Trump and the evangelicals

| 7:29 pm EDT July 26, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

As many of you already know, from my seventeenth year to my late twenties I was an evangelical Christian. As such I read all the books the evangelicals wanted me to read but didn’t (for the most part) want to read themselves. Among my favourites were the works of the theologian CS Lewis. Lewis was a clever writer who was the darling of the evangelicals, their very own intellectual. Just about every crazy cult has one.

I’d like to say that my principal reason for leaving the evangelical movement was thanks to Lewis himself. But the actual reason was far more prosaic. I simply gradually faded away, becoming for a time a virulent atheist and swinging back to ordinary agnosticism, which is where the pendulum rests to this very day.

But had I heeded his warning I might have noticed the trend Lewis cautioned of “Christianity AND.” Or as Lewis explained it in “The Screwtape Letters,” “… Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform.”

I was there in the early days as evangelical Christians began their transition from pro-choice to almost psychotically anti-abortion. It was a peripheral issue for me, as it was for most evangelicals. It was just another article of faith we were expected to parrot but had, for the most part, no real passion for. Nevertheless, it became part of Christianity AND. In that case, Christianity AND abortion. Which in turn joined (or morphed into) Christianity AND radical rightwing Republicanism.

Evangelical Christianity today is as unrecognisable from itself back then as Eisenhower conservatism is unrecognisable from MAGA. It transformed itself from what was supposed to be a religion of Love thy Neighbour and care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, yes even the foreign born, to a religion of pure hate. Lewis was right, “Christianity AND” is dangerous and shockingly easy to corrupt.

So the question many people have today is, where is Donald Trump in all of this? Much of MAGA, especially the stupider part, believes he is a Christian, whatever they mean by that. Most Democrats and fellow-travellers on the left believe he’s an atheist. Both are wrong.

Donald Trump is precisely nothing at all. To call him a Christian, practising or lapsed, would be a manifold joke. To call him an atheist would be to give him too much credit for self-reflection or anything approaching original thought. Trump is the closest thing I know of to a man (or woman) entirely devoid of any real point of view. He has no convictions about anything (apart from 34 of the felony kind.) If he could be said to believe in anything at all it would be money and power, but even that is something of a stretch. The most accurate thing you can say about Trump is that he eats. Or it might be more accurate to say, IT eats.

Trump is a bottomless nothing in need of the endless attention of the food of praise. He’s like a badly-designed, inefficient machine that requires too much of whatever keeps it running, gasoline or oil or whatever. Most of us can go months or even years on a kind word or a little praise or encouragement of some kind. Trump needs it constantly. Fifteen minutes without someone acknowledging his Greatness is just about his waking limit.

It is to this thing that the Republican Party has attached itself. It is to this thing that evangelical Christianity has attached itself

Imagine it yourselves. The evangelicals and the Republican Party, the people of law and order, the people of moral rectitude, the people of family values, are running a twice-divorced adulterer, a judicially-confirmed rapist, a 34-count convicted felon, a stochastic terrorist and traitor for president of the United States. They’re running old man Trump against a smart and youthful former state attorney general and righteous prosecutor of scumbags and low-lifes. Is this an example of “they know not what they do”? No, I don’t think so. I think they know. I think they just don’t care.

Evangelical Christianity today has become consumed with hate. It’s a cult of Christianity AND hate. Trump is their dictator, their golden calf, their toad-god. They are a mere convenience for Trump, and Trump gives them a focus, a way to work out their bottomless fund of hate. It’s a marriage made in their very own hell. We must never allow this thing to take command of the United States of America. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.