As the 2016 Presidential Election season wound
down recently, a counterintuitive and for many, troubling, alliance was
highlighted by a number of observers.
The GOP Nominee, and subsequent winner of the Election, having garnered
316 Electoral Votes (270 Electoral Votes are required to be elected President),
Donald Trump, attracted the support of the lion’s share of white Americans who
identify as Evangelicals. According to
CNN exit polls, 80% of persons who identified as born-again or Evangelical
Christian said they voted for Donald Trump.
Of those polled 16% said they voted for Hillary Clinton, while the
remaining 4% said they voted for someone else, or they did not respond to the
question. (National Polling base on 24,558 Respondents)
Over the past 17 months I have unpacked
numerous aspects of the, shall we say, unconventional means and methods
employed by Mr. Trump on what we now know was his road to the White House. By and large, many, if not most of those
means and methods would likely be deemed incongruous with the folkways and
mores of the born-again and Evangelical Christian community.
Before I examine this oddity any further, allow
me to establish (at least from my viewpoint) some of the baseline parameters of
Evangelicalism, and the born-again, and Evangelical movement:
·
Evangelicalism
The term “Evangelicalism” is a broad definitional “canopy” that
covers a diverse number of Protestant traditions, denominations, organizations,
and churches. In the English-speaking
world, the modern term usually describes the religious movements and
denominations which sprung forth from a series of revivals that swept the North
Atlantic Anglo-American world in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The concept of evangelism—revival-codified, streamlined, and
routinized by evangelists like Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)—became
“revivalism” as evangelicals set out to convert the nation. Post World War II, changes in American
society wrought by powerful forces such as urbanization and industrialization,
along with new intellectual and theological developments, began to weaken the
power of evangelicalism within American culture.
In the
20th century evangelicalism still held the status of a pervasive American “folk
religion.” This is particularly so in many
sectors of the United States, especially the South and certain areas of the
Midwest.
·
Evangelical
Christian
An Evangelical
Christian is a Protestant who spreads the Gospel. In recent decades the
term has narrowed to designate a white conservative Protestant, usually with a
belief in the inerrancy of scriptures. "Evangelical" includes Fundamentalists.
Fundamentalism" is not
an organization but a style of religious activism:
·
Fundamentalists
are fighting evangelicals taking on mainstream religion.
·
Most
Fundamentalists believe in Dispensationalism
(which most Calvinist
Evangelicals reject).
·
The largest
Evangelical church is the Southern Baptist
Convention, which is largely Fundamentalist.
·
Also important
is the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, which is
both Fundamentalist and Lutheran.
There is no single
accepted way to define who is an Evangelical. Pollsters often pose the query,
"Are you a born-again Christian?" to define the group. Sociologists tend
to look at membership in specific denominations, and often include Holiness Movement, Pentecostal and Nazarene groups. Some scholars focus on the
Bible beliefs, together with a personal commitment to Christ.
Christian researcher and
author George Barna defines "Evangelicals" as a subset of those who
meet the basic criteria defining born again Christians, but who also meet
several other doctrinal conditions. A distinction is then enabled to be
manifest in other areas of faith beliefs.
That is a lot of preamble to
lead to what I consider an inescapable conclusion. To wit, Donald J. Trump is an unlikely
candidate to be embraced, endorsed, and ultimately adopted by anyone who wears
the label Evangelical. At least, that
would seem to be the case at first blush.
However, deeper inspection reveals there is a dark, and frankly,
nefarious association between Southern Evangelicalism and racial enmity…racism,
if you will.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II recently penned an essay
on Evangelicalism that appeared in a number of publications, including the
Washington Post. Rev. Dr. Barber is the
Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ), in Goldsboro, NC,
a North Carolina
political leader, national board member of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and chair
of their Legislative Political Action
Committee. He is President of
the NAACP’s North Carolina state chapter, the largest in the Southern United
States, and the second largest in the country. Sin 2007, Rev. Dr. Barber has been leading "Moral
Mondays" civil-rights protests, usually in North Carolina's
state capital, Raleigh.
You can get
the sense of the thematic tenor of the essay from its title The Racist History
of Southern White Evangelicalism and the Rise of Donald Trump. It is natural to want to believe that racism and Evangelicalism or Evangelical
Christendom is antithetical. Of course
many of the folks who marveled at the verbal stylings of Donald J. Trump on the
campaign trail could naturally have thought the same thing about any
perceivable relationship between Mr. Trump and Evangelical Christendom. Apparently, if they did, they were wrong.
In the essay,
Rev. Dr. Barber points to Franklin Graham’s (son of the Rev. Billy Graham)
response to Donald Trump’s victory. As
he noted, Graham said:
“Political pundits are stunned. Many thought the Trump/Pence
ticket didn’t have a chance. None of them understand the God-factor… While the
media scratches their heads and tries to understand how this happened, I
believe that God’s hand intervened.”
