CONSERVATISM, RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND TRUMP
Campaign reveals risk of selling out principles for shot at political power
In the final presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump made a big, and wise, play for evangelical votes. He reiterated that he is staunchly pro-life and that he would only appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who support the Second Amendment.
“They will interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted,” Trump added, echoing a conservative philosophy of judicial analysis.
Appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court are a big deal for the religious right. Conservative Antonin Scalia died earlier this year, and liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, could leave her post during the next president’s term. For those who believe the Supreme Court has trampled religious freedom and are upset about same-sex marriage and abortion rights, appointing justices is a battleground that, conceivably, could roll back decades of liberal progress.
This is tantalizing. And yet there is a divide among evangelicals. Some, such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., part of the vanguard, have jettisoned Christian principles in supporting Trump. Millions are willing to swallow the bile and vote for a lecher, in hopes that Trump will at least be better than Hillary Clinton. But many women and minority groups — non-whites make up roughly onequarter of evangelical protestants — are not, revealing a remarkable schism in a steadfastly Republican community. “(Trump) is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool,” wrote Christianity Today executive editor Andy Crouch recently.
The risks of selling out principles for a shot at political power — especially when the requisite frontman is so unqualified — should serve as a warning to religious conservatives in Canada and the U.S.
So what the heck is going on? Part of it is that people who claim to be religiously principled are, in fact, principled and can’t support a man who’s so obviously bereft of political or religious or personal convictions. As Ed Kilgore writes in New York magazine, “the culture-war verities of Christian nationalism are slowly giving way to a counterculture sensibility that regards fidelity to the Republican Party and even the conservative movement as a sinful temptation.”
Yet this probably won’t matter in November. Sixty-nine per cent of white evangelicals, says recent polling from the Public Religion Research Institute, support Trump. (Of course, non-white Christians — not limited here to protestants — support Clinton over Trump by a margin of 74 per cent to 18 per cent.)
While it’s generally unwise to look to the United States for lessons for Canadians, especially on religion and conservatism, in Trump there’s some guidance. Fundamentally, politics should remain firmly moored to reality. Trump has severed the anchor line, and routine falsehood — wait, doesn’t that violate the ninth commandment? — has corrupted conservatism. It is, as Twitter user Daniel Windham argued, about the clash between ideas and feelings, and the ideas side isn’t winning.
In Canada, we saw a cartoonish imitation of the most paranoid American conservatism in the “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line, announced last year by then-ministers Chris Alexander and Kellie Leitch, now both candidates to head up the Conservative Party of Canada. The fantasy world inhabited by this instinctive conservatism is not only politically ruinous, but tears at the fabric of political life.
Political choices, though, can become more vexing if the socially conservative candidate is unhinged on other fronts. But is the chance of seeing religious values expressed in politics worth sacrificing other conservative principles?
There are common allies to be found outside of Conservative ranks, say, on poverty; there are enemies from within. Brad Trost’s ugly attacks on transgender people — “you are all one in Christ Jesus,” says Galatians 3:28, I’d remind him — do little to help Christians or their cause and only alienate moderate religious and conservative allies.
Some battles are truly lost. Some battles, in the end, actually aren’t even political; they’re personal. And a paucity of principle can lead to ugly alliances.
This is the conundrum, for conservatives and Christians in the West, that the Trump campaign has laid bare. Tyler Dawson is deputy editorial pages editor of the Ottawa Citizen. tdawson@postmedia.com