gracchusdixit

Many of those who get paid to opine on television or in print have wondered how it is that Evangelical Christians, whom poll after poll show to be Donald Trump’s most steadfast followers, can justify their support of a man twice divorced, who has cheated on all his wives, is an unrepentant sexual predator, and indulges in language and behavior that are routinely vulgar, spiteful and “unchristian”.  Surely, the pundits argue, Evangelicals must recognize that Trump contradicts everything they profess to believe in:  family values, the sanctity of traditional marriage, the so-called “word of god” embodied in the Bible, and the rest.   How, then, can they reconcile their religious faith with their political fidelity to Donald J. Trump?

Two possible explanations for this apparent contradiction are routinely advanced.   One is that Evangelicals are hypocrites, which is to say, they support Trump for reasons having nothing to do with their faith, because their faith is a sham, a mask for more practical and political interests.  

The other is that Evangelicals have made a deliberate but grudging bargain with the devil to accomplish some greater, purportedly moral purpose:  to abolish abortion, to protect what they imagine to be their “religious freedom,” or to uphold “choice” when it comes to deciding whether to send their children to public or religious schools.

There may be a dollop of truth in such explanations—though I very much doubt it.  In any event, they miss a deeper point.  

The deeper point is that the beliefs of Donald Trump and of Evangelical Christians are, not only not at odds with one another, but one and the same.  In supporting Trump, Evangelicals haven’t struck an instrumental bargain with a devil they otherwise abhor; they have struck a bargain with a man who embodies their most basic beliefs.  For the truth of the matter is that the belief system of Evangelical Christians is at root authoritarian and oppressive, sexist and racist.   In Donald Trump, they have therefore found their perfect avatar.

Trump’s thinly veiled racism—his attack on Mexican immigrants as “rapists;” his defense of white neo-Nazis; his bullying condemnation of black football players for exercising their First Amendment rights by kneeling during the national anthem—is perfectly aligned with the racist history of Evangelical Christianity.  The Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Protestant denomination in the land, was formed in 1845 specifically to support the institution of slavery.  A Baptist sermon from that era proclaimed:

Both Christianity and Slavery are from Heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time; and therefore both have been protected and defended by God’s omnipotent arm from the assaults, oppositions and persecutions through which they have passed.

To imagine that slave-owners were objects of “persecution,” deserving to be “protected and defended by God’s omnipotent arm,” says something profoundly sinister about the Evangelical mind. 

Some will say all that was a very long time ago.  But it took the Southern Baptist Convention more than a century to disavow its support of slavery and its successor institution, Jim Crow.  And despite that official disavowal, it is abundantly clear that many Southern Baptists, along with other Evangelicals, still cling to their unrepentant racial prejudices.  That is one of the reasons they cling so steadfastly to Donald Trump.

But racial prejudice is not the only reason.  The constant invocation of “family values” by Evangelicals is code for another deep-seated prejudice—a vision of society in which men are in charge and women are submissive, subservient, and compliant.  To Evangelicals, it matters comparatively little if a man commits adultery, sleeps with porn stars, or pays them off to secure their silence.  That is his privilege.  He is a man.  He can do as he chooses.  A woman, on the other hand, must do as she is told.  

Evangelicals would deny this dichotomy, of course, but their denials are belied by their behavior.  Time after time, we have seen their pastors and their favored politicians ensnared in one sordid sexual scandal after another.  These men always disingenuously “confess” their sins; they invariably sidestep the consequences; they are routinely “forgiven”.

That is because Evangelicals believe that the sexual and reproductive behavior of women must be subordinated to the desires of men and to the dictates of the patriarchal and domineering god of the Old Testament.  A woman’s freedom to make her own choices nowhere enters the picture.  Thus it is that a man may be forgiven, but a woman must be forced to bear a child she did not intend or does not want, no matter the circumstances or the consequences.

Evangelicals justify all this in the name of “life”.   This justification is moral and logical rubbish.  If they truly cared about “life,” the Evangelicals who worship Trump would care, not only about protecting unborn fetuses, but also about protecting living children and the living women who gave birth to them.  They would care that childbirth is ten times more dangerous than abortion.  They would care that, when the options of contraception and abortion are denied, the morality rates caused by childbirth skyrocket.  They would care that our country, almost alone in the advanced world, refuses to provide maternity leave, childcare, and adequate nutrition.   

But Evangelicals care about none of these things.  All they care about is controlling women, subordinating their lives and their choices to the commandments of the thoroughly revolting Old Testament god Trump personifies. 

To quote the Book of Exodus:

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children until the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

These could be the words of Donald Trump, if he had the capacity and eloquence to utter them.  That he lacks both capacity and eloquence does not change the fact that he is the “jealous God” Evangelicals now worship.  He is a god who holds grudges, a god who takes pleasure in “visiting iniquity” on those who refuse to love him, and a god whose spiteful jealousies should be rejected for the abominations they are.