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Someone recently asked me that question. Is it un-Christian to support Donald Trump.” What follows is my answer to her.
The first thing I’d say is that supporting Trump is not and cannot ever be described as Christian.
Nothing he says or does even remotely reflects the life and teachings of Jesus. His pathological lying is enough to prove that, as is his abject corruption, selfishness, vengefulness, constant demonizing of immigrants, his legal persecution of perceived enemies.
So, yes, it is un-Christian to support Trump, but that hardly tells the whole story. The truth is, it is absolutely, unequivocally anti-Christian to support him.
Trump’s whole being represents an indirect attack on what it truly means to be Christian.
He pretends to be Christians when his words, his actions, his personal character are undermining and corrupting everything Jesus said and did. That’s as anti-Christian as it gets.
Supporting him makes you both complicit, and at the same time, a participant in that undermining of being Christian.
But if that is true, and I think it is, the next logical question is, why do so many Christians support Trump?
The answer is not simple, but at one level it is not complicated either. Christians who support Trump have embraced what biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann calls “enculturated” Christianity.
This form of Christianity has been shaped and formed by American culture more than the life and teachings of Jesus. It passes for Christianity, and claims to represent it, when in truth is reflects a false and corrupted version of it, especially when it wraps the cross with an American flag.
That desecrates Christianity and demeans patriotism, using both for selfish ends. Trump does both, and Christians who support him are aiding and abetting him as he does.
It’s not that Trump Christians are insincere. They are, instead, profoundly uniformed about what Christianity actually is.
They are ignorant of the history and content of the faith to which they insist they are devoted.
Worse, they are bold in their ignorance because they don’t know that they don’t know.
Listening to them justify their support for Trump is like listening to Trump lie when we know the truth he wants us to ignore.
Ignorance has a way of emboldening people to speak with authority to cover up the fact that they don’t know what they are talking about.
It’s not that Trump Christians are insincere. It’s that they substitute sincerity for actual knowledge and understanding. They believe the enculturated beliefs they have embraced are what Jesus said and did when they aren’t.
But here’s the thing. There are almost as many Catholics and main stream Christians who support Trump as there are evangelicals.
57% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 55% of Catholics voted for Trump in 2024 (Pew Research, Public Religion Research Institute).
What this means is that the problem we are discussing is bigger than we might have imagined. In point of fact, enculturated Christianity has infected most American Christians regardless of their denominational affiliation.
The majority of white American Christians do not understand that they are making political decisions that undercut the very faith they say is the reason they made those decisions.
Talk about irony!
It doesn’t make any sense, of course, because there is no sense to be made of it, which is always the effect enculturation has.
Enculturated Christianity is Americanism wearing an ecclesial robe and boldly speaking falsehoods as if they come from Jesus himself.
It is pernicious, dangerous, and, sadly, ubiquitous. It’s all around, and that is why so many Christians have engaged in the anti-Christian act of supporting Donald Trump, and still do.
They don’t know that America is not a Christian nation, never has been, and never will be. They believe what they believe and no matter how distorted and corrupt it may be, they refuse to hear the truth.
The rest of us who happened to be Christian, and anyone who cares about truth, must persist in exposing this kind of Christianity for the false claims it makes.
A Christian faith that rejects the need for it to make sense, refuses to take facts seriously, or teaches that faith is all about what you believe without the need for reason and logic is a Christianity that is dishonest, corrupted, and unworthy of being trusted to tell the truth about anything.
That is precisely how I would describe Christian support for Trump.
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