What Now, White Evangelicals?

I admire my neighbors so much. The morning after the election, as I walked John to school, I saw people going about their business, many as if nothing had happened. They were headed to work, or taking their kids to school. Some smiled and laughed. Others talked in whispered tones about the disastrous events of the day before. Many were silent.

The quiet fortitude and love of people accustomed to oppression stood in marked contrast to the fear and selfishness that propelled white evangelicals toward their deathly embrace of a new king to rule over them. While my neighbors appeared unbowed by a man threatening violence and oppression against them, white evangelicals appeared to be scared of their own shadows. Behind every corner lurked another possible threat to their privileged position in American life. And so, on Tuesday, they were vigilant.

Let's talk about those white evangelicals.

One of the worst mistakes white evangelical Trump supporters could make is to assume that the blowback they're receiving right now from their fellow Christians is political. It's not; at least, not primarily. For decades, Christians of color have been urging white evangelicals to repent of racism. That repentance--a broad and thorough phenomenon if it is real--is still nowhere in sight. For decades, Christians of color have been demanding that White evangelicals enact systemic reforms in their colleges and churches. Those reforms have usually been too little and too late. For decades, Christians of color have been warning white evangelicals to stop perverting the gospel. The perversion continues apace.

In much of evangelicalism, whiteness has spiritual authority. In these spaces, whiteness connotes theological maturity and biblical literacy. Theology rooted in the specific cultural contexts of American white supremacy is rendered as the default and normative theology, its racial origins and implications made invisible. If a person of color toes the line, preaching the same individualistic theology with its attenuated understanding of sin, society, and redemption, he (and yes, it's usually a he) is eagerly celebrated:

"Look at our model minority."

"Look at our exceptional Negro."

If that person of color seeks to dismantle the social, economic, and spiritual authority of whiteness within the church or institution, all manner of stonewalling and obfuscation ensue:

"This was never the plan. We wanted you on display. We didn't want you to change us."

This broader context of theological error and systemic sin made this week's political events possible. White evangelicals turned out to be Trump's core constituency. Preliminary data indicate that 81% voted for Trump, a higher number than even George W. Bush received. We can debate until we're blue in the face just how much awareness they had of what they were doing. What is clear is that the general environment of racism and ignorance in the communities in which they live and worship prevented them from seeing their fellow Christians as equally valuable human beings. Even more, the humanity of immigrants and Muslims and many others appeared to be little more than collateral damage in white evangelicals' quest to protect themselves.

As my former pastor in Chicago wrote this week, "most ethnic and religious minority American citizens feel that a Trump election is a vote against their identity. It says to them that "America doesn't want you here". It feels like a vote to go back to the way things were (Make America Great Again), when they were treated even worse then they are today."

Some white evangelicals surely knew this and voted for Trump anyway. Others literally did not know. In either case, they have an enormous amount of listening, learning, and reflecting to do.

But what of the nearly 1 in 5 white evangelicals who opposed Trump? We have our own problems:

One of the worst mistakes white evangelical Trump opponents could make is to use this occasion to declare our divorce with evangelicalism. I've already seen people I respect take this route. But you know what? People of color don't need us to assert our innocence. When we look at white evangelicalism and say, "I'm not that!" I understand that we might mean it as a statement of solidarity with people of color, but I worry that we are really making this declaration for ourselves. We don't want to be associated with white nationalism. But if we huffily announce that we're not evangelicals, how does that help people of color? Seriously, what good does it do them? They don't need us to loudly signal to the world our virtue and enlightenment. They need us to be missionaries to our communities where white nationalist idolatry has overrun the church.

We, as white evangelicals who claim to oppose racism, are the people best positioned to bring our white evangelical brothers and sisters to repentance. It's not anybody else's job to do it. This is all on us. This is our inheritance. Shouldn't we stay and try to make it right? When we bail out, loudly declare that we're done with evangelicalism, we become yet another set of critics lobbing stones from the outside. What good are we then?

Look, I'll be the first to admit I don't know what this means for me or how exactly we should go about these things. When you fight racism as a white evangelical, you will be accused of being too harsh, of being too patient, of being too wishy-washy, of being too radical. You will be constantly misunderstood. The only certainty is that you won't have a comfortable home within white evangelicalism. But maybe we can stay within its fold anyway? I'm struggling through this.

There's another mistake to which a third group of white evangelicals are vulnerable. These evangelicals have tried to keep their head down and bring peace to warring factions, desperately wanting both pro- and anti-Trump evangelicals to get along for the larger good of the church. The worst mistake these moderates could make is to think that there are two morally equal sides suffering from a temporary political disagreement. When the white evangelical church in its predominant expression is living in open and unrepentant sin, bowing down to the gods of whiteness and nationalism, what does it really mean to be a peacemaker? It must not mean giving equal comfort to the oppressor and the oppressed.

This is an exciting time to be a follower of Jesus. More than ever before, I feel assured that the great work of God is proceeding far from the centers of white nationalist Christianity. As God has introduced himself to us as a defender of the needy and a warrior on behalf of the oppressed, let that also be our calling card.

Why I'm Still An Evangelical In The Age Of Trump

Part of me thinks if you're a real evangelical you don't need to write about why you still are one. But my path has been winding. For the past decade, whether or not I was an evangelical might depend on the day you asked me, or what I had for dessert the night before. As I've grown older and begun to raise my children, I've grown into my identity. When your children begin to ask you questions, you find you have to answer them one way or another. It turns out that I am still an evangelical. 

It is through evangelicalism that I encountered Jesus and cast what little faith I have into the proposition that he will rescue me from myself. For me, "sinner saved by grace" is not an old-fashioned Sunday school tale. It is the basic claim that shapes every day of my life. Without it, I would live somewhere else, do different work, and have a different kind of family. Without it, I wouldn't know what to do.

