Writer offers theory on U.S. evangelical support for Trump

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This article was published 17/10/2020 (2133 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the U.S. presidential election only a couple of weeks away, there’s renewed focus on American evangelicals. Will they turn out for Donald Trump in the same numbers again?

While members of that group continue to be among his most ardent supporters, one poll shows only 69 per cent of this key voting bloc plan to vote for him, compared to 81 per cent in 2016.

While what they will do in November is an open question, many people continue to ask how it is American evangelicals — a group known for its promotion of biblical values — ever ended up so enthusiastically supporting a crass, thrice-divorced, misogynistic liar who is not known for his commitment to those same values.

Into that discussion comes Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, a new book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a scholar of American Christianity at Calvin University, a Christian Reformed university in Michigan.

In the book, Kobes Du Mez says American evangelicals didn’t support Trump only because of things like abortion, the Supreme Court or even because of hatred of Hillary Clinton. It’s also because he embodies the very values they hold so dear.

These are represented by the rugged manliness of John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were tough, certain, uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was and did what needed to be done — just like, in their eyes, Trump.

In a Sept. 25 webinar sponsored by Toronto’s Wycliffe College, an evangelical seminary that is part of the University of Toronto, Kobes Du Mez elaborated on the thesis of her book.

Kobes Du Mez began by saying that when she started her research in 2005, she wasn’t sure if this John Wayne-type idea was just a fringe view among American evangelicals. The 2016 election proved to her it was mainstream.

What surprised her then was how willing these self-proclaimed “Bible believers” were so quick to “reject some pretty straightforward biblical teachings on loving your neighbours as yourselves, loving your enemies, turning the other cheek” in order to vote for Trump — someone who, she noted, was not generally seen as a champion of those ideals.

Yet for many American evangelicals, Trump was someone to vote for because he was seen as a John Wayne figure, perfectly equipped to do whatever it takes to protect America and American Christians.

They were able to so easily vote for him, she said, because over the past number of decades American evangelicals had replaced the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism.

This idea was transmitted and supported in a theological and social culture that promoted toughness, masculinity, militarism, nationalism, patriarchy and strict gender roles through things like sermons, books, conferences, music and Christian TV.

When asked if she thought American evangelicalism could be redeemed, Kobes Du Mez said she wasn’t hopeful. But, she added, there are some evangelicals in that country “who are beginning to deconstruct this narrative.”

That is something that is very hard to do, she added, since evangelicalism in the U.S. is “so deeply intertwined with cultural and national identity.”

Another reason it is so hard to change is fear.

“There is a lot of fear in the (American evangelical) system,” she said, noting she hears from American evangelical pastors who agree with what she wrote but are afraid to speak out because they are afraid of losing their jobs.

For average members, “there is a real sense of us versus them” she added, noting “They are taught to fear what is outside their church or their evangelical circles. Their pastor is their protector. God, fear and the leader are all thrown in together.”

Added to that is the fear that if Trump loses the election they will lose their religious freedom — a claim he makes repeatedly that is echoed by many American evangelical pastors.

“This fear is real, stoked by leaders who have a lot to gain by stoking them,” she said.

The book also includes a chapter titled “Evangelical Mulligans,” which details the sexual scandals that have occurred all-too frequently in those churches and organizations, and how they were often “excused or glossed over.”

Writing that chapter, “made me angry as a woman and a Christian,” she said.

Looking back, she said writing the book was a difficult and depressing experience. When her editor asked her to try to end on a hopeful note, she couldn’t.

“The best I could muster was ‘what was done can be undone,’” she said, adding the current state of affairs for American evangelicals doesn’t have to be this way forever. It was “not handed down by God from the beginning of time.”

American evangelicals “need to ask if this is what they really want, why it was constructed this way in the first place, who benefited and who suffered.”

faith@freepress.mb.ca

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