The recent death of Christian evangelist Luis Palau, the “Billy Graham of Latin America,” makes me think about how the Trump era has affected the ability of Christians to share the good news about Jesus’ salvation with a diverse world. and skeptical. According to his New York News obituary, Palau “was especially aware of the common assumption that evangelicals are rabid dragons,” so he tried to make up for the celebration of “feasts” in progressive cities. “In New England, when you say ‘Christian,’ they think ‘those maniacs on the right,'” Palau told the Time in 2001. “I want to show that we are not maniacs, but that we are well educated. This is a rational faith, but a faith that awakens you. ”If you believe, as did Palau (and like me), that Jesus is“ the way, the truth, and the life, ”then it makes sense to share the good news with everyone you can, yes, including urban planners and university-educated progressives. This is what Palau did.
But what happens when so many messengers of Christ have sacrificed their credibility and moral ground by allying themselves with a controversial political figure such as Donald Trump? What happens when Jesus ’brand ambassadors to many Americans are Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr., not Billy Graham and Pope Francis, let alone Jesus himself? In today’s climate, you may be forgiven for thinking that Christians are, as Palau cared to be perceived, “manic.”
Evangelical Christians thought that standing in line behind a Trump was worth it; they couldn’t be more wrong. The cost-benefit analysis that led them to support him as a “minor of two evils” in 2016 did not take into account the long-term damage he is, in fact, still doing.
I recently wrote about how the Trump era has undermined the ability of conservatives to effectively sound the alarm on government spending, debt, and deficits, a development that could have serious consequences for our temporary political world. But the consequences of undermining the Christian witness are even more serious. For believers who take John 14: 6 seriously i literally, anyone who undermines the church’s ability to credibly evangelize a fallen world is guilty of sending other human beings — people who would otherwise have been receptive to a message of salvation — to eternal damnation. .
Do you think getting a few Supreme Court seats guarantees a lasting legacy? Think about the consequences of … eternity. This puts the political commitments made by so many evangelicals into a more complete perspective. It also highlights the possible consequences of one side of the political corridor trying to monopolize an entire religious faith.
According to political scientists David E. Campbell and Geoffrey C. Layman of the University of Notre Dame and John C. Green of Akron University, authors of Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, this corruption is already happening. They designed an experiment to see if the rise of Americans who identify as “non-religious” resulted from a backlash against the Christian right. The experiment consisted first of asking participants about their views on the faith and then exposing them to news that mixed religion and politics; the experiment concluded by asking participants again about their religious identity.
During an interview with Religion News Service, Campbell said just exposing people to one of these stories was “enough to keep a considerable number of people away from having a religious affiliation. a history a a punctually, and we can achieve that effect, “he said.” Imagine what happens when people are exposed to hundreds of stories for many, many years. It would only reinforce the idea that religion and the Republican Party go together and that if not sympathize with the Republican party, you don’t want it to have anything to do with religion. “
The connection between Christianity and the Republican Party has existed for four decades. But it is fair to say that associating religious faith with Ronald Reagan’s solitary optimism or George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” does not result in the same level of negative repercussions as embracing the MAGA ethos.
As he writes to Daniel K. Williams The politics of the cross, “[J]just as some evangelical supporters of Republican conservatism in the 1970s and 1980s combined white middle-class suburban fears about rising crime rates and social welfare costs with Christian principles, so some evangelical supporters of the Contemporary Republican parties have combined rural fears of immigration, arms control and cultural change with Christianity.
“The result may be even more catastrophic for the gospel than late twentieth-century Christian conservatism, because the Christian nationalism of the contemporary Republican party is even further away from historical evangelicalism and certainly further away from historical Christian principles. , at least in its attitude towards immigrants and marginalized racial minorities “.
This problem is not limited to religion. In my estimation, Trumpism has tarnished numerous causes, including (but not limited to) our credibility in 1) compassionately defending the unborn and the sanctity of life, 2) questioning the wisdom of spending 1 , $ 9 trillion and even 3) celebrate the values, traditions and works of art of our Western civilization. In a recent episode of the Bulwark podcast, Charlie Sykes reflected on this development, lamenting that Western civilization has been co-opted by “white nationalists and racists.”
To put it in business terms that a consumer society can understand, we have a brand problem. If you’ve never heard of it, Grover Norquist, the anti-tax conservative, uses a rather eye-catching hypothetical to explain the importance of brand management (since it refers to tax cuts): “Coca-Cola spends a lot of Coca-Cola brand quality control time, “he says.” Everyone knows what’s in Coca-Cola. And so you can buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, take it home, you don’t have to wonder what’s there , or read the ingredients, or ask your friends [it]”, Keep on.
“Finding Donald Trump as the de facto leader of your movement — at least in the eyes of many Americans — is like finding a rat’s head in your bottle of Coca-Cola. ”
But “if you get two-thirds of the way through your bottle of Coca-Cola and look at it and there’s a rat’s head in what’s left in your bottle of Coca-Cola, don’t tell yourself,“ You know , I wonder if I’m going to finish all the rest of this bottle of Coca-Cola this evening. “… Damages the brand.”
“Republican elected officials who vote in favor of tax increases,” Norquist concludes, “are rat heads in the Coca-Cola bottle. They damage the brand for everyone.”
This metaphor of colors could be extended to other realms. I would say Trumpism has damaged the Christian brand as well as the conservative brand.
The good news is that Trump does not exist in a vacuum. Others seek to reach out to different communities and separate the gospel message from toxic politics. In this regard, Luis Palau and his successors (people as Christian leaders such as New York City pastor Tim Keller and chair of the Ethics and Religious Freedom Commission Russell Moore) provide a ray of hope and an alternative. hopeful.
Still, finding Donald Trump as the de facto leader of your movement — at least in the eyes of many Americans — is like finding a rat’s head in your bottle of Coca-Cola. But the consequences are even heavier. In some cases, Trumpism lasts forever.