It finally happened. Failing as a politician, Donald Trump has gone to preaching.
While James Comey was spilling the beans on Trump’s efforts to stop the investigation into Michael Flynn, he was across town giving a “sermon” to the evangelicals attending the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference.
His text was Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed. Take up the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
Then he launched into his exposition of the text: “The entrenched interests and failed bitter voices in Washington will do everything in their power to try and stop us from this righteous cause, to try to stop all of you. They will lie, they will obstruct, they will spread their hatred and their prejudice, but we will not back down from doing what is right.
“Because, as the Bible tells us, we know the truth will prevail. Nothing worth doing ever came easy. . . . We know how to fight better than anybody, and we never give up. We are winners, and we are going to fight.”
This is what Trump’s presidency has come down to, using the Bible to justify his own words and actions, identifying God with his cause which he defines as “doing right, seeking justice, and defending the oppressed.”
Only he wasn’t talking about the poor and people truly oppressed. He was talking about evangelicals who imagine themselves under siege and his being their champion determined to protect their religious freedom that the rest of us are apparently trying to take from them.
It’s a wonder he wasn’t struck by lightning.
Both Trump and his evangelical followers have reached the point of no return. Neither has any credibility left to draw on.
The only people who respect Trump are primarily evangelicals and virtually no one respects them. In fact, most Americans see right through Trump and his evangelical base.
In my new book, Evangelicals and the Decline of American Politics, coming out late summer, I document the fact that evangelicals are in a decided minority when it comes to their stand on most moral issues.
And Nate Silver, the genius numbers guy, says that the percentage of people who “strongly support” Trump has gone from a high of 30% in February to 21% today. Overall, almost 56% of the country disapprove of his presidency.
Trump rejects these kinds of facts because, as we all know, he suffers from extreme narcissism.
But I think the same holds true for evangelicals who have a collective narcissism that leads them to believe that their self-righteousness is seen by others as a virtue rather than a vice.
Both Trump and evangelicals are so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see anything except a world of their own creation.
That was confirmed when Trump started quoting scripture and evangelicals wildly cheered him on, much to the disbelief of the rest of the country.
You really can’t make this stuff up, but the consequences are too serious to dismiss that easily.
Whenever an American leader resorts to using religion to stave off declining political support, our nation is headed for serious trouble.
At the sane time, we may be seeing the signs of the impending end of the short lived Trump era, and evangelicalism’s effort to become the dominant expression of Christianity as well.
Neither can come too soon.
linnposts.com 
Jan, you make good points, but I would also point out that there are plenty of self-righteous “progressives” out there also. There are fundamentalists on the right and fundamentalists on the left and other than the fact that they have some different fundamentals, I’m not sure there is much difference between them at all. We live in a very polarized time, but times like this should prompt us all to look in the mirror. That’s when we are best able to see the planks in our own eyes – something that is true for progressives, evangelicals, and everyone in between.
Scott, I fully agree that self-righteousness is not an evangelical trait only, and liberals can also be very arrogant. The difference for me is lies in evangelical identification of God with what they believe. They make a habit of speaking as if God believes what they believe. That is made worse for me by their support of Trump, a support that in my mind undercuts their credibility on other matters. But you provide a good reminder that “sin” is no respecter of persons. Thanks.
AAAAMEN!!!!! You scored BIG time on this one!!! Thank You.
Thanks, Wally. I believe what I said is very true and very disturbing. Not a good combination.
Great blog, Jan. Politics and religion rolled into one is the bane of civilization. The result is regularly despotic. I don’t think it matters if politicians turn preachers or vice versa, it’s disastrous.
I’ve known more than a few intelligent evangelicals. The direction they have turned that caused the parting of our ways has turned them into anti grace, legalistic followers of a scary, self righteous, American Civil Religion. Worse, they vote!
Keep beating the drum. I’m warming up the bagpipes.
Gene, your experience is precisely my own. I have a former faculty colleague with whom I was good friends who has turned radically right in ways I cannot believe, and he has a Ph.D. – sad indeed.
Darth Cheeto and his evangelical friends are both afflicted with a false certainty that should cause all thinking people, and anyone with a semblance of integrity, to shake their heads in amazement at their hypocrisy. Great post!
Looking forward to your new book, Jan! It’s number 16, isn’t it?
You are right, Rollie. All of us are shaking our heads, and Trump evangelicals don’t have a clue why we are.
Yes, the book will be #16.
The only thing better than reading this post is hearing your tell it with your laugh.
As the late night comedians drown in their material…it really is hard to believe this is happening. Off to visit an evangelical elder of my childhood today to see what Fox has fed her today. Keep laughing…so you won’t cry.
I will do my best, Dixcy. It would be even better if we lived close enough to each other to be able to sit down and talk about it all, laughing (and crying) together.
Great column, Jan, although I think you are guilty of generalizing about the evangelicals. They are a diverse group, and I would guess a portion of them are as disappointed in Trump as the rest of us (maybe for different reasons). Thanks for your writing ministry. I always enjoy reading your stuff.
Mark, I think a lot about generalizing. On the one hand, my concern are what I call “political evangelicals” who are descendants of the Moral Majority and that does not include all evangelicals. At the same time, as I discuss in my upcoming book, evangelicals who are not aligned with the Republican Party openly often vote the same way political evangelicals do. More important, though, is that what they believe is usually express as absolutes that lie at the core of both religious and political intolerance that evangelicalism today embodies. So while I realize there are non-Trump evangelicals, making the distinction can let them off the hook for perpetuating a form of Christianity that betrays the life and teachings of Jesus in the very name of Jesus. In my book I connect the dots between evangelical theology and Republican intolerance obstructionism. I hope this extended response reflects the seriousness with which I take your comment. Thanks.
I think of the late Walter Wink and some of what he wrote about the collective spirit of institutions and groups. Maybe that’s what you’re after, i.e., seeing what the evangelical movement has done to our society. Not what individual evangelicals have done, necessarily. Jim Wallis, after all, is an evangelical, if I recall. Can’t ever imagine him voting for Trump. I look forward to your upcoming book. Peace to you.
Mark, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about the power of collective evil in “Moral Man and Immoral Society,” pointing to a collective “evil” at work in groups and institutions beyond individual morality. I, too, am speaking collectively when I speak of evangelicals, which is why I try as much as possible to talk about evangelicalism rather than the former. That said, I am convinced that non-Trump evangelicals don’t focus the attention they should on the theological exclusivism that is endemic to evangelical beliefs and serves as a foundation for its absolute truth claims. What is more, based on the definition of evangelicalism I settled on in the book, people like Jim Wallis are not evangelical by today’s standards because they are not biblical literalists. There was a time when evangelicalism and biblical literalism were not one and the same, but as evangelicals scholar Mark Noll (who is superb, by the way) points out, that all changed when fundamentalists took over the evangelical movement. More than you wanted or needed, but I couldn’t help myself.
Jan, thanks for this information and clarification. I look forward to your book coming out and seeing your critique of evangelicalism. Keep up your good work!
Jan, I think the heart of your fine post are these lines:
“Using the Bible to justify his own words and actions, identifying God with his cause which he defines as “doing right, seeking justice, and defending the oppressed.” “Only he wasn’t talking about the poor and people truly oppressed. He was talking about evangelicals who imagine themselves under siege and his being their champion determined to protect their religious freedom that the rest of us are apparently trying to take from them.”
This nicely illuminates Trump’s arrogance and his manipulation of vulnerable evangelicals whose paranoia he feeds — for praise and for votes!
I will add that I find around me innumerable people who are not evangelicals, yet are diehard Trump supporters and apologists who have their own fears of immigrants, minority citizens, and terrorism — people convinced that Trump is the only leader(sic) who can protect them! Very troubling, my friend. Bill
Jan,
This an excellent article. Your insights are clear, coven and accurate . . . To say nothing of disturbing. Trump and his evangelical base make a noise louder than their numbers warrant. They have that arrogant ring of “God is on our side.”
I look forward to your forthcoming book.
Cheerz!
Gene
That is the way they think, Gene, which is why they are so offensive. It is one to believe something, It is very different to say what you believe is the truth of God. Arrogant beyond measure.
I am hoping my book will be out late summer, at the latest early fall. Cascade Books (Wipf & Stock) in Oregon is the publisher
This post reminds me of a passage Miroslav Volf wrote in Exclusion and Embrace. From page 88: “Historians… trumpet the double theme of the former glory and past victimization; economists join with accounts of present exploitation and great economic potential; political scientists add the theme of the growing imbalance of power, of steadily giving ground, of losing control over what is rightfully ours; cultural anthropologists bring in the dangers of the loss of identity… finally the priests enter in a solemn procession and accompany all this with a soothing background chant that offers to any whose consciences may have been bothered the assurance that God is one our side and that our enemy is the enemy of God and therefore an adversary of everything that is good, true, and beautiful.”
Kudos to Trump as he managed this entire process in one sermon. Thank you for uncovering this and raising it up.My hope is yours, that our society wakes up to the fact that there can be another way and we ourselves can take it to a new way of life.
Luke, I recently heard Volf lecture at St. Olaf College on his book which you mentioned. Raised a lot of questions while providing sobering reflections on the inevitable connection between “exclusion” and “inclusion.” Thank you.