I had written these paragraphs as part of the draft of a book I'm working on with the working title Balm in Gilead. I decided they don't belong there, so I'm posting them here. They make several important points.
Trump Cut from Balm in Gilead
We
see American nationalism, and to some extent Christian nationalism, in Donald
Trump. He once publicly referred to certain countries other than the United
States as “shithole” countries. He carries on about “America first!” He wants
to shut off all, or nearly all, immigration into this country. He wants to
deport millions of people who are already here. He wants to pull the United
States out of certain international treaties He pulled us out of one treaty on
the environment while he was president. He is an anti-Semite and racist who
considers only us white Americans truly to be Americans or at least to be the
good Americans. In all of these ways Trump has crossed from a healthy or at
least harmless patriotism to a fascistic nationalism.
And
he’s taking millions of conventional American Christians with him across that
line. A great many American adherents of Conventional Christianity are MAGA
Republicans who will overlook all of Donald Trump’s personal and political
shortcomings in their effort to make him president again. He, of course,
panders to them. He gives them “dog whistles” that don’t come right out and say
things like use violence against my opponents but that many of his followers
hear as calls to do just that. Donald Trump is no kind of Christian. He will
use Christianity to enlarge his political base, but he has no actual faith in
anything or anyone but himself. Yet so many adherents of Conventional
Christianity are diehard Trumpists.
Why?
How can that be? It can be in large part because of the way adherents of Conventional
Christianity make banning abortion the main, and sometimes it seems the only,
goal of Christianity. As I noted briefly above, conventional Christians have
been on a crusade against legalized abortion for decades. Donald Trump and
other Republicans promised them again and again that they would appoint federal
judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that
said that the right to an abortion is not just legal but is constitutional.
Donald Trump finally fulfilled that promise while he was president. The Conventional
Christian opposition to all abortion is based on the absurdity that an embryo
is a human being. Conservative Christians have followed politicians for years
who have echoed that ridiculous assertion. Those politicians led a great many
Christians to the far right of American politics. In the 2016 presidential
election, which Trump won despite losing the popular vote, Trump got a great
many Christians to overlook his obvious failings and shortcomings because he
promised them he would get Roe overturned. Trump, it seems, has no
strong personal opinion on abortion. He is, however, more than ready to use
that issue to drum up support for his neofascism.
There
is another powerful, though finally indefensible, reason why so many
conservative American Christians follow Trump. It is the issue of the way the
demographics of the United States are changing. Most American adherents of Conventional
Christianity, though not all of them by any means, are white Americans of
European descent. A majority of Americans have been white Americans at least
since European immigrants displaced Native peoples as the primary demographic
group in the country. White Americans pretty much ran the whole show. And not
just white Americans but white American men made essentially all of the
country’s decisions from the beginning until quite recently.
There
have always been people of color in the United States and its predecessor
political entities. Those first nation people have always been here and still
are. There have always been Black Americans of African descent. For most of our
history there have been Asian people in the country. And, of course, white
Americans, hard as they tried, never quite succeeded in killing off all
American Indians. Especially,
but not exclusively, in the what became the American southwest there have been people
of Hispanic or mixed Hispanic/Native descent.
Nonetheless,
white men were by far the dominant demographic in this country’s power
structures from the beginning of European settlement. For example, I find
photographs of Congress after Reconstruction and before the mid-1960s shocking
because everyone in them is a white man. White men ran the government. White
men ran the economy (though they did it relying on the labor of a great many
people of color). White men ran most of the churches that had any political
significance. White men ran the military. White men ran most of the country’s
educational establishments, HBCU institutions being an exception here. There
was always a bottom demographic level of people of color without which the
country could not have functioned, but white men held essentially all of the
power.
That
demographic is changing. A time is now in sight when white Americans will still
be a plurality of the population but will no longer be a majority. People of
color have, to some extent, come into positions of power and authority in the
country. We’ve had a Black president, not that having him made as much
difference as many of us hoped it would. The Latinx population of the country
has grown to the point that Spanish is practically a second language for us the
way French is a second language of Canada. It is no longer as rare as it used
to be to see people of color occupying positions of responsibility and
authority in the country’s economic, political, and educational institutions at
every level. Women too have come into positions of responsibility and
authority. As I write, our Vice President is a woman. There simply is no
question but that the demographics of this country are changing radically and
rapidly.
A
great many white Americans experience those changing demographics as a threat
to them. We white American males are losing some of the privilege we used to
have in our country. Or perhaps more accurately, women and all people of color are
living with more privilege than they ever have before. Donald Trump plays to
the insecurity and angst these changes produce among a great many white
Americans. He blames people of color, especially recent immigrants, for what he
says are this country’s problems. He says we must expel all immigrants or at
least all undocumented immigrants. He says there are fine people among white
supremacists. In the 1920s and 1930s, Adolf Hitler played on the insecurity and
angst of a great many Germans by telling them that the Jews were responsible
for all of their problems. Trump is using immigrants in exactly the same way,
and his claims about immigrants are as much a big lie as were Hitler’s claims
about the Jews. Tragically, a great many American Conventional Christians buy
into this American fascism that Trump propounds.
Trump’s
racism, and his misogyny too, are radically anti-Christian; but a strange thing
is happening in this country. People, most of them probably adherents of Conventional
Christianity, are melding an unhealthy nationalism and white supremacism with
their faith and producing something called Christian nationalism. Trump plays
to the country’s Christian nationalists nearly every time he opens his mouth in
public. He panders to their anti-Semitism and their Islamophobia. He panders to
their sexism. He blames immigrants, or at least immigrants of color, for
economic problems that either don’t exist or that are in no way caused by
immigrants. Christianity ought to keep people out of Trumpism, but instead many
American Christians distort Christianity so badly that they have no problem combining
their faith with politics produced not by faith but by fear.
All
through 2023 the polls said Trump will almost certainly win the Republican
nomination for president next year. The fact that he has been indicted for
something like 91 different felonies has not significantly reduced his support
among people who self-identify as Republicans. Whether a conviction before the
2024 election will reduce his support remains to be seen at the time of this
writing. One thing that, ironically, might reduce his support is the Supreme
Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. That overturning won’t reduce
Trump’s base. Trumpists love it. It may, however, reduce Trump’s support
because it was fanatical opposition to abortion that got many people to vote
for Trump in the first place. Now these people don’t need a president to do
anything to overturn Roe. It’s already been overturned. So will Christians
start to wake up to Trump’s personal immorality and fascistic nature of his
policies? That, sadly, remains to be seen.
