Posted by 
In my Introduction to this blog, I wrote. “I intend in these blog posts to discuss the current conflict between the Church and modernity, particularly in the realm of values and behavior.” This cultural change has been viewed by many Christian leaders as so threatening to the Church of Christ that they supported Donald Trump in 2016 and since. This last point was raised by Peter Wehner in a New York Times op-ed on December 6. (Thanks to Curt Dierdorff for alerting me to this article). According to Wehner many Evangelical leaders believed that 2016 was a time of “existential crisis.”
For example, “Eric Metaxas, an influential evangelical author and radio talk-show host said in 2016 in a radio interview (that you can find here), ‘The only times we faced an existential struggle like this was in the Civil War and in the Revolution when the nation began.’ He added, ‘We are on the verge of losing it as we could have lost it in the Civil War.’” He went on, ‘This election, he said, represents as critical a turning point as the Civil War or the American Revolution.'”
“If you have Supreme Court justices legislating from the bench, not four of them or four and a half, but if you have six or seven of them, that’s what you’re going to get under Hillary, and if that happens, the democratic republican government is over in America, in the greatest nation in the history of the world,” he said. “The freest nation in the history of the world will, under a new Democratic administration, we will no longer have the freedom where the people’s voice counts.”
In another article Wehner addresses the question of why white evangelicals support Trump so strongly. He writes, “Part of the answer is their belief that they are engaged in an existential struggle against a wicked enemy—not Russia, not North Korea, not Iran, but rather American liberals and the left. If you listen to Trump supporters who are evangelical (and non-evangelicals, like the radio talk-show host Mark Levin), you will hear adjectives applied to those on the left that could easily be used to describe a Stalinist regime.
“Many white evangelical Christians, then, are deeply fearful of what a Trump loss would mean for America, American culture, and American Christianity. If a Democrat is elected president, they believe, it might all come crashing down around us. Many evangelical Christians are also filled with grievances and resentments because they feel they have been mocked, scorned, and dishonored by the elite culture over the years. (Some of those feelings are understandable and warranted.) For them, Trump is a man who will not only push their agenda on issues such as the courts and abortion; he will be ruthless against those they view as threats to all they know and love. For a growing number of evangelicals, Trump’s dehumanizing tactics and cruelty aren’t a bug; they are a feature. Trump “owns the libs,” and they love it. He’ll bring a Glock to a cultural knife fight, and they relish that.”
“Last year, Mr. Metaxas told the journalist Jon Ward that while he did not mean to compare Hillary Clinton to Adolf Hitler, “Christians who think the Church in America might have survived a Hillary Clinton presidency are something like the devout Christian Germans who seriously and prayerfully thought it un-Christian to be involved in opposing Hitler because to do so would have dirtied their hands with politics.”
I think Metaxas speaks for many Evangelical leaders (and their supporters in the pews). The drift of the mainstream culture away from its Christian roots is extremely frightening for Evangelicals. Many believe, as Metaxas says, it threatens the “end of democratic governance in the United States.” Franklin Graham has said, “We are losing our country and the freedoms we have enjoyed. As Bible-believing Christians, we are the ones who must take action before it’s too late.”
The Washington Post quotes Eric Metaxas as lamenting those who question the idea that Trump was ordained for the presidency by God. “They go on to cite how he’s the least Christian, and they go on and on and on,” he said. “And I think these people don’t even have a biblical view when it comes to that. If somebody doesn’t hold to our theology, that doesn’t mean they can’t be a great pilot, or a great doctor, or a dentist.”
The Evangelical syllogism is something like this: 1) America is going to hell in a handbasket. 2) One way to get off this road to hell is to make sure we have judges who will make these evil practices illegal and halt them; and 3) the best way to ensure we have a judicial system that supports traditional values is to have a conservative president and senate; thus 4) we must support Trump.
There are three major problems with this position. First, there’s a lack of perspective. Are Christianity and the American experiment really being threatened by the secular Left? In the days of the Apostles, the Second Coming was expected in their lifetimes. Jesus said, “Therefore, keep watch because you don’t know the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13). America has seen times of apostasy and times of revival. Is this time so different?