Barber
credited Trump with believing that racism in its most raw and most overt form
is anathema. And yet he (Graham) thanks
God for the same triumph that white nationalists/Alt-Right members celebrate because he (Graham) is an heir to a religion that accommodated itself to slavery in
America, and that has morphed over and again for a century and a half to fuel
every backlash against progress toward racial justice in American history.
In its most
recent iteration, the squishy foundation and framework of Evangelicalism and
its nexus to among other things, bigotry, sexism, and yes, racism runs directly
through Donald Trump. In his voluminous
tawdry exhortations, and angry tweets and retweets, he has managed to excite
and attract an eclectic mix that includes, the KKK, the Alt-Right, and oh yeah,
Evangelicals, AKA the Religious Right.
Mr. Trump
kicked off his campaign Tuesday June 16, 2015, promising to “Make our country
great again.” Fairly quickly he went all
in on Mexicans, saying:
“When
Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending
you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of
problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Not long after
his kickoff Mr. Trump upped the ante by claiming he would build a wall on the
Southern Border. I suppose, to put a
cherry on top of that, he added, and Mexico will pay for it. Soon to follow, he suggested a ban on Muslims
entering the country, and for good measure, added that Mosques should be
“monitored.” Keep in mind, all this with
a backdrop of Trump unofficially launching his campaign by effectively becoming
the voice of the Birther Movement, in which he not only argued that President
Obama, the nation’s first Black President was not born in America…but, also that he
was a Muslim.
In Barber’s
essay, he posits that God did not intervene in Mr. Trump’s election, but
quickly injects, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association did. He noted that Graham spent $10 million in
2016 to promote a backlash against President Obama in God’s name by organizing
prayer rallies in all 50 states. In
concluding his national tour in North Carolina, Graham, standing on the steps
of the state capitol, told thousands assembled that they need to know the true
name for those who call themselves progressives: atheists. In essence, Barber added, sadly, Franklin Graham
believes that a God who does
not bless white America’s fear and nostalgia is no God at all.
For his part,
Mr. Trump left a trail of incendiary assertions, allegations, and claims. I have included below a less than exhaustive list of Mr. Trump’s comments, including him saying:
▪ Mexicans are thugs and rapists
▪ We should ban Muslims
▪ "The blacks"
▪ "The blacks" are living in hell (as he allegedly
attempted to secure black votes)
▪ What the hell do you have to lose (also
while purportedly seeking black votes)
▪ He didn’t mock a disabled
journalist…after he did
▪ The media and the electoral system are
rigged
▪ McCain is not a war hero
▪ Thousands of Muslims in NJ celebrated
9/11
▪ Obama is a Muslim
▪ He could walk Down 5th Ave & shoot
someone & not lose any votes
▪ If he wins he’ll lock Hillary up
▪ He will repeal & replace
Obamacare…with something terrific
▪ He'd be dating his daughter if he wasn’t
her father
▪ Said not paying taxes made him smart
▪ Said he knows more about the military
than the generals
▪ Said multiple bankruptcies means he
knows how to work the system
▪ He get his military strategy from TV
▪ A judge was unqualified due to his
Mexican Heritage (Indiana born)
▪ Grab ‘em by the genitals (using a crude
term)
In my
own foray across the Rubicon that separates me from understanding the religious
and ethical basis of the relationship between the Evangelical community and
Donald J. Trump, I found one person who gave me his earnest appraisal of why
he…and presumably Evangelicals like him, supported Mr. Trump. His answer was pretty basic. He stated that he believed the Supreme Court
(SCOTUS) is crucial, and that Mr. Trump will appoint Pro-Life jurists to the
SCOTUS. He rationalized that Pro-Life
trumps (pun intended) everything else.
Full stop.
I believe that
is his personal bottom line. I also
believe that Make America Great Again is a dog whistle, and that the open and
enthusiastic support of the KKK/Alt-Right of the GOP Nominee and winner of the
election is not just a rarefied, inexplicable coincidence. It was cultivated, it was earned, and it
should concern every individual who claims to believe in the principles and
tenets embedded in the Bible. Until
Evangelicals make a straight forward repudiation of the KKK, the Alt-Right, and
the speech and behavior of Donald Trump that inspires their allegiance, I find
it difficult, no, make that impossible, to simply permit them to wink and nod
and act as though this charade is OK. I
will hold them personally responsible for their actions, or lack thereof, in
this matter. It is what it is, and I for
one will not pretend it’s otherwise. It
is…“Southern White Evangelicalism and Racism: ACompelling Intersection!”
I’m done; holla
back!
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