No need to brace yourself: I’m not going to tell you how to vote. But you need to be aware of the price of your support for Donald Trump. The costs have been piling up for the last four years, and it doesn’t seem that President Trump’s Christian supporters are in the right places to see it.
By the way, I find no need to write a post about the cost of supporting Joe Biden, because Christian media are all over that one. So let’s add up the spiritual and human costs of your support for Trump:
1. It’s a gut punch to Black and Hispanic Christians. Your support says I’m OK with Trump’s racist tweets and divisive actions—it’s not that big a deal.
I’ll never forget the time many years ago when I drove up to the home of a Christian friend and found a campaign sign for a certain politician on the front lawn. In my eyes, this man clearly hated white people. This politician, in fact, had screamed in my face and cussed at me when I was a newspaper reporter. The sign made my heart sink. I questioned whether my friend really cared about me. Was there a side of her that I didn’t know or understand? How could she be OK with this politician when he despised people like me?
That was a long time ago, and today I see the situation differently. I didn’t live in this politician’s district, so his influence on my life was limited to begin with. Plus, my friend proved over many years that she loved me. But the way I felt is exactly how your Black and Hispanic friends feel about your support for Trump, except it’s magnified 1,000 times, because Trump is the leader of the nation, setting the tone for public discourse, and he continually spouts ugly and offensive things about people of color (not to mention women and immigrants and persons with disabilities).
I also need to add that my experience from years ago only goes so far as an analogy, because my people group has never been subject to centuries of enslavement, dehumanization, hatred, lynchings, and legal oppression.
You might not realize that when Trump was first elected president, he emboldened racists to come out from under cover. Since then he has refused to definitively condemn white supremacist groups’ support for him. I’ve spoken with several Black and Hispanic friends who have found themselves in encounters with brazen bigots who now feel it is permissible to share their hatred in public places, on social media, and even in the workplace.
Want to sucker-punch your Black and Hispanic friends? Then keep declaring your unqualified support for President Trump.
Right about now someone is going to shake the Internet upside down until they find a Black pastor or prominent personage who supports Trump to put in my face. This means nothing. You will find a few African-Americans who support Trump, because African-Americans are not a monolithic group. But Black Trump supporters are rare. Why would you pull out the tiny handful who support him and ignore the millions—most of them Christians—who consider his presidency one of the worst things that has happened to them?
And doesn’t it ever strike you as strange that President Trump’s political and prayer rallies feature a sea of white people? Are we the United States of White People?
2. It’s driving the next generation out of the Church. Millennials and Gen Zers care about the environment, and no amount of propaganda is going to change that. They’ve grown up understanding that racism—and disrespect toward any group of people—is an awful thing, and they view the older generation as selfish, insensitive, and ignorant of their own prejudices.
Though I might think they’ve thrown out certain moral distinctions in their quest to value all people, they recognize that racial and sexual oppression really is ugly. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that they have brought a needed corrective to the Church.
By the way, sleek buildings and snappy technology don’t impress millennials and Gen Zers as much as we think. They’re just like the rest of us—searching for real relationships, with Jesus Christ and their neighbor. We’ve handed down to them a complacent Christianity that talks a good game but fails to go deep, and they’re smart enough to see it and run.
Want to drive the millennials and Gen Zers out the door as fast as possible? Then keep making excuses for a president who insults women and immigrants and embraces pseudo-science about the environment and COVID-19.
3. It is destroying the American evangelical church. I’ve stated before that I am an evangelical Christian. I hold to that label inasmuch as it represents a person who believes that the Bible is the final authority for all matters of life and doctrine.
My understanding of the term evangelical, however, seems to be going the way of fanny packs and fidget spinners. Nothing has hastened its obsolescence more than white evangelicals’ support for Trump. Because of the gross incongruity of propping up a president who espouses a few evangelical agenda items at the cost of alienating vast swaths of American Christian people (see points #1 and #2), evangelicalism is becoming meaningless.
So what does it stand for? This is what it’s begun to look like to me:
● Stiff-necked refusal to repent for our sins of commission and omission concerning racism, even though white evangelicals’ quiescence in the face of racial injustice over a span of many decades has been amply established.
● A Christian “brand” created by and for middle-class and affluent white Americans.
● Opposition to abortion to the exclusion of other moral issues, including racism.
● Selfishness and a culture of comfort centered on me and mine.
● An impoverished spirituality that results in the continuing spectacle of prominent pastors, preachers, and evangelical figureheads falling into grievous sin.
There is one type of support that we all owe to President Trump: sincere prayer. We practice that in my family.
I’ll stop there. The stakes are high for your neighbor in this election season. I pray that future generations of American Christians reclaim a faith that makes sense in belief and practice. We can’t go on as we are.
