If you’d clicked on the Evangelical’s Now website the other day then you will have been greeted with the headline “Bible believing evangelicals will vote for Trump.” It was the most prominent article on the page. E-N did offer the disclaimer at the end of the article that the newspaper does not endorse specific candidates. However, I’m not sure how effective such smaller print disclaimers are once the damage has been done by the big headline.
EN’s defence of the article is that it isn’t intended to be prescriptive, not an endorsement of Trump but rather descriptive, attempting to explain why Evangelicals will vote for Trump in November. An attempt to get into the mind o American evangelical church attendees. I acknowledge and accept the intent but unfortunately again, I don’t think that the article did the job intended.
Here’s the problem. I think it is a very tricky thing to attempt to do such an exercise effectively. I’ll come to why later. However, first of all, I think that if you are describing and explaining rather than prescribing and endorsing that there is a level of care and nuance involved. This is best demonstrated by being careful to distinguish perception from objective statement. Unfortunately, the article lacks that. It is the difference between saying that people will vote for Trump because he is seen to be on their side when it comes to Christian values verses saying that he IS on the side of Christian values.
The article makes a number of missteps in this regard. First, he says:
“I only moved from the UK at the beginning of 2012. Like most of my compatriots, I had been trained by the UK media to ridicule Trump. Why a higher percentage of people voted for him in 2016 and in 2020 than voted for Keir Starmer in the recent UK election remained a mystery to me for quite a while.”[1]
Now, it may be the case that many people in the UK, along with many Americans see Trump as a figure of ridicule. It may even be the case that many US voters who will be supporting him, to some extent see him as such a figure of ridicule but also see reasons for supporting him, just as many people voted for Boris Johnso whilst seeing him as ridiculous, buying into the caricature and laughing at him. The difference perhaps is that Boris was willing to join in laughing at himself if it served his purpose.[2]
However, lots of his voters do not see him as a figure of ridicule, it’s not just that they put up with that to get to the meat of his policies. They really think that the image he projects represents who they are and/or what they want to aspire to be. Remember that a US Presidential election is not just about support for policies but for the person and personality that will represent them. So, if we want to understand why American Evangelicals will vote for him, then we need to either understand why some will put up with the caricature and why some will even embrace and vote for the personality. Why do they not seem him as ridiculous.
The other problem here is that the author seems to assume that if he was convinced that Trump was a figure of ridicule, then that is the only problem that his readers would have with understanding why Americans will vote for Trump. This feels like it isn’t treating the issue seriously, as though our confusion arises purely out of cultural differences. The assertion seems to be that if you don’t know why people will vote Trump, then you too have been “trained by the UK media to ridicule Trump.” There are two issues with this. First, Trump is not the first US president or candidate to be ridicules by our media. In fact, there is a history, especially with the most successful Republican candidates. Reagan was ridiculed as an empty headed b-move actor, George W Bush was subject to intense scorn and yet I think it is fair to say that if you’d asked British Evangelicals why American Evangelicals had voted for either that an answer would have been forthcoming.
Indeed, the big concern from many, again, as with Johnson is that the tendency to ridicule Trump means that people may not see him as a serious figure and then not worry about him and miss the serious concerns. This means too that for many of us, it is not that we don’t get why people ca vote for a ridiculous candidate, it’s that we have significant concerns about his character and policies and wonder how Evangelicals cannot merely vote for him but even endorse him. The article doesn’t even entertain, let along address those concerns. In that respect it is a little condescending.
Then, there are examples of what I mentioned above, the move from reporting and describing perceptions to in effect accepting those perceptions of objective fact. For example, he comments on the V-P candidate’s conversion to Trumpism that
“In 2016, as a ‘never-Trumper’, he deplored the association of Trump with racism, described Trump as ‘cultural heroin’ in an Atlantic article, and speculated that while he might accidentally do some good, he might also prove to be America’s Hitler. He is a smart guy and has become serious about his faith (he walked away from faith at college, but converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019). His conversion to Trump aligns with his conversion to Christianity. It also helps that he was proved wrong about Trump during his presidency. He had thought that Trump would deliver nothing for working-class Americans despite his accurate description of the problems they faced. By the end of his presidency, paychecks had outstripped inflation by 8.4%, mortgage rates were at their most affordable for decades, 15 million people were lifted out of poverty, and job growth had been continual until the outbreak of the pandemic (see factcheck.org).”
