In all the discussion of the two elections and thus five years of Trump and his personality, his views, his statements, his fighting back, there has been an interesting discussion that has emerged among Christians. On the one hand, we have people pointing out that much of what he says is not so much Christian as traditional culture, which has included Christianity, and other parts of him fall below even that. On the other side we have his defenders saying "You can't be serious. If you can't see that his opponents are demonstrably worse, you don't belong in a Christian discussion." The former group , upon close examination, includes many Christians who seem to have a divided loyalty between Christ and liberal pieties - and I am absolutely including clergy, seminaries, and denominational headquarters in this. They are a bubble with Politics Envy. The latter group includes people who think that Trump is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies and others with the aggressive, combative form of Christianity that says if we don't fight for it, we will be persecuted into oblivion. It's our right as a Christian nation to protect Christianity by any means.
There are people commenting and even posting over at Instapundit, Maggie's, Neo, and a half-dozen other sites who don't display a lot of Christianity other than to say they support it in some way and warn that the Democrats are going to make it increasingly illegal and impossible to be a person of faith at all. So there. Get on board. One common interpretation of evangelicals supporting Trump is that he at least will not make practicing their faith illegal. The belief is that liberals are not going to make any blanket prohibitions all at once, but gradually, issue by issue, and then (as Hemingway said about bankruptcy) all at once. So if Trump can just get it partly right, they are in.
With the exception of the Trump fulfilling prophecy part, I have both disdain and admiration for all of these positions. If it seems ridiculous and contemptible that Christians should lower themselves to supporting one such as Trump whose previous sexual and business behavior was unacceptable, it might pay to remember that a lot of Spanish Catholics supported the fascists, even knowing their evils, because the communists were going into convents, raping all the nuns and then killing them. Oh, you forgot that part because you grew up hearing nothing but how terrible Franco was? Funny how that happened even then in American media. Yes, the terrible temporary, partial, and informal blacklist in Hollywood. Worst thing that ever happened, really.
On the other hand, the church (liberal and conservative) has not had good long-term results casting its lot with strongmen who offer to protect her.
I came of age in a combination of an elite college well into the unfashionableness of Christianity and then the 70s Jesus People certain that the Tribulation was coming by 1988. So I expected oppression from the start and expected it to be far more advanced by now. I thought I might be living in some out-of-the way place with my wife, unable to worship in public by now, and that my children would be choosing how much compromise they would be accepting in order to feed their children without compromising the faith. It has certainly been much slower than that, hasn't it? OTOH, things are objectively worse in some areas. Slower doesn't mean nonexistent.
What if those evangelicals are making the wrong decision for the right reasons? What if the oppression is indeed coming and they are choosing a protector in hopes of staving off the inevitable, when they should instead be preparing for Babylon? I am unlikely to live long enough to see what is going to happen next in the broad scheme of things, so unless God decides I should have some surprise pulpit to proclaim the unvarnished truth, I am unlikely to have any prophecy or even knowledge. I'm not one of the ones who will need to know.
I'm not at all expert on Spanish history, but I had the impression that the cultural infrastructure for a liberal democracy wasn't there in Spain. Given what the communists were like, and given what Hitler would likely have done to a communist Spain, it seems they got the best of the bad alternatives.
ReplyDeleteThere aren't always good outcomes; sometimes there are just less bad ones.
I don't personally know any Christians who thought Trump was the fulfillment of prophecy (though I hear they're out there), but I know several who think of him as a kind of Cyrus--a pagan raised up to do God's work.
I never trusted him. That he was likely to cause less damage than Hillary or Biden's minders seems obvious, but I didn't think he had convictions, and I did think he'd happily cut deals. Maybe I was wrong, or maybe he would have and the democrats' insensate hatred blinded them to their opportunities.
I don't know if that many people really believe Biden or Harris are the anti-Christ. "Preparers of the way," yes.
"On the other hand, the church (liberal and conservative) has not had good long-term results casting its lot with strongmen who offer to protect her."
ReplyDeleteProbably true, but I don't think that there's the slightest evidence that Trump had (or has) any inclination to be a 'strongman' in the Franco or Latin American dictator sense. And few of those expressing such disdain for his personal life seem to have been similarly exercised about Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, etc.
The enormous hypocrisy of those is not lost on me. However, I am wondering if we are moving from comparative times to sterner ones.
ReplyDeleteThis approach makes little sense to me. I couldn't vote for political representatives at all if I had to eliminate all whose lives couldn't be demonstrated sinless. I vote for candidates on the basis of whether I think their policies will make things better or worse, partly because I care about my own future and partly because I care about the future of my neighbors, my state, my country, and my world. What's the point of saying, "Well, your candidate has done bad things in his personal life," countered by, "Well, yours has, too, and worse"? When did I ever have more than the opportunity to choose the lesser of two evils? Am I supposed to say, "You can be my candidate if you're at least as good as me, otherwise no dice"?
ReplyDeleteWhen people try to engage me in discussions about personality, I always try to steer the debate back to policies. Otherwise I might as well spend my time fighting about infant baptism.
I have the same problem with evaluating political parties on the ground that the other one is imperfect. I've had good friends, otherwise sensible people, tell me it's wrong to support Republicans because there's injustice in the world. Certainly there's injustice in the world, but why would I turn from the R to the D party if I believe the D approach increases injustice rather than decreases it?
ReplyDeletePeople seem to be shouting a lot of meaningless nonsense most of the time, as if the labels were the important thing, and we were never supposed to look at the impact on actual lives.
it might pay to remember that a lot of Spanish Catholics supported the fascists, even knowing their evils, because the communists were going into convents, raping all the nuns and then killing them. Oh, you forgot that part because you grew up hearing nothing but how terrible Franco was?
ReplyDeleteOrwell's Homage to Catalonia informed us that during the Civil War, the traditional narrative of the virtuous Republicans versus the evil Fascists was rather naive, in showing how Communists were killing Anarchists.
For the lead-up to the Civil War, Stanley Payne's books go even farther in smashing the traditional narrative. Raping and killing Roman Catholic clerics was only part of it. Government police killed Jose Calvo Sotelo, the Right's leader in Parliament. Though his killers were readily identified, the government made no arrests. The was probably the spark that ignited the conflict, as the right realized they could expect no justice from the Republican government.