Members of my extended family are Evangelical Christians; in fact, they’re part of the Quiverfull cult. They love, love, love Donald Trump. They look at him as a second Messiah.
Why?
Because he says he is.
This is really really hard for non-Evangelicals to wrap their heads around, but for a lot of Evangelicald, what you say is far, far more important than what you do.
Let’s start with this:
You will never, ever, ever shame or persuade an Evangelical by pointing to someone’s behavior and saying “that’s not very Christian, is it?” They’re equipped with a magical defense against that, one phrase in the Bible that’s the perfect counter to any behavior no matter how reprehensible:
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:23.
Donald Trump cheated a cancer charity? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Donald Trump cleared out a street full of protesters with tear gas? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Donald Trump persecutes and kills immigrants? Well, they like that part, it’s one of the things they voted for. It’s hard to find a more racist bunch than American Evangelicals. The Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan Resistance, the Aryan Nations, and the various Christian Identity churches all consider themselves Evangelical Christians.
Me personally, I would argue 1 Corinthians 5:9–11:
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
But what do I know? I’m not a Christian.
Anyway, that phrase, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god,” is like the soldier in that meme standing guard over anything that would shatter their worship of Trump.
Evangelism is authoritarian. Evangelicals are taught never to wuestion people they see as being in legitimate authority, which includes their own leaders. That’s deliberate; Evangelical leaders tend to have sex with children, with the wives of their own flock, and with sex workers, tend to embezzle from their flock, and tend to do all sorts of other reprehensible things…but Evangelicals like my family shrug and say “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
So “Donald Trump is a bad person who does bad things” will never ever ever work. They know. They don’t care.
So why do they love him?
To understand that, you have to understand something deeply weird about American Evangelicals, something non-Evangelicals also have trouble getting their heads around:
Spiritual warfare.
To an Evangelical, spiritual warfare is not a metaphor.
Let me say that again because it’s that important: spiritual warfare is not a metaphor.
They literally believe that the entire earth is currently a battleground, that right now in the room you are sitting in the literal army of God is conducting literal war with the literal army of Satan, that this is a direct war with swords and shields and magical weapons, and the fact you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real.
They believe every doubt or question about the truth of what they’re taught is a literal, a literal demon standing physically right next to them whispering Satan’s words in their ear.
The rules of engagement in this war say that the armies of Satan cannot harm the faithful without their consent, but they can whisper propaganda. Every little twinge of doubt they feel, every little wobble in their faith in their leaders and Donald Trump: “Watch out, Brother, that’s Satan whispering in your ear. If you listen to him, you are lost.”
To understand that, imagine a real, actual war, like say WWII.
Remember this guy?
Winston Churchill was a drunk and a womanizer, but he also led the British to victory.
Evangelicals believe that God can ass into anyone, anyone, and that persin can rise up to be a powerful commander of the armies of God.
Imagine you’re in 1944 Britain and someone tells you, “We should get rid of Churchill because he drinks.”
You’d think he was daft.
Yeah, he drinks, he’s famous for it. Yeah, he has problems with women. So what? Ir’s a war. He’s winning battles.
That’s how Evangelicals feel about Donald Trump.
Is he a womanizer? Yes. Is he a cheat? Yes. Is he problematic? Yes.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God can use anyone in His righteous quest.
Donald Trump is winning battles. He won against the forces of Satan by making abortion illegal. He’s winning against the forces of Satan by making gay men, lesbians, and trans people suffer. He won the battle against DEI. He’s talking about making gay marriage illegal again, the single greatest battle Satan decisively won in recent memory.
You don’t replace your commander in the middle of a war when he’s winning battle after battle because you don’t like the things he does with women.
They don’t have to like him personally to see him as a commander of the armies of God, routing the legions of Hell and their Earthly supporters: the gayz, the trans, the liberals, the Muslims, the non-Christians.
A thing my family says: “Sure, I would never invite him to dinner, but so what? He’s doing God’s work.”
Jimmy Carter of course, a devoted church attending Baptist who taught Sunday school and was arguably on the evangelical side of the Baptists. He stayed married to the same woman for about 70 years until she died.
But this has been a problem since Christianity first made it to the big time. Constantine had a vision and after winning a battle, decided he was a Catholic and promoted what was then a small religion. At least then, the church was at least ambivalent about Constantine’s endorsement, because Constantine didn’t actually practice the religion.
And that’s one of the problems, particularly in the evangelical movement. Many religious denominations will have no compunction about tossing you out if you don’t meet certain minimum standards. However, Protestants as a rule and evangelicals in particular are very tolerant about who they let in and who they let stay.
A lot of this is a sense of loyalty. Evangelicals often have a “persecution complex” where they get the idea that even though they’re the majority religion that the rest of society is working to destroy them and everything they hold dear. As such, they often welcome powerful allies.
Another problem is deep within Christianity, the idea that “sin” has only one penalty and that each one of them is essentially identical to each of the others. According to Protestants in particular (Catholics require you to work at it), the forgiveness of sin should be a gift that’s based not on your behavior, but on the depth of your faith. Evangelicals often have a tendency, due to the fact most of them are entirely sincere, of believing everyone in their group is just as sincere. That’s why evangelicals are often targeted by other evangelicals for financial scams.
