Hugh Hewitt: Christianity Today took aim at Trump, but it only hurt itself

3 Comments

1. Mark Ward on December 26, 2019 at 4:33 pm

   I feel bad that my last comment and this one have both registered disagreement… I guess I don’t usually see the need to comment when I agree!

   But I think I do need to register disagreement with Hewitt (and Graham and Falwell), not out of high moral dudgeon but out of sincere confusion. One of the central points of Galli’s piece has been resounding in my mind for the last three full years: *we all said in 1998—when I was a college freshman, and therefore well old enough to remember—that moral character was important in a president.* I remember this as the universal opinion of my leaders. I believed them, and I agreed with them. And as David French said recently, we can’t just walk that back. We all said it. Even CT said it, as Galli’s piece shows. (Admittedly, I checked the FBFI resolutions of that era and did not find the FBFI saying it, but I distinctly recall it being the united message of all conservative Christians.)

   Here’s French at greater length in a recent piece:

   Why does the larger public not see the compromise in the same way Republicans do, as a necessary, (often anguished) transactional embrace of the lesser of two evils? Well, because these same socially conservative Republicans spent years—decades, really—telling the American public that transactional politics was wrong, that character mattered. The same Southern Baptist Convention that will overwhelmingly vote for Trump next fall passed a resolution in 1998 on moral character of public officials that contained this statement, ‘Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.’…

   You cannot unring that bell. You cannot maintain credibility with a skeptical culture and say, ‘Our bad. Politics is really just a transactional, antiseptic evaluation of competing policy proposals.’ [From Mark Ward: as Hewitt says in that piece, “Whether Trump is good or bad for the republic isn’t a theological question. It is a political one.”] If you’re going to reinterpret a decisive, theological declaration, you need to show your work. And if you think that public skepticism doesn’t matter, that you can just win anyway, write laws, and change the moral character of a nation, an entire history of public resistance to morals legislation—from prohibition, to bans on contraception, adultery, sodomy, and obscenity—stands in your way.”

   French goes on to levy the specific charges that I feel like I don’t hear much from my pro-Trump brothers and sisters, especially Baby Boomers.

   Do the advocates of common-good conservatism truly understand (or care) how their embrace of Donald Trump undermines their argument to the rest of America—the America that’s not committed to the GOP and lives their lives outside the conservative media bubble? Do common-good conservatives understand the vast, broad, and deep cultural buy-in they’d have to achieve if they want to accomplish their aims? Let’s break their compromise clearest possible terms. This is what common-good conservatives assert and then ask.

   Porn is a problem, so you must support the only candidate in either party who has appeared in Playboy videos and hangs a Playboy magazine cover on his office wall.

   Family cohesion is vital to our national health, so you must vote for the thrice-married adulterer who bragged about groping women and paid hush money to a porn-star mistress a month before his election.

   Conservatives should focus on building social cohesion and national solidarity, so you must vote for the candidate who intentionally provokes his opposition so that he can consolidate his support in a base that represents a minority of the American population.

   It’s time for the right to oppose exploitive capitalists, so you must support a man who ran a fraudulent university that profited off of regular Americans’ desire to improve their economic prospects.

   https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/common-good-conservatism-has-a-trump

   Peggy Weyhmeyer captures how I feel perfectly. I am very much confused why this isn’t the united cry of all fundamentalists and evangelicals:

   What has really troubled me from the beginning is why can’t people say on the one hand, ‘We love what he’s done on religious liberty, abortion and the economy?’ But on the other hand say that ‘As Christians whose allegiance is to Jesus Christ, his behavior is despicable’?