There is something wonderful and hard to explain about the rootedness of believing in supernatural religion. I am a person of my time, of course, but I'm also of another time. I can read words written hundreds or thousands of years ago and feel an instant connection. They trusted in Jesus, too, I say to myself, and their experience seems so similar to mine because, after all, Jesus is alive. This foolishness rescues me from the soul-crushing materialism of this confused era. Evangelicalism is not the only place I might have discovered these things, it's just where I did discover them. And so I owe something to it.

But when as a young adult I found out that my faith tradition was broken, I wanted to push it away, reject it. Easier said than done.

Many of us have complicated but ultimately unbreakable bonds with the things that form us. Families, countries, religions, a landscape or a city. There are certain things that are a part of you and you love them with all the frustration and familiarity with which you love yourself. So when I tried to disown evangelicalism, it didn't take. I find that my very best and very worst qualities are tangled together in this evangelical inheritance.

I've found in evangelicalism the harshest judgments and most unexpected acts of grace. I've seen the worst kinds of complacency and the most life-giving zeal. I've found guilt and shame, and soul-restoring peace. I've found infuriating anti-intellectualism and humble scholarship of the first order. I've even found racism and anti-racism.

To many readers this may all sound vaguely strange, possibly even interesting, but disconnected from what they know of evangelicalism. The elephant in the room with us is the "Christian" Right. Many Americans know evangelicalism primarily as a political movement. So it may surprise some people to learn that evangelicals are spending far more time and money working on things like poverty, racism, health care, and education than they are in trying to elect Republicans. World Vision, for example, is an evangelical aid organization with a budget that by itself dwarfs all the activities of the "Christian" Right in the United States. And don't forget the thousands of organizations that are doing exceptional work in every city across the country. They're helping kids, rebuilding communities, fighting poverty, providing health care, and offering college scholarships to students of color.

John Perkins, founder of the CCDA. A hero within evangelicalism, virtually unknown without

From the outside, evangelicalism has looked like a political juggernaut. From the inside, it has looked like a religious movement that treats partisan politics as a sideshow. I don't know quite how to reconcile these competing visions. But communities are always more complicated than they appear from the outside.

An old friend and mentor of mine, himself an evangelical, recently told me that he believes many of the "evangelicals" showing up in polls supporting Donald Trump are cultural evangelicals in the South who are not actually committed Christians. There seemed to be an element of truth in this, especially in the primaries when the data showed regular church attendees were less likely to support Trump. And anecdotally, this seems right even now. It's hard to find Christians in my circles who support Trump. But I don't think that's the story the data is telling now. Though some of us are associated with evangelical communities in which voting for Trump is unthinkable, we have to face the fact that the large majority of church-going White evangelicals are going to vote for him.

This is the culminating act of political self-destruction in a 40 year campaign of harmful politics. When I think of the "Christian" Right, I'm inclined to repurpose a line from Frederick Douglass' first autobiography: "between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference..." Indeed. Despite all the good done by evangelicals in local communities, the dominant political expression of American evangelicalism is hateful and selfish, and unworthy to be called Christian.

This politics is very public. It's what people see, and it's what they associate with evangelicalism. So to all the readers who don't have any particular connection to evangelicalism but know it through its politics: you're right to be offended. I hope, in some small way, it might matter to you to know that millions of evangelicals are offended too.

And we're not just offended. We're bewildered. Evangelical support for Trump is a fascinating and confusing phenomenon because he is a living negation of the values we claim to hold. He embodies with eerie precision the opposite of the qualities we're taught to revere in our savior. Christ's servant's spirit, his humility, his boundary-crossing love, his wrath for oppressors--it's not just that Trump fails to live up to these qualities, as we all do. It's that he's unusually hostile to them.

Evangelicals should not be under the illusion that they will have any credibility to speak to my generation after vocally supporting Trump. I can understand an evangelical quietly and sorrowfully pulling the lever for Donald Trump. I really can. But open advocacy is something else. To this day, I still haven't seen an honest evangelical case for Trump. I'd like to see the case made.

I do not want to offend Trump supporters. But I do want them to be aware that their politics hurts real people, including my neighbors. These folks have names. They're flesh and blood. Supporting Trump hurts them, and I still can't see how it helps anybody else. It's all downside.

So how does a candidate running on an anti-Christian platform win over Christian voters? By appealing to their idols. In the end, Trump's allure cannot be understood apart from White evangelicals' investments in race and patriotism. What I wrote at the beginning of the summer still holds true:

Many White evangelicals are prepared to vote for Trump because they're heirs to a cultural and theological tradition that binds race and nation to faith. Trump may not offer a clean-cut portrait of Christian character, but he is surprisingly forthright in his White nationalism. It is a mistake to assume that Trump's irreligious persona doesn't carry a religious message. To make America great again, to restore America's racial hierarchy--these are religious goals of an idolatrous people.

This, too, is part of my inheritance. Part of what it means for me to be a follower of Jesus is not to run away from my community of faith. It would have been easier in a way to leave evangelicalism and cast stones from the outside. It is harder to stay, confront my own racism, and seek reformation of my community from the inside. But I think that's what I'm supposed to do.

Christians and Politics: The Abstention Option

Amid the arguments swirling around us in the year of Trump, what if Christians simply abstained from politics? What if we stopped arguing, stopped criticizing, stopped sharing social media memes? What if we simply didn't vote? What if we abstained from politics?

Sound appealing?

I'd like to suggest that perhaps there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this.

First, a right way.

I grew up with a deep familiarity and appreciation for a Christian tradition that shunned the American political process entirely. On my mother’s side we come from Amish roots. My great-great-grandfather left the Amish church and started the conservative Mennonite church in which my mom grew up. I have fond memories of the Bible school I attended there each summer as a kid. Cape dresses, head coverings, and a capella singing were the order of the day. We boys could wear jeans to Bible school, but never shorts. And during the breaks in the lessons, we’d all go out to the back of the church and play freeze tag in the dimming light of evening. It was delightful.