Second, the fundamental issue here is cultural, not political. This cultural change has led, among many other things, to a decline of the importance of religious belief and practice in American life. The chart below shows how religious beliefs are evolving as America ages. White Protestants, both evangelical and mainline, and white Catholics made up 61% of all people 65 or over, but only 22% of those between the ages of 18 and 29. For people of color the story is the opposite. Black Christians make up about the same percentage (8%) across all age groups; Hispanic Christians make up a much larger segment of the younger age groups (around 10%) than of the older age groups (5%). The big point here is that in 1992, 9% of Americans considered themselves as religiously unaffiliated; by 2016 this percentage had increased to 24%, a 4% annual increase in the percentage of those unaffiliated with any religion.
This decline in religious beliefs has also affected attitudes. Except for abortion, in the key cultural battles –homosexuality and marriage –there have been profound changes in beliefs. Beliefs around abortion have been surprisingly stable. According to Pew in 1995, 60% 0f all Americans believed that abortions should be legal in most cases; in 2019, that percentage had increased to 61%. However, another Pew Survey on same-sex marriage found that those who favor same-sex marriage increased from 35% in 2001 to 61% in 2019. Even among Christians, support for same-sex marriages has risen dramatically. In four years, between 2013 and 2017, opposition to same sex marriages fell from 71% to 58% among white evangelicals, from 68% to 53% among Mormons, from 65% to 45% among Hispanic protestants, and from 57% to 43% among black protestants. Finally, on another (and largely lost) front in the culture wars, another Pew Survey, found that 86% of those polled said it was acceptable for an unmarried couple to live together.
If the problem is cultural, then the solution has to be cultural. The problem we face is the failure of the Church of Jesus Christ to speak to the hearts of contemporary Americans. We are in the middle of a profound cultural shift with respect to sex and the family. This problem is not going to be solved by electing Donald Trump as president or appointing justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Evangelical leaders are fighting the wrong battle. In the story of King Canute, the King demonstrates to his flattering courtiers that he has no control over the elements (the incoming tide), explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God. We cannot use the supreme court to turn back this cultural war any more than King Canute could turn back the waves.
Moreover, Christians using politics to fight the culture wars raises the possibility of turning off the very people we should be appealing to. As Fuller Seminary President Dr. Mark Labberton speaking about “The Crisis in Evangelism,” said, “The core of the crisis is not specifically about Trump, or Hillary, or Obama, or the electoral college, or Comey, or Mueller, or abortion, or LGBTQIA+ debates, or Supreme Court appointees. Instead the crisis is caused by the way a toxic evangelicalism has engaged with these issues in such a way as to turn the gospel into Good News that is fake…The wind and the rain and the floods have come, and, as Jesus said, they will reveal our foundation. In this moment for evangelicalism, what the storms have exposed is a foundation not of solid rock but of sand.”
Jesus said go to Judea, Samaria and the rest of the world to preach the gospel. Red America mostly believes in the gospel and are not the Christian’s main mission field; Blue America is today’s Samaria, and we will not bring them to Christ by supporting a man who acts so as to make the Scriptures a joke. Christ says “As you do to the least of my brothers, so you do unto me.” Who are the least of my brothers? According to Psalm 146:9, “The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow…” Exodus 22:21 says “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Whatever we think about President Trump, it is clear that he is helping reinforce the division between the blue and red tribes; Evangelical Christians are doing the same thing. Instead of holding President Trump to a higher moral standard, White Evangelical Protestants (WEPs) are changing their values to reflect the President’s. For example, they are much more likely (85%) than any other group to support restrictions on immigration despite the Scriptures cited above. They are also more likely (39%) to support family separation at the border. Most other Christian groups have levels of support for this policy of around 25%. While 62% of all Americans say that the President’s behavior makes them less likely to support him, the comparable number for WEPs is 36%. Finally, thirty-one percent of WEPs say there is almost nothing that Trump could do to forfeit their approval. Jesus says in Mark 8:36, “what profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul.”
Evangelical Christians have lost their way. Evangelism is centered on sharing the Gospel by public preaching or personal witness. America is crying out for true evangelism, for preaching that will call it to repentance. I remember how thrilled I was in 1997 to Stand in the Gap on the National Mall with 800,000 men calling for a return to holiness. We believed in the efficacy of this simple promise from 2 Chronicles 7:“If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” This prayer is needed now more than ever. We need to return to that moment of repentance.
