Evangelicals and Trump: Here's Why They Support Him

We’ve all heard the question. What are they thinking? How can so-called Christians support a president who has lived the life of a crime boss, with all the classic deceit, corruption, and damage? 

How to politically seduce an Evangelical

First, we need some context. Going back a few years, there are several influential movements that came together like streams in a watershed, resulting in a political-spiritual swamp just waiting for the right creature to thrive there. Like the dinosaurs in the La Brea Tar Pits, today’s Evangelicals are caught in the ooze of that swamp, a snare that was decades in the making. Make no mistake, it’s a Republican swamp. That is not to say that Democrats are always innocent, but todays miasma has a Republican stink.

The first was the Koch movement to set up think tanks, foundations, and institutions to spread, not just conservative policy, but winner take all libertarian ideocracy. They played the long game over decades, and they succeeded in changing the entire conservative environment, making money and power the end game rather than what’s good for America. Jane Mayer wrote the book on this program. A must read is Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016).

Next came a brilliant, multi-talented young Republican operative named Lee Atwater. His story was told in an award-winning bombshell documentary in 2008 in Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. Later it was published in Britain as “Dirty Tricks: The Man Who Got the Bushes Elected.” Atwater turned politics into entertainment. He was also a master of manipulating the press with no ethical safeguards, and best of all, he taught the Republicans to pander to and partner with the conservative Christian movement. When he developed brain cancer at a relatively young age, he claimed to have gotten religion. His newfound faith caused him to confess to people the tricks he had maneuvered, and he apologized to particular press people for playing them for fools. Did he really make the change? You can decide for yourself by googling the titles above.

Third: what do you get when you cross a billionaire with a conservative Christian faith? You get dynastic families like the DeVosses, the Princes, and the Mercers—moguls who don’t need faith to move a mountain because their money can create the mountain or demolish it at will. These are people whose whole existence revolves around preserving their status and their wealth. They have no clue how the rest of the world lives and they really don’t care. If you want to read up on this development, no one explains it better than Katherine Stewart in The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Here is a tidbit from a review of the book:

 “A revelatory investigation of the Religious Right’s rise to political power. For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. But in her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: America’s Religious Right has evolved into a Christian nationalist movement. It seeks to gain political power and to impose its vision on all of society. It isn’t fighting a culture war, it is waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.” 

Pastors of megachurches and heads of influential organizations began to network together in the new environment of partnership between politics and Christian religion.

An important fourth cultural development to help us understand today’s politics is the siloing of news information and the lapse of ethical considerations in many non-mainstream news outlets. If Fox News had existed in Nixon’s day, he may have gotten away with all of his crimes and nastiness. He could have served out his term, and the average Republican may never have known who did what or why. For this phenomenon we can thank the removal of the Fairness Doctrine. Evangelicals today don’t hear the same news we hear on the left. Any honest historian who studies autocracies knows that no dictator arises without making the press the enemy of the people. Trump functions according to all the classical autocratic playbooks, but Evangelicals are not educated enough or curious enough to recognize that.

Fifth, Citizens United. Big money, lots of it, much of it laundered to hide corporations, individuals, and foreign entities. Money corrupts everything, and it has ineluctably corrupted our politics. I love how Republican pols talk about Democrat elites, as if there are no Republican elites.

And then, the bombshell phenomenon that brought it all together: charismatic prophecies began coming out as early as 2007, 2011, 2014, 2015, ascribing wondrous traits to trump like being a savvy business man and deal maker. He was God’s chosen to save America from falling into the hands of the globalist conspiracy. He was the man in God’s hand who would never be impeached. He would cause America to be respected again. He would serve two terms, Pence would serve two terms, and Pence’s VP would serve two terms. The prophecies, dreams, and visions were all very convincing to the Christian world. You can read some of them on my blog: https://janetkatherinesmith.blogspot.com. I transcribed them word for word to show that the exaggerated claims of Trump’s greatness are actually laughable in light of history. They came not from God, but from RW media.

However, like G. W. Bush, Trump listened to the Evangelicals, meeting with them and promising them the moon. And he delivered. There are still Elijah List prophets saying that God will keep his promise of a second term for Trump. He will reverse the loss. This could actually be encouraging Trump allies, who have a nominal faith bolstered by bad theology, to think that it’s God’s will for them to proclaim that the election was fraudulent so they can try to overturn it on January 6. When the prophets say, don’t give up, it’s not over, it encourages this useless sedition. Who can argue with God? Who needs an election when we have prophets to tell us who the president should be?

Millions of Evangelical Christians will be interceding all through early January for two low-life senatorial candidates, riddled with dodgy financial activities and conflicts of interest, to win Senate seats in Georgia. Forget the lack of character; these two will support Donald Trump. That’s all the E’s know and all they want to know. After that, prayers will assail heaven for Mike Pence to saunter into the electoral process and approve the GOP challenge to the electoral count. They think he can just approve or eliminate electoral votes at will. In fact, Donald Trump thinks that, too, and he doesn’t understand when Pence and others tell him that it doesn’t work like that. Meanwhile, the prophets have assured them that victory is at hand.

