The politicization of God’s plan
What Nikki Haley and Rick Perry expose
When former Energy Secretary Rick Perry made headlines last month on Fox News for saying that President Donald Trump is “the chosen one” who was “sent by God to do great things,” it wasn’t the first time someone argued that the commander in chief was commissioned on high.
Nor was it the last.
Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Christian CBN News that Trump’s election made plain “that everything happens for a reason . ... I think God sometimes places people for lessons and sometimes places people for change.”
The Perry and Haley TV interviews exposed the ongoing tension in American political culture between those who believe that divine purpose underwrites everything that happens in politics and those who see human agency at work. Trouble is, the Perry and Haley arguments give leaders like Trump a pass when they do and say ungodly things — like allegedly groping women, lying about charitable giving or enacting immigration policies that result in children being separated from parents at the border.
Reaching back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, self-identifying “evangelicals” have been a reliable Republican voting constituency.
A poll released in October said 99% of white evangelical Republican Protestants oppose Trump’s impeachment and removal. Some of these Christians credit the president’s appointment of pro-life judges and his defense of religious liberty as reasons for their ongoing support, even if they admit he sometimes says things they don’t like.
“The tweets and other things are kind of disgusting and embarrassing,” evangelical voter Ellen Martinson told The Boston Globe. “But I think I look at the bigger picture of what he’s done in the country, because I still think he’s a better choice.”
My evangelical friends
For nearly a decade, I have been listening to sermons online in evangelical megachurches about economic and political issues. I started to do this because I have always admired the faith of born-again Christians. I have always also puzzled over the way my personal experiences with these believers differed from how scholars and popular writers tend to frame their thinking and behaviors. For the most part, the evangelicals I know try hard to live their lives being faithful to their spouses, as good examples for their children and open-hearted toward their neighbors. They might be politically conservative, but they are not abject hypocrites.
Even as I personally like my evangelical friends, I share the confusion of so many about why they vote as they do. How could these believers, whose faith includes a specific call to care for poor people, support the GOP and its president, despite evidence of harm to poor people? Why don’t they cry out on behalf of the vulnerable?
What I discovered is that those vulnerable voices are all too often absent in the stories evangelicals tell.
This absence is evident in the interviews with Perry and Haley and in voter Martinson’s assessment of Trump. Likewise, when conservative pastors describe the United States and the American public sphere, they emphasize how God’s main purpose in the United States is either to grant evangelicals special status in the form of Christian religious liberty or else to supernaturally rule via a self-appointed leader who will make sure conservative values carry the day.
Either way, evangelicals have primary citizenship while other groups and other issues are omitted from the conversation. It isn’t that they don’t matter. They simply don’t figure into the story.
Active passivism
In my research, I refer to this storytelling technique as active passivism. It asks Christians to participate in politics by voting but indemnifies them from responsibility for what happens next because “God is in control.”
When outsiders to conservative evangelicalism wonder at how these believers can justify Trump’s character faults, some of the answer stems from an evangelical narrative about the United States that believes that nothing is ever an accident.
Evangelicals make the fundamental mistake of recasting a valid theological belief — that God loves them and has a plan for their life and even their country — into an invalid material artifact. This artifact is their vote, and it has consequences on the lives of tangible and vulnerable people.
It’s high time Americans confront the silencing narrative of their evangelical friends and challenge them to fill in their stories. If everything happens for a reason, ask those believers who disagree to fill in the imagined detail of an immigrant making her way to the border. Speak with empathy about children and families on school lunch programs. Use your phones to look up pictures of war-torn regions, and wonder at your luck not to live there. Are these victims of strife and tragedy simply the unchosen ones? Are they the sorry object props of the lessons a higher power has placed in their way?
You might not come to political agreement, but the tangible consequences of what’s happening could become a bit more clear. WANT TO COMMENT? Have Your Say at letters@usatoday.com, @usatodayopinion on Twitter and facebook.com/usatodayopinion. Comments are edited for length and clarity. Content submitted to USA TODAY may appear in print, digital or other forms. For letters, include name, address and phone number. Letters may be mailed to 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA, 22108.