The accusation of immorality isn’t some sanctimonious liberal talking point. Many conservatives (Christians included) have admitted that Trump is a deeply immoral man, aligned with the worst people, and have made their peace with it. For nearly a decade, he’s been the candidate of Christians—mostly White ones. But many non-White voters cite their Christian faith as a reason for supporting him as well, and the Trump campaign has in fact courted non-White voters largely through Christian institutions.
Conservative Christians may have made their peace with this, but centrist and left-leaning Christians still struggle to explain it. One frequent excuse is to claim that their religion has been politicized by our fraught historical moment. There are convincing arguments against this, but that aside, it’s a curious position to hold. I would hope these same Christians don’t fret about politicization when talking about, say, the Black Church’s involvement in various human rights causes, or when their own church flies a rainbow flag.
It strikes me as a fantasy to believe that one can separate the political from the religious. Where there’s money, power, and influence, there’s politics. And, as history has shown, Christianity’s teachings can be used to support both the Civil Rights Movement and its decades-long backlash, culminating in the cult of Trump.
Another well-worn excuse is to claim that fascist-leaning Christians are in fact “fake Christians,” an obnoxious phenomenon that Religion Dispatches has explored many, many times. Predictably, the pro-Trump side hurls the “fake” accusation right back. Since the pro-Trump Christians appear to be in the majority, they may, in a sense, be right. But really, there’s no reality check for any of it. Writing for Sojourners, Noah Berlatsky provides a succinct response to this lazy thinking:
Fighting for a better Christianity is a worthy thing for Christians to do. But if Christians really believe in equality, charity, and humility, then that fight can’t just be an intra-Christian struggle over the true nature of what it means to be a Christian. Whether progressive Christians think that white Christian nationalists are Christian doesn’t matter to most people who aren’t Christians.
A third and slightly more sophisticated response is to claim that Christianity cannot be essentialized into a single tradition. Therefore, any attempt to hold the religion(s) accountable will inevitably raise the question: “Well, which Christianity are you talking about? Certainly not mine!” To be fair, this hews more closely to what we observe of Christians in the real world, and avoids some of the arbitrary and self-serving gatekeeping of the “fake Christian” routine.
Still, this response comes across as a dodge rooted in semantic nitpicking, even if the scholars who developed this approach never intended it that way. In the end, it gives too many people an excuse to never, ever admit that Christianity—yes, even as Jesus intended it, and certainly as many Americans practice it—can ever be wrong about anything, or ever be blamed for anything. By denying any correlation, they avoid a difficult conversation about cause. For many, this tactic becomes a form of special pleading that applies only to Christianity.
So, I acknowledge that we could always be more careful when using the terms Christianity or Christian in this context. Yet, as Chrissy Stroop argued in a recent piece, we should also avoid going overboard with trying “to distance Christianity from Christian nationalism,” as if they’re completely different things. That Venn diagram is probably closer to a figure-eight than a double-zero. The religion is what its followers do, how they live, and how they express that faith within and outside of their communities.
Again, we’re not extrapolating from some small minority. We’re talking about, at the very least, a huge minority—possibly a majority—along with some of the most prominent leaders of the largest denominations. Appeals to scripture (or “prooftexting”), debates over definitions, or pointing to the example of even smaller denominations won’t make the bigger problem go away.
The excuses are piling up at a difficult time for American Christianity. Virtually every survey shows that an unprecedented number of people are leaving the faith, and there may not be a single denomination taking the news well. Rather than acknowledge that grownups in a free and diverse society might seek a different path in life, religious leaders have warned that a loss of faith in Christianity will unravel our country, with little to back up their claim other than their own bigotry.
On the one hand, centrist and progressive Christians, much like conservatives, have defended the idea that their religion is vital to the public good; on the other, they’ve tried to explain why so many Christians would support an authoritarian takeover of this country, or look the other way while it happens. That contradiction is now laid bare, especially since the people who’ve walked away from the religion are far more likely to oppose the Trump movement.
For those trying to thread that needle, I’ll spell out the problem as simply as I can. If Christianity were the force for good we’re told it is, it would not have failed this test. If Christianity were the glue holding our society together, then only a tiny minority would lean fascist, and the rest would shout them down. If Christianity did a better job of cultivating morality than other worldviews, then being a Christian would be a reliable indicator that a person stands for decency, honesty, and the rule of law, and against cruelty and nihilism.
There would be no need for endless deflection. There would be no need for empty promises to reclaim the faith for Jesus. There would be no need to pretend that smaller, more socially conscious denominations somehow speak for the entire Church. Instead, the religion—from the bishops to the Sunday school teachers—would lead the way against authoritarianism and bigotry.
It’s not 2016 anymore. Centrist and progressive Christians (as well as the pundits who cover them) have run out of excuses. Instead of grasping for new ones, they might consider the possibility that Christianity has failed most Americans in this critical moment, and that at least some of the blame should fall on the religion itself. While they’re at it, they might reconsider the presumed moral supremacy of Christianity—progressive or otherwise—along with the simplistic tendency to equate “good” with “Christian” and “bad” with “not Christian.”
Let me be clear: I’m not demanding some zero-sum outcome, in which we now declare Christianity to be a force for evil. No serious person questions whether Christianity has done good in the world, or whether it has the potential to bring out the best in us. It has and it does. But our current predicament must seriously challenge the persistent and often manipulative claim that we’re doomed without Christianity, and that Christian faith (and temporal power) is absolutely essential to maintaining a just and peaceful society. It may have been in the past, but no longer, it seems. And, perhaps, never again.