When at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, someone might come to the door and suddenly Grandma would be speaking in a language I didn’t understand (it was Pennsylvania Dutch). It is impossible for me to convey the dignity and reserve with which my grandparents carried themselves, especially because they also seemed to be so joyful. Grandpa liked to laugh. Their house was a place of peace. If we were there on a Sunday, we might ask to turn on the computer, but we couldn’t expect that request to be granted. We could expect, instead, good conversation, good food, and the inevitable nap on the couch.

I now think the peace that Grandma and Grandpa radiated was a direct consequence of their theological convictions. For Grandma and Grandpa, running for political office, serving in the military or police force, voting, or employing violence of any kind was just out of the question. They followed someone who said “my kingdom is not of this world,” and “he who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” Amid the rough-and-tumble of politics and power grabs, Grandma and Grandpa were quiet witnesses to a different path: a way of being in the world that did not reach for power, and did not fear those who possessed it, for they too would fade like the grass, while the word of the Lord would endure forever.

I can’t say Grandma and Grandpa were wrong.

Suffice it to say, were they alive today they would not be on Facebook talking about how bad Donald Trump is. But their silence might obscure how radically subversive their posture actually was. In their rejection of state power they resisted the heretical conflation of God and country that has dogged the church since Constantine. Lest you think this is a minor point, try to imagine how the Nazi state would have made war if its churches had been incubators of Christian conscientious objectors instead of German patriots. And so, under different circumstances, Grandma and Grandpa’s abstention from the institutions of the state would have been deeply political.

Maybe we need more of that kind of subversiveness. As millions of Americans thrill to the cry of Make America Great Again, I fear that our churches have created nearly as many patriots as Christians.

One might assume that Grandma and Grandpa were irresponsible for refraining from the political process. Think of all the good Christians could do by exercising their right to vote. Isn't it wrong to discard that influence? Yet look at where we are. Three-quarters of White evangelicals are getting ready to vote for Trump. This is a self-inflicted mockery of Christian faith more thorough than any skeptic or critic ever imagined. The theory was that Christians would influence politics. The reality looks more like being captured by it. Grandma and Grandpa's abstention looks appealing in comparison.

A theologically-rooted rejection of politics involves the humble recognition that power corrupts the church and prevents it from embodying Jesus Christ to the world. A power-seeking church cannot possibly represent the God-man whose earthly life was marked by poverty, sorrow, and homelessness. Instead of standing in solidarity with the poor and needy, such a church becomes obsessed with maintaining its prerogatives. It becomes a client of the state.

In a way, the abstention option is about self-preservation. But this is not the self-preservation of defensive and power-seeking Christians desperately searching for a president to take their side. This is self-preservation with a specific purpose in mind: when the state seeks to mobilize its citizens toward oppression, a mass Christian collective will stand uncowed by the state's power and unmoved by its claims. The church creates spaces where the normal methods of power become inoperative. The weak are protected, the poor are empowered, and the rich humble themselves--or else. In these spaces, repentance and humility count for infinitely more than money, power, education, or class. In these spaces, the state is frustrated in its aims.

Now, let's talk about a wrong way to go about it.

A lot of people don't like politics. They find it confusing or irrelevant. Or the process seems dirty and corrupt. Others believe what's happening at the political level simply isn't very consequential. These attitudes make abstention easy, but not necessarily Christian. Principled, theologically-grounded abstention reckons with the reality that politicians are making life and death decisions that affect our lives. It does not pretend that politics is unimportant. It recognizes that withdrawing from politics does not bestow innocence or absolve responsibility. In the face of these realities, it still chooses to abstain.

But too often, Christians withdraw from politics not because of a well-considered theological ethic, but because of a narrow understanding of Christian responsibilities. Certain strains of white evangelicalism have a long tradition of being reluctant to think about systemic sin and systemic solutions. They hold up individual conversion as a cure-all. They express concern for the individual but too often discount the social forces shaping the individual. Faith becomes personal rather than communal, and piety becomes the measure of obedience. The biblical demands of social justice recede to the background and matters of basic Christian duty are coded as merely political.

As Dr. King said of white Christians during the civil rights movement:

In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

We must be careful not to fall into this trap. As we grapple with the disgraceful and dangerous candidacy of a racist strongman, assuming a posture of irenic detachment is not necessarily a Christian response. Is our position embedded in a broader ethic of concern for others? Or is it a convenient screen for complacency? Is it counterfeit abstention? If we are going to be silent in this dangerous moment, it cannot be because of our own desire to maintain an illusory sense of purity. It cannot be because we think the gospel doesn’t have anything to say about oppression.

We can talk about God’s sovereignty. We can declare that the prospect of a Trump presidency leaves us unimpressed and unafraid. We can reaffirm Christian cliches about how Jesus will still be doing his work regardless of who wins a presidential election. That's all fine. But we cannot be indifferent to the rise of a man who promises to oppress our brothers and sisters made in God’s image.

When those of us who are unlikely to be targets of the demagogue adopt postures of calm neutrality, it doesn't necessarily look like trusting God. It may look more like a lack of love for our neighbors.

As this year began, I was prepared to sit back and observe this election in a spirit of nonpartisan equanimity. See here, for example. But we haven't seen such a radically destructive and anti-christian candidacy before. Donald Trump is unprecedented. He is a threat to our neighbors. He is a threat to the world.

So I choose to engage.

I can't escape the idea that the same Bible that taught Grandma and Grandpa to abstain from politics teaches me to jump in: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This kind of righteous action has always been political. It always will be. When the Hebrew prophets brought the word of God to the people, they spoke of politics: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

Oppression is perpetrated through politics. Justice--at least the imperfect version of it we can reach for in this disordered world--is enacted in part through politics. And this, too, is clear: Donald Trump seeks power so that he may oppress.

In the face of this unusually evil candidacy, I want to either have the kind of radicalism my grandparents had, or stand up and forthrightly join the political process to defeat Trump, but I want to avoid the complacency and ambivalence of the moderate middle.

