Since Trump embraced Evangelical Christians for their influence and votes in order to win election to the Presidency, they've given him the kind of political support that no other Republican has enjoyed from this particular constituency, at least the half of American Evangelicalism that is white. In this country, the other half of those whose doctrine and theology are similar enough to be defined by the use of the term are African American, Latino and Asian, and while the white Evangelical support for Trump registered as high as 82% by some estimates, in the 2016 election, it was less than 25% among those of color.
Their loyalty and support has taken the form of a complete endorsement of him, characterizing him by using terms like "God's man," and comparing him to the Israelite King David, who they say wasn't perfect, but was used by God to do great things.
Trump is no King David, by any stretch of the imagination. The comparison doesn't work. According to the Biblical narrative in 2nd Samuel, David was a monarch appointed by God through a prophet to rule over a theocracy. He exhibited characteristics of strong leadership and was considered a good leader. Trump was an abject failure from the first momemt of his Presidency. David, in spite of his faults and his sins, was repentant and submitted to God for forgiveness. Trump claims he hasn't done anything needing forgiveness, which is a denial of the core doctrine of Christian conversion preached by the Evangelicals.
And when David did commit a series of grievous sins, starting with adultery with Bathsheeba, and leading to the murder of her husband, God sent a prophet to warn him. His household fell apart, the son conceived by the adultery died as an infant, his children fought with each other, one of his sons raped his daughter, another one rebelled against his father, split the army and tried to take the Kingdom away from him. David had to flee for his life, lost the respect and loyalty of most of his people, opened the country up to invasions and raids by the Philistines, whom he had previously subjugated, his son was killed by one of the men who remained loyal to him, and he was not restored until he was totally repentant, depending on God to be forgiven. His kingdom suffered because of his lapse in judgment and his lack of leadership. None of that resembles Trump in any way, shape or form.
What Evangelical Support For Trump Says About Their Faith
Regardless of their rhetoric, and excuses, Evangelicals who endorse and support Trump as a political leader are abandoning their convictions and principles in order to do so. Trump is not a Christian by their definition of the term, he openly denies having done any of what they claim is required for the conversion experience that makes someone a Christian, by spiritual transformation. And while God does sometimes use evil men to achieve his purpose, nowhere does he ever require his people, those who are called by his name, either the Jews of ancient Israel or the Christians of the church, to give their loyalty to an evil political leader. But that is exactly what Evangelicals who support Trump are doing. They've chosen between God's Holy Spirit to achieve their ministry ends, and the political power of Trump, and they've abandoned the former to embrace the latter. There's no denying it.
Evangelicals claim to believe that the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are inerrant, meaning that they are without human error in the original manuscript, and infallible when applied according to interpretation in a literal context. But in following Trump and his brand of far right wing Republican politics, they must either flatly deny some of the basic, clearly worded principles found in the scripture, taken from the Apostles themselves and in some cases, the directly recorded words of Jesus, or change the interpretation in a way that is well outside any acceptable principle of Biblical hermeneutics. Trumpian Republican politics turns the Christian gospel upside down, into an unrecognizeable mess that starts at the point of denying the very nature of Jesus himself.
Approval of Sexual Immorality
Elevating Trump to the stature of a political leader revered by a group of Christians has required them to make some convoluted turns and twists in their faith practice and doctrine in order to support his agenda. Most Evangelicals based their support for him on his judicial choices to the Supreme Court, leading to the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade. There's some hypocrisy, even with that, as there are allegations Trump himself has paid for multiple women with whom he had adulterous affairs to have abortions, and at least one of the justices who ruled against Roe did the same.
But aside from that, there's no consistency whatsoever in that position, when, throughout his entire married life, right up to the present time, Trump continues to be engaged in adulterous affairs with women while being married to someone else. Each of the women he married, subsequent to his previous wives, were also "other women" in affairs, something about which he continues to claim as a mark of his worldly reputation, and in which he expresses pride.
