When Evangelicals Endorse Trump With Their Support and Their Vote, They Are Also Endorsing Everything That Goes With Him

For such boasters are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  And no wonder! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  So it is not strange if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness.  Their end will match their deeds.  2 Corinthians 11:13-15, NRSV

Trump has made no real effort to hide his bigotry and his hatred for persons of color, lumping all of them into a category of people he considers outsiders in a white, Christian nationalist America.  I was a little bit shocked, however, when one of the speakers at his rally in Madison Square Garden, billed as a "comedian", Tony Hinchcliffe, came out spewing all of that vitriol and hatred at people of color so openly, and in such terms.  There's no hiding behind excuses for this, Trump approved booking the guy, knowing exactly what he was going to say and now is making the ridiculous claim that he didn't have anything to do with it.  

Liar.  And those who are Evangelical supporters of Trump own the lies, approve of lies, and are liars themselves. 

Most pundit comments about the MSG rally suggest that Trump's campaign management senses the base might need a little shoring up, and lumping all black and brown Americans together makes it actually seem like immigrants are all over the place everywhere, and telling vulgar jokes, like a lot of bigots do when they think they're in the company of other bigots, deliberately offensive, insulting and crude, including some off color sexual innuendo, is just a lighthearted way to address the "problem."  And, of course, there's that idea Trump has in his head that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.  When he says that, he is showing what contempt he has for every one who supports him, that they have no conscience and no ability to think critically.  He's laughing up his sleeve at the ignorance of his own supporters on which he is depending to win him votes.  

Every Evangelical--and I'll stop short of using the word "Christian" because that has a definition that doesn't accurately characterize most Evangelical Trump supporters--whose posts I see on the two social media sites where I visit has provided a typical response today to the crude, disgusting vulgarity he invited to speak at his rally.  It's silence.  What could they say?  They cannot openly support something that is so clearly anti-Christian in its degradation of fellow human beings, equal creations of God in Evangelical theology.  

These same people will not avoid speaking up and speaking out at anything they judge to be a departure from the orthodoxy they claim to follow when a politician from the left takes a position they consider to be out of step with Christian faith and practice.  They are harsh in their criticism, willing to consign their "godless soul" to hell over simple infractions.  Many of their criticisms are based on their own perceptions, not on the factual reality of the position the more liberal, Democratic politician has taken, and I went ahead and said it because that's really the dividing line, not an actual evaluation of the rightness or wrongness, biblically, of the position taken. 

Trump Can't Be "God's Anointed" if He's Not Converted, and He Isn't   

Their "out," from a spiritual perspective in Christian practice, is their very subjective belief that "God's hand" is on Trump, mainly because they were willing to bargain off their unqualified support for a few political bones he threw their way, is characterized in some Evangelical circles as an "anointing," and in others, as a conversion experience.  Their problem with this is that Trump gives absolutely no evidence at all of having had a conversion experience, nor an "anointing," which is, among the Pentecostal and Charismatic branches of Evangelicalism, accompanied by the visible sign of speaking in tongues.  

Sometimes Trump's words are unintelligible, but that's more due to dementia than to a demonstration of Pentecostal glossolalia.  He denies having confessed Christ, because he denies having committed any sins requiring forgiveness from God, and he claims he "doesn't see God that way."  That makes him, by definition, found in I John 4:2-3, antichrist.  

So, without this "out" being in effect, these Evangelicals are endorsing and owning everything that goes with Trump and who he is, an worldly, corrupt fraudster and grifter, accused of sexually assaulting 39 women, convicted of assaulting at least one, as well as convicted on 35 counts of fraud in the Stormy Daniels case, where he bedded a porn star while his third wife was pregnant with their son, and then tried to use business transactions to launder the money he paid her to be quiet about the affair.  

It sends a very inconsistent message to claim from the pulpit of a church, which is supposed to be a sacred desk from which the word of God is preached, that the Bible is a true revelation of the Christian gospel to humanity, and at the same time, with an action like a political endorsement, or the claim that one is voting for a man like Donald Trump, whose public life exemplifies the diametric opposite of the Christian gospel.  As the Apostle James wrote, "Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?" [James 3:11]  

The answer of course, is no.  And that explains why, at a political event that is supposed to represent the closing argument of a political campaign, there was not a single mention of anything having to do with Christianity, or American Evangelicalism, through the whole event.  And the clearer message from yesterday's event, in spite of the insults hurled at Latinos, Blacks, Jews and Muslims, was that choosing Trump means abandoning Christ.  Because the hatred and bigotry directed at all of these people by Trump, and by his cult of followers, is all clearly labelled as sinful behavior in the Bible, and it goes against one of the core principles of the Christian gospel, which is the equality of all humanity.

The Christian gospel is focused on spiritual transformation, though some of the more Calvinist branches of the conservative and Evangelical movements think Christianity is a system of intellectual assent and conformity to a set of doctrines put together by removing the historical, literary and cultural contexts in which various parts of the New Testament were written.  Trump is still the same licentious, immoral liar that he was before he ever engaged in far right wing Christian nationalist politics.  

So, bottom line, what every Evangelical endorsing Trump with their vote is saying is that their faith is not a priority, and not as important to them as their politics.  

Those Specific "Issues" Involving Abortion Rights and LGBTQ Rights Will Be Addressed in the Next Post, "So How Can a Christian vote for Kamala Harris, who Favors Abortion?"