Those of us who speak out cannot do so simply because we like politics and enjoy jumping into the partisan fray. It cannot be because we have been captured by the partisan process and are under the illusion that Hillary Clinton represents Christian ethics. It cannot be because we're in the habit of criticizing Republican candidates. Many of us have cried wolf too many times in past elections, and now that we really do face a historically dangerous candidacy, our words ring hollow because of past hyperbole. Mitt Romney, I'm sorry for every bad thing I ever said about you!

Whatever we do, it must not be for our own interests. Beneath the apparent differences of engaging or disengaging from the political process lies the deeper question of whether our posture is self-focused or other-focused. Perhaps the most pernicious way to be captured by the political process is to vote for our own interests. Of course, this is what is expected of us in a democracy. People voting for their interests is precisely how this system is supposed to work. But why should Christians play by these rules? Why would we want to?

Wayne Grudem is Wrong: Don't Vote for Trump

Polls show about 4 out of 5 White evangelicals are preparing to vote for Donald Trump. A recent article by the evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem shows us why. It's long, but read it for yourself. Read it and weep.

One hardly knows where to start with this article, but three overarching characteristics stand out.

1) It is intellectually dishonest.

"His many years of business conduct show that he is not racist or anti-(legal) immigrant or anti-Semitic or misogynistic..."

Grudem presents Trump as a flawed but basically normal nominee. I honestly don't have the gumption to argue about this. I don't know if the first person Grudem deceived was himself, or if he is engaging in calculated deceit. In either case, anyone open to the idea that Grudem might be wrong can simply do a 5-minute google search and see that he is. So let me outsource this. On racism, check out Nicholas Kristoff's recent column. And for a blow by blow account of Trump's disgraceful and unprecedented behavior as he seeks the presidency, follow James Fallows' amazing "time capsule" series. He's at #65 and counting. Read them all. Seriously.

Donald Trump is a demagogue with authoritarian instincts. He is a man governed by appetites, not thoughts. He does not give considered judgments; he excretes passions. To say this is not to claim any special insight into his character. It's only to say that I'm a sentient being with an interest in the news. There are two groups of people who don't know that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. The first are ordinary people with better things to do than pay attention to politics. As they begin to tune in to the election this fall, they can be persuaded. The second are people who do pay attention to politics and choose not to know the truth. That's Grudem. And I'm not under the illusion there's anything that could be said to change his mind. But perhaps we can persuade those who are still persuadable.

People have difficulty, I think, fully grasping how dangerous Donald Trump is. The logic of the demagogue, and what this would mean for a Trump presidency, is still not well-understood. Demagogues stoke fear and anger against marginal groups of people in order to gain power and popularity. The process continues without end, because it is the lifeblood of the demagogue’s power. Without a heightened sense of threat, the demagogue is just a tick without a host. And so the threat must remain. The only thing that’s certain about a Trump presidency is that he will scapegoat and persecute whole groups of people. The only question is how far he’ll go. This is the logic of the authoritarian demagogue.

Trump makes his appearance on stage at the Republican Convention, July 18, 2016.

Ordinarily, ideology is very important in a presidential election. You vote for the candidate you agree with on the issues. But ordinarily, both candidates have some measure of competence, display normal amounts of human decency, and appear capable of feelings such as shame and guilt. Ordinarily, both candidates believe in democracy and human rights. There's little evidence Trump possesses any of these qualities or beliefs. This has never happened before. In these circumstances, ideology recedes and our common humanity moves to the fore.

We’ve never seen such a radically anti-Christian figure come this close to the pinnacle of power in the United States. His most profound theological statement was when he declared he had never had reason to ask God for forgiveness. Trump is the negation of Christianity personified. He is a man who "breathes out violence," as Psalm 27 so evocatively puts it. His recklessness and contempt for human life is too obvious to take his "pro-life" claims seriously.

I would like to see an intellectually honest defense of Donald Trump from an evangelical Christian. I imagine it would go something like this: "I'm voting for the dangerous racist because he might appoint justices who might reduce abortions." Or, "I'm risking war and global turmoil in hopes that Trump will make the abortion rate, which has trended down during Obama's presidency, go down faster." As much as I would disagree with that choice, it has a coherent internal logic and accords with reality. It's a plausible scenario. And if that's where you're at, I haven't thought of a good argument to convince you otherwise. But I've yet to hear anyone make that argument. And I think that's telling. Grudem was either unwilling or unable to make an honest defense of voting for Trump. Why?

Another intellectually honest case for Trump would be something like: "I'm voting for the incompetent demagogue because at least he'll be on our side." That brings us to point number two.

2) It is selfish.

"a Trump-appointed Supreme Court, together with dozens of lower court judges appointed by him, would probably result in significant advances in many of the policy areas important to Christians. It would also open the door to huge expansion of influence for the many Christian lobbying groups..."

Superficially, Grudem frames his case as a disinterested defense of what is best for the country. He quotes the scripture about seeking the welfare of the city in which you are in exile. In the same way, he says, we should seek the welfare of the United States. Grudem poses this question to guide our decision: "Which vote is most likely to bring the best results for the nation?"

At a time when many Christians are invested in unchristian attachments to patriotism and American exceptionalism, this is a dangerous question to serve as our guide. It invites Christians to vote through the lens of nationalist hierarchy (my nation first) rather than cultivating equal concern for all human life.

But leave that aside for now. Even on his own terms, Grudem fails dramatically. As the article goes on it becomes increasingly clear that for Grudem, the biggest reason to vote for Trump is that he will be on team White evangelical. He openly speculates that a Trump administration will lead to "huge expansion of influence for the many Christian lobbying groups." Does that sit well with you? Christians as just another interest group jockeying for position?

After his introduction explaining that a) Christians should vote, and b) Christians should vote for Trump, the meat of the article explores "the results we could expect from a Clinton presidency with what we could expect from a Trump presidency." Well over one-third of the ensuing analysis is devoted to the protection of so-called religious liberty for White evangelicals.

