Last year, I wrote about how the Trump movement has become a cult of personality, and many people who support Trump will defend his worst pathologies and claim that those who point out said behaviors either “hate America”, “hate Trump,” “are a Democrat”, “are evil”, or some combination of these attributes or all of them. It is similar to the “Obamamania” of the Obama years, except the face looks different and the party affiliations have changed.
Recently, an American Evangelical, Chris Thurman, wrote an excellent piece for the Christian Post called You foolish Evangelicals, Trump has bewitched you, where he heavily critiques mainstream Evangelical Christians and Evangelical leaders for promoting Trump and promoting him to a point that he is being cast as something who he is not, and refusing to address major sins as a result of this, but to openly make excuses for them without a call for repentance.
I believe evangelicals who support Donald Trump are being both blind and foolish to do so and that labeling them as such is not sinful but appropriate and necessary. By support, I’m not referring to evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016. I’m referring to those evangelicals who continue to hold Trump up as a great leader, say he is God’s chosen one for the presidency, applaud his appalling words and actions, ignore his glaring moral defects, and enable his dangerous presidency to continue by giving him their time, talents, and treasures.
As a Christian, I don’t have much hope that evangelicals who enthusiastically support Trump will have ears to hear what I say in this piece. My personal interactions with enthusiastic Trump-supporting evangelicals have, in general, been unpleasant and involved very little willingness to “Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Nevertheless, I feel prompted to comply with two verses in Scripture, “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) and “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault” (Matthew 18:15) when it comes to this matter. This article, however imperfectly written, is my best effort to speak the truth in love to my brothers and sisters in Christ who support Trump and point out why I believe the Bible says they are wrong to do so. (source)
The entire article is worth reading, as it reflects many of the points I have attempted to make in my own writings about Trump. As promised, I gave him a “fair chance”, and it has been almost four years now, and Trump has significantly been found to be wanting in his promises and words versus his actions.
Usually on the Christian Post, there are few to no comments on articles, especially those of objective importance. However, this article about Trump has generated dozens of comments, most of them angry, towards the author. Consider the following selections below:
Steve Thompson
Hey Chris Thruman, You are a f[***]ing piece of s[***]. I didnt spend 12 months of my life and thousands of hours door knocking on strangers doors to put this man in office just to have faggot liberal Austin based piece of s[***] like you tear him down. F[***] you man. If you wanna man up lets do it anytime.
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Michael Oliver
What about Bill Clinton and his antics; what about Hillary and her greed and lies? How about Jack Kennedy and all of his paramours? How about Adam Schiff who lies openly and is immune because the leftist media is in agreement? What about Obama’s statement “I have a pen and a phone? This is all seems to be ok to this author. Selective outrage once again.
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Andrea Bonner
You’d prefer that woman who proposed abortions until nine months, you can not support abortions and be a Christian. That’s why Donald Trump is President. Period.
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Shelley Brown
Oh you wise, enlightened psychologist, thank you so much for educating us foolish evangelicals. I’m so thankful there’s self-righteous, better than the sheeple, individuals out there like you to set us right. I’m sure God is looking down on you right now just beaming over the division you just caused within the Christian community. Let me guess, you align yourself with the Mitt Romney/Ben Sasse group of Republicans. You’re the type of people that normal Christian Republicans have become so disillusioned with and I would say, probably helped bring Trump into office. I’m sure you’re the type of “evangelical” who swept their Christian ethics under the rug to vote for Hillary Clinton. “Oh, sure I care about abortion, gun rights, traditional marriage, religious freedom and a whole host of other issues, but at least she would bring respect/integrity (hahaha!) to the Office.”Maybe you should get out from under your copy of The New York Times, and re-read the Bible (you probably read a gendered pronoun version) to see all the times God used unlikely people to accomplish His purposes. You think we’re not aware Trump isn’t the poster child Bible carrying individual? We’re not imbeciles, although clearly that’s what people like you think. What you didn’t mention is what is the other choice? If we didn’t want to vote for Trump and could NEVER vote for Hillary, was there some other holier-than-thou, squeaky clean option to vote for? Last I checked, there were two options. If we stayed home and opted out of our civic duty, that would have handed the election to someone totally Godless. These evangelical leaders supporting Trump are doing so because they see all the good Trump is doing for Christian causes. He actually listens to them. They know what the alternative would have been had a liberal Democrat won. Just look at where the Supreme Court would be ideologically had Clinton won and the far-reaching decisions that would’ve been handed down. Let me guess, you just don’t care where this society is heading culturally. You don’t care Christians are losing their rights. You don’t want our President to be about America First. You’re probably a globalist, let everyone come in and live off our land, let the foreigners come in and take Americans jobs type of good-hearted person. Probably because you sit in your stuffy office on the 10th floor asking people to talk about their feelings all day. That’s really helping all these college kids today cope with real life! Honestly, you should get out of your bubble and talk to REAL Americans. We feel like finally someone is standing up for us, someone’s got our back. We are SOOO tired of smooth talking, stab you in the back politicians. Believe me, I don’t care for Trump’s style. I wish he wouldn’t tweet or say some of the things he does, but let’s be honest— he only says publicly what most politicians say privately. If you think all these other politicians are so morally superior to Trump, either you have your head in the sand, or you watch too much CNN! I never comment on articles, but this so enrages me. This is the type of stuff that is causing all our beloved Christian churches to veer to the left and to embrace all the liberal ideologies that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago! You have certainly done Satan’s bidding today. Congratulations. If the Christian Post is going to continue to post articles on things like this, which demeans probably at least half of their audience (in addition to all the articles on evangelicals leaving the faith), I’m going to have to unsubscribe and would urge others to as well. If we want this type of commentary, we certainly don’t have to go to a “Christian”site to get it! They may want to change their name as well to something like “The Christian Bash.”
You can read these comments at the bottom of the article. One may note that these comments received a lot of support as opposed to the comments who supported the author, or said that one does not have to support Trump.
Political idolatry is a serious problem in the US for all political parties. If the current patterns remain consistent, one should expect to see the emergence of a major Democrat candidate for the 2024 election, and that person- whoever the nominee will be -likely will have the same kind of fervent religiously surrounding the campagin and hopes for office just like what one say with Trump and Obama.
There are good things that can be said about any president, no matter how bad he is, because not everything that they do is bad. Obama, for example, in spite of all of his talk, supported gun rights more that Trump has, recalling that it was under Obama that the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban expired and was not renewed, but it was Trump who banned the use of “bump stocks.” Likewise, it was Obama who made comparable peace with Iran, but Trump who is banging the drums of war, something that serves nobody’s interest- including that of the US -except for those of Israel.
When history looks back, there is a strong chance that Trump will not go down as great a president as many look at him as being because he significantly betrayed most of his base, he furthered the already difficult situation of the country, and nothing that he has done has been of true significance to merit such honor. If anything, he is only proving himself to follow in his pattern of past behavior, which is a showman who markets himself and his image well, but in reality produces nothing and leaves people with debt and a “bad taste in their mouths” for him because they were deceived by him.
Trump can say what he wants, but a man is measured by his actions, not so much his words, and these he cannot hide no matter how hard he tries.
This is not to say that the Democrats are putting forward any good options, or that they are good. Rather, it is to point out that between a choice of two evils, there is no choice, especially now when the “lesser of the two evils” is not truly so, but only maintain the appearance of a “lesser evil” when it is just as potent as the open one, for it is only different in its ability to disguise itself and pretend that it is something that it is not.