Back to basics
by Suzanne Gould and Biodun Iginla, The Economist Intelligence Unit Political News Analysts, New York
Some evangelicals want to wean their brethren off unconditional support for Donald Trump
A GROUP of evangelical leaders gathered near Chicago on April 16th and 17th to discuss the future of their movement. They were not well-known names—though some are pastors of large churches—mainly because they are not active in politics or the media. But that was partly the point of their meeting, held at Wheaton College, the “Harvard of evangelicalism”. Acknowledging that more than 80% of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and that three-quarters held a favourable view of him in a recent poll, many of those attending the meeting have expressed concern that their wing of the Christian faith is being tainted by its often unquestioning support of the president. They want to return it to its spiritual roots.
Many of the country’s most prominent evangelical leaders, such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell junior, have spent years complaining about moral decay in America. Yet they have been happy to throw their support behind Mr Trump, in spite of evidence of his misogyny, racism and cruelty. Mr Falwell called Mr Trump the “dream president”. Doug Birdsall, the organiser of the Wheaton meeting, who is honorary chairman of Lausanne, an international movement of evangelicals, says that many believers are tired of seeing Christians who praise Mr Trump being held up as representative of the faith. They are also tired of themselves being portrayed as racist and misogynistic because of other people’s mistaken elision of faith and politics. “Evangelical is a theological term,” he says. “But it has become a sociological and a political one.”
Many of those attending said the greatest barrier to people believing the Christian message is evangelicals’ embrace of Mr Trump. They say they want to present a “counter-narrative” that returns believers to the central tenets of the faith: the sufficiency of Christ’s death for salvation, the need for personal conversion, and the authority of the Bible.
A lot of evangelicals held their nose when voting for Mr Trump, says Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, DC, but, as conservatives, felt they had no choice, if the alternative was Hillary Clinton. Now “millions of evangelicals are looking for a different voice”, he believes. Political weaponisation “is not what faithful and true Christianity should look like”.
One of the reasons for the problem is that evangelicals, unlike Catholics, do not have a strong model for social engagement. “People’s views on, say, immigration are not shaped by their theology, but by their class, their politics and their tribe,” says Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who supports the Wheaton meeting. The danger is that this has meant that they take on the characteristics of the group that has said it will protect them. Feeling besieged in a secularising society, they have been receptive to a message of resentful populism. So, not unlike some medieval church leaders, “they are providing religious cover for moral squalor”, says Mr Gerson.
Supporting Mr Trump also cuts evangelicals off from the next generation and from the global movement, says Mr Wehner. Indeed, many young evangelicals are leaving evangelicalism, or if they stay, care more about social justice than political power. And four-fifths of evangelicals globally do not have a white skin, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological College in Massachussetts. Support for the president also cuts them off even more from their non-white brethren at home. The movement in America is strikingly segregated, so the Wheaton meeting has made a point of including many black leaders such as A.R. Bernard, who leads a church of some 40,000 members in New York, and Claude Alexander, as well as Latino, Asian and native American pastors. Mr Bernard resigned from Mr Trump’s evangelical advisory group when the president blamed both sides for the violence at a far-right march in Charlottesville last year.
The racial divide will take some healing. Of the 27% of American adults who describe themselves as evangelicals, 62% are white, 19% are black and 11% Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Centre. Since Mr Trump’s inauguration last year, Pew has found that three-quarters of white evangelicals say they lean towards the Republican Party. And three-quarters of those people said they thought Mr Trump was doing a good job. Among black evangelicals, 85% said they leaned towards the Democrats, and 86% of those said they disapproved of Mr Trump’s performance.
In the end, argues Mr Gerson, support for Mr Trump is self-defeating, because it makes non-Christians want to have nothing to do with evangelicals. “If you are pro-life, it does not help your case to be associated with misogyny,” he says. The same is true for family values, he says, if you denigrate migrants who have those values and bring them to your society. “Evangelicals will suffer badly for that reason,” he predicts.
So will the Wheaton meeting gain much traction? Some who oppose Mr Trump believe that support for him is mostly among nominal evangelicals, and that “real” believers will see through the hypocrisy. But Pew found that his most ardent supporters are those who attend church at least once a week. Still, Mr Wehner is hopeful. “We need to try to alter the perception of what evangelical Christianity is,” he says, “and to offer a higher and better way.”
Many of the country’s most prominent evangelical leaders, such as Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell junior, have spent years complaining about moral decay in America. Yet they have been happy to throw their support behind Mr Trump, in spite of evidence of his misogyny, racism and cruelty. Mr Falwell called Mr Trump the “dream president”. Doug Birdsall, the organiser of the Wheaton meeting, who is honorary chairman of Lausanne, an international movement of evangelicals, says that many believers are tired of seeing Christians who praise Mr Trump being held up as representative of the faith. They are also tired of themselves being portrayed as racist and misogynistic because of other people’s mistaken elision of faith and politics. “Evangelical is a theological term,” he says. “But it has become a sociological and a political one.”
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A lot of evangelicals held their nose when voting for Mr Trump, says Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, DC, but, as conservatives, felt they had no choice, if the alternative was Hillary Clinton. Now “millions of evangelicals are looking for a different voice”, he believes. Political weaponisation “is not what faithful and true Christianity should look like”.
One of the reasons for the problem is that evangelicals, unlike Catholics, do not have a strong model for social engagement. “People’s views on, say, immigration are not shaped by their theology, but by their class, their politics and their tribe,” says Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, who supports the Wheaton meeting. The danger is that this has meant that they take on the characteristics of the group that has said it will protect them. Feeling besieged in a secularising society, they have been receptive to a message of resentful populism. So, not unlike some medieval church leaders, “they are providing religious cover for moral squalor”, says Mr Gerson.
Supporting Mr Trump also cuts evangelicals off from the next generation and from the global movement, says Mr Wehner. Indeed, many young evangelicals are leaving evangelicalism, or if they stay, care more about social justice than political power. And four-fifths of evangelicals globally do not have a white skin, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological College in Massachussetts. Support for the president also cuts them off even more from their non-white brethren at home. The movement in America is strikingly segregated, so the Wheaton meeting has made a point of including many black leaders such as A.R. Bernard, who leads a church of some 40,000 members in New York, and Claude Alexander, as well as Latino, Asian and native American pastors. Mr Bernard resigned from Mr Trump’s evangelical advisory group when the president blamed both sides for the violence at a far-right march in Charlottesville last year.
The racial divide will take some healing. Of the 27% of American adults who describe themselves as evangelicals, 62% are white, 19% are black and 11% Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Centre. Since Mr Trump’s inauguration last year, Pew has found that three-quarters of white evangelicals say they lean towards the Republican Party. And three-quarters of those people said they thought Mr Trump was doing a good job. Among black evangelicals, 85% said they leaned towards the Democrats, and 86% of those said they disapproved of Mr Trump’s performance.
In the end, argues Mr Gerson, support for Mr Trump is self-defeating, because it makes non-Christians want to have nothing to do with evangelicals. “If you are pro-life, it does not help your case to be associated with misogyny,” he says. The same is true for family values, he says, if you denigrate migrants who have those values and bring them to your society. “Evangelicals will suffer badly for that reason,” he predicts.
So will the Wheaton meeting gain much traction? Some who oppose Mr Trump believe that support for him is mostly among nominal evangelicals, and that “real” believers will see through the hypocrisy. But Pew found that his most ardent supporters are those who attend church at least once a week. Still, Mr Wehner is hopeful. “We need to try to alter the perception of what evangelical Christianity is,” he says, “and to offer a higher and better way.”
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