The 'lie' that keeps evangelicals 'praising Trump with faint damnation': analysis

In a report for The Associated Press last week, Peter Smith reported that Donald Trump's "support is as strong as ever among evangelicals and other conservative Christians."

Smith noted, "Many of the T-shirts and hats that were worn and sold at the rally in March proclaimed religious slogans such as 'Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president' and 'God, Guns & Trump.' One man’s shirt declared, 'Make America Godly Again,' with the image of a luminous Jesus putting his supportive hands on Trump’s shoulders."

The Atlantic's Peter Wehner highlights the hold Trump has on evangelicals in a Thursday, May 23 op-ed, noting, "In my years in politics, I’ve never found a group as easily seduced by political power as evangelicals." Wehner also wonders why that is.

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Others, according to Wehner, have a similar question, wondering "how people who claim to be followers of Jesus can offer such dependable, even enthusiastic, support to a man of undisguised moral degeneracy."

He writes:

How did we end up in a situation that led the late Timothy J. Keller, who was one of the most trusted Christian ministers in the world, to say that the word evangelical used to denote people who staked out the moral high ground—but now, in popular usage, is nearly synonymous with hypocrite?

The answer is complicated. Part of the explanation is that many white evangelicals have convinced themselves that if Democrats win public office, especially the presidency, abortion and crime rates will skyrocket, there will be a 'war on Christianity,' and America will become a hellscape.

Furthermore, Wehner asserts, "Another reason things are playing out the way they are in the white evangelical world is that its leaders are giving in to the ancient temptation of proximity to political power, choosing to be court pastors in order to win the favor of the king. They are thrilled to be taken seriously, thrilled to be offered invitations to the halls of power, thrilled to be seen having influence in this world."

The Trinity Forum senior fellow also notes:

In Walker Percy’s The Second Coming, Will Barrett, the novel’s main character, says of Christians, 'I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise that truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists?' Barrett then puts forward a mystery: 'If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it? And if the good news is true; why are its public proclaimers such assholes and the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?'

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Wehner's friend, Steve Hayner — the former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Columbia Theological Seminary — said something before his death in 2015 that Wehner will never forget: "The central character of God, Steve said, is love and grace, and the central mission of Christians is to extend God’s hand of grace to others."

Contrary to Hayner's assertion, Wehner notes that Malcolm Gladwell wrote in a 1986 essay: "For some on the religious right, advancing a political agenda has come to take precedence over even the most basic ethical considerations."

Pointing out that prominent evangelical, Franklin Graham, recently "conceded that Trump—twice impeached, thrice married, and four times indicted—at times uses 'locker room' talk." Wehner writes, "The narrative that’s being pushed by Graham is that Trump’s 'locker room' talk and 'mean tweets' are his worst transgressions."

However, The Atlantic writer emphasizes:

This assertion is a lie, ignoble but in some respects understandable. After all, Trump supporters can’t defend who Trump really is, the awful things he does and says. They can’t defend his lawlessness and cruelty and crudity, the attempted coups and encouragement to his supporters to violently storm the Capitol and hang his vice president. They can’t defend his fraud and promiscuity, his love of conspiracy theories and affinity for dictators, his pathological lying and deranged rants, his misogyny and racism, his mockingof prisoners of war and those with disabilities. So they take his least problematic actions and pretend they’re his most problematic offenses. It’s the opposite of damning someone with faint praise; in this case, it’s praising Trump with faint damnation.

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Wehner's full op-ed is available here.