   I know that Galli is not saying, “Let’s put a pro-abortion Democrat in the White House.” I watched him on Face the Nation, and he disclaimed having any policy position. He’s simply saying that Trump is morally unfit for office. I honestly thought fundamentalists, of all people, would be saying the same thing from the rooftops for the last three years. We’re the ones who are supposed to have the backbone to do right even when it arouses a chorus of opposition. A tiny few (?) conservative Christians have vocally opposed Trump while being grateful for the good he does. More (like myself, honestly) have been grateful for the good but have opposed him silently (for me, it’s because I’m worn out and I haven’t wanted to stoke unnecessary division in my church circles). Most Christians (?—in my unscientific sampling) have closed ranks around Trump and have seemed excited to promote and protect a man who—if he weren’t their Great White Hope—they would normally regard as venal and buffoonish. Falwell and Graham have been leaders in the effort to defend him to evangelicals. And I sincerely and honestly don’t get it. *I don’t understand what happened to my leaders between 1998 and 2016.*

   
   
   
   • dcsj on December 27, 2019 at 6:24 pm

     Hi Mark,

     Thank you for your comment. I’d like to point out a couple of things in response.

     First, note that the article you are commenting on is a link, not an article of our own. I posted it because I thought it might be of interest to our readers and thought some of hte arguments Hugh Hewitt makes had some validity.

     My take on Trump starts this way: I was appalled that he won the Republican nomination. I thought he was singularly unqualified, not just for his morals but for his so-called business acumen and ability. I couldn’t think of any way he would have succeeded as a president. I counselled family members (some successfully) to vote for someone else. I still don’t much like him.

     However, as a president, though I have disagreed with Trump’s policies occasionally (notably on trade), overall I think he has done a good job. Now I find myself grudgingly supporting him and his re-election. What has changed?

     First, as to “qualification” – while Trump has a public record of a lot of immoral talk and behaviour, is he any less qualified than any of the pro-abortion Democrats, one of whom wil be the Democratic nominee? Most of them are likely less publicly crass than Trump (as seen in his past, mostly), but how do they really have the moral high ground? Are we trying to say that Donald Trump’s kind of immorality is worse and more disqualifying than their kind of immorality? I don’t see it. I would have to say that on moral grounds he is as qualified as any of them.

     Second, on the impeachment and Mark Galli’s unfortunate article: The accusations in the current articles of impeachment are unconvincing. Galli claims the charges are clear and disqualifying. I don’t agree. The whole process looks like a witch hunt from beginning to end. The charges, at best, point at an episode where Trump may have toyed with using the threat of withholding funds to get the Ukrainians to do something for him against Biden. (The episode looks far worse for Biden, if the allegations are true. That point has not yet been proven.) I don’t thnk there is anything there to warrant terminating Trump’s presidency.

     Compare it to Clinton – in that case, Clinton was clearly guilty of acts while in office that ought to have disqualified him. He used his power and position for self-gratification. In the “Me Too” era, he might not have gotten away with it, but he is a Democrat. In any case, his disqualifying misdeeds occurred *while in office*. To me, that is an important distinction. Yes, Trump, prior to the election, seemed to me to be unqualified for the job. However, his actions *on the job* are not disqualifying, at least so far.

     Third, I agree, many fellow-believers are disconcertingly in Trump adulation mode. This attitude is appalling as well. Trump has done many things well in his presidency, but he isn’t the second coming of Ronald Reagan, or any other “sainted” predecessor. He doesn’t deserve the fawning accolades. The adualation is troubling, but that isn’t a fault in Trump himself, it is a misquided attitude among people who ought to know better.

     On balance, I think Trump has done well enough as president to show that he is capable of functioning on the job. I don’t think he is any more morally unfit than anyone the Dems would offer. Since he has supported a generally conservative political agenda (which I also support), I am now in the “grudging” support for re-election column.

     This could all change if Trump does something disqualifying while in office, but so far he hasn’t done that.

     That’s my view

     Maranatha!
     Don Johnson
     Jer 33.3

     
     
     
2. Mark Ward on December 28, 2019 at 9:16 pm

   Thanks for the careful reply, Don. Your point #3 is really all I’ve been wanting to hear. And I think I’m not the only one who wants to hear it from other believers.