So the Evangelical Christians who support him have, whether they admit it or not, abandoned their doctrine of sexual purity in order to support this politician who unapologetically engages in adultery by Bibica definition. And for all of the finger pointing and shrieking from many Evangelical leaders over the fact that President Clinton may have had an affair in the White House, they are now shameless hypocrites, in the face of the highly publicized case of Stormy Daniels, a porn star who Trump paid to keep their adultery a secret, and of evidence indicating that this has been a regular occurrence in the Trump White House, and afterward.
Thou Shalt Not Lie, Except to Win in Politics
Integrity is a value that is an integral part of Christian practice. It's mentioned by every Apostle who is a New Testament writer as one of the identifying marks of believers in Christ. It was vitally important, for a church existing in a pagan culture, that the lifestyle of those who were Christians was lived according to a set of values opposite those practiced in the pagan world around them. Noticing that these characteristics and practices were valued by Christians, and were part of their regular lives was a testimony that attracted people to the Christian faith, and led many pagans to convert to Christianity.
Turning a blind eye to Trump's lying is bad enough, but allowing themselves to get caught up in the lies, none of which help advance the Christian faith or encourage people to convert to become followers of Christ, is an endorsement of evil. Claiming that the election of 2020 was "stolen" from Trump is a lie. There's evidence to prove that it is. Repeating it, as many of his supporters do, makes them evil liars just like he is. And that turns his Evangelical supporters into hypocrites who deny their faith.
Those Who Say "I Love God" and Hate Their Brothers and Sisters, Are Liars
Trump's rhetoric about how he treats other people is the most convincing argument proving that he is so much the opposite of Christian faith and values as to fit the Bible's definition of antichrist. The "our" in "take back our country," means the descendants of white, European settlers who came here and displaced the natives in their taking of the land. It clearly does not include any, and I mean any Americans of color, including those whose ancestry is Latino, Asian, African or even original native American.
Human beings, all of them, are created in the image of God, according to the scripture. So the blatant discrimination and hatred of people of different ethnicities and racial backgrounds, is not only sinful, according to Christian doctine and theology, it is a denial of the very nature of God himself. The apostle John defines this principle in his first epistle, when he says, "Those who say, 'I love God," but hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they hae seen cannot love God, whom they have not seen." [I John 4:20, ESV]
So looking at all of the rhetoric about revenge, getting even, the "foreigners" who poison the blood of the country, the anti-Semitism, the hatred of and threats of vengeance against Democrats and Republicans who didn't support him when he committed crimes, all of that defines Trump as an evil antichrist, by the literal definition of that word (See I John 4:1-3), and it makes his Evangelical apologists and supporters either hypocrites, or insincere imposters.
Making Politics Their God and Trump Their Savior
The flood of white Evangelicals who are now relying on far right wing politics to do what they once prayed to God to achieve is an abandonment of principle and faith. Some of them are throwing out rhetoric that actually criticizes core teachings of Jesus that don't fit their particular political preferences, such as "loving your enemies" and "turning the other cheek," labelling those actions, which, according to Jesus, were clear identifying marks of true faith, "liberal." Others push for varying forms of Christian Nationalism, holding on to the belief that God has set Christians aside, because of their faith, to be the ones who rule everything from their perspective, a practice which resembles most of the 1,700 year history of the church after Constantine.
The Apostle John makes it clear, in the same passage where he identifies the anti-christ, that love is the single, most visible identifying characteristic of the members of the Christian church who were, at the time he wrote those words, living in the middle of a completely pagan society.
Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. I John 4:7-12
And he adds this, just a few sentences later on, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."
I would argue, based on what is conveyed in these words from the Apostle, which conservative Evangelicalism considers inerrant, infallible, and literal in their application, that any Christian who gives loyalty and support to Trump must first deconstruct their Christian faith, and abandon its principles and practice, because it is not possible to do so and have the love of God perfected in us. Instead of perfect love casting out fear, these phony Christians are using fear to cast out perfect love.
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