It’s 2018 and I’m sitting in the church I’ve attended for nearly two decades. My pastor has been talking about President Trump for the past hour. He throws in a scripture from Matthew, a few words about Jesus, and about 10 minutes later closes the sermon.
I leave feeling like I attended a Trump rally rather than a church service.
Politics has been a topic in many evangelical churches since well before Trump, dating back before Roe V. Wade. Yet Trump brought out a side of the church I had never seen before. They were judgmental, hateful, and hypocritical; they were focused more on helping their political candidate than their communities.
My church didn’t support Trump until evangelical leaders started to label him “a modern day Cyrus the Great.” There is a multitude of authors, more qualified than myself, who have delved into the comparison between Trump and Cyrus. If you’re interested in that aspect of evangelicals support of Trump, I recommend you give them a read. The short and quick version is that Cyrus the Great was the Persian king whom God used to deliver the Israelites from Babylonian rule and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. An imperfect man used as a vessel for God.
This, along with Trump’s rejection of the mainstream media–who the Christian right already distrusted–spurred support in the evangelical base. While some leaders sat back to watch, many charged forward with their support.
There’s a victim complex plaguing these churches, created by the removal of public prayer from schools in 1962. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and the legalization of gay marriage in 2015 furthered the complex, propagated by a media bubble where the Christian right gets their news. These, among other “immoral” legislations, are viewed as attacks on their faith and attacks on America.
Despite these so called attacks, the white evangelical community didn’t get involved much in politics until 1980 when televangelist Jerry Falwell founded Moral Majority, a political action committee based around conservative and religious viewpoints. Shortly after its founding, Ronald Reagan, during his presidential campaign, endorsed the committee and evangelicals felt as if they had been given a voice. Evangelicalism has been interlocked with the Republican party ever since.
Yet, even George W. Bush, who was very open about his Christianity, didn’t garner the support that Trump has. With 81% of the evangelical vote, Trump tapped into something that his predecessors didn’t. The “thing” that he tapped into is what I’m going to label Evangelical Angst.
Being raised in an evangelical church, I’ve heard my fair share of sermons about how Christianity is under attack from the “world” and more specifically, liberals. That the world is on a dark path and that we needed to save it. This evangelical angst has festered in churches, their congregants feeling helpless and at war. Trump strategically reiterated these feelings.
“Christianity is under tremendous siege,” he said in Iowa in 2016.
He went on to promise that Christianity would have power under his presidency and that they would have someone representing them. Whether he was a good representation of Christianity or not, evangelicals grasped onto his words, ignoring the declaration in the same speech that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
After his election, Trump acted on those promises. He moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, appointed conservative Supreme Court justices and judges, and made executive orders “protecting religious freedoms.” His unchristian tweets or comments are explained away as being “just words.” His unchristian actions are ignored under the guise that he’s the most “pro-life candidate” we’ve ever had.
Now my pastor of twenty years was spending an hour preaching the gospel of Trump. Congregants shouted “Amen!” to statements proclaiming Trump to be chosen by God and denouncing mainstream media. People I had known all my life grew callous, ignoring the children separated from their parents at the border in favor of an America First attitude. Love Thy Neighbor grew boundaries and became “love thy church neighbor” and “love thy conservative neighbor.”
Of course, these things were never explicitly said, but they were said through statements degrading their fellow man. Evangelicals maintain that they’re loving and that they love through correction. That’s what they believe Trump is doing, correcting the wrongs in America. However, for the few win’s evangelicals have gotten, we’ve seen more losses.
Loss in life, love, and community.
Loss in the idea that helping one another is the right thing to do.
Loss of the church I grew up in and the people I loved.
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