The Yuck Factor in American Religion & Politics: Trump’s MAGA Christians

The late, great American philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote:

“A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”

In the last three elections, Donald Trump secured the votes of over 80% of self-identified Evangelical Christian voters. This was no surprise to me. As a non-Southern Baptist I graduated from what was the premier Southern Baptist seminary before the Fundamentalist takeover in 1992. Back then we had women teaching in the School of Theology and women students in the Master of Divinity, PhD, and Doctor of Ministry programs. That is no longer the case, women have been banished from all of those programs. Back then, the seminary was regionally accredited and rated the top academic seminary in the in the country by the Association of Theological Schools. It has fallen far in every category.

At the time I was on a liturgical/catholic journey in large part to my Church History, Systematic Theology, Pastoral Care, and Philosophy of Religion Professors. All of them were sidelined and forced out by the Fundamentalist administration. The journey continued in my Clinical Pastoral Education residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital where I served as the Trauma and Surgery Department and worked with some great progressive Protestant and Roman Catholic chaplains.

Two years later I was ordained into a conservative Anglo-Catholic church in which many clergy, like me came from Evangelical backgrounds, however, I tended to be more like a progressive on many issues including women’s ordination, and while “pro-life” I didn’t believe that women’s reproductive, or birth-control choices should be dictated by the State or the church. Likewise, I was pro-LGBTQ+ rights, and because of serving in Iraq and knowing history, I was not so judgmental about ordinary Muslims. I wrote a blog confessing those things back in 2010 and was immediately asked to find a new church by my bishop, which meant a scramble as a military chaplain to find a new denomination and military endorser. Thankfully, the Episcopal Church’s Bishop for the Armed Services was a friend and colleague from the Navy and he put me in contact with the presiding bishop of a progressive church in the Old Catholic tradition, who brought me in. That was a good thing. I have a home, despite being retired from the military and semi-retired from the priesthood.

Toward the end of my Navy career I preached a sermon dealing with the immorality of the family separation policy of the Trump administration led by Tom Homan in July, 2018. I never mentioned Trump by name, but a MAGA Navy retiree in the congregation alleged that I had called Trump Hitler in it and the Border Control, the Gestapo. He wrote this to my commanding officer who directed an investigation against me without ever hearing my side of the story. Knowing that this was bad, I contacted Mikey Weinstein at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and he provided me a lawyer. Thankfully, between that, and the the investigating officer was a colleague who took the time to interview all of my staff present as well as half of the congregation, none of whom backed up the allegations, I was exonerated from charges that could have ended my career, and possibly put me in prison.

Now I am even more determined to speak the truth about the clear and present danger we face.

So, I had a very personal understanding of just how toxic and politically vengeful American Evangelicalism had become, even before the 2020 and 2024 elections. But I also made it my business to study and write about why so many people were fleeing the church after being asked to leave mine. So I went to several studies, some done by the Barna Group, a polling organization founded by George Barna, a respected Evangelical Christian.

As such, despite the support of Evangelical churches, their leaders and members for Trump, I find it little wonder that people are leaving Christian churches of all denominations in droves. For most of these people it is not about God or Jesus, or even the Bible. It is due to the lack of love, care, compassion exhibited by Christians and the institutional corruption, lack of transparency, double standards and political machinations of churches over people that are not of their faith or under their institutional control. The surveys conducted by Christian pollsters like Barna bear this out. When asked what words or phrases “best describe Christianity” the top response of 16-29 years olds was “anti-homosexual” while 91% of all non-Christians surveyed said this was the first word as it was for 80% of Christians in the survey. Here are those words that describe Christians:

Hypocritical: Christians live lives that don’t match their stated beliefs;
Antihomosexual: Christians show contempt for gays and lesbians – “hating the sin and the sinner” as one respondent put it
Insincere: Christians are concerned only with collecting converts
Sheltered: Christians are anti-intellectual, boring, and out of touch with reality.
Too political: Christians are primarily motivated by a right-wing political agenda.

All of these are even truer 13 years later, and the political aspect has become so radical that it can only considered a vehicle of hate, intolerance, and fascism. It is now all about political control and changing the fundamental laws of our country to reflect their intolerance and hatred.

I find it interesting that one of the first conservative politicians to criticize the political activism of Evangelicals was none other than Barry Goldwater. He did it on the Senate floor in 1981, and in these words reflecting on his political career:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” November, 1994, in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience.

Now they have sworn fealty to Trump, and seem to have forgotten anything moral they ever once believed to gain political power. The damage to our country and whatever is left of Christian churches will last decades, and both may never fully recover.

The problem is that Christian Nationalists, and for that matter many Evangelical and Conservative Catholics believe that our nation should be a Christian theocracy. One of the earliest exponents of Christian Nationalism was the late Gary North, an advisor to many Republican leaders including Ron and Rand Paul wrote exactly what today’s Christian Nationalists advocate:

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.”

Robert Ingersoll, one of this first prominent skeptics in this country and one of the first acknowledged atheists, wrote something quite profound in understanding the nature of what our founders intended and why there were protections both for and from religion in the Constitution:

“They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.”

It will probably be a day or two before my next article as I need to write some tests for my students. Have a great night and better tomorrow. Don’t give up and keep fighting, or laughing in the face of darkness. Remember the words of Sojourner Truth:

“Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me.”