"Fear is not a Christian habit of mind."
Marilynne Robinson's unremarkable observation comes in an essay remarkable for its analysis of the mindset, worldview and emotional profile of contemporary America. You can read the whole article here. Written in 2015, and before the 2016 Presidential election, Robinson's main thesis has gained cogency in the events unfolding in the three years since it was written. With the publication of John Fea's book Believe Me. The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, we now have a much more substantial analysis and narrative of how we came to be where we are. This time written by a historian who understands the American evangelical mind from within.
Writing, then, as a historian and an evangelical Christian, Fea is trying to understand how 81 percent of white evangelicals came to vote for Donald Trump over other Republican candidates of the more traditional Christian Right. In the search for an answer, Fea traces the origins of recent political events backwards to the 1970's and the political playbook written then to "win back" or "restore the culture" which white evangelicals believed was being lost to secularism, pluralism and moral decay. Speaking of a long history of evangelical fear, Fea apllies this diagnostic observation to contemporary events in America:
"For too long white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for a national past that may have never existed. Fear. Power. Nostalgia." (7)
Moving backwards, the Obama years are seen by white evangelicals as bringing about the threatened "end of white Christian America". Cultural changes around human sexuality in particular, happened very quickly, and are seen by conservative evangeliclals as a dangerous erosion of the moral foundations of the nation. Opposition to Hillary Clinton is likewise rooted in the moral fears of those who have witnessed the
"thickening of the walls of separation between church and state, the removal of Christianity from public schools, the growing ethnic and religious diversity of the country, the intrustion of the federal Government into their everyday lives (especially as it pertains to desegregation and civil rights), and legalized abortion." (8)
These are grievances that are existential in their impact on those who hold that America is a Christian nation, and that such was the intention of the Founding Fathers. What white evangelical America is afraid of is the loss of a way of life, a worldview and the integrity of their nation as one nation under God. The consequence of this is not stronger faith, but a shift of trust.
"Despite God's commands to trust him in times of despair, evangelicals have always been fearful people, and they have built their understanding of political engagement around the anxiety they have felt amid times of social and cultural change.." (8)
"The politics of fear always result in the quest for power", so the next stage of Fea's analysis is the role now being played in the White House by what he calls "court evangelicals". Rather than speaking truth to power as prophets insisting on justice, righteousness and mercy, those court evangelicals closest to the White House are keen to hear power speak its own versions of truth, and these as supportive of their own political and social agendas. One of the most important chapters of the book is that which critically examines the way conservative white evangelicals have appealed to a selective and tendentious view of the past as justification for their current political positions. My earlier post expressed my own questioning of how the call and values of the Kingdom of God are furthered by values and ambitions inimical to the ways of Christ and the Gospel. However, Fea's questions push that critique even deeper, and expose the dangers of nostalgia for the past. Nostalgia refuses to acknowledge changed situations, resists that which is new and idealises a past in ways that are selective, artificially positive, and comforting for those disturbed by the forces of change.
"Instead of doing the hard work necessary for engaging a more diverse society with the claims of Christian orthodoxy, evangelicals have become intellectually lazy, preferring to respond to cultural change by trying to reclaim a world that is rapidly disappearing and has little chance of ever coming back. This backward looking approach to politics can be seen no more clearly than in evangelicals' embrace of Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America great again". (9)
No wonder then, culturally pressured white evangelicals all but heard the words of a new prophet in Trump's election promises which included: "So let me state this right up front: [in] a Trump administration our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended -- like you've never seen before. Believe me."(Donald Trump, 2016, Values Voter Summit)
And there it is. The promise of political power as the achievement of fifty years of culture wars. Fea's comment on this, as an evangelical Christian and a professional historian:
The court evangelicals have been shown "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory."(matt. 4.8-10):but, unlike Jesus in his encounter with the Tempter, they have gladly embraced them. Evangelicals claim to follow a Savior who relinquished worldly power - even to the point of giving his life. Yet they continue to place their hope in political candidates as a means of advancing an agenda that confuses the kingdom of God with the United States of America. (10)
Fea's central thesis, towards which this book moves, is a call for evangelicals to replace nostalgia with history, power with humility, and fear with hope. Nostalgia, power and fear can never be the valid expression of the Christian Gospel; history, humility and hope are embedded in the Christian narrative, and when given their convictional priority as part of an obedient faith, they represent the core values of evangelical Christianity. A politicised gospel that serves the interests of Christians is something other than the gospel which called in question the core values and false transcendencies of the most powerful Empire the world had then known.
I have commented (more than once, I think) on Patheos that "81% of white evangelicals" is a very different figure from that for non-white evangelicals in the USA, which points to the cause being something other than evangelicalism. This post goes further than anything else I have read towards explaining what that something is.
Posted by: Dave Summers | August 27, 2018 at 08:52 PM