Grudem is deeply concerned about protecting the traditional prerogatives of a certain kind of conservative White Christianity. He does not acknowledge that this might have trade-offs, that the same judges likely to support restrictions on abortion and special protections for evangelicalism are also likely to harm women and workers and erode the rights of LGBT people, African Americans, and immigrants. As long as a policy seems good for his own community, Grudem shows no apparent interest in its consequences for others.

Grudem's Christianity appears insular, embattled, defensive. Preoccupied with lost power and declining cultural authority, it desperately reaches for an anti-Christian strong man to restore its fortunes. This is a Christianity so self-absorbed that its posture toward the broader polity is described by words such as take and impose, rather than give and sacrifice.

Grudem's article has a short section on "minorities." Apparently all "minorities" are indistinguishable and have the same concerns. You have to read it to believe it. Almost all of this section either paraphrases or quotes directly Donald Trump's convention speech. Because if there's one thing we know, it's that we can take Donald Trump at his word. For the varied problems facing over one-third of the nation's population, Grudem has a grand total of two original sentences:

Two of the deepest causes of poverty among minority groups and racial tensions in our country are failing public schools in our inner cities and lack of available jobs...[quotes Trump]...By contrast, Clinton will bow to the teachers’ unions and oppose school choice at every turn, and she will continue to strangle businesses with high taxes and regulations, preventing job growth.

It's not a coincidence that these sentences read like every boilerplate Republican speech you've ever heard. That brings us to point number three.

3) It bows the knee to a political party. 

"this election is not just about Hillary Clinton. It is about defeating the far left liberal agenda that any Democratic nominee would champion..."

It's hard to convey here how thoroughly Grudem outsources any sense of Christian conviction toward the end of the article. He runs through a litany of issues, offering a veritable cliffs notes version of the Republican Party platform. Grudem is a theologian. But here he trades in his theology card so that he can adopt the posture of a partisan hack. Behold! A miraculous congruence between the will of God and the GOP! 

Why doesn't Grudem's cliffs notes list of policy areas mention issues of importance to other groups of people? What about voting rights, criminal justice reform, the war on drugs, Native land rights, deportations of families, police brutality, and so on? Is it because Christian theology has nothing to say to those who are affected by these issues? Or is it because the GOP has so little to say?

This almost defies belief, but Grudem notes that his largest disagreement with Trump is on trade policy. He found a way to excuse Trump's racism, misogyny, and violence, but he couldn't get past Trump's heresy on trade. Hatred can be explained away, but God forbid that he should defy GOP orthodoxy on trade policy.

This is not bold and prophetic Christianity. This is a co-opted Christ ready to be put into service for a political party.

Conclusion

As 4 of 5 White evangelicals prepare to vote for Trump, Grudem's article almost perfectly captures why they are going to do so. It is dishonest, selfish, and partisan while claiming to be honest, selfless, and Christian. It is an exercise in selling one's soul and calling it conviction.

I probably shouldn't write all this without going on the record myself. I can't write about co-opted Christianity without being at least dimly aware of how my own faith is bound by time and place, shaken by fear, corrupted by desire for approval. My own faith constantly stumbles toward something more comfortable, more palatable, more understandable to other people, than the kind of life Jesus invites us to discover. So is this a message from one co-opted Christian to another?

For the record, because I am a Christian I cannot support many of Hillary Clinton's positions, especially those pertaining to abortion, war, and the death penalty. She is far too ready to take life, and far too complacent about protecting it. Nor can I support her brand of nationalism and her insufficient concern for the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Don't vote for Hillary Clinton if such a vote violates your conscience. There is ample reason to withhold your vote from her. But in the same spirit, do not vote for the most dangerous and unchristian nominee of our lifetimes, a man who literally makes our fellow citizens and people around the world fear for their lives. People say this is a lesser-of-two evils election. For the Christian voter, that’s the only kind of election there is. If you think you’ve ever participated in another kind, you left your Christianity behind somewhere.

Revisiting the Gospel and White Evangelicalism

I'd like to revisit my last post. In particular, I received some helpful pushback from a current professor at Moody Bible Institute for what he saw as my unfairness toward Dwight L. Moody. He had some good points to make. And, it must be said, he knows much more about Moody than I do. He noted that Moody associated himself with a variety of progressive causes, founded an integrated school in Massachusetts, privately expressed displeasure with segregation, and was supported by some Black southerners. Including all of this in my last post, I think, would have strengthened the argument I was trying to make.

If people read what I wrote about Moody and Edwards and Whitefield and concluded, "Wow, I didn't realize these guys were so monstrous; let's disown them," my post had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather, for White evangelical readers in particular, there is an urgent need to embrace the totality of our history and inheritance. The point is not that Moody was horrible. The takeaway ought to be that I have little reason to assume I'm any less blind than he was. It's probably just blindness about different things.

When we pay attention to what Black Christians were saying in Moody's time and others, we can begin to see that our inheritance is a distinct brand of White Christianity, with its own foibles, idioms, and blind spots. This is less a shocking indictment than an obvious reality of any human community of faith. We are culturally located. We are not the normative group by which other Christians can be measured. There is no fault in having never heard the sordid details I shared in my last post. But we can know the outlines of our own tradition. We can become students of our own community, knowing some of its errors and biases, including, especially, its idolization of Whiteness and American nationalism.

Some Christians seem to be concerned that we might focus on the negative side of past heroes to the exclusion of the good they did. I understand this concern. But the much greater danger is that in ignoring their sins, we will repeat them. When we build up people of the past to mythical status, we encourage a culture of arrogance and unwarranted self-satisfaction. Scripture doesn't do this. The so-called heroes of the faith in the biblical narrative are usually presented as scoundrels and cowards, the better to emphasize the grace of God.

Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931

Let's return to Moody. How are we to interpret his disapproval of segregation? Does that make his segregated meetings better? Or, indeed, does it make them worse? That Moody did what he did in service of the Gospel, as he understood it, is precisely the point. His belief that individual conversion would ultimately undermine segregation was not just naive; it was a view his privileged position made easy, and a luxury that many Black Christians facing questions of life and death felt they couldn't afford. Moody's understanding of the gospel was narrow, culturally specific, and White. In refusing to speak and act publicly against the anti-Christian society of the American South and the greatest social evil of his time, Moody compromised the Gospel.

Consider the contrasting fortunes of Moody and Ida B. Wells. Moody toured the South to widespread acclaim, preaching to many thousands of White southerners. Just a few years later, Wells had to flee the South for her life because she had spoken out against lynching. Moody's public silence won him praise, but what did it cost him? What was the cost to the integrity of the Gospel and the church? What are we to make of a message that was more readily accepted by the oppressors than by the oppressed? How can such a message be anything other than a perversion of the teachings of Christ?

While Moody's Gospel allowed White southerners to believe they could love Christ while remaining indifferent to their brother, Wells did the much harder work of clinging to faith while grappling with the world as it actually was. "The heart almost loses faith in Christianity," she wrote, "when one thinks of...the countless massacres of defenseless Negroes...O God, when will these massacres stop?"

Was this a cry of despair? Perhaps, yes. It was also a cry of faith in which the key word was "almost." We would do well to come closer to Ida B. Wells, to meditate on evil committed in the name of Christ, to question and struggle to the point of "almost." If this means lost certainty and self-assurance, it may also lead to unexpected compensations. Not least, the discovery that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Recovering the Gospel from White Evangelicalism

I received my undergraduate degree from Moody Bible Institute. A small evangelical college in Chicago, MBI was founded by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody in the late nineteenth century and became a major player in the fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century. Though the college no longer enjoys the outsize influence of its earlier years, it remains a well-regarded institution in evangelical Christian circles.

As a kid, I learned about the career of the great Dwight L. Moody, perhaps the most famous evangelist of the late nineteenth century. I suppose any self-respecting evangelical has at least heard of Moody. While at MBI, I learned more about the school's founder. He traveled around the country and across the Atlantic preaching to huge crowds. His commitment to the Gospel and passion for sharing his faith were legendary.

Dwight L. Moody, 1837-1899

But what I didn't learn about Moody is crucial to understanding White evangelicalism in our own time. I didn't learn that as Moody preached across the South in the 1880s there were Black churches boycotting his crusades. Moody held segregated meetings, emphasized reconciliation among Whites after the civil war, and told folksy stories associating African Americans with dirt and poverty to illustrate his sermons. He emphasized his respect for White southern ideals and did not discuss Black aspirations for freedom.

Black clergy protest segregated revival, Galveston, 1886.

One member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church wrote of Moody, "His conduct toward the Negroes during his southern tour has been shameless, and I would not have him preach in a bathroom, let alone a church." As southern Whites lynched African Americans and kept their body parts as souvenirs, Moody ventured South preaching that they could have their Christ and White supremacy too. The  anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells said Moody had "encouraged the drawing of the color line in the churches," the very last place it ought to exist. Frederick Douglass agreed. "Of all the forms of negro hate in this world," he declared in disgust, "save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus."

Moody prioritized national unity and racial hierarchy over Christian doctrine, perverting the good news he claimed to preach. Moody could not have been unaware of basic Christian teaching found in the Bible he loved. Christ had declared in no uncertain terms that he would enact eternal judgment on the basis of how his followers treated the most vulnerable and despised people in their society (Matthew 25). And his disciple John had bluntly warned that people who claimed to love God while hating human beings were liars (1 John 4). But Moody refused to apply the Gospel to his own country.

At the very end of his life, after his influence had waned, Moody finally stopped holding segregated revival meetings. But by then the damage had been done. And Moody had been overtaken in popularity by other preachers who were more overt in their commitment to White supremacy.[1]

We can trace a similar theme both forward and backward in time from Moody's position in the late nineteenth century. White evangelicals revere the profound theological reflections of the eighteenth-century minister and theologian Jonathan Edwards. We know much less about the people he enslaved.[2] White evangelicals have drawn inspiration from the astonishing zeal and oratory of the eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield. We know little about his lobbying efforts to institute slavery in the colony of Georgia.[3]

Moving forward in time, White evangelicals laud the most famous evangelist of the twentieth century, Billy Graham. If we know anything about his stance on racism, it is likely a triumphant narrative about how he desegregated his crusades (leaving aside the question of why they were segregated to begin with). Despite desegregating his crusades, Graham did not aid the civil rights movement. Worried that the movement threatened national unity and provided an opening for communism, Graham called for a more moderate course. When Martin Luther King wrote to Graham seeking his help in the battle against Jim Crow, Graham did not even respond. The task of brushing King's plea aside was left to one of Graham's lieutenants.[4]

White evangelicals do not generally know these stories. In this forgetting there is more than institutional protection and group bias at work. In the dominant White evangelical imagination, all these stories, if they are recalled at all, do not touch upon the essence of these men or their ministries. As long as these giants of the faith preached repentance and salvation through Christ alone, they can be heroes. This unchristian narrowing of theological vision allows the bonds of Whiteness and nationalism to go unexamined in many evangelical circles.

While White evangelicals venerate Moody and Whitefield and others, they erase from the story Christians who clung more faithfully to the Gospel. During these men's lifetimes fellow Christians were rebuking them for perverting the good news! These Christians believed, alike with Moody, that human beings are sinners in need of God's grace through Jesus Christ. But they also insisted on applying scripture to American society. We don't know the stories of those Christians or respect their theological insights because they were Black.

During my years at Moody, I'm not aware of having been assigned to read any theologian of color. Though my theological training was distinctly White in its cultural orientation and value system, and the campus culture strongly nationalistic, I was taught that what I was learning was simply biblical Christianity. This is perhaps the central conceit of my evangelical heritage: that a faith so bound up in modern categories of race and nationalism is somehow an unmediated expression of "true" Christianity rooted in the early church of 2,000 years ago.

