Why the arguments of pro-Trump Christians fail

I first heard of David French, I'm embarrassed to admit, in 2016, when Bill Kristol tried to enlist him as an independent candidate for President following the nomination of Donald Trump.

He was, frankly, a last-ditch choice. Former congressmen, governors, and senators had refused to make the race; as a result, Kristol turned to French, a conservative civil liberties lawyer,  journalist, and a devout conservative Christian.

French, too, opted out, and finally former CIA operative and House Republican Caucus policy advisor Evan McMullin made the race. I was privileged to circulate petitions to get McMullin on the ballot here in Iowa. Alas, he entered the race so late, and with such little preparation that he made much less impact than he should have.

Libertarian candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson did far better than McMullin, who pulled only one half of one percent of the vote- though he did briefly create some excitement after the polls late in the race showed him having a viable chance of carrying his home state of Utah, denying both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton a majority in the Electoral College, and, as provided by the Constitution, joining them as the three candidates from whom the House of Representatives would select the new president.

There was a Republican majority in the House, McMullin was, after all, the former policy advisor to the House Republican Caucus, and its members understood quite clearly that McMullin was not only more stable than Mr. Trump but far more knowledgable about just about everything a president might need to know. It was a forlorn bit of wishful thinking that House Republicans might choose McMullin- the political consequences of disregarding the votes of the people back home for Trump would have been an adequate deterrent to House members making their choice on its merits- but it was a glimmer of hope for rational conservatives and Republican moderates in a tough year for rational people.

I started paying attention to French, though. I found that we had a great deal in common intellectually. We both are traditionalists within the so-called Magisterial Reformation- he, a Presbyterian Calvinist, and I, a confessional Lutheran- who take what our traditions say about matters of political ethics seriously at a time when many of our co-religionists allow their political orthodoxy to compromise their theological reasoning about such things,

Today I received my regular copy of French's column, "The French Press," in my email.  As usual, it was thoughtful, tightly reasoned, scripturally sound, and chock full of both political and theological integrity. It deals with a recent debate between French and Eric Metaxas, biographer of Bonhoeffer and Luther, serious evangelical thinker, former Trump skeptic- and yet, current Trump defender. It amounts to a functionally confessional statement, clearly articulated and rationally presented, for us conservative but anti-Trump Christians.

Metaxas argued thus:

How can you even divorce policy from character? In 1860, slavery was on the ticket, okay? You could elect, if there was somebody really close to Jesus who was pro-slavery, you would simply say that slavery–no pun intended–completely trumps the man’s moral character. There are issues. The life of the unborn is an issue, it’s the equivalent of slavery in our time.

French observes that this is an odd statement coming from an admiring biographer of George Washington, a slave owner.

But Metaxas continues:

We are not talking about that, we are talking about a man that a lot of people don’t like, and he expresses himself in ways that often I don’t like, but when the poor are on the line (French interjects here that Metaxas argued Biden was an advocate for socialism, a somewhat over-the-top accusation incidental to the matter at hand) when real human beings in the womb are on the line, I simply don’t see how anything that has been said here or has been said would get me to allow someone like Joe Biden or a Hilary Clinton to genuinely destroy America forever and we haven’t even touched on Kavanaugh.

Wow. Joe Biden is going to destroy America? Hillary, of course, is irrelevant at this point, and Metaxas only tosses in her name for the sake of the "yuck factor." Over the top much?

Yes, the poor are on the line. But I'm not sure how that helps Metaxas's argument. And Mexicans aren't people? Muslims aren't people? Those who criticize or merely disagree with Donald Trump and point out his mistakes aren't people? And perhaps most directly relevant to Metaxas's invocation of abortion, elderly people, people with high blood pressure or diabetes or COPD or any of a dozen other pre-existing conditions for whom COVID has a significant chance of being lethal- even otherwise healthy young people who may be symptom-free but die of strokes because COVID tends to cause abnormal blood clotting- aren't people?

