In defense of Evangelicals who support Trump
It is usually easier for an outsider to defend a person or a group that is attacked than for the person or group.In that vein, this Jew would like to defend evangelicals and other Christians who support President Donald Trump. They are regularly attacked as religious hypocrites who give Christianity in general, and evangelical Christianity in particular, a bad name. More . . .
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I often like Prager when he lands on my radar, but in this case I think he left out the key premise in the evangelicals-are-hypocrites-for-supporting-Trump argument, namely that we can all remember when evangelical leaders were insisting very loudly that character mattered a great deal in a president. I was a young college student at the time, and not much of a reader of periodicals, but I most definitely got the message.
Maybe Prager is right; maybe “religious Christians and Jews who support Trump understand that the character of a public leader is quite often less important than his policies.” I actually tend to think we may be being drawn ineluctably into a world in which we don’t have the luxury of caring about character in our president. I’m ready to hear that case, and at least one of my highly respected friends has made it to me. But hop in a time capsule and take a poll of evangelical/fundamentalist leaders in 1998, and ask them, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘Character is no predictor of political leadership on behalf of moral causes’?” (That statement is straight from Prager, by the way.) I strongly suspect that you’d get an avalanche of opposition. They’d insist that character matters.
*That* is why many conservative Christians, and not only younger ones, are crying foul. That is the element of hypocrisy. If if turns out that character actually doesn’t matter in a president as long as he supports certain policies (and what does the Bible say about this?), then why did our pastors say it did in the late 90s?
Hi Mark
Thanks for the comment. I suppose I should stress first of all that we link to his article without endorsing it. It is part of the discussion, so it may have value for our readers’ consideration.
Secondly, I am with you on evaluating Prager here. I find Prager to be basically useless for political philosophy. He is conservativish, but his philosophy seems to rest almost entirely on pragmatism, certainly not a philosophy Christians should follow. I am afraid that too many listen to him without grasping his basically godless philosophy.
On the question of integrity, I think Christians need to take a hard look at themselves and consider whether we really are as principled as we think we are. If we are just another pragmatic voice that spouts integrity when we are arguing against their guy, but just want to change the subject when our guy fails the integrity test… well. We need to really think about this.
I think we can be thankful for the good policies the Trump administration has instituted, but we shouldn’t be blindly loyal or uncritical of his many failings either. (See Kevin’s article in our main blog for more on this theme).
Finally, please note that I am expressing my personal opinion here, this is in no way an “official” FBFI view.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
I’m 100% with you here, Don.