Note, the connection of conversion to Trump with conversion to Christianity and the evaluation of the VP candidate as “a smart guy.” The positive evaluation of Vance suggests that his assessment of Trump is to be given weight. We are told that Vance’s previous negative perception was proved wrong. Not that he concluded it was wrong, not the more neutral description of simply changing his mind. He moved from a wrong view of Trump to a right one. I might also comment on the unquestioning handling of the economic data. Did Trump’s policies really lead to those economic benefits or was he a lucky president in that his time in office coincided with a period of prosperity. It is arguable that the Tony Blair government of 1997 inherited an economy in good shape and benefited from tough decisions made by John Major and Ken Clarke. Keir Starmer is currently enjoying a period of low inflation and economic growth in Britain. After less that a 100 days in power it would be as silly for him to claim credit for those figures as claiming credit for England getting to the Euros final.
The author continues
More than economic growth, J.D. Vance saw that Trump had turned out to be on the side of conservative Christian values. Despite identifying him as ‘morally reprehensible’ in 2016, Vance came to understand Trump as ‘America’s last best hope’ in his first speech as the vice-presidential candidate.
Again, it’s not merely that Vance saw Trump as appearing to be on the side of Christian values (apperception), it’ that he saw that he WAS on their side (an assertion of objective fact). The difference is crucal.
He then lists seven reasons why people will vote for Trump and the tone and context does hive the impression that “will” means “should”, that if you care about these thigs then you will vote for Trump so that he concludes:
For the evangelical Christian who is concerned about all the issues that I have listed, and no doubt for J.D. Vance who has changed his mind, there is no choice in November. They WILL vote Trump.
Note the capitalisation there. Note not “are likely to.” Note too that there is no allowance here for the possibility that you might view things differently but an appeal to understand those who differ. Indeed, the tone gives the impression that if you don’t support Trump that you don’t care about those values. This is important because such an argument has been made on this side of the pond for why if you care about those things then you shouldn’t vote Labour.
Now, it may be that the author intended to include something to the effect of his own disclaimer along the lines of “these are not neccessariyl my views but I’m trying to state what an American Evangelical is thinking. However, it reads to much as though these are his views. That’s fair enough, he is entitled to them. I hope we can understand them. But what it doesn’t do a good job of is helping us to understand.
Here is the problem, I think. Such articles tend to either be written by people attempting to understand the mind of others they disagree with but are so hostile that they end up sneering or they are written by those who are so sympathetic that they come across uncritical. The same is true of any such attempt to “get into the head.” We’d run into the same challenges if attempting to “get into the head of a woman who has had an abortion. You risk either heavy condemnation and lack of grace or an acceptance not just of reasons but of outcome. You could do it seeking to get into the head of people on a whole range of issues from ethical things like euthanasia through to differences of theological perspective.
Here’s the thing. If I asked an Anglican or Presbyterian to write an article helping me get into the head of someone who baptises children then you’d say “Why don’t you just get him to say why he does it and get a Baptist to explain why they don’t.” I think it would be better in the US election case for Christian magazines to get different people to write “Why I’m voting Trump” and “Why I’m voting Harris.” EN in effect did this for the UK General Election. It allows for greater transparency.
This is the wider take home for all of us. If you want to understand why people believe, think, say, do what they do, then instead of trying to get into their heads, why not ask them?
[1] If you’re a Bible-believing evangelical Christian, you will vote for Trump | Evangelicals Now (e-n.org.uk)
[2] Incidentally, I think that we will just as happily ridicule Keir Starmer for coming across as prissy and preachy and for repeatedly saying that his father was a tool maker in order to sound connected to the working classes. We of course ridiculed Thersea May, for the repetition of strong and stable She was chistened “The Maybot”. John Major was portrayed as grey and wearing his underpants over his trousers. It is normal to ridicule and caricature our leaders. I don’t think this is really the barrier to understanding suggested.
Faithroots 