Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure. Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity. Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised. Another way to put this is that the Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms.
As a kid, I still believed that religious people were the ones practicing kindness and compassion and trying to lead Christ-like lives. They were they ones trying to live their faith, who not only went to church but actually read their Bibles and worked to incorporate those teachings into their lives. They revered the version of Jesus Christ who taught love, tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion. They were decent, loving, compassionate people who practiced tolerance and acceptance and loved other as they’d wish themselves to be loved.
Looking back on my more naive self, I don’t imagine that Christians were as uniformly good, kind, and altruistic as I gave them credit for being. Still, I can’t help feeling that my memory of Christianity being, at least in general terms, far less malevolent, judgmental, and intolerant isn’t wrong. It really wasn’t until Christianity became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party in the early ’80s that terms like “American Taliban,” “Christian homophobe,” and “culture warrior” came into vogue and “spiritual warfare” came to mean actual warfare. Once Republicans discovered that the deeply religious were the perfect base and the deeply religious realized that the GOP offered them a shot at political power, the very nature of Christianity in America changed.
The Evangelical brand is so depleted and tainted at this point that Russell Moore, a prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention recently said that he will no longer call himself an “Evangelical Christian,” thanks—he implied—to association between Evangelicals and Trump. Instead he is using the term “Gospel Christian”—at least till the 2016 election is over. While Trump has received endorsements from Evangelical icons including Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Pat Robertson, other Evangelical leaders (e.g. here, here) have joined Moore in lamenting the deep and wide Evangelical attraction to Trump, which they say is antithetical to their values.
And yet Evangelicals continue to support Trump, who’s about as Christian as I am Nigerian. It has nothing to do with the teachings of a benevolent and compassionate Jesus Christ. It has far more to do with Trump resembling the angry, vindictive, spiteful God of the Old Testament.
But how much, really, is the Trump brand antithetical to the Evangelical brand? Humanist commentator James Croft argues that Trump is what Evangelicalism, in the hands of the Religious Right, has become:
“The religious right in America has always been a political philosophy based on bullying, pandering, projecting strength to hide fear and weakness, and proud, aggressive ignorance. That’s what it’s been about from the beginning. Trump has merely distilled those elements into a decoction so deadly that even some evangelicals are starting to recognize the venom they have injected into American culture.”
Croft says that Pastors like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren use Jesus as a fig leaf “to drape over social views that would otherwise be revealed as nakedly evil.”
Which is really a nice way of saying that a convincing case could be made that pastors like Osteen and Warren sociopaths…exactly what you’d hope someone passing themselves off as earthly representatives of the love of Jesus Christ would be, eh?
Conservative Evangelical Christians came to recognize that the GOP provided the infrastructure and means for imbuing their narrow moral/ideological/theological agenda with the force of law, which would allow them to create a political system more to their liking. They understood that the path to power offered by Republicans meant they finally had a shot at dismantling the anti-Christian (at least in their minds) separation of Church and State. They could make their God our government and restore God to His rightful place in the public square, thus ensuring that they’d be the ones wielding political power. What they forgot to consider were the opinions and sensibilities of the vast majority of Americans, who don’t want ANYONE’S God to be our government.
Somewhere along the way, Conservative Evangelical Christians lost sight of the truth that most Americans strongly support the separation of Church and State. They like the fact that religious freedom doesn’t also mean the freedom to force a narrow moral/ideological/theological agenda on all, including those who don’t think as they do. The Evangelical Christian brand has become so thoroughly associated with negative connotations that some are refusing to refer to themselves using that appellation…which is indicative of yet another problem. Instead of addressing the (not altogether inaccurate) perception that “Evangelical” is synonymous with “hatred, intolerance, rejection, and exclusion,” many Evangelicals are simply referring to themselves with another adjective. When most Americans hear “Evangelical,” they think of fire-and-brimstone ideologues like Franklin Graham, Bryan Fischer, and John Hagee, who are to Christian love and charity what Donald Trump is to honesty and integrity. Even by another name, though, discrimination and bigotry in the name of God still run counter to the teachings of the Lord and Savior they claim to revere.
And people wonder why I’m good without God….
