In the past seven years or so, many articles and books have been written to explain the unexpected relationship between white evangelicals, who saw themselves as guardians of family values (They even called themselves the Moral Majority at some point), and Donald Trump, a man whose behavior is not, in any way, bound by Christian ethics.  Many of the writings have been authored by progressives who saw the relationship as vindication of their misgivings about evangelicalism, and I suppose my own writings on this website probably fall within that category.  But criticism also came from political and religious conservatives, including other white conservative evangelicals.  In this article, I will review some thoughts expressed by a few conservative writers.

I will start with an opinion published in February 2022 by David Brooks in the New York Times.  Brooks is, I think, a moderate conservative Christian with evangelical friends.  He observes that the state of divisiveness and crisis within evangelicalism, at the time of his writing, is caused by three big issues: “the white evangelical embrace of Donald Trump, sex abuse scandals in evangelical churches and parachurch organizations, and attitudes about race relations, especially after the killing of George Floyd.”

The crisis manifests itself, in particular, as strong feelings of distrust among people formerly connected to each other by strong friendships, which is antithetical to the expectation of love and unity in Christ within the church.  As Brooks puts it, “The bitter recriminations have caused some believers to wonder if the whole religion is a crock.”  He quotes Russell Moore who resigned from his leadership position in the Southern Baptist Convention the previous year over SBC’s failure to address racism and sexual abuse scandals in its ranks:

“’We now see young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches,’ he said, ‘but because they believe that the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.’”

Brooks thinks Trump is only a partial cause of the disruption.  Indeed, “Trump is merely the embodiment of many of the raw wounds that already existed in parts of the white evangelical world: misogyny, racism, racial obliviousness, celebrity worship, resentment and the willingness to sacrifice principle for power.”

This is a rather severe assessment of conservatives by a conservative.  Brooks further notes the abuses of power at the leadership level.  Since evangelicalism is a populist movement, power is often concentrated “in the hands of highly charismatic men, who can attract enthusiastic followings. A certain percentage of these macho celebrities inflict their power on the vulnerable and especially on young women.”  Brooks quotes Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University and author of the book Jesus and John Wayne, who says: “’Obedience to God was defined by obedience to the leader.  It’s been incredibly hard for people within that system to confront abuses of power.”

Brooks, like many others, also points to the widening gap between evangelical preachers and members of their congregations who are highly politicized because they constantly listen to Fox News but have a weak Christian formation.  In other words, many are Christians in name only:

“In 2020, roughly 40 percent of the people who called themselves evangelical attended church once a year or less, according to research by the political scientist Ryan Burge. It’s just a political label for them. This politicization is one reason people have cited to explain why so many are leaving the faith.”

As a result, not only there is a loss of membership, but young people are leaving evangelical churches:

“In 2006, 23 percent of Americans were white evangelical Protestants, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. By 2020, that share was down to 14.5 percent. In 2020, 22 percent of Americans 65 and older were white evangelical Protestants. Among adults 18 to 29, only 7 percent were.”

Brooks describes a situation in which structures are increasingly fractured and evangelical leaders are increasingly at odds with pew members:

“Over the past few years, the atmosphere within many Christian organizations has grown more tense and bitter. As an evangelical friend of mine noted, what used to be open fields are now minefields. If you invite such and such a speaker to your Christian college, it means you’ve surrendered to the woke brigades. If you use this word in your sermon, you’re guilty of critical race theory. Pastors across the political spectrum are exhausted — partly because of Covid but partly because every word they use is scrutinized to see if it passes this or that ideological litmus test.”

However, Brooks believes this turmoil should lead to a renewal.  He gives examples of evangelical friends and acquaintances who have been, in good faith, engaging with “Trump-backing Christians, trying to understand what was going on. Now they are courageously and passionately opposing the Trumpification of American Christianity. They’ve become leading spokesmen for reform and participants in the discussions that are now happening over what needs to be done.”

One of those friends is fellow journalist David French who has been a victim of the turmoil:

‘French is a white evangelical who lives in Tennessee, served in Iraq and spent much of the first part of his career as a lawyer defending religious liberties. He came out early and loudly against Trump. Many assaults on him were from the alt-right. A photoshopped image floated around the internet presenting his adopted daughter, who is Black, in a gas chamber, with Donald Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press the button. “I’ve seen and been exposed to more hatred than I’ve ever seen at home in my entire life,” he says.

