Defender of The Faith
Many political observers ask this question: how did Donald Trump command so much support from America’s evangelical community?
Evangelicals voted for Trump by 75%+ margins in both 2016 and 2020.
(Note: we distinguish the Evangelical vote from Christians as a whole – mainstream US Protestant churches lean leftwards and vigorously condemned Donald Trump in both campaigns. The Catholic church was slightly more muted, but still solidly anti-Trump.)
Evangelicals champion faith-based family values and responsible personal conduct, an admittedly elastic code often honored in the breach. Nevertheless, Donald Trump was far outside the margins of even the most generous interpretation of fundamentalist principles. His lifelong libertinism was obvious well before he descended the escalator in 2015. His affairs, broken marriages, and all-around hedonism were proof positive that he was not a man of morals, let alone a serious Christian.
And this was before Stormy Daniels and the multiple allegations of sexual assault, all the more intolerable in the #MeToo era.
So why did Evangelicals turn out for the Orange Man?
The answer is not difficult to discern: Evangelicals supported President Trump for the same reasons feminists supported President Clinton.
Let us recall that Bill Clinton’s treatment of women was at least as vile as Trump’s. More than a dozen women have publicly accused Slick Willie of sexual assault, with two women alleging outright rape. Even his affair with Monica Lewinsky, while consensual on the surface, was still an exploitation of an extreme power imbalance between a 21-year-old female intern and the most formidable man in the world.
And then there’s Clinton’s multiple sojourns with Jeffrey Epstein.
In sum, we can draft no code of sexual conduct that Trump fails - and Clinton passes.
Yet feminists rallied behind Clinton regardless. Why? He protected women’s reproductive rights. As journalist Nina Burleigh famously said: “I would be happy to give [Bill Clinton] a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal”.
So it is for evangelicals. As one Trump supporter said: “I’m voting for the man who is least likely to make my faith illegal.”
Seems like hyperbole, doesn’t it? Yet consider the astonishing pace of cultural change in the last 10 years.
In 2011, it was the official position of both President Obama and Secretary Clinton that marriage should be union of one man, one woman.
Today, if a church echoes Obama and Clinton’s 2011 sentiment, it is likely to be designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, placed in the same moral category as neo-Nazis and the Klan.
Of course, the SPLC is a private organization. They are free to protest, critique and boycott whomever they choose. Evangelicals should not extrapolate governmental action from the SPLC’s rhetoric.
But that brings us to a fascinating moment in the 2020 presidential campaign. CNN’s Don Lemon asked Beto O’Rourke “if religious institutions like colleges, churches, charities, should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?”
O’Rourke replied: “Yes…there can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us.”
Many critics (including Mayor Pete) pointed out that an outright denial of tax-exempt status for churches that oppose gay marriage would be a violation of the First Amendment, and indeed, there is a solid body of case law supporting that view. Attempts in the 1950s to require anti-Communist loyalty oaths as a condition of tax-exemption approval were struck down by courts at all levels.
But, that was then and this is now. Gay rights have secured an exalted status in our culture, and there is much we can celebrate accordingly.
But given the IRS's proven propensity to discriminate against conservatives on the basis of content, and further given the impact on religious freedom from the Obergefeld and Bostock decisions, evangelical apprehension is not a stretch. Add in a serious presidential candidate like O’Rourke endorsing the same, and the plausibility of government intervention in faith practices becomes more than just a conspiracy theory.
If the issue were limited to gay marriage, we could balance freedom of faith against human rights for all, with the latter trumping the former (so to speak).
But, harnessing the power of the government to promote policy via theology will be an enormous temptation on other issues besides gay marriage. Many progressives (secular and religious alike) already advocate Federal limitations on speech that contradicts preferred positions on climate change and race relations, just to name two.
Now imagine sweeping government mandates that churches must not oppose certain political positions; or require them to actively champion others. Imagine digital enforcement by Silicon Valley; and a biased Federal bureaucracy making tax-exemption conditional upon compliance. De jure law would not even be required; a de facto practice selectively enforced would achieve the same effect.
Fanciful? Yes…for now. It may seem extreme, but today’s extreme is tomorrow’s new normal.
After all, who would have imagined just 5 years ago that limiting women’s sports and locker rooms to biological females would be considered a hate crime today? If gay-rights champion Martina Navratilova and feminist JK Rowling can now be canceled for such heresy, is it really a stretch for the Federal government to get in on the action?
I’m an atheist. So as phrase goes, I don’t have a god in this fight. I endorse gay marriage, and am intrigued by the ongoing debate over transgender rights.
But as a free-speech absolutist, let’s just say I’m hedging my bets. While I don’t agree with the evangelicals, I cannot dismiss their concerns.