I found this to be a very thoughtful commentary to read all the way through. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but when it gets to the end, I think it's on point.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...p.html?start=1

Also, we needed something new to talk about.

This could have been said pre-Trump easily with the religious traveling to Washington in order to gain their measure.Just another Trump bash which I liken to a hate crime in England blamed upon Trump or the killing of an Iman in Brooklyn blamed upon Trump. "Trump did it!!"

Redemption via Washington is the sacrilege or idolatry and its been around for awhile. The ministers , as card carrying politicos , left their flock awhile back ; better known as the dysfunction between Caesar and "G".

It was said by others a long time ago. For example, Max Lucado penned this short critique back in February:

https://maxlucado.com/decency-for-president/

(For those who are temporally challenged, this was before Super Tuesday.)

But in fact, this particular criticism could not have been said back then, because the rationale for supporting Trump among Evangelicals at that time had little to do with the Supreme Court. And while issues of character have always been present, it wasn't until the last month or so that it has become fully prominent in the news cycle.

So I disagree with your analysis, and find it to be grasping at affirming your assumptions more than it is an accurate reflection of reality.

If the Antichrist were to come to earth now wouldn't we expect him to be extreme wealthy, well known, glib, lying, self-centered, hate mongering, divisive, a misogynist, a hedonist, and seek to gain control of the most powerful position on earth?

Well, thats a step up from being hitler, for sure

I'm confused. Is he suggesting that it is wrong to attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support? What does he favor instead? Randomly twiddling the levers of history?

Bah. Stay out of politics if you aren't willing to be responsible for the effects of your choices.

Cowardice. If you think Trump is a worse candidate than Hillary (as I do), then fine. But don't take as your reason for not supporting him that your neighbors will look down on you. Support the candidate that you think is better for the country, not the one approved of by those around you.

this doesn't ring true to me. Seems like this might be true of the authors circle, but not of the Christian Right who supports trump generally. They like him, and for more than his ability to appointment people who will try and end a woman's right to choose.

This is paraphrased from, I believe, Goethe and may be found in "Faust" and so I don't have it exact.

The devil speaks; "The fools !; I have them by the scruff of the neck and they don't know me" .

Theologically, the idolatry is a matter of putting all hope behind something other than God. So it's not the political calculation itself that's the issue, but the idea that Christians are saying "Our only hope is Trump." Among other things, this would deny a statement like "Our hope is in God."

There's also a difference in the tone of the support. There's a gap between supporting Trump because one thinks he's the best candidate compared to voting for Trump because we have no other choice if we want to rescue the US from descending into hell.

You seem to be misunderstanding the theology here, too. One way (among many) of characterizing Christianity is that the purpose of Christians is to build relationships with non-Christians to share the gospel with them. If ardent support for Trump interferes with that, then (even if it's best for the country) it's not helpful to ardently support Trump. This doesn't mean that one shouldn't vote for the candidate they think is better for the country.

In fact, it's important to recognize that the article does not say that one should not support Trump. Rather, it is criticizing the tone that Christians are currently using to support Trump.

Edit: I just realized that you might have been focusing in on the "reluctant strategic calculation" within the strategy. I'll address that separately.

There is a split between the "Christian Right" and the American Evangelical culture. If you only look at the figure-heads of Evangelicals and not Evangelicals themselves, you'll miss it. There are a lot of people grumbling about their decisions.

I would frame the issue here of being too narrowly focused on "pet causes" and missing the larger framework of concerns. It's not as if the only issues at stake in this election are far more broad than one (or two) supreme court justices. Are the highest values of Christians to select supreme court justices? That's not even on the top 100. The underlined values should be ranked much, much higher but aren't.

For example, contrast the view of many Christians who are against bringing in Syrian refugees with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The whole point of that parable was to shame the religious leader for trying to justify not caring for others who are in need.

Also, a lot of Christians don't see the irony in supporting making "laws" to make people good when their core theology states that laws don't make people good.

The assumptions of the calculation are being challenged as being idolatrous, not the act of doing the calculation.

Wasn't it the case that that trump was the leading candidate in the primaries amongst evangelicals? I can see how supreme court picks might be an important argument today amongst, say, a rubio supporter. But it's not quite clear, but it seems like you are wanting to downplay the degree to which evangelicals genuinely like trump, and not because he happens to be the guy elected and they want a conservative on the supreme court, but because they like his immigration stand and defiance of political correctness and all the main reasons people trump for.

I only very quickly googled so I didn't get into evangelical cross tabs, but of the issues people supporting trump, supreme court justices is certainly important, but as one of the many important issues for people and not by any means the biggest (90% for "economy" or "terrorism" vs 70% for "supreme court" as a "very important issue").

Remember, the quote I'm disagreeing with is "Most Christians who support Trump have done so with reluctant strategic calculation, largely based on the president’s power to appoint members of the Supreme Court.". Broadly on the right there certainly is plenty of enthusiasm for trump, and of those who are reluctant plenty with other issues than the supreme court. Unless you have some cross tabs showing the evangelicals are substantively bucking this trend, it seems fairly false even under the interpretation of "most christians" as "self identifying evangelicals".


edit: forgot the link: http://www.people-press.org/2016/07/...2016-election/

I don't believe Trump was the top pick among evangelicals early on in the Republican primary. See for example http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...w-support-him/

It all depends on which sub-population you're looking at. It's true that among primary voters, Trump had strong Evangelical support. But at that time, traditional Evangelical leaders (except Falwell Jr, I think) were lining up to support Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

Here's an article from January:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/22/politi...the-primaries/

The diversity of Evangelicals also led to conversations in which the question of whether the Evangelical moniker was even sufficient to describe the electorate. Here's an article that came along much later, but these conversations were happening earlier:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...e-meaningless/

I didn't look for it, but I know there's also a survey (probably Barna) that looked at Evangelical support based on beliefs and church-going behaviors and not self-identification as Evangelical. My memory is that "more religious" Evangelicals were moving far more strongly towards Cruz and the "less religious" Evangelicals were going to Trump.

I don't intend to downplay that support. I know that there are a lot of Evangelicals that support Trump strongly for reasons that are uniquely Trump. But I do think the nature of that support and the rationale for that support has taken many different forms as the base has run from one issue to the next to avoid controversies.

I can speak to what I'm seeing in my circles, which is that many people are talking about the Supreme Court. It does loom large over their heads, and I see conversations that are post-Trump and talking about the importance of the Supreme Court to set the direction for 20-30 years out. I'm also seeing "Vote the platform, not the person" and the platform list always includes the Supreme Court justices. So that 70% think the Supreme Court is a "very important issue" doesn't surprise me.

But at the same time, there are a lot of (mostly younger and more liberal) Evangelicals that have been speaking out against Trump for quite a while. An example of a split of this type is the following:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-bad-news.html

What you're looking at are people who support Trump as the base population. I'm looking at all Americans as the base population. So you can be right that among Trump supporters, you've got that type of support. But the broader Evangelical electorate is much more diverse. What you're probably capturing is specifically white Evangelicals.

As I said, If you only look at the figure-heads of Evangelicals and not Evangelicals themselves, you'll miss it." The figure-heads are primarily white Evangelicals.

I guess the quibble would be whether "largely" should be interpreted as "primarily" or something else. If it's important to 70% of the people, that's still a pretty important consideration.

That's a tough way to read "most Christians." I think looking at self-identifying Evangelicals narrows the population to something that skews far more white. Whites have their own issues.

I'm not sure that disputes that he was nonetheless the leading candidate (ie in wide fields nobody gets a big number...as it narrows more and more people come on board) but less than non evangelicals, granted. Regardless, it confirms that the "strongly support" numbers are higher for evangelicals than for the mainline and catholic republicans.

I think we would be making quite a mistake to try and attribute this largely to supreme court, not to genuinely liking him.

erm posted while Aaron was posting didnt' read his. Can't respond now sorry.

This is easily disputable. Trump's unfavorability ratings gap has been consistently in the 20%-30% range. Since Christians make up the bulk of the population, it would be hard for that gap to exist if Christians really liked him.