The most sobering encounters came from his fellow Christians, who shunned or confronted him at church. “It’s made me more introspective,” French says. “It’s made me think hard about my view of the world before 2015 and 2016. It’s made me understand that there are a lot of things in our country that I thought we had made more progress on, that we had not.”’

Brooks provides a summary of work that is underway for the renewal of evangelicalism, with special emphasis on the agenda proposed by Tim Keller who was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

I mentioned David French above because I intended to review some of his thoughts about the Trumpification of evangelicalism.  In an article published on April 21, 2024, French felt the need to clarify the definition of evangelicalism because of the confusion created by polls that ask voters “Are you a white evangelical or born-again Christian?”  French believes voters who answer “yes” to that question do represent a coherent political group that votes Republican and holds similar views on matters such as race, immigration and covid vaccines.  But the group does not reflect the diversity within evangelicalism.  For example, “evangelicals of color are far more likely to vote Democratic, and their positions on many issues are more closely aligned with the American political mainstream. But the differences go well beyond race.”

French wants his readers to understand that evangelicalism includes three religious traditions with different beliefs, cultures and effects on the nation: fundamentalism, evangelicalism and Pentecostalism.

The word “evangelicalism” is often used to describe both fundamentalists and evangelicals.  French explains the difference between the two groups as follows:

“The conflict between evangelicalism and fundamentalism emerged most sharply in the years following World War II, when so-called neo-evangelicals arose as a biblically conservative response to traditional fundamentalism’s separatism and fighting spirit. I say ‘biblically conservative’ because neo-evangelicals had the same high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God that fundamentalists did, but their temperament and approach were quite different.”

In a previous article, French had related his observation that fundamentalists were more likely to become followers of Trump.  He explained the fundamentalist “fighting spirit” as follows:

“I grew up in a church that most would describe as fundamentalist, and I’ve encountered fundamentalism of every stripe my entire life. And while fundamentalist ideas can often be quite variable and complex, I’ve never encountered a fundamentalist culture that didn’t combine three key traits: certainty, ferocity and solidarity.”

On the matter of “certainty,” he explains:

“The fundamentalist mind isn’t clouded by doubt. In fact, when people are fully captured by the fundamentalist mind-set, they often can’t even conceive of good-faith disagreement. To fundamentalists, their opponents aren’t just wrong but evil. Critics are derided as weak or cowards or grifters. Only a grave moral defect can explain the failure to agree.”

On ferocity, he writes:

“Ferocity is so valuable to fundamentalism that it can cover a multitude of conventional Christian sins. Defending Trump in 2016, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas, an evangelical megachurch, explained, ‘Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals.’”

On solidarity, he says:

“Yet certainty and ferocity are nothing without solidarity. It’s the sense of shared purpose and community that makes any form of fundamentalism truly potent. There is an undeniable allure to the idea that you’re joining a community that has achieved an understanding of life’s mysteries or discovered a path to resolving injustice. As angry as fundamentalists may feel, at the same time, there is true joy among comrades in the foxhole — at least as long as they remain comrades.”

It is therefore easy to see why fundamentalists love Trump: “Because in his certainty, ferocity and demands of loyalty, he’s a far more culturally familiar figure than a person of restraint and rectitude such as the departing senator Mitt Romney, who has the piety of a true believer but does not possess the ferocity of the fundamentalist.”

The difference between neo-evangelicals and fundamentalists is therefore more psychological than theological.  In his April 2024 article, French illustrates the difference by comparing two evangelical leaders: Bob Jones and Billy Graham.  Bob Jones, of course, is known as the founder of Bob Jones University:

“Bob Jones University barred Black students from attending until 1971, then banned interracial dating until 2000. The racism that plagued Southern American fundamentalism is a key reason for the segregation of American religious life. It’s also one reason the historically Black Protestant church is distinct from the evangelical tradition, despite its similar views of the authority of Scripture.”

Billy Graham attended Bob Jones University for one semester, but later separated himself from the fundamentalist movement:

“He went on to become known as ‘America’s pastor,’ the man who ministered to presidents of both parties and led gigantic evangelistic crusades in stadiums across the nation and the world. While Jones segregated his school, Graham removed the red segregation rope dividing white and Black attendees at his crusades in the South — before Brown v. Board of Education — and shared a stage with Martin Luther King Jr. at Madison Square Garden in 1957.”