This is the context in which we ought to read polls showing strong White evangelical support for Donald Trump. A new CBS poll has Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump 43% to 37% among all registered voters, while Trump leads among White evangelicals 62% to 17%.

Trump is running the most aggressively anti-Christian campaign of our lifetimes, with execrable displays of racism, contempt for women, and disregard for refugees. He shows no concern for the poor. He directs his venom against the very groups God, according to the Christian scriptures, chooses to identify with. And when it comes to protecting the lives of unborn children, Trump seems even less sincere than the usual degree of insincerity from GOP politicians.

Many White evangelicals are prepared to vote for Trump because they're heirs to a cultural and theological tradition that binds race and nation to faith. Trump may not offer a clean-cut portrait of Christian character, but he is surprisingly forthright in his White nationalism. It is a mistake to assume that Trump's irreligious persona doesn't carry a religious message. To make America great again, to restore America's racial hierarchy--these are religious goals of an idolatrous people.

Many White evangelicals are still under the impression that America is a new chosen nation, like the Israelites of old. They still don't know that the biblical narrative of the Exodus offers America a closer parallel: the blasphemous enslavers, the Egyptians. Many White evangelicals still haven't discovered that scripture is filled with God's constant claims that he identifies with those society despises. They still haven't realized that God's compassion for the oppressed and wrath for the oppressor is not a message of comfort to White, Christian America, but of judgment.

I know many White evangelicals who are too busy experiencing the grace of God in their daily lives to be enthralled by White nationalism. They are building health clinics, adopting children, running summer camps for poor children, raising scholarship funds to send students of color to college, working against gun violence, and living in poor communities as neighbors rather than gentrifiers. I know well all the good evangelicalism can do.

But we've seen, as well, the evil it can do when fused with political power and drained of the good news Jesus declared. In this extraordinary political season, I feel it is important to lay down a marker. The political "Christian right" is likely to follow Trump into the abyss. But many millions of Christians refuse to go there, and we insist that this so-called Christian political mobilization does not speak for us.

We claim that White nationalist Christianity is a perversion of the Gospel, and we invite everyone to receive the message of our savior, who came preaching liberation rather than hatred:

 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

_____________________
[1] My account of Moody relies on Edward J. Blum's excellent book, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press). See especially chapter 4. 

[2] See for example Richard A. Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[3] Jessica M. Parr, Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 

[4] Curtis J. Evans, "White Evangelical Responses to the Civil Rights Movement," The Harvard Theological Review 102 (2009): 245-273.

When Christianity Stops Being Good News

This is what the scriptures have to say about my savior:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And the image to the right is what I see today on the website of a popular organization of the Christian Right. Of course it is astonishingly tone-deaf and offensive. Amid the violence of our country and our world, someone thought this was appropriate imagery? This is what happens when Christianity becomes more of a cultural marker of identity than a lived faith. As its adherents fear they are losing "their" culture, their posture becomes increasingly vindictive and self-absorbed.

More than that, this is theologically abhorrent. Christianity is good news to all who are needy. It is not a blood-spattered declaration of war on the culture. If there's any blood on the floor, metaphorically or otherwise, it ought to be ours--gladly given for the good of others.

How Did Northern White Evangelicals Respond to the Civil Rights Movement?

I'm working on a new project on White evangelicals during the civil rights movement. What follows are some provisional thoughts. Historical knowledge is, by its very nature, provisional, so we ought to expose the process more often than we do. 

Here's my entry point: we know a lot about White evangelicals in the South during the civil rights movement. Interpretations of their role differ (Chappell sees their relative neutrality fatally undercutting segregation, while Dupont argues that their theology provided a much stronger bulwark for Jim Crow than Chappell allows).  Still, that southern White evangelicals' posture toward the movement was predominantly hostile is not in question. Yet when the religious narrative of the 1960s shifts to the North, the story we know is of liberal clergy assisting the movement. We know much less about conservative White Protestants in the North. 

How did their response to the civil rights movement differ from their conservative brethren in the South and their liberal counterparts in the North? My simple answer, which remains too vague to be worth much, is that the views of White evangelicals beyond the South were characterized by a greater sense of ambivalence. They were more likely to support the goals of the movement than were southern White evangelicals, but less likely to support its methods than were liberal Protestants. I'm already quite sure this is correct as far as it goes, but it remains too simple to be particularly useful.

Carl F.H. Henry, Founding Editor, Christianity Today

As I search for people or an event or institution on which to build my analysis, I've been exploring the archives of the premier magazine of White evangelicalism addressing public affairs, Christianity Today. There is much here to surprise and enlighten. For now I'll just note some questions I have about two documents. Before doing that, though, I'll note a persistent disservice we do to our students. We speak of a "civil rights movement" over and over, and wonder when it began--in 1954? 1945? 1960? The 1930s? But it's important to understand that any of those answers impose a coherence on the past that people did not have at the time. For Christianity Today in the 1960s, there was no "civil rights movement." There was a "crisis." There was "trouble." There was "the race problem." There was a "Negro revolution." As the movement(s) developed, there was no immediately agreed upon way to interpret what was happening, much less what it ought to be called. Even the recognition of this simple issue of nomenclature helps us to recapture a bit of the confusion and complexity White evangelicals were experiencing. 

Throughout this era Christianity Today ran a carefully cultivated letters-to-the-editor section in each issue. These letters are revealing, I think, not because we can necessarily assume they are representative of White evangelical opinion, but because they at least reflect what the premier magazine of White evangelicalism considered to be acceptable discourse. In contrast to the sewers that are today's web comment sections, Christianity Today chose to publish only those dissenting opinions that it considered to be within reasonable bounds (presumably, right?). A surprising number of those letters hit CT and White evangelicals from the left, castigating them for their failure to unequivocally support Black liberation. More interesting, perhaps, are the sizable number of letters (not only from the South) that are, by our contemporary lights, explicit in their racism. Like this one, for instance: 

Those who today desire to live separate from Negroes are not, I submit, justly chargeable with hate, prejudice, or discrimination. Integration all too often has resulted in intermarriage and the undermining of race integrity, with unhappiness and tragedy for those concerned, and, therefore, is undesirable for both blacks and whites.

