The persistence of support for our pagan president by white evangelicals has become a topic of greater and greater interest. We've known about it for a while, but it seems to have deeper roots than other groups in his "base." (Support beyond the "paler born-again folk" minority, never high, continues to crater - much lower than averaged polls tell us.)What's going on? It's tempting to accuse the white Evangelical base of hypocrisy for supporting a leader so evidently not living a life of Christian virtue; perhaps it's a religious veneer for patriarchal white supremacist nostalgia? I've been taking comfort in a study from the primaries, cited again when Roy Moore seemed headed for Washington, that the most fervent supporters are those who call themselves Evangelical but don't go to church much.
But this lets religion off the hook, and Christianity. I'm persuaded by a recent article by Hollis Phelps in Religion Dispatches that one can't just accuse these people of hypocrisy. The "narrative of the morally ambiguous, repulsive individual" used by God to do God's work is biblical: it recurs in the Bible (not just the in "Old Testament") so often that "covering over the 'darker' aspects of the faith for the sake of love, as more liberal Christians tend to do" should be condemned as a simplification, too. These wouldn't be the first Christians to claim biblical support for bigotry.
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This leaves me in an uncomfortable place. First, as a religious studies person I feel obliged to note that the very definition of religion as about love and morality rather than power and politics is problematic. Also as a religious studies person I feel that, though hypocrisy is no doubt real, religious self-identification needs to be taken seriously. If a large number of self-described X do something the textbooks tell me X don't do (like Catholics using birth control or approving of gay marriage) then it's time to revise the textbooks. And who's to say that church-going X are more truly X than those who do X at home?
But I'm uncomfortable also as a self-identified Christian. For a number of years now I've prayed the Our Father in church holding my hands face-up in front of me. Every time I do that I recall Christians unlike myself who pray that way - Evangelicals, I'm thinking - and try to feel solidarity with them. This is a habit from Anglicanism (by way of Rowan Williams). I'm aware that my own queer-friendly Christianity is no less a departure from tradition than their personal relationship with Jesus. Perhaps I hope that if I make space for them in my understanding of Christianity, they'll return the favor.
But this aspirational ecumenism has been getting harder over the past year, as surveys claim (though I continue to resist believing them) that the prez enjoys the unwavering faith of white Evangelicals. It reached a breaking point during Holy Week. At some point I found myself wondering if those who think God fights his culture war with guns and the bullying grifter in the White House might, in fact, not be Christians at all. Oblivious of theology they are validated in their judgments because Jesus tells them they're right. But is it Jesus who speaks to them that way, fueling their fears and stoking their rage? Until now I guess I've taken a benevolently skeptical view of those who claim to converse with Jesus - what harm does it do? But of late the harm question seems very real, and I found myself thinking they're either dangerously self-deluded ... or that it's someone else answering their prayers, not Jesus.
I've spent countless hours rebutting students' view that religion is all about judgment, about exclusion, separating the sheep from the goats, condemning the Other to hell. True religion is about humility and inclusion, the goodness of all God's creation! But perhaps sometimes judgment is appropriate. We "liberal Christians" need to be more humble, yes, but are Christians not called to defend the Gospel from "Good News that is fake," to quote an Evangelical?
I'm still working this out. Perhaps I need to learn to use the "powers and principalities" language of Stringfellow... And "religion" - maybe it's time to stretch my "religion is not nice" muscles a bit more again.