I think religiously motivated politics that willfully supports someone that represents the anti-thesis of your religious ideals in the hopes that you indirectly may gain supreme court leverage down the road sounds rather asinine to be honest. Trump has already moved the bar for what is acceptable behavior and talking. Sure, his actions might garner a lot of scorn - but everyone gets to pat themselves on the back and say "well, I'm not Trump".

I suspect your country is going to go on quite the rampage of racism, sexism and xenophobia over the next 8-10 years (and yes, I mean rampage as in a very strong increase in these things). We might think these politicians and what they represent don't have that much power, but it does. They move the bar for the acceptable and the world is worse of for it.

We've had the super-populist right defecate over decency in Europe approaching two decades soon, and we've far from rock bottom yet.

I had a conversation about this with my roommate. The question we were debating was whether a Trump loss leads to an increase in domestic terrorism in the form of hate crimes. Certainly, there are some who are making noise in that direction:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dont-say-...165357927.html

But I'm not entirely sure that the "right" population is there for this to happen. The reason is that the majority of people who are swinging in that direction are much older. How many 50+ year-olds will really take up arms and start lashing out at people? I'd suspect it's a minority.

This certainly doesn't mean it's going to just go away (I don't think it will), and it may get worse. But I don't think it goes into rampage mode.

What demographic was at the root of the super-populist right two decades ago?

That is not what is going on here. He is specifically addressing Christians who are reluctant Trump supporters, and who mostly support him because of Supreme Court nominations, not those who are putting all their hope in Trump. By "strategy," I assume he is referring to strategic voting, the idea that you should vote on the basis of an EV calculation of the effects of your vote rather than on the basis of picking the candidate that most closes matches your identity, allegiance, or ideology.

It seems to me that he is making two criticisms here.

1) That this attitude towards voting is idolatrous. I think the idea is that Christians should just do the right thing (implicitly understood deontologically as meaning voting for a candidate that you identify with) and trust that God will direct the outcome.

2) These Christians are miscalculating. While Trump might be better politically, because he is so toxic publicly, Christians association with them will end up making them look bad as well, thus harming their witness to their neighbors, which should be a higher goal.

Against (1), I think strategic voting is clearly the correct attitude to take towards voting. I define strategic voting as voting on the basis of an EV calculation of the effects of your vote in achieving your goals. In fact, I would say this cycle shows well the dangers of adopting Crouch's view. Republicans have ended up with a poor nominee in part because of an unwillingness among GOP base voters to coordinate around an acceptable alternative (ie use strategic voting). If evangelical leaders had come out against Trump in 2015 or all coordinated around one of the alternatives once it became clear that Trump was a real threat, he would have lost. They didn't do this, in part, because of a lack of concern to manipulating the levers of history. Irresponsible imo.

Against (2), yes Christians should note their disagreements with Trump, as I think they mostly do. However, they should still be honest and open about their political views. If they think Trump is the better candidate and will vote for him, for whatever reason, then they should be willing to say so. Christians should not be so concerned with social approval that they are not even willing to publicly state that they agree with something 40+% of the country also agrees with.

Indeed, I take a somewhat more cynical attitude towards this article in general. After a very bad PR week for Trump, and as he looks increasingly likely to lose badly, Christianity Today's editor writes an editorial where he doesn't call for Christians to either support Hillary or not vote for Trump, but instead to try to dissociate themselves from him.

Okay.

Yes, I understand this fine. It's a form of cowardice. Crouch is hoping that evangelicals don't have to pay the cost for their poor political actions. Understandable from his perspective, but still craven. Also hopeless. Evangelical support for Trump is too strong to be able to hide it.

Indeed, that is my criticism. If he was penning an editorial opposing Trump because of the harmful effects on the Christian community of supporting him, I wouldn't object. But his purpose here seems more to shield evangelicals from deserved criticism because of their actual support for Donald Trump.

This is a weird dichotomy. I think most of the Christians who place such a high value on the Supreme Court do so because of their view that it is what will ultimately decide whether abortion is or is not legal. And that is an issue of, in their view, concern for the orphan and oppressed.

I will grant the point that those Christians that are concerned about "religious liberty" should be more willing to listen to this argument.

