Evangelical Christianity and “Warfare” (part 1)

I’m always interested in reading news/opinion articles that seek to unravel the mystery of evangelical Christians’ deep, paradoxical, and seemingly unshakable support for Donald Trump. How can evangelical Christians endorse someone whose personal conduct and style is so much at odds with Christian principles?

I’ve heard Biblically-grounded arguments that God can use ungodly kings/leaders for divine purposes. