Evangelicals and Trump

Evangelicals seem willing to overlook a lot when it comes to this president

Our view:

Last Monday, President Donald Trump had some evangelicals leaders over to the White House to give them marching orders for November. Reporters weren’t invited, but The New York Times ended up with an audio recording of the president’s remarks during which he: A. accepted the title of “the greatest leader for Christianity”; B. warned them of violent progressive Democrats; andC. urgedthemtobreakthelawbyusing the pulpit to tell church members to vote Republican in November.

Sowastheresponse by the100 or so invitees to patiently ignore A and B as self-serving pablum and question the wisdom of C, as it wouldcausethemtoviolate the lawandputtheir tax-exemptstatus at risk? Mr. Trump claims to have overturned that law by executive order, but only Congress has the power, and it hasn’t done so. Last year, the president instructed the IRS not to enforce the rule, but experts say that has little effect.

The answer (as if you had to ask): By all accounts, the clergy ate it all up, lock, stock and smoking hypocrisy.

White evangelicals might be President Trump’s most unshakable supporters. Polls suggest as many as 81 percent back him. Too often, this support is dismissed by the president’s critics as a single issue transaction — so long as President Trump appoints Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, they are willing to ignore any number of moral shortcomings. But the bond appears much stronger than just that.

Over andover again, the core Trumpplatform seems designed to cater to the concerns of white evangelicals that the country is slipping away from them on a more basic, cultural level as they become a smaller percentage of the overall population. Even the central theme of the Trump campaign to make American great “again” plays into this reactionary thinking that the country has drifted away from its white, Christian-centered, heterosexual past and turned toward something with which white evangelicals do not identify. They don’t want to just turn back the clock to 1972 on women’s reproductive rights, they’d like to turn it back on immigration, civil rights, separation of church and state, whoserves in the military or merits a wedding cake and on and on.

This isn’t a religious conflict, it’s a cultural one. How else to explain that so many of these same institutions came down hard on President Bill Clinton for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky but have hardly batted an eye over the deluge of reports about President Trump’s alleged infidelities?

Howevangelical leaders can reconcile Mr. Trump’s personal life, his incendiary tweets, his frequent lies, his bigotry toward people of color (not to mention the very minuteness of the role faith appears to have played in his life) with their unabashed worship of him is nothing short of a miracle. The Gospel seems so packed with lessons about love and forgiveness, helping others and steering clear of pride and greed that you would think the average minister would see this president as more of a lost soul in desperate need of their attention than someone to follow.

President Trump’s warning to evangelical leaders that if Democrats win big at the polls this fall, take control over Congress and then “quickly and violently” reverse Trump administration actions to date sounds morelike ElmerGantry than Billy Graham— opportunistic, insincere and dripping with narcissism. Yet this particular section of the congregation just loves him all the more.