Today, the two movements are routinely called evangelical and the differences between them are more blurred, but remain real:

“Roughly speaking, fundamentalists are intolerant of dissent. Evangelicals are much more accepting of theological differences. Fundamentalists place a greater emphasis on confrontation and domination. Evangelicals are more interested in pluralism and persuasion. Fundamentalists focus more on God’s law. Evangelicals tend to emphasize God’s grace. While many evangelicals are certainly enthusiastic Trump supporters, they are more likely to be reluctant (and even embarrassed) Trump voters, or Never Trumpers, or Democrats. Fundamentalists tend to march much more in lock step with the MAGA movement. Donald Trump’s combative psychology in many ways merges with their own.”

Politically, evangelicals (or neo-evangelicals), as described by French, would have been more comfortable with a leader such as George W Bush who was advocating for a gentler, kinder form of conservatism.

Pentecostalism, on the other hand, is quite distinct from the above.  It was founded at a 1906 revival led by a Black pastor named William Seymour and is more focused on the supernatural.  According to French,

“At its heart, Pentecostalism believes that all of the gifts and miracles you read about in the Bible can and do happen today. That means prophecy, speaking in tongues and gifts of healing. Pentecostalism is more working class than the rest of the evangelical world, and Pentecostal churches are often more diverse — far more diverse — than older American denominations. Hispanics in particular have embraced the Pentecostal faith, both in the United States and in Latin America, and Pentecostalism has exploded in the global south.”

French, who has attended a Pentecostal church, presumably speaks from experience when he says:

“Pentecostalism is arguably the most promising and the most perilous religious movement in America. At its best, the sheer exuberance and radical love of a good Pentecostal church is transformative. At its worst, the quest for miraculous experience can lead to a kind of frenzied superstition, where carnival barker pastors and faux apostles con their congregations with false prophecies and fake miracles, milking them for donations and then wielding their abundant wealth as proof of God’s favor.”

He also considers Pentecostalism a likely source of Christian nationalist ideas, giving as an example “the Seven Mountain Mandate, which holds that God has ordained Christians to dominate the seven ‘mountains’ of cultural influence: the family, the church, education, media, arts, the economy and government. This is an extreme form of Christian supremacy, one that would relegate all other Americans to second-class status.”

According to French, Pentecostalism is also a primary source of prophecies about Trump as a divinely chosen leader for the nation.  He writes:

“Combine the Seven Mountain Mandate with Trump prophecies, and you can see the potential for a kind of fervent radicalism that is immune to rational argument. After all, how can you argue a person out of the idea that God told him to vote for Trump? Or that God told him that Christians are destined to reign over the United States?”

Following his involvement in all three of the above evangelical traditions, French gives us an update on his journey as a Christian:

“I’ve lived and worshiped in every major branch of American evangelicalism. I was raised in a more fundamentalist church, left it for evangelicalism and spent a decade of my life worshiping in Pentecostal churches. Now I attend a multiethnic church that is rooted in both evangelicalism and the Black church tradition. I’ve seen great good, and I’ve seen terrible evil.”

Russell Moore’s name was mentioned above in the section about David Brooks.  I also previously discussed reactions to his statements about evangelicalism in connection to the publication, last year, of his book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.  Another interview of Moore, conducted by Tish Harrison Warren and published on July 30, 2023, is the focus of my review here.

To explain the title of his book, Moore provides a definition of “evangelical America”:

“What I mean by ‘evangelical’ is people who believe in the personal aspect of what it means to be a follower of Christ. That includes the way that we understand the Bible, the way that we understand the need to be born again.”

It’s fair to say that his definition would include all three traditions described by French.  Moore’s book is an expression of his concern about the state of evangelicalism.  However, he makes it clear that he does not believe secularization is the answer to America’s culture wars.  He explains:

“I was in a session several years ago in which a researcher had done a survey about religious people’s reactions to immigrants and refugees. And she was stunned to find that the more active evangelistic work a church did, the more welcoming they were to refugees in their communities. I was not surprised at all, because evangelism presupposes the possibility of conversation and persuasion. And not the coercion of raw power.

