Evangelicals Don’t Love Trump Enough

Evangelicals Don’t Love Donald Trump Enough

For the first time in history, a former (and possibly future) president of the United States is now a convicted felon. A jury found that Donald Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, with whom he had an affair, in order to keep the story from hurting his 2016 presidential campaign. If only President Trump could have seen the reaction from many white evangelicals to his sexual crimes and misdemeanors, he could have saved some money.

Pundits are probably right that this conviction—like all the revelations of the past almost-decade—will have little effect on the actual election. At this point, people know who they are supporting or opposing—and it’s hard to imagine many who didn’t know all along. The implications, though, are moral, not just legal or political, and on that ground, we should ask whether the most politicized evangelicals should actually love Donald Trump more.

One might reasonably ask how white evangelicals could possibly love Trump more. The most visible evangelical supporters of the former president have been willing, since at least 2016, to wave away criticisms of his character, from the Access Hollywood tapes onward. Many of these voices defended the former president as fit for public leadership, even after a jury found him liable for doing just what he bragged about in those tapes of yesteryear: groping a woman’s genitals against her will. And now this. But all of that is precisely what I mean by asking about love.

The question has been on my mind since I read the galleys of a brilliant book on former president Richard Nixon, coming out this August, by Christianity Today journalist Daniel Silliman, which you can read more about in the soon-to-be-published July/August issue.

Most people who follow religion and politics know about Billy Graham’s oft-articulated regrets about how close he became to Richard Nixon. Many also know about Nixon’s aide—and later Watergate felon, and still later repentant born-again Christian and revered evangelical leader—Charles “Chuck” Colson, and how evangelical ministers typically were so awed by the Oval Office that they would lose the ability to say much more than “Yes sir, Mr. President” when they were there. Silliman, though, demonstrates that this was not the whole story.

There was at least one evangelical pastor who spoke hard truths to Nixon. John Huffman, a Presbyterian pastor in Florida, who had revered Nixon since his days as a young Republican at Wheaton College, preached to the president as he sat in the pews of his church in the midst of Watergate, calling both publicly and privately for Nixon to confess the truth. What’s most surprising to me is not that there was at least one courageous voice of integrity—I’m sure there were others too—but the reason that Huffman gave to Silliman for why he didn’t sidestep the question of guilt with Nixon: “I really loved the man.”

This, Silliman argues, is what made the difference. This pastor didn’t see Nixon as a transactional figure for whom one should trade unquestioning loyalty for a set of policy positions—much less the proverbial seat at the table. He saw him as a human being—a person loved by God, and a person who would ultimately stand, as all of us will, before the judgment seat.

Put aside, for a moment, the question of whether a former president should be prosecuted. That’s another question. Put aside the politics of red state versus blue state. What about the question of morality? What would our relationship to Trump look like if it were informed by our belief that hell exists?

The former president’s defenders are too smart to believe what some of them imply—that Trump never really knew Stormy Daniels and that he was paying her six figures of hush money to keep her from talking about something that never happened. So what message does it send when—like every other political constituency—we find ways to minimize that by suggesting that the cultural and political stakes are too high to worry about such minor matters as keeping one’s vows or telling the truth?

That’s especially when a figure is held up to the rest of the country as a champion of restoring the country to Christian values—to when “girls were girls and men were men,” as the old sitcom characters Archie and Edith Bunker would sing it. And that’s especially true when Christian leaders hail Trump as a “baby Christian” and he licenses his name to Bibles. For many Americans, the word evangelical now is shorthand for “Trump supporter.” How can we blame them when, in so many arenas of American Christian life, people who deny the Trinity are embraced as Christians, but those who don’t support Trump are ostracized as apostates?

Many will talk about how God uses flawed and imperfect people; that’s true, of course. This is not, though, a Chuck Colson repenting of his sin, taking responsibility for it and pleading for God’s mercy. This is someone who instead now says that he will take revenge on his critics and enemies the moment he is back in office.

What does that say to those who are watching, learning from Trump’s “never admit, never apologize” strategy? It says policy is more important than character. Achievement is more important than integrity. The implication from religious leaders reputedly bearing witness to the God for whom they speak is this: A man is justified by winning alone.

You know that some of us, such as this writer, have very strong views about this figure’s being fit for public leadership, what he is doing to the witness of the church, the degradation of women and the glorification of political violence, and so on.

Some of us believe strongly in the separation of church and Trump. But maybe the problem is not primarily that so many evangelicals love Trump but that they love him so little that they are willing to say to those who follow his direction, This is fine, so long as you give us what we want.

Is it really love to use someone to achieve one’s goals—never even asking what the transaction is doing to that person? And then to just pretend that all of it never happened, and, if it did, everybody does it so it’s okay? One might even say that’s how an immoral man wrongly would treat a porn star, not the way a Christian people rightly would treat a leader who claims to represent them.

God loves Donald Trump. God loves those who will wreck their lives following his moral example. That’s not in doubt. The question is—do we?

When Our History Leaves No Room for the Holy Ghost

You might think that your day-to-day personal life has nothing to do with a debate among academic historians. In most ways, you are probably right. A problem that one historian identified recently, however, is one that plagues most of us, including almost every Christian I know.

In the New York Review of Books, historian Peter Brown (who wrote the best, in my view, biography ever of Augustine of Hippo), reviews the new book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300–1300 by Peter Heather. I haven’t read the Heather book yet, so I can’t speak to the exact criticisms of it that Brown makes, but one point he wrote is important—for all of us, not just historians or academics.

