Let's go all the way back to 1980, when Ronald Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter. Carter, whose "born again" Southern Baptist faith was widely known and had been widely discussed, was arguably the most genuine, sincere, and committed Evangelical Christian to ever occupy the White House. And yet, in his 1980 re-election campaign, a group of Evangelical Christians, previously not nearly as engaged in secular politics as they would become, led by a couple of "televangelists" Jerry Falwell, of the Old Time Gospel Hour, James Robison, a Texas-based "evangelist" known for his screaming, foot-stomping sermonizing, and Pat Robertson, a Charismatic television host, decided to endorse Reagan rather than Carter.
Why?
The Fight Against Abortion Rights is at the Core of Evangelical Support for the GOP
Ostensibly, over the partisan difference between the two candidates over the issue of a woman's right to abortion, recently codified as a Constitutional right by the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, just seven years earlier.
Carter, a Democrat, was openly opposed to abortion, except in those cases where it was deemed a medical necessity. His views were clear, and were based on his Christian faith and conviction. However, because of his belief, rooted in the historic Baptist principle of complete separation of church and state, he refused to use impose the influence and power of the Presidency on something he considered to be a matter of individual conscience and religious liberty. Restrictions on the use of abortion as a method of birth control was based solely on religious conviction, according to the way Carter saw it. It was not the opinion of secular science that an abortion constituted taking a human life until at a later point in the pregnancy, most often the point of fetal viability, and therefore to impose a restriction solely based on religious doctrine would be a violation of the Constitution's first amendment establishment clause. That was Carter's belief
It was not until after his Presidency, and the support he got from a certain group of self-appointed Evangelical political leaders, that any of Reagan's biographers or apologists make room for any discussion of Reagan's "Christian" faith and practice. That's because there never was any. Reagan was a secular politician, an actor who, as it turned out and was discovered post-Presidency, was more into what Evangelicals define as "New Age Religion," more of a blend of several forms of mysticism and spiritualism, influenced by his second wife Nancy, than any resemblance it bore to any kind of Christian faith, and even that was far removed from any kind of Evangelical expression.
But, as a politician, Reagan's campaign managers saw an opportunity to diminish a constituency his opponent had relied on to win in 1976. And they saw, in the issue of abortion rights, a way to separate the Evangelical branch of American Protestantism from more liberal mainline denominations on this issue, and form a coalition with conservative, politically involved Catholics, to create a new voting constituency among the GOP.
Even Reagan's own children have said their father never really had any convictions at all about abortion until it became an election issue for the GOP. Even during the campaign, his awkwardness in using vocabulary that Evangelicals understood and related to was visible, and he tried to limit discussions about the theological support given by the religious right to this issue, and stick simply to the party's acceptance of overturning Roe as a platform issue.
But, politics being what it is, it was apparent that opposition to abortion rights was a single political issue capable of drawing in millions of Evangelical voters to the Republican party. These were mostly white, mostly from the more conservative branches of Evangelicalism, which tended to be those whose Christian faith was more of the kind of frontier folk religion that developed during the westward expansion on the frontier following the Second Great Awakening, characterized by a literal reading and interpretation of a Biblical text they believe to be without error and infallible in its theological and doctrinal authority.
Overturning Roe Was Always the Goal, So They Said, Anyway
It took politically engaged Evangelicals a long time to get to the table, and then a long time to get their primary issue, which they claimed was the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the national ban on any kind of abortion procedure. There's not been much variation on the theme, nor has there been much in the way of consideration of the complications of placing some kind of ban on a medical procedure which crosses the boundary line into protected right to personal privacy. But they have been relentess in pursuing it and succeeded, when Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court who eventually formed an anti-abortion majority with three other conservatives already on the court, and overturned Roe.
That was the first step toward the Evangelical goal of a strict ban on virtually any kind of abortion, except in what they define as the most "extreme" cases. It seems that, in looking at a lot of the rhetoric, not only do they want to be the ones who make this call for every woman, they also want to be the ones who decide whether the life of the fetus, or the life of the mother, is more important when that decision must be made. Don't take my word for that, some of the most ardent anti-abortion advocates, who are also hard line Evangelicals, have made it clear that if the fetus can be saved, it should be, whether the mother's life can be or not, and that choice should be reserved for their moral view, not that of either the mother or any of her family members. That's easily proven from the record these people have made on this subject.
The next step, after overturning Roe, which did not outlaw abortion, as many of them thought would be the case, is getting Congress to pass a nationwide ban on all abortion, taking any medical choice involved completely out of the hands of either the woman making it, or her doctor advising it.
Trump is Now in Favor of "States Making This Decision" and He's "Ok With That" Which is a Betrayal of His Evangelical Constituency
And that is where they part company with Trump.
