Thank you for telling me what I think

Evangelicals Now have published a couple of articles responding to Trump’s inauguration, one from a concerned Evangelical. The other from someone seeking to explain why Trump has evangelical support. Unfortunately most of the article is given over to telling us UK Evangelicals what we think about Trump and why we are mistaken. We are also accused of wanting to disown US Evangelicals who support Trump.

Apparently this all boils down to our dislike and disdain for the guy because we don’t like how he talks, his establishment approach and his sexual immorality. The charge is that we are snobs who should look down on a Geordie Prime Minister and there’s some hypocrisy because his sexual ethics were cultivated by the people like Harris that he opposed.

I don’t want to get too heavily into the specific arguments here. They were disappointingly shallow though. To be sure Trump’s way of talking is mocked as was George W Bush before him. There is a difference between how the two are regarded though even if some similarities. Nor do I really buy the “this is how New Yorkers talk” It’s more an exaggerated caricature of some New Yorkers. Further just because his way if talking, not just his accent reflects a culture doesn’t make the culture right.  I can give you a caricature of a grumpy Yorkshireman.  That doesn’t make the grumpiness right. Similarly, think of the equally boorish City Yuppie culture of the 80s. In fact Trump is more the US equivalent of the aged yuppie than the young Geordie.

The article forgets to mention. The criminality both around the anti establishment stuff, he has just pardoned those involved in the Capital Hill insurrection and of course in terms of his own personal morality.

Nor does it mention the significant issues many have concerning race and American Nationalism. Whether it’s the simple hubris of the NAGA slogan, the baiting of other countries and cities including our own or the expansionist talk about Greenland.

The author presumes to tell us what we have against Trump without bothering to find out and engage with us and find out what we really think.

Indeed, if the author stopped to ask us what we did think, he would find that it isn’t that we are dismissively writing off our poor brothers and sisters in the US. It is possible to maintain fellowship whilst disagreeing profoundly.  But more than that, one of the concerns raised is that at times Evangelical leaders in the US have spoken first to and for an American audience forgetting their own relationship to and impact on their brothers and sisters in the church around the World.

Disappointingly, the article’s focus on analysing UK perceptions doesn’t take us any deeper into understanding the Trump phenomenon.  There is something to look at there. Why do Evangelicals need a hero? Whether that’s the current concern to join the Jordan Peterson bandwagon or the longstanding tendency in the US to co-opt Republican presidents for the Evangelical cultural cause?

Finally, the unaddressed issues are first the possibility that a man could both seek to align himself with some causes that Evangelicals would endorse whilst for other reason be wholly unsuited for public office from a Christian perspective. Second, can we endorse those good things without feeling the need to excuse/justify or support the candidate and their platform? Third is it not possible for us to argue that other Evangelicals are deeply wrong on something without disowning them as brothers?