Kristin Kobes Du Mez - Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

How White Evangelicals
Corrupted a Faith and
Fractured a Nation

Kristin
Kobes Du Mez

This one is for Jack.

O N A BITTERLY COLD DAY IN JANUARY 2016, Donald Trump stood on the stage of an auditorium at a small Christian college in Iowa. He boasted of his poll numbers and his crowd sizes. He warned of the dangers posed by Muslims and undocumented immigrants, and he talked of building a border wall. He denigrated American politicians as stupid, weak, and pathetic. He claimed that Christianity was under siege and urged Christians to band together and assert their power. He promised to lead. He had no doubts about the loyalty of his followers: I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose any voters, he claimed.

That morning, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, introduced Trump. As a pastor Jeffress couldnt endorse a candidate, but he made clear that he wouldnt be there if he didnt think Trump would make a great president. Jeffress wasnt alone. Already at that point, before the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of February, 42 percent of white evangelicals supported Trumpmore than any other candidate. The reason was simple, Jeffress contended. Evangelicals were sick and tired of the status quo. They were looking for the leader who would reverse the downward death spiral of this nation that we love so dearly.

I wasnt in Iowa at the time, but I watched this spectacle unfold as it streamed online. I knew the setting well. The college was Dordt College, my alma mater. The town was Sioux Center, my hometown. Id grown up a short walk from campus, on the other side of the old farmstead only recently converted back to native prairie. Id attended the local Christian grade school, where my mom was my PE teacher. My dad, an ordained minister, taught theology at the college since before I was born. Every year as a child Id attended Easter sunrise services in that auditorium, and as a college student I faithfully attended chapel services in that same space. Standing on the stage where Trump now stood, I had led prayers, performed in Christian praise teams, and, during choir rehearsal, flirted with the man who would become my husband. We married in a church just down the road. Although I moved away after college, the space remained intimately familiar. But as I watched those in the overflow crowd waving signs, laughing at insults, and shouting back in affirmation, I wondered who these people were. I didnt recognize them.

Not everyone present that day shared in the enthusiasm for Trump. Some were there out of curiosity. Others came in protest. A small group of residents, including students from the college and the Christian grade school, stood bundled against the chill, holding handmade signs proclaiming Love Your Neighbors and Perfect Love Casts Out Fear. But their numbers were dwarfed by Trumps supporters. Their numbers were again dwarfed on November 8, 2016, when 82 percent of Sioux County voters voted for Donald Trumpa proportion remarkably close to the 81 percent of white evangelical voters who backed Trump, according to national exit polls, and proved crucial to his victory over Hillary Clinton.

Trumps confidence in the loyalty of his followers seemed like bluster at the time, but it soon took on a prophetic ring. His evangelical supporters stuck by his side even as he mocked opponents, incited violence at his rallies, and boasted of his manhood on national television. Then there were Trumps sexual indiscretions. Divorce was one thing, rumors of sexual escapades another, but the release of the Access Hollywood tape furnished irrefutable evidence of the candidate speaking in lewd terms about seducing and assaulting women.

How could family values conservatives support a man who flouted every value they insisted they held dear? How could the self-professed Moral Majority embrace a candidate who reveled in vulgarity? How could evangelicals whod turned WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) into a national phenomenon justify their support for a man who seemed the very antithesis of the savior they claimed to emulate?

Pundits scrambled to explain. Evangelicals were holding their noses, choosing the lesser of two evilsand Hillary Clinton was the greatest evil. Evangelicals were thinking in purely transactional terms, as Trump himself is often said to do, voting for Trump because he promised to deliver Supreme Court appointments that would protect the unborn and secure their own religious liberty. Or maybe the polls were misleading. By confusing evangelicals-in-name-only with good, church-attending, Bible-believing Christians, sloppy pollsters were giving evangelicalism a bad rap.

But evangelical support for Trump was no aberration, nor was it merely a pragmatic choice. It was, rather, the culmination of evangelicals embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad. By the time Trump arrived proclaiming himself their savior, conservative white evangelicals had already traded a faith that privileges humility and elevates the least of these for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses. Rather than turning the other cheek, theyd resolved to defend their faith and their nation, secure in the knowledge that the ends justify the means. Having replaced the Jesus of the Gospels with a vengeful warrior Christ, its no wonder many came to think of Trump in the same way. In 2016, many observers were stunned at evangelicals apparent betrayal of their own values. In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them.

Donald Trump did not trigger this militant turn; his rise was symptomatic of a long-standing condition. Survey data reveal the stark contours of the contemporary evangelical worldview. More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty. They are more likely than members of other faith groups to own a gun, to believe citizens should be allowed to carry guns in most places, and to feel safer with a firearm around. White evangelicals are more opposed to immigration reform and have more negative views of immigrants than any other religious demographic; two-thirds support Trumps border wall. Sixty-eight percent of white evangelical Protestantsmore than any other demographicdo not think that the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees. More than half of white evangelical Protestants think a majority nonwhite US population would be a negative development. White evangelicals are considerably more likely than others to believe that Islam encourages violence, to refuse to see Islam as part of mainstream American society, and to perceive natural conflict between Islam and democracy. At the same time, white evangelicals believe that Christians in America face more discrimination than Muslims. White evangelicals are significantly more authoritarian than other religious groups, and they express confidence in their religious leaders at much higher rates than do members of other faiths.