Donald Trump and the Corruption of Christianity

 

Conservative evangelical columnist David French has written often about how Donald Trump has corrupted much of Christianity. In a recent column,¹ he talks about friends and family who vote for Trump. He says, “I love them dearly. But the most enduring legacy of a second Trump term could well be the conviction on the part of millions of Americans that Trumpism isn’t just a temporary political expediency, but the model for Republican political success and—still worse—the way that God wants Christian believers to practice politics.”

He notes changes in individual character, not just of Rudy Giuliani and other MAGA insiders, but changes in ordinary Americans. “Never before have I seen extremism penetrate a vast American community so deeply, so completely and so comprehensively.” He says this isn’t a subjective sensation. “Polling data again and again backs up the reality that the right is abandoning decency, and doing so in the most alarming ways.” In 2011, white evangelicals were least likely to say that a politician could behave immorally in private but “still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” By October of 2016, they had become the most likely to find immoral behavior acceptable in politicians.

He then cites polling that shows 33 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Trump devotees agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Only 13 percent of Democrats, by contrast, agreed with this statement.

French is obviously disturbed by the changes he has seen and that have been documented among his own people, evangelical Christians. “The result,” he says, “is a religious movement steeped in fanaticism but stripped of virtue.” Perhaps most troubling to French is “how Trump’s core supporters convey their tribal allegiance. They’re often deliberately rude, transgressive or otherwise unpleasant, just to demonstrate how little they care about conventional moral norms.”

The core of the MAGA movement is made up of white evangelical Christians, if we can call them that. How can we possibly call people Christians who excuse the endless lies, the sexual crimes and indiscretions, the repeated business fraud, the self-dealing, the narcissism, the hatred of refugees, the disregard for the environment, the bragging (often about behaviors that are far from admirable), the 91 indictments, and on and on and on? How can a Bible-believing people become so thoroughly corrupted by a two-bit huckster?

Unfortunately, evangelical Christians are not alone in this. Many Latter-day Saints have become more Trumpist than Mormon. Look at Mike Lee, Utah’s senior senator, who spent many hours each day trying to promote an unconstitutional scheme to overthrow the will of the voters. Look at the treatment LDS speaker of the Arizona House Rusty Bowers received from his fellow “saints,” all for following his conscience and not overturning a fair election.

The First Presidency’s letter last summer to be read in sacrament meeting admonished Church members “to spend the time to become informed about the issues and candidates[;] . . . study candidates carefully and vote for those who have demonstrated integrity, compassion, and service to others, regardless of party affiliation”; and understand that “merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).”

D&C 98:10 says, “Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.”

Most Church members did not understand what the First Presidency was saying. I suppose if they really want the members to avoid voting for dishonest and corrupt men, they are going to have to be much more explicit. But I understand their dilemma. How do you convince Church members to stop supporting evil, when they apparently can’t tell the difference between morality and immorality anymore? If they do come out and tell the members to vote against a corrupt party, they may well alienate a good portion of the American Church.

Liberal columnist Frank Bruni (New York Times) wrote recently about the new religion of the GOP: nastiness.^{2 “}We’ve spent the past few days deconstructing what happened at the Iowa caucuses. I’m still stuck on what happened before: We saw just how faithfully the Republican Party now worships at the church of nasty. Just how fully it genuflects before the great god of nastiness, Donald Trump. I don’t mean by supporting and voting for him, though there’s that. I mean by idolizing and emulating him.”

He then went into detail about how the also-rans in the Republican presidential primary have adopted Trump’s total disregard for decorum. He summed up the Iowa caucuses with this: “There’s a rationale for the nastiness. My Times Opinion colleague Zeynep Tufekci, who recently interviewed scores of Trump voters, explained in a column last weekend that they regard his ‘penchant for insults’ as proof that he’s uniquely ‘strong and honest enough’ to say out loud what other politicians want but don’t have the nerve to. He’s not indecent. He’s authentic and unbowed.

“I guess that’s what Matt Gaetz was going for back when he was tormenting Kevin McCarthy and bringing the government to a halt. To some of his constituents, he wasn’t a preening punk. He was a righteous hell-raiser, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for whom nastiness is less trait than creed. The two of them are high priests (of a sort) in their party. Says everything about the new religion.”

Unfortunately, this is the new GOP, and Latter-day Saints who vote for this party are finding it increasingly easy to put on the blinders and call good evil and evil good.

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1. David French, “The Greatest Threat Posed by Trump,” New York Times, January 12, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/donald-trump-culture-decline.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20240112&instance_id=112341&nl=opinion-today&regi_id=93058658&segment_id=155029&te=1&user_id=b82adcd02b2fec762995462844df3be5.

2. Frank Bruni, “The G.O.P.’s ‘Nasty’ New Religion,” New York Times, January 18, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/trump-republicans-desantis-haley.html.