                --Walter W. Strong, Long Beach California 

Indeed,  Christianity Today, under the direction of evangelical legend Carl F.H. Henry, had only recently editorialized that interracial marriage, while not strictly immoral, was probably inadvisable. Of particular interest here is the assumption of racial difference and the appropriateness of racial separation. It is considered good and proper that "race integrity" ought to be maintained. And this opinion was considered mainstream enough to publish. Yet in the ensuing decades, White evangelicals (with the notable exclusion of fundamentalist outposts such as Bob Jones that continued to uphold segregationist theology) would move decisively toward precisely the opposite assumptions: that racial difference was a mirage not to be remarked upon, that integration was not only politically expedient but theologically obvious. There are, to be sure, numerous blind spots and inconsistencies in this contemporary vision. Yet those tensions do not take away from the basic question: how did White evangelicals travel from point A (racial difference assumed) to point B (racial difference dissolved)? I think we still don't have an adequate answer to that question.

Now, here's the second document I've been thinking about. It's Christianity Today's reporting on the 1963 March on Washington. Recall that this march has entered into our collective memory as a moment that every American is proud of, the occasion of Dr. King's famous "Dream" speech, and a touchstone of our exceptionalist narrative of American history. Yet when we go back to the reporting at the time, we see a much murkier picture:

Demonstrators swarmed through the streets…Were these the convulsions of a new age in which all Americans would freely recognize one another’s rights irrespective of color? Were they rather a portent of revolutionary mob pressures that presage the decline of a republic, and possibly a time of bloody violence? Any sure answer to those questions seemed exasperatingly elusive...

Note here the nod toward colorblindness sitting in tension with their commentary on interracial marriage. The precise boundaries and nature of these "rights" were precisely what was at issue. And note, too, the fear on display here. They've just witnessed a peaceful march of hundreds of thousands people, Black and White. And they understand themselves to be desirous of Black freedom. Yet they wonder if the March on Washington prefigurs the terminal decline of the United States! This is a sense of threat out of all proportion to events, revealing a deep racial fear. Or does it? Is the fear, at bottom, racial? Is it something else? Does it have more to do with the method, with the sight of thousands of bodies in the streets rather than calm conversation in congress? Surely it is both, and more.

The editorial continued:

What does the Negro want? What racial aspirations are legitimate and illegitimate? He wants only ‘what the white man has’ –so the word goes. An easy reply is that nobody has the right to demand automatically what another qualifies to achieve. But there are larger considerations: has not the white American also set the Negro American an example of seeking economic equality and social status above all else?...Is he now perhaps paying part of the penalty for setting an example of putting first things second? If the Negro mimics the white man, is the Negro alone to blame?..

While the Negro spokesmen have sought effectively to stir white conscience, the rising momentum of pressures and demands has also adversely affected some who normally would be sympathetic…The groundswell of sympathy for Negro rights has a furrow of anxiety over what seems also to be a demand for preferential treatment…

Look at the assumptions buried here. There is no acknowledgment of the structures of racial exclusion built into the American economy, only the ostrich-like belief that what the "white man" has is what he (and it is, of course, a he) has achieved by his merits. And then, the breezy expectation that Whites set "an example" which Blacks were bound to "mimic." Notice the slight of hand. Equality of rights is subtly reframed as a grasping materialism, but the blow is softened because, after all, one cannot blame "the Negro" for only following the White example. Racial paternalism is assumed from the start. Finally, the authors warn against the increasingly militant methods of the movement, claiming that it turned off otherwise sympathetic observers. And, at a time when (for example) Philadelphia's building trades unions featured 1 African American among their 7,300 members, Christianity Today fretted about Black demands for special treatment. These concerns were so unmoored from any facts on the ground, existing with no apparent relationship to reality, that I'm not sure how to grapple with them. How do you explain it? My initial stab at it is to say that, like most White northerners (if those old Gallup polls are to be believed), these White evangelicals sincerely failed to realize that Blacks were systematically excluded from opportunity. Segregation was something that happened down South, they thought. It didn't reflect the true state of their heart, nor of their welcoming community and church. How then could they make sense of people on the streets demanding what they ostensibly already possessed? Such demands were reinterpreted as excessive calls for special rights. This closely mirrors the rhetoric of segregationist elites in the South, so that is certainly an angle worth exploring.

The editorial continued with a sudden shift:

“[One tragedy] was the failure of evangelical Christians at the grass roots to anticipate and help to resolve a crisis in the life of the nation along spiritual lines…Evangelical churches across the nation must look into the future and ask themselves what they can and must do to create a helpful and constructive interracial climate.

The massive demonstration was void of official evangelical representation. ‘Our folks are sympathetic with solving the race problem, one top evangelical leader observed, ‘but we feel that this wasn’t the way to go about it.' But what is the way? Have evangelicals offered any constructive, creative guidelines to curtail oppression of Negroes? Does it not bother the evangelical conscience that there are parts of the country where a traveling Negro cannot even find water?”

On that note, the editorial ends. Remarkable. It's enough to give you whiplash. The very same editorial features racist assumptions, obvious paternalism, dismissive tone, and heartfelt calls for the church to take constructive action to stop the oppression of African Americans.

How do you make sense of it?

One thing comes through clearly: however sympathetic they were to civil rights movement's goals in the abstract, the movement as it actually existed was deeply unsettling. One of the questions I'm grappling with is how sincerely held was the methodological objection. Did the unnamed leader in that final paragraph throw up his objection to the methods employed as an excuse? Or was there something about street protest itself that genuinely upset White evangelicals on a theological or ideological level?