How about the babies whose lives are threatened by PMIS, the COVID-linked pediatric syndrome? Do the lives of infants cease to matter the moment they're born?

And I never cease to be amazed by the shallowness of the perception that we who oppose Donald Trump on specifically religious and moral grounds simply don't like his embodiment of habitual dishonesty, cruelty, crudeness, childish petulance, and the politics of false witness and divisiveness. Surely the damage that Mr. Trump has done by mainstreaming all of these and legitimizing paranoia and tinfoil-hat suspicion of our neighbor, or the damage he's done to our alliances and our national interests, or the degree to which he's squandered America's moral capital in the world justifies more than mere distaste, nor can abhorrence of them be dismissed as personal dislike. Surely these, too, are matters of confession! Can an entire political persona based on cruelty and lies be justified simply because the person in question gives what seems to be mere lip service to being pro-life?

As I've argued before, Mr. Trump's hell-for-leather determination to re-open the American economy no matter what the cost in human lives has pretty much exposed the emptiness of the assertion that support of Trump has anything at all to do with the sanctity of life and pretty much neutralized the abortion issue as a moral obstacle to voting for Joe Biden. But I digress.

Perhaps Trump, Metaxas suggested, was sent to "shame" the Church for its failure to get down and dirty, if necessary, in the defense of basic Christian values. Perhaps, as Bonhoeffer ha to speak prophetically to a German church so obsessed with remaining apolitical that it failed to speak up when Hitler began his genocide, Trump is an embarrassment sent to prod the church into being less concerned with remaining above the battle and more concerned about fighting it.

As is his habit, French pretty much demolishes his opponent's argument, gently but with an intellectual rigor that exposes well-intentioned nonsense for what it is, French responds:

While I made a number of arguments in the moment, the more I reflected on the exchange (especially as I went back and read Metaxas’s words), I was struck by the extent that I had just encountered the rhetoric of religious war. This was the kind of reasoning that had long justified atrocities in the name of faith.

The formula was clear. He placed his argument in a false, catastrophic cultural context, he justified the “down and dirty” of extreme resistance, he cast his opponents in Satanic terms, and he described the moment to “stand up and be counted” in terms of rejecting the power of the Christian witness.

This is dangerous. It attempts to justify profound moral compromise. It rationalizes evil in the pursuit of justice. When a nation is at its political best, its political leaders are just and they also pursue just causes. At a polity’s best, a just people pursue just causes. American Christians should seek to model politics and culture at their best—especially when the stakes are high.

And the moral compromise involved in support of Donald Trump is profound.  French, a Presbyterian, uses the Reformed numbering of the commandments; I, a Lutheran, am accustomed to a different one. But to avoid confusion, let it simply be said that to compromise our witness to the commandments against idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, stealing, false witness, and coveting- as well as the very commandment against murder which is invoked to justify ignoring the rest- is simply neither a morally nor logically coherent position. Yet that is what a Christian must do to embrace Donald Trump. And to identify his cause as completely as many have with the cause of Jesus Christ is not only in itself blasphemy, but an ugly witness that drives God only knows how many marginalized and brutalized or simply morally sensitive people away from faith in the Savior.

French uses the theology of the just war as a paradigm for addressing the matter:

A simple way of understanding the necessity of right conduct even in the most extreme of circumstances is through the lens of just war theory. A just war requires jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Jus ad bellum refers to a just cause for war—such as self-defense or defense of an ally who has its own just cause. Jus in bello refers to right conduct in war. This relates to concepts like distinction, proportionality, and humanity.

The United States unquestionably had just cause to strike the Taliban and al-Qaeda after 9/11, but that “just cause” didn’t grant it the right to intentionally target civilians, use banned weapons, or torture prisoners—even if those tactics would prove effective in the fight. Though the stakes are as high as they could get (human lives are on the line every moment of every day in combat), those high stakes did not justify or permit dishonorable conduct.

