Christian Fear and Lust for Power

“Back in 2011, white evangelicals were the most likely group to say that personal morality was important in a president, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Since Mr Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, they have become the least likely group to say that, changing what seems like a fundamental issue of morality to accommodate their support for the president.”-- The Economist, June 2017

“How long will I be allowed to remain a Christian?” That was the deeply dismaying question posed to me by a friend with four young children as we discussed the plight of the Christian faith in America and around the world. With each passing month, that shocking question becomes more relevant and even more disturbing. .... Here in the United States, Christians and Christianity are mocked, belittled, smeared and attacked by some on a daily basis. This is a bigoted practice that is not only increasing exponentially, but is being encouraged and sanctioned by a number on the left. .... As more and more of the mainstream media, entertainment, academia and the hi-tech world continue to purge or discriminate against Christians, what future job fields will be open to young Christians? -- Fox News opinion piece, April 2018

“Trump’s an outsider, like the rest of us. We might not respect Trump, but we still love the guy for who he is. Is he a man of integrity? Absolutely not. Does he stand up for some of our moral Christian values? Yes.” .... “I’m not going to say he’s a Christian, but he just doesn’t attack us.” .... “Obama wanted to take my assault rifle, he wanted to take out all the high-capacity magazines. It just — felt like your freedoms kept getting taken from you.”  -- New York Times, Evangelical Trump supporters explaining their feelings and reasons for support

Polls indicate that about 80% of white Evangelicals will vote for the president in November. That is about the same level of support he got from that group in November of 2016. This group is absolutely necessary for his re-election. He is so important to them that they changed their moral beliefs. What white Evangelicals want is political power to make their fear go away.

An article in the New York Times, Christianity Will Have Power, discusses the reasons that white Evangelicals support the president. The main reason was fear in 2016, and it still is today. The article starts with a January 2016 speech at a small religious college in Iowa where the president promised the audience they would have power if they elected him. In his speech, the president promised power:

“I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it. And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have. Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”

The NYT writes:

“Evangelicals did not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They supported him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as though they have not been in power all along.”

In essence, rural people see the social changes and they do not like it. They do not like social changes including a long decline in church attendance, a high divorce rate, legalization of same-sex marriage and a false belief that for eight long, terrifying years, president Obama led a brutal attack on Christianity, religious freedom and white people generally. The Christians complain that people in urban areas do not understand them, their situation or their moral values, especially family values. They fear that children are not taught to attend church every week and that spells the end of Christian power. They complain that urban people look down on them and think of them as deplorable.

One Christian explained it like this: “I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and stuff, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we are a bunch of hicks, and don’t know anything. They don’t understand us the same way we don’t understand them. So we don’t want them telling us how to live our lives. You joke that we don’t get it, well, you don’t get it either. We are not speaking the same language.”

One woman commented: “The religious part is huge for us, as we see religious freedoms being taken away. If you don’t believe in homosexuality or something, you lose your business because of it. And that’s a core part of your faith. Whereas I see Trump as defending that. He’s actually made that executive order to put the Bibles back in the public schools. That is something very worrisome and dear to us, our religious freedom.”

It is hard to see how operating a business in commerce is a core part of belief or religious practice. Selling products or goods in commerce is not any form of endorsement of anyone or their sex status. But maybe that is just an atheist bias. Obviously, Christians see this as a devastating attack on their liberty. Also, in practice, very few businesses are lost because most states do not have laws that ban discrimination  in commerce on the basis of sex. In those states, there is no chance that a business owner can lose the business by refusing to serve LGBQ or same-sex couples. They want power to discriminate their pure little Christian hearts out while oppressing those they dislike.

What few or no Christians appear to see is that the power they want is the power to stop social, economic and demographic change through political force. They do not see that a majority of Americans do not want or accept their goals, including the power to discriminate against same-sex couples and the power to force women to bear children that they do not want. What nearly all Christians appear to not know is the history of religious discrimination and brutality that characterized their false view of an illusory Christian American Garden of Eden since colonial times. What most seem to want is a vision of rural America that was like it was in the 1950s through about the mid-1960s. They want minorities to go away. They want power and they are willing to be authoritarian to get it and to use it to control the unwilling. 

One Christian commented that they want Christian education for their children: “so we don’t have to have them indoctrinated with all these different things. We are free to teach them our values.” What most Christians apparently do not understand or care about is that others want to be free to teach their different values and lead their lives as they want. 

If Christian values means forcing other people to live differently from what they would choose, those Christian values are immoral. One person seemed to sense this: “It’s almost like it is a reverse intolerance. If you have somebody that’s maybe on the liberal side, they say that we are intolerant of them. But it is inverse intolerant if we can’t live out our faith.” The flaw in that reasoning is that Christians always could live out their faith as they wished. Christians have always overwhelmingly been in power in America. Abortion law never forced any woman to have a baby she did not want. Legalized same-sex marriage does not force anyone to worship in a church that accepts it or anything they find unacceptable. There is no significant attack on religious freedom.

All of this seems to be lost on almost all Christians. The propaganda and lies they have been fed has worked to create a great but false fear. That fear now opens the door to the death of democracy and civil liberties and the birth of an intolerant authoritarianism borne by a vulgar, immoral, mendacious demagogue and a corrupt choir called the GOP. This is what fear, rational or not, can lead some people to do.