Brown argues that modern history, when it comes to the rise and growth of the early church, “seems to have left little room for the Holy Ghost.” He’s not arguing for some sort of providential reading of the past but rather that one can’t really tell the story of that world without recognizing how people experienced it. “We should remember that the people we study lived in a world crowded with invisible beings,” he writes. “Some of these beings were demons driven by chill malevolence,” but “humans could also be touched by the warm presence of benevolent spirits, seen as ever ready to protect and to inspire individuals.”

One does not have to agree with that conception of the world, but one must recognize that the people one is studying did. That’s true, he argues, not just of Christians but of almost every culture and tribe. He writes, for instance, about a figure who is “wrapped for centuries in a veil of false familiarity: Saint Patrick.” This is where I found myself inspired. Brown quotes Patrick’s vision, related among the few writings we have from him:

And again I saw Him praying within myself,

And I was as if inside my body,

And I heard over me, that is, over the interior man,

And there He was praying vigorously with groans

and amidst these things I was stupefied and I kept thinking

Who He might be who was praying in me

But at the very end of the prayer thus He spoke out that He was the Holy Spirit.

Brown points out, to the mostly secular readership, that this is language drawn from the apostle Paul: “The Spirit helps the weaknesses of our prayer … and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).

These sort of visions, experiences, prayers, and calls to discipleship, Brown argues, are often ignored in favor of simply reducing these lives to the economic, social, cultural, or psychological factors that seem to be driving the community as a whole.

In much the same way, I think, we often narrate our lives as though we were what Walker Percy called “an organism in an environment.” Even those of us who have experienced spiritual realities in life in Christ tend to second-guess most of them as coincidences. Or we only pay attention to those times when, in some spiritual moment or other, we “learned a lesson” and can tell others what that lesson is.

The most pivotal moments, I suspect, are the ones we don’t, or can’t, dissect and tell. They are those moments when all we can do is cry out, “Lord have mercy!” or, “Abba, Father!” or even just those groans too deep for words.

Which groans are just coming from us, in response to some need, and which are coming from the Spirit? The Bible doesn’t pose that as an either/or. We groan inwardly, Paul wrote, and “the Spirit himself intercedes.” Both are true.

A Skeptic Is Surprised by Oxford

I recently watched the film Surprised by Oxford, based on the book, to prepare for a conversation with the book’s author and the film’s central character, Carolyn Weber.

She has a unique point of view—as a nominally, culturally Christian unbeliever who found Christ at Oxford. Her path, naturally enough, intersects with the previous one trod (or ridden on in a motorcycle, I guess) by C. S. Lewis.

On the show, Carolyn and I talk about what convinced her that the Bible is reliable and that the gospel is true, whether “missionary dating” is good or bad, and how people can better help struggling skeptics along.

You can listen to it here.

Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This week’s submission comes from reader Gary Roys from near Madrid, Iowa, who writes that his musical tastes haven’t “evolved” much since he was a “junior hippie” before coming to Christ in the 1970s. “Neither has my taste in cars,” he writes. “I keep returning to old English Ford products. Ah well.”

The picture is of Gary and one of his 11 grandchildren with one of those old English Ford cars.

Evolved or not, Gary’s list is representative of just what I love to see here—a life story told through songs. Here are his choices:

“Isn’t It Nice to Be Home Again” by James Taylor (Mud Slide Slim): In the 1970s, I was a junior member of the counterculture. We moved from town to a rural acreage and have never lived anywhere else since.

“Dancing in the Minefields” by Andrew Peterson, (Counting Stars): In 1976, I married my wife. I don’t know if we’ll see a 50-year anniversary. She’s slowly fading out. But it has been quite a dance.

“When I’m 64” by The Beatles (Sergeant Pepper): The Beatles were part of the soundtrack of my youth. So, a song about growing old together.

“Against the Wind” by Bob Seeger (Against the Wind): A song for dreamers who always seem to be tacking against the wind.

“Keep Your Heart Young” Brandi Carlile (Bear Creek): Spirited and rebellious, like I still sort of feel, in spite of my years.

“Farther Along” by The Byrds (Tiffany Queen): Someday, I really hope to “understand it all by and by.”

“Call Me the Breeze” by J. J. Cale (Naturally): Lively meets easygoing; makes me want to drive somewhere.

“The Late Show” by Jackson Browne (Late for the Sky): A song that fairly encourages me to pine over what’s past, but then closes with “Leave it at the curb and we’ll just roll away.”

“Hello in There” by John Prine (Souvenirs): This was always a call to be kind and caring to seniors … and now I am one.

“Lord, Lord” by Linda Rich (Apple Tree): From a 1970s Midwestern gospel singer; it’s a call to be more than a Christian in name only.

“My Youngest Son Came Home Today” by Mary Black (Collected) and/or “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” also written by Eric Bogle: Two antiwar songs that move me to tears.

“Mountain Whippoorwill” by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Stars and Stripes Forever): Simple country boy makes good, against the odds.

“It’ll Shine When It Shines” by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils (It’ll Shine When It Shines): Keep it simple—endure. “I’m just a good ol’ boy who’s learned to wait.”

Thank you, Gary!

Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?

For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list of up to 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)

For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books. If possible, include one photo of all the books together.

Send your list (or both lists!) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.

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Onward,
Russell Moore