Specific Evangelical policies

1: Abortion. Trump came on strong as the prolife president. I am theologically prolife. I saw my second son in a dream before he was conceived. He was Ben the day he was conceived, but in the eyes of God, even before that. However, not all women are believers, and they will find ways to abort those babies. In the process, they will harm themselves or leave the fetus in a campsite port-a-potty or gas station bathroom. If they choose to not abort, their lives are turned upside down, not yours or mine. It’s their health, their finances, their career, their family, their relationship with boyfriend or husband, their education, or their trauma if they are forced to carry a child to term that they don’t want. I don’t take the decision to abort a baby lightly. Not at all. But me forcing my faith and convictions on another woman when the consequences are so vast is a kind of Christian Sharia law, which isn’t Christian at all. I’m all for restraints on abortion, like a 20-week cut off except in certain cases, but I can’t bring myself to tell a woman that the government should control her body, and that she has to live by my convictions.

2: Prayer in school, but it has to be conservative, Protestant, Christian prayer in school, like it used to be in the 1950’s before the country was flooded with Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, and adherents of various pagan religions.

3: The Johnson Amendment has threatened the tax-free status of Christian churches and schools that want to preach and teach RW politics. They want it gone under the moniker of “religious freedom.” They moan that they are oppressed. “Jezebel” is suppressing them and thwarting God’s will.

4: Total support of Israel. They know nothing about the Palestinian problem, about how oppressed that group is, and how the Israeli settlers are taking their land. They don’t care. The Jews are God’s people and the land is for them. Period. No study needed, no nuance, no diplomacy. Trump loves Israel, Israel loves Trump. That’s all they know and all they want to know.

5: There are Bible studies in the WH, and they aren’t led by a worldly diverse group of leaders. They are more about a newish theology called Dominionism, a fringe movement encouraging Christians to dominate family, economy, government, media, celebration, education, and spirituality. See The Seven Mountains of Influence: A Practical Guide for Understanding God’s Purpose for your life, by Bronwyn O’Brien. Sprinkle in a little prosperity gospel. Trump’s circle of religious advisors are tongues speaking “prophets” and “apostles” who truly believe that God is all about Republican policies. They prophesy that Democrats are the enemy to be defeated and judged, and how Republican policies on taxes, immigration, and regulation etc. are God’s divine will. For more on this, see Well Versed: Biblical Answers to Today’s Tough Questions, by James L. Garlow.

6: Right Wing judges. Even Franklin Graham noticed early on that Trump was a scoundrel. He told his followers, “Vote the judges.” Some prophet predicted that God had a “Deborah” waiting in the wings. When Amy Comey Barrett was picked, that vindicated all their support for Trump. Who could then doubt that God was in charge and Trump was in His hand? I suspect that said prophet has a human source that a female judge was being groomed.

7: Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and declared that the U.S. supports Israel in claiming the entire city of Jerusalem as its capital. Wow, that set off an explosion of joy and worship among Christians. The U.S. will also not obstruct the annexation of about a third of the West Bank. Israeli settlements can remain there. Kim Clement prophesied that God would “restore the fortunes of Zion.” Yes, that sounds so biblical. God gave the land to Israel, right? Israel can’t steal what is rightfully theirs, explained my trumper friend.

Trusting, obeying political prophets leads to ruin

I believe in prophecy. I really do, but these prophecies are bunk. I can understand if you are a Republican and ascribe to conservative policies, but a prophet or pastor scaring their people by telling them that voting against Trump is a sin, that is wrong. It will tear the church apart.

After all is said and done, there are two outstanding takeaways in all this. I can’t stress this enough—the power of RW media is profound. The deception, manipulation, spin, lies, smears, etc., have had an unquantifiable effect on the average Republican, Christian or not. They live in a bubble of utterly different truths and facts. The average Evangelical does not listen to news all day, and the ones that do listen to Fox, Rush Limbaugh, OANN, or get news from Facebook, and we on the Left know where that comes from. They are blissfully unaware of half the things Trump has said and done.

The other important issue as far as the leaders are concerned, they feel that the time is right for them to have temporal influence, and maybe wealth as well. Democrats will sideline them again. Having tasted the thrill of laying hands on a president, touring the Oval Office, recommending a Supreme Court justice, and telling their flock that it’s time to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth, it will be hard for them to return to normal status, especially when good things begin to happen under a Democrat president. That will be a shock. All the wonderful things they predicted about the next four years when they thought Trump would surely win, may happen under Joe Biden and a hussy woman named Kamala Harris (a name they love to mispronounce).

No matter how silly the Evangelicals sound to the Left, blowing off millions of church-going Christians in this voting block is not a good move for Democrats. For example, is there some compromise that could pacify the ardor against abortion? Being a great president will not be enough for President Biden to lure them back. Obama was a great president, but they were taught to hate him, and hate is what they did. Somehow, the river of sewage that these good people drink every day needs to be thwarted. It will take someone wiser than I to figure out how to do that.

Why don’t the charismatics care what is happening to our Democracy? One, because they believe their trusted news sources that the election was stolen. Two, because they think God has spoken through the prophets. Who needs a voting public when Republican legislatures can follow god’s will and just appoint their own electors? A Republican god designates a Bush or a Mitt Romney or a Trump. Who can thwart god? And then the holy prophets can tell the elected officials how to run the government. What could possibly go wrong?