense you have for aligning with Donald Trump is a shared hatred of liberals. Hatred. A twisted form of blasphemy compels followers of Christ to choose allies and leaders based on hate. In your mind, hatred is actually love for what is righteous. What convenient bullshit. Love doesn’t work like that. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.*

Comparison is a coward’s defense. Nothing is good because something else is worse. Good, according to the Bible, is simply good. It is fueled by love and inspired by God. Good and love are intertwined and neither describe Donald J. Trump on his best day. He uses faith, and those claiming faith, to accomplish whatever his childish mind desires. He does so without compassion, civility, kindness, or consideration. He is impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, and proud. He slanders anyone who disagrees with him. He is self-seeking. He is easily angered. He records every single slight. He delights in evil and constantly lies. He is always on the attack. He is untrustworthy. His hope is fragile and contingent on obedience. Trump will fail.

“But he’s better than Biden” – whatever the hell that means.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The lesson of Jesus is reliance on God, his Father, to balance the scales. Your duty, as his followers, is to embody love. You are not to control, or damn, nonbelievers. You are not to pursue political power to make the world obey and conform. Jesus held up a coin with Caesar’s face on it. So many Christians interpret that moment as a symbol for tithe. That’s not what he said, though:

“…and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Money and materials and strategy are for the world and rulers of the world. Your hearts, which must be filled with love, are for God. What is your heart full of when you listen to a Trump speech? What is your heart full of when you hear Fox News pundits exaggerate and lie about the latest “liberal agenda?” Hope? Benevolence? No – fear and hate.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

Jesus was from an ordinary family, and his killers were the powerful people who used the name of his Father to justify murder of the innocent and exploitation of the temple. Jesus flipping tables is often used as an example of him showing rage. The only time Jesus ever showed anger was in defense of his Father’s legacy – God’s legacy. Never to convince. Never as a threat. Never to cause harm.

Let me ask you, though – what do you think Jesus would think about a non-christian politician selling sticky-paged Bibles on the side?

You’re flipping the wrong damn tables and your children are watching. You laugh about Trump describing Arnold Palmer’s penis and clap when he claims most illegal immigrants are violent. The next day you gasp when a television show uses too many bad words while you devour the McDonald’s a possibly-illegal immigrant handed you ten minutes earlier.

This generation of hate-fueled faith will not win your children. They lie for now and cheer beside you – they don’t have a choice. In the future, though, that timid kid who takes every word you say as gospel will grow up to see the bastardization of Jesus’s message and hypocrisy of those who cheered it on for what it is. You’ve given up on your God’s promises and taken strategy into your own hands. You endorse Trump while pretending you don’t want to, but giggle every time he does an evil thing aimed at your shared enemies.

Here’s the reality of Jesus’s message: If your choices are two paths you feel are contrary to your principles – you refrain from both and accept the consequences. You don’t support an evil – lesser or greater. Your faith is about more than politics or control – it’s about what you’ll accept and celebrate. You claim to love your God more than any other part of your life while making every philosophical choice from a place of hate and fear. The command of Jesus isn’t about victory or strategy or control. It’s about principle. It’s about integrity. It’s about faith in the God you claim. Living by principle often leads to losing. It sometimes leads to dying. That’s the call of your Jesus.

It’s not your job to win at any cost. It’s your savior’s command to show kindness and demonstrate love even when it means losing. The cross wasn’t just an alter – it was an example. Living a life of service and kindness and love like that described in *1 Corinthians 13 is difficult and it often leads to disappointment. It never leads to hate.

You know better.

Footnotes

Tags: Christianity, Donald Trump, Evangelicals

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