When churches have given up on evangelism, this means they’ve given up on actually engaging with and loving their neighbors. That’s bad news for everybody. You end up in a situation where these warring groups in American life are seeking some kind of total victory, where somebody is the final, ultimate winner and somebody is the final, ultimate loser. That ratchets up the stakes of culture wars dramatically.”

This statement reflects Moore’s assumption that Christians are driven by love of neighbor which leads them to engage others through non-coercive means, and that the secular world is not necessarily driven by similar considerations.  Of course, that is not an attempt to explain why evangelicals have not lived up to that calling, especially when they happen to be Christian nationalists.  Moore goes on to address Christian nationalism, which he considers heretical:

“Christian nationalism is the use of Christian symbols or teachings in order to prop up a nation-state or an ethnic identity. It’s dangerous for the nation because it’s fundamentally antidemocratic. Christian nationalism takes a political claim and seeks to make it ultimate. It says: If a person disagrees with me, that person is disagreeing with God. No democratic nation can survive that, which is why the founders of this country built in all kinds of protections from it.

Christian nationalism is also dangerous for the witness of the church, because Christian nationalism is fundamentally, at its core, anti-evangelical. If what the Gospel means is for people to come before God, person by person, not nation by nation or village by village or tribe by tribe, then Christian nationalism is heretical.

Christian nationalism assumes outward conformity enforced by social or political power. It transforms the way that we see reality with the assumption that the really important things are political and cultural, as opposed to personal and spiritual and theological.”

On this point, I agree with Moore, except for the fact that I do not believe Christianity should be only a matter of individual worship.  The whole idea of the kingdom of God implies the urgency to build a world that is more pleasing to God.  Individual improvement should lead to societal improvement.  I just don’t think Christian nationalists have much connection to the Jesus of the New Testament.

Moore also thinks Christian nationalism is not a fringe movement within evangelicalism.  Like the prosperity gospel of the previous generation, it affects every aspect of American Christianity.  It also supports the rise of authoritarianism throughout the world, and in the United States in particular, as seen in the January 6 event.  I see this as a serious indictment of the Christian religion as it has been practiced.  Indeed, nothing in the teaching of Christ should lead to authoritarianism.

Asked whether he was surprised by the negative reaction from Christians when he denounced Trump, Moore gives an interesting answer which is worth reproducing here in its entirety:

“It didn’t surprise me that there would be overwhelming buy-in once Trump became the Republican nominee. One of the things I was worried about is that people would say: I’m not supporting him; I’m just voting for him because I think the alternative is worse. I feared, at the time, that the way that American politics works right now is inherently totalizing, so there would not be people after Trump was elected who would, for instance, support him on some judicial appointments and oppose him on a Muslim ban or whatever the issue is. And I think that has proved to be the case. Trump has transformed evangelicalism far more than evangelism has influenced Trump.

I was surprised by the aftermath of the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. When the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was released, I was saying to people around me: “Don’t say, ‘I told you so.’ We need to have empathy for Trump-supporting evangelicals who are really hurting at this revelation.” But what ended up happening is that white evangelicals made peace with ‘Access Hollywood,’ if anything, quicker than the rest of America did.

I received a castigating email from a sweet Christian lady who had taught me Sunday school when I was a kid. And none of it argued: “You’re wrong about Trump’s moral character.” The argument was: ‘Get real. This is what we have to have in order to fight the enemy.’ That was surprising to me. And disorienting.”

Again, from Moore’s perspective, evangelical teaching stands on a solid foundation and it is surprising that evangelicals can be so easily derailed from their true calling.  But could it be that the foundation is precisely the reason why the movement is so vulnerable to influences from the likes of Trump or Christian nationalism?  In fact, my point is seen clearly in the last part of Moore’s answer when he is asked why certain evangelicals feel so embattled today:

“I mentioned in the book about how many pastors talk about referencing Jesus’ call to ‘turn the other cheek,’ only to have blowback from people in their congregation because they say that that doesn’t work in times like these. The assumption is that we’re in a hostile culture as opposed to a neutral culture — as though the Sermon on the Mount is delivered in Mayberry, not ancient Rome. And the assumption also shows a lack of confidence in the means that God has given us to advance the church through proclamation and demonstration.”

