CHRISTIANITY TODAY 'gets religion' about Trump
While I quarrel with a few minor points in the editorial, it says essentially what I have been trying to get across to my fellow conservative Christians ever since 2016. It fails only in that it does not note that everything we now know about Donald Trump's character and attitude toward the rule of law was not only knowable but widely known to anybody interested enough to pay attention not only in 2016 but for decades before.
I have written this Letter to the Editor in response to the editorial:
I'm a Missouri Synod Lutheran who served as a pastor in both the ELCA and in an independent confessional Lutheran congregation. And as strongly as I support President Trump's Supreme Court appointments, I was and remain a 'Never Trumper.'
As well as your editorial summarized why the continued support of Christians for Mr. Trump is a scandal to unbelievers and how it compromises our witness, you said two things which I feel I should respond to. First, is it true that the Democrats were out to "get" Mr. Trump in some way other than the one in which he opposition party is generally out to "get" the incumbent president? If so, it's only in one sense- and it's the sense that I've been trying to communicate to Christians who have supported him ever since he announced his candidacy.
There is nothing your editorial said about Mr. Trump which has not been reflected in his behavior all his adult life. Nor has his reputation for shady and even downright illegal as well as unethical dealings been a secret; before his election, he'd been fined for them over 300 times. Both that fact and the reasons for his fines are easily ascertainable online from sources whose objectivity is beyond question. Further, his psychological makeup and his character failings in other areas have been equally apparent all along. As I've pointed out, usually to deaf ears, court appointments or not, the things you complain of are all things which not only could have been expected but were by many of us.
Secondly, the accused is not supposed to have the opportunity to tell his side of the story in the House phase of an impeachment proceeding. Neither Andrew Johnson nor Richard Nixon nor Bill Clinton had such an opportunity, either, The House sits essentially as a grand jury, and the accused never has representation in grand jury hearings, which are carried out not to decide innocence or guilt but only whether there is sufficient cause to even raise the question of innocence or guilt. Especially given Mr. Trump's refusal to cooperate with the House when allowed to do so (his attempt to obstruct the hearings by refusing to allow members of his administration to testify comprises one of the articles of impeachment), the argument that he had no opportunity to do what no defendant even in a criminal case is allowed to do is a red herring.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, "When faced with a choice between the two evils, choose neither." Christians compromised themselves and their witness by choosing what they saw as the lesser evil. No candidate for public office is perfect, and it's true that to elect a president is not to call a pastor. But to disregard an obvious lack of empathy, compassion, and a consistent pattern of unethical behavior and then to go into denial about them even for the sake of a worthy goal like stopping abortion is tempting God. To support evil so that good may come is not only bad theology but begs the question of why evangelicals are not even now backing a pro-life challenger.
I've often wondered why, say, Ted Cruz isn't challenging Mr. Trump, and with the support of the very "evangelicals" who are so firmly in Mr. Trump's corner. Surely there could be no ideological objection to Ted Cruz or dozens of other ethically upstanding men or women at least as far to the right on the political spectrum as Mr. Trump- a lifelong liberal, pro-choice Democrat- chooses to be at the moment. Instead, Sen. Cruz and many others are staining their own reputations and places in history by defending the man. Surely there are plenty of qualified Christians in public life who would be equally active in defending the attempts of the social left to make the First Amendment a dead leader and force Christians to violate their own beliefs as regards their own personal behavior and to stand against the outcry of those who want to treat orthodox, traditional Christians as second-class citizens even before the law.
This sort of compromise with evil has consequences. The obvious one is how the witness of conservative Protestants to Christ has been and continues to be compromised by their defense of the ethically indefensible. But the stain also rubs off on them personally. Not only are the Christian politicians and journalists who have chosen to blindly support Mr. Trump compromised their witness, but they've compromised themselves. In the long run, their reputations will suffer. It will be hard to trust them or even to take them seriously on ethical matters again.
And it probably will be a very long time before those ethical and politically secular rather than sectarian and inherently religious issues make much headway again. So many who have wanted nothing more than to fight the good fight have put themselves in a position in which they will have to defend themselves from the suspicion of being hypocrites. That may be the greatest tragedy of conservative Protestantism's flirtation with Donald Trump, and it was both avoidable and predictable.
God can redeem it, though- just as He was and remains able to deal with the abomination of abortion without our making a deal with the devil to make it happen.
Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
Psalm 146: 3, ESV
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