The usual response of Evangelicals to every single thing Trump does that flies in the face of their religious beliefs and practice, including his complete denial of ever having need for a conversion experience from the perspective by which they define conversion, and his immoral, depraved, licentious, lifestyle, that includes pathological lying and utter dishonesty, is to ignore it, deny he said it or that it happened, and then, in the face of a mountain of evidence proving it, find some way to twist an obscure passage from the Old Testament out of context to excuse it.
But Trump's new found support for a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, which he put forth in his debate with Vice-President Harris, and has since underlined and clarified, which is the reason most Evangelicals have held their nose and voted for him the past two times, or so some of their self-appointed leaders claim, is now diametrically opposed to the Evangelical view.
The response from the political religious right so far has been silence. They're either coming up with some kind of convoluted version of an explanation of why Trump doesn't really mean what he says and that what he says isn't really support for a woman's right to choose. What Trump has expressed, as loudly and with as much clarity as anything he has expressed over the past year and a half, is that he is 100% in favor of the voters in each state deciding whether abortion can be legal, safe, and readily available in their state.
"It's giving it to the states," he said during the debate, "Everyone wanted this to go to the states, and that's what I did by getting Roe overturned," were his exact words. He even acknowledged that the states which have voted on this so far, overwhelmingly in favor of a woman's right to choose, all very conservative politically, might indicate that abortion would be legal in all 50 states, if that's the way the voters want it. He seems to be perfectly OK with that.
This is a complete betrayal of his right wing, conservative, white, Evangelical constituency who has believed implicitly in both his opposition to abortion rights, and his personal Christian conversion experience. They've been duped on both things.
And As If To Underline This Flip-Flop on Abortion Rights...Enter Melania Trump
I don't think that it is a coincidence that the eternally silent former First Lady, whose few previous moments of speaking out on issues have earned her a reputation as an uncaring, unfeeling, disconnected, gold-digging princess, has chosen this moment to make a rare public statement in full support of the right of American women to control their own reproductive rights, including to have an abortion if the choose, or if it is a medical necessity. In the whole time she's been in the public spotlight, since her husband first descended the escalator and decided to run for President, she has not ever expressed her feelings on an issue as passionately and as strongly as she did on this one.
Of course, she's come along at a time when her husband thinks perhaps his third wife speaking up in support of his flip-flop will help him get votes from pro-choice advocates. Does he really think this would cause a single voter who supports women's rights to their own choices in health care would trust him for a second, and think he would be the better choice on this issue than Vice-President Harris would be?
A Huge Dilemma for Conservative Evangelicals
So, here is the question for conservative, Evangelical Christian voters, who have lost their reputation, testimony and witness because of their political support for Trump and the fraud, immorality, worldly lifestyle, pathological lying and anti-Democracy positions he represents so well. Now that the one reason they claim has earned him their support has disintegrated before their very eyes, will they continue to vote for him after being betrayed, sold out, and lied to once again?
Or is it, as many political pundits, commentators and editors have claimed, that this constituency is willing to completely step away from biblical Christianity, into the apostate, heretical error of white, Christian nationalism, attracted there by the simmering hatred against any people who are not white, Caucasian descendants of the Europeans who took America from its native population and settled it, believing it was a gift from God to bless them and punish the heathens and pagans who lived here.
Trumpism has already helped to severely deplete the ranks of conservative, Evangelical Christians in the United States. They have lost whatever credibility they had before Trump by supporting a politician with a lifestyle that was opposed to their convictions and beliefs in every way, on every level. Accusations of hypocrisy as a result are legitimate. Churches with pastors that jumped on the Trump bandwagon have seen their membership and attendance drop considerably. The largest Evangelical denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, has had a 20% decline in membership and attendance since 2016.
I've already seen a few social media posts from Evangelicals, now looking like geese lost in a snowstorm, questioning whether their political inamorata has actually betrayed them, or if this is some kind of government plot, to throw them off course. In spite of the fact that he articulated this position clearly, during his debate with the Vice-President, and has since clarified what he means by letting the states make the decision in several interviews with the news media, there are some who can't seem to come to grips with the reality that most of us have known long before this man ever chose to run. Trump is a liar, and a duplicitous demagogue who cannot be trusted with anything."
What I'm wondering is if anyone among this group has the integrity, and holds the sincerity of beliefs and convictions of the Christian gospel as a life priority, to point this duplicity out, and publicly tell Evangelicals that Trump is actually the greater of two evils, from their perspective, based on his duplicity, which should be considered a much greater evil, and danger, than anything the Vice-President has said or done.
I grew up in an Evangelical church, and there are some good people who do indeed put their faith in the Christian gospel ahead of their politics. There are a lot of others who have been duped and deceived for decades by this charlatan, Trump. He's proven he doesn't care about you, or God, he cares about himself. If you want to have any hope of reclaiming your testimony of faith, you need to stop supporting, and voting, for him and for his enablers in the Republican party. Otherwise, God is about to remove your lampstand.
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