This is a crucial point- and one which many political conservatives who may also be Christians miss. Our witness consists not merely of what we stand for and what we stand against, but of how we stand for or against it. We compromise our witness to the point of losing it when we pursue even just goals by unjust means.  And to embrace Donald Trump is not merely to embrace his (purely nominal, as it turns out) commitment to the sanctity of life. It is not even a pragmatic measure which, however distasteful, addresses the very real evil of legalized abortion. It is a negation of our Christian witness on such an extensive front and to such a massive degree that our witness to the sanctity of life would be lost in the process even if Mr. Trump's behavior in the face of the pandemic didn't reveal it to be sheer hypocrisy.

And even worse, it implicates us in hypocrisy. I am stunned by the number of professing pro-life Christians who, in our tribalized political environment an out of a reflexive desire to support "our side," have adopted the President's absurd and self-defeating agenda of re-opening the economy before the guidelines of the President's own taskforce say that it is safe and actually argue that a certain number of human lives might be a reasonable price to pay for getting the economy rolling again!

It seems that such "pro-life" Christians differ from the pro-abortion liberals they abhor only as to at which end of a human being's life that life becomes expendable if sacrificing it serves some utilitarian end. They seem oblivious to the fact that every argument that can be raised for sacrificing old folks or people with pre-existing conditions or young folks who are obese or have high blood pressure or happen to throw a blood clot resulting in a fatal stroke or thrombosis to mitigate the suffering of Americans who, if the consistent result of the polls is to be believed, would rather endure that suffering than prematurely re-open the economy is finally indistinguishable from the argument for an unmarried teenager facing personal catastrophe due to an unwanted pregnancy having an abortion!

Well, except in one regard: the teenager having the abortion will, in fact, end the pregnancy by doing so. A rush to re-open the economy will only force it closed again, and add to the unnecessary deaths the deepening and prolonging of the nation's financial ordeal. Supporting a bad man who is also illogical and incompetent and whose chaotic policies only make matters worse merely doubles the ethical difficulties involved; we end up selling our souls for nothing at all. And what, then, becomes of the pro-life witness allegedly made by supporting Donald Trump?

And to make that witness, one presents the face of Donald Trump to the stranger and sojourner, the unbeliever following a false prophet, the weak, the poor, the marginalized- the "losers" with whom Christ preferred to spend his time and for whom He died- as the face of Jesus Christ.

Some witness!

French continues:

Let’s put it this way—opposition to abortion may be moral, but opposing abortion cannot justify immorality. A believer in the Gospel of life should be marked by character and conduct that reaches far, far beyond taking the right position in public policy debates about abortion rights. For example, I must confess that I’m mystified by the frequent mockery of George W. Bush’s pro-life credentials when he not only nominated pro-life judges and signed pro-life laws, but he also speaks with sincere love for his fellow man.

Is this not what the Gospel of life looks like in a national leader?

A Message from President George W. Bush@TheCalltoUnite pic.twitter.com/FIn9wuOPTF

— George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) May 2, 2020

Lest one forget, Mr. Trump responded by mocking Mr. Bush and asking why he remained silent during Mr. Trump's impeachment rather than speak out in his defense. With Donald Trump, it's always about Donald Trump.

Which of these men modeled Jesus? And how can so many miss the point that to embrace evil for the sake of doing good is still embracing evil, and compromising our witness to Christ?

I have to agree with David French. The condoning of hate cannot be the vehicle by which a message of love is delivered, or else the message of love will inevitably be lost. All that will be heard is the condoning of hate.

And I wish that more of my fellow conservative Christians in America could see clearly enough to realize that when it comes to Mr. Trump, the medium drowns out what they tell themselves is the message, our witness is lost, and we become apostles not of love and reconciliation, but of hatred and division.

To borrow Metaxas's pun, our embrace of Trump trumps whatever good we may mean to achieve by it by making us accomplices to an exponentially greater amount of evil- and sadly, like Metaxas and so many other pro-Trump Christians, better apologists for evil than for Christ.