Isn’t this proof that these evangelicals don’t know Jesus that well?  Moore is correctly pointing out that the context of Jesus’ statement was ancient Rome, with all its brutality and subjugation of weaker nations such as the Jewish one.  Surely that is not the situation faced by evangelicals today!  And yet, they are quick to reject Jesus’ basic teaching while, at the same time, calling him their Lord and Master.  Perhaps they have switched their allegiance from Jesus to Trump? Or perhaps their allegiance was never to Jesus in the first place?  Perhaps they just used him for insurance for the afterlife!

Along a similar line, Moore laments over the fact that many evangelicals are leaving the church today because “in many cases they’re starting to question not whether the church is too strict but whether the church actually holds to a morality at all.” As I mentioned earlier, evangelicals once promoted themselves as the Moral Majority.  Was that real?

Asked what he thinks a healthy political engagement from evangelicals would look like, Moore says something that I agree with:

“It would mean a reordering of priorities. The church could see ultimate things as ultimate and other things as falling in line behind those ultimate things. That’s the fundamental shift.

I do think that we need to have the right ordering of our priorities and our loves and also the right understanding of what it means to follow Christ. The figure of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels is not a frantic, angry culture warrior. He is remarkably tranquil about the situation around him. I think we need more of that. If our neighbors saw us loving one another and forgiving one another, even if they find our theological beliefs to be strange or even dangerous, that would be a good start.”

From the above review, one gets a sense that there is hope that a healthy reform of evangelicalism may follow the current crisis.  However, there are reasons to think it may not come soon.  For that, I turn to a January 2024 opinion by Michelle Goldberg who is a political progressive and an atheist.

Goldberg notes that some evangelical leaders have expressed second thoughts regarding their unconditional support of Trump.  She quotes a 2021 statement by Robert Jeffress who was mentioned earlier: ”‘I had that internal conversation with myself — and I guess with God, too — about, you know, when do you cross the line?’ he said, allowing that the line had, ‘perhaps,’ been crossed.”

According to Goldberg, the underperformance of MAGA candidates at the 2022 election led to more questioning by evangelical leaders of their allegiance to Trump.  She mentions Mike Evans, a former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, who remembers leaving a Trump rally “in tears because I saw Bible believers glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.”  Also on her list is Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who seemed happy that Trump had punched “the bully that had been pushing evangelicals around,” but expressed a concern: “The challenge is, he went a little too far. He had too much of an edge sometimes.”

At the time Goldberg was writing her article, some evangelical leaders were considering alternatives to Trump.  Perkins, along with others such as Bob Vander Plaats, the head of a Christian activist group called the Family Leader, or Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, saw Ron DeSantis as the new hope for their cause.  Of course, we now know that DeSantis’ campaign collapsed while Trump kept going strong.  Furthermore, in my opinion, if the hope is to reform evangelicalism, DeSantis does not look like a good choice since he is a Christian nationalist.

Therefore, while Moore and other conservative Christians may hope for a change for the better within evangelicalism, Goldberg’s article outlines two current trends: The leaders who fully supported Trump are not necessarily hoping for a move away from Christian nationalism.  Also, those leaders are being overcome by the MAGA wave and are becoming powerless against the Trumpification of evangelicalism.  Goldberg writes:

“From this wreckage has emerged a version of evangelicalism that sometimes seems like a brand-new religion, with Trump at the center of it. As Ruth Graham and Charles Homans reported in The New York Times this week, in Iowa, the percentage of people tied to a congregation fell by almost 13 percent from 2010 to 2020, one of the sharpest declines in the country. ‘As ties to church communities have weakened, the church leaders who once rallied the faithful behind causes and candidates have lost influence,’ they wrote. ‘A new class of thought leaders has filled the gap: social media personalities and podcasters, once-fringe prophetic preachers and politicians.’ Trump captured the spirit of this movement when he shared a video on his Truth Social site titled, ‘God Made Trump.’

There’s no way to know if evangelical leaders could have prevented this devolution of their faith by joining together to stand up to Trump before he became such a mythic figure. But now, more than seven years into their deal with the devil, it’s probably too late.”

It is not for me to say whether it’s too late or not.  Perhaps a good start might be to recognize that there is something about evangelicalism that has been leading to a “brand-new religion” that should not be confused with New Testament Christianity.

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