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Hanukkah and Christmas are seasons of celebration, joy, and hope.

This year there is reason, in fact, two reasons, why Americans can be especially joyful during this holiday season. 

The first is what is clearly the beginning of the end of the political career of Donald J. Trump and the increasing likelihood that he will be indicted on multiple federal charges.  

The second is the persistent decline of evangelical Christianity that has played a central role in Trump’s toxic and corrupt political influence.

The mid-term elections were an indisputable rejection of a “looking backwards” Trumpism that has dominated the Republican Party since the 2020 presidential election. That rejection verifies what the polls have been saying for many months, that while Republicans may still like Trump, almost no one else does. 

In regard to evangelicals, the image most Americans now have of them, especially young adults, is that they are judgmental and hypocritical. That has led to a precipitous decline in their numbers. Ten years ago 26% of Christians in America described themselves as evangelical. Today only 14.5% do.

Even the children of evangelicals don’t share the views of their parents on major social/moral issues (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/04/though-still-conservative-young-evangelicals-are-more-liberal-than-their-elders-on-some-issues/).

This decline in both Trump Republicanism and evangelicalism represents the commonsense wisdom of the majority of Americans who have had enough of culture wars and political chaos, and that is worth celebrating.

Trump has never represented what is best about America and evangelicals haven’t in terms of what is best about Christianity. Both managed to ignore what their critics said about them, but the truth is now catching up with them.

I could talk at length about both, but my concern here is evangelicalism, not least because it is an expression of religion that makes most people want to avoid Christianity rather than embrace it.

No wonder since it is anti-intellectual to the core. Being evangelical means giving up thinking in favor of blind acceptance of beliefs that don’t make any sense.

That is not faith. It’s indoctrination, an unhealthy form of religiosity that is more concerned with power than truth.

That is bad enough, but it is efforts to force the nation to live by what evangelicals considers right and wrong that is the primary reason for their decline. They are out of step with where most people are on all the major social issues of our day.

Surveys consistently show that a majority of Americans support the right of everyone to choose the person they marry regardless of sexual orientation. They also support the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body rather than the government. What is more, in the marketplace they want everyone who chooses to run a business to treat everyone the same way regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Evangelicals are a decided minority in opposing all these rights, but they are determined to force the entire country to live the way they believe everyone should live. That is what makes them so unpopular.

When you think about it, the relationship between Donald Trump and evangelicals has always been transactional, each wanting something from the other.

Trump wanted to be the nation’s de facto king and sought evangelical help to that end. Evangelicals gave it to him because they believed he would allow them to impose their religious and moral beliefs on everyone else. It was a quid pro quo relationship at the expense of our democracy.

That evangelicals joined up with Donald Trump is a scandal beyond understanding. Making it worse has been the fact that most of us have been much too tolerant of the extremes they represented. It’s as if we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe they are as bad as they are.

Everything is pointing to the fact that most people are now seeing the truth and that is a good thing for the country. And for those of us who still care, it is also a good thing for Christianity.

I am not suggesting that Trump or evangelicalism are no longer dangers to our democracy. That would be naive because Trump is still speaking and acting in every way he can to be noticed and evangelicals are continuing their efforts to use the government to further their moralistic goals (especially the courts).

But the more they say and do the more the American people see them in a negative way.

I think that fact significantly adds to the joy and hope of this holiday season.

(On a personal note, my novel, A Brother’s Peace, is now available in e-book form and is selling for $4.99 on Amazon and at all book sellers.)