White-Republican evangelicals believe they are right in supporting Donald Trump because his administration supports their views on abortion, GLBTQ rights, support for Israel, and religious freedom that allows evangelical businesses to discriminate against GLBTQ Americans.
They know Trump is a morally corrupt man, but in their words, “God uses imperfect people to do God’s perfect work on earth.”
What they don’t say, however, is that what they believe is “God’s perfect work” is not even close to what most other Christians believe it is.
Indeed, if their views are Christian, I gladly admit I am not one, and have no desire to be one.
I think white-Republican evangelicals embody religious extremism in the name of God, and that is how I also think they will be remembered when the history of our time is written.
Here are my two cents worth of what I think the content of that history will be.
1. White-Republican evangelicals will be remembered as having the reputation of being morally judgmental toward people who disagreed with them.
I say that because that is what the evidence shows.
They don’t simply believe abortion is wrong, for example, they believe a woman who has one is guilty of murder, as well as doctors who perform them.
They don’t simply believe homosexuality is unnatural. They believe it is a moral perversion.
They don’t simply believe marriage is between a man and a woman. They believe gay marriage is destroying heterosexual marriage.
What is more, polling of Americans confirms the image they have of being morally judgmental.
Researchers with the Barna Group, a conservative polling company, report that a majority of Americans believe white-Republican evangelicals are judgmental, way too political, anti-homosexual (to the point of being gay-hating), and hypocritical.
That, I suggest, is exactly how history will remember them.
2. They will also be remembered as having such a negative impact on society that they made Christianity less attractive rather than more.
There is persuasive evidence that historians will use for this conclusion.
In 2013 a National Public Radio report said that one-fifth of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, which is higher than at any time in recent U.S. history, and a third of young adults say they don’t belong to any religion.
Only a few years ago more than 85% of Americans not only identified themselves as religious, but as Christian. That figure is down to around 70% and still declining.
Instead of “winning the world to Christ,” their goal, they are losing it.
Of course, they blame secularism for this decline when reports like the one from the Barna Group noted above say that white evangelicals are a major reason for Christianity’s decline in American life.
3. History will also record that white-Republican evangelicals were never as morally good as they wanted people to believe they were.
In a recent article entitled, “The Way We Never Were: Calling Out Evangelicals For Hypocrisy Misses the Point,” (February 20 on Rewire News site), Hollis Phelps, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Mercer University, says that when people like me accuse white-Republican evangelicals of hypocrisy, we are basing that on an assumption that is not true.
We assume that they once had what Phillips calls “a salutary moral vision” from which they have fallen, but, she contends, that vision has always been nothing more than a political self-identification white-Republican evangelicals have given to themselves.
In other words, white-Republican evangelicals created the image when they first entered politics that they were trying to bring moral righteousness back to the nation, a righteousness they possessed when in truth they never did and still don’t.
The reason is because of something I have said numerous times – first and foremost they are political, not religious.
They pretend to stand for moral virtue and goodness they never actually had themselves, and history will tell the truth about them.
4. History will also record that white-Republican evangelicals posed a serious threat to American democracy.
One of the reasons will be their refusal to accept the rock bed principle of the separation of church and state.
They continue to perpetuate the myth of America as a Christian nation and of their religious freedom being infringed upon because the courts and the American public don’t want them to have prayer in public schools or use religion to prevent others from enjoying civil rights such as marriage regardless of sexual orientation or discriminate against them in business.
White-Republican evangelicals continue to speak and act in ways that indicate they don’t like democracy because they don’t like majority rule or the fact that they have to obey laws like everyone else.
For this reason, I don’t think history will be kind to them about the ways they are trying to undermine our democracy.
5. There is one final thought I have about the way white-Republican evangelicals will be remembered in history – that they were one of the primary reasons belief in God declined during this period.
Historians may not actually pay much attention to this issue, not least because it is always difficult to judge the reliability of people’s belief in God.
People say they believe in God without any clear indication of what they mean when they say “God.”
That said, if the image of God white-Republican evangelicals promote has any impact at all, I think it makes people turn away rather than turning to God.
Outside of evangelicals, who wants to believe in a God who condemns people because of their sexual orientation? Or uses a man like Donald Trump to further God’s work on earth? Blesses ministers who live in ten million dollar homes and own jet planes? Who doesn’t want people to take care of the planet because it will be destroyed soon enough anyway?
This is the God white-Republican evangelicals worship, reason enough for people to give up on God altogether, an impact historians may very well record as one of the ways they impacted American life.
So these are my thoughts about the way historians will tell the story of how white-Republican evangelicals influenced American society at this time.
My sense it is that it will not be a pretty picture, the evidence for which I am inclined to think is not being taken as seriously as needed.
Countless articles keep telling us that these are nice people who just happen to believe Donald Trump is good for the country.
Yet history is replete with stories about good people supporting very bad people who were able to do unimaginable evil for a time because of that support.
That, I believe, is what is going on as we speak.
And why, when the legacy of white-Republican evangelicals is written, future generations will be shocked by what was done in the name of Christianity.
linnposts.com 
Definitely sobering. I’m not ashamed of Christ, but I’m very ashamed at how many Christians are presenting Christianity. I know of many people who are appalled at what they see and state they want nothing to do with Christianity. Then they tsk tsk in judgment.
It is sobering, Willie. That is why those of us who are Christian, but not evangelical, must speak up. Thanks for adding your voice.
As disheartening as the picture you paint is, I believe it’s even worse. The absolute moral corruption of evangelicals that we are witnessing is as damning as anything in our time, including Germany prior to WW2. I also believe Christianity will be changed as a result. The surviving Christianity hopefully will be more like Jesus and less like the evangelical version.
Rollie, I think your hope for a surviving Christianity may be the good that comes from all of this awful stuff. All of us speaking up will help it happen.
The snarky and somewhat profane Wonkette web site had this headline:
“If Trump is really God’s ‘chosen one,’ God’s a dumbass.”
Since we know the latter is not true, the former must not be true either.
I for one am counting on that being correct, Charlie. If not, I will become an atheist.
Maybe a secular humanist?
In spite of their influence now, Jan, I find hope in knowing that they remain a significant minority, and one that continues to shrink in its popularity and influence.
Wlibur, that is another reason why I think history will judge them harshly. May their tribe DEcrease.
Dr Michael Ramsey, one of our most famous Archbishops of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974, has this quotation from St Irenaeus of Lyon inscribed on his grave: “The Glory of God is the living man; And the life of man is the vision of God.” Sister Helen Prejean also mentions this in her forthcoming book River of Fire, which I’m looking forward to reading.
As I see it, we’re being challenged to think and to live ‘outside the box’, and to see God in our neighbour, instead of just agreeing with what we’ve read or have heard from the pulpit last Sunday. So, take heart! God is to be found in all sorts of places!
Nigel, your last paragraph highlights a critical point, and is reason to take heart. Thanks.