That being said, again, supporting Trump is only a "betrayal of [your] deepest values" if you think that voting for someone who you disagree with and despise is such a betrayal - ie you reject strategic voting as immoral. As argued previously, this is wrong.

Yes, it does seems unchristian to oppose letting in Syrian refugees. This is a good reason to oppose Trump if you are a Christian.

I don't think so. What political assumption is he challenging here? He doesn't argue that you shouldn't support Trump, just that if you do, do so begrudgingly or not openly so as to not besmirch evangelical Christianity's good name.

The real challenge for evangelicals, and one I haven't seen much discussion of, is that while most other religious groups (eg Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Mormons, etc.) have all moved pretty strongly away from Trump, evangelicals have largely remained loyal. My assumption prior to this cycle was that Trump couldn't win the primary mostly because he was unacceptable to evangelicals, and they have a veto. Well, that didn't happen. Why not?

I think surveys have shown that the the typical person learning towards right-wing populism is a 50+ white male with little education, history of unemployment is not uncommon.

Though more anecdotally I see a shift in acceptance, you see the rightwing ideals being spread more and more from a broader spectrum of the population.

Okay.

I don't think this criticism is valid. He's not saying "vote for the most morally pure" candidate. So he did not implicitly suggest that one should be voting based on deontological identification. I don't recall him giving any specific parameters on voting.

Since it's *always* possible to characterize one's voting as strategic, I don't think this line of argument is particularly successful. All that amounts to is trying to redefine the EV calculation so that whatever you want to have happen in the long run comes out on top.

The bolded is also false. Trump did not have much support from Evangelical leaders early on. Many of the of them rejected him openly and were perplexed by the level of support he was receiving. But the existence of this gap can be partly explained by the fact that people who were less church-going were more likely to vote Trump. That is, those leaders did not actually have sway over the population that moving Trump-ward. So while it's possible that they could have stopped it by somehow forming a coalition against Trump, I don't think it's likely. (Don't forget that there was the whole #NeverTrump movement.

This is the criticism I think he is making.

I don't disagree with the bolded. I don't think he's saying that you shouldn't support Trump. But the key phrase is "for whatever reason." He's criticizing the reasons that are being cited and the way that it's being argued. He's chastising Christians who he thinks are miscalculating and using the wrong reasons. He's also warning them about losing track of the larger issues at stake that are fundamental to the faith (he probably holds that the outcome of the US election is not a fundamental faith issue).

A couple points.

1) You can be cynical. But I think you would be wrong. Here's an article from January that was critical of him.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...mp-gospel.html

And from February:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...tempts-us.html

And from March:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...ald-trump.html

I would not be surprised if there were articles in late 2015 as well. So it's not as if they've been silent all this time and have just suddenly found their voice.

2) You can read the article as an attempt to dissociate from Trump voters. Ii think that's also a cynical reading. The article in whole is a plea for voters to think carefully about the larger stakes (beyond the election):

3) There's a financial reason that they're not going to tell their readers how to vote. It's outlined in the first paragraph:

Do with that what you will.

Evangelicals *WILL* take a hit because of their support of Trump, but I think it's really cynical to think that Crouch is trying to somehow protect from it.

I think you're wrong.

I think abortion is less of an issue and LGBT rights are a higher issue. But that's neither here nor there. (And it can't be a concern for the orphan because the orphan never happened.)

But the question of why the value is on the Supreme Court is interesting from a theological perspective. I've argued here (and elsewhere) that American Evangelicalism is the modern-day equivalent of the Pharisee. The Pharisees made laws to try to make people behave in ways that pleased God, and Jesus was trying to show them that making those laws completely missed the point. And yet American Evangelicals are making political calculations based on creating laws that that they think will make people behave in ways that please God. This, I believe, is the core theology that Crouch is setting himself up against.

Again, it's about the assumptions going into the calculation and not the act of calculation itself.

The false assumption is that the Supreme Court is more important than everything else, and that you ought to be willing to sacrifice all on the hope that the Supreme Court is somehow going to rescue us from... something.

I think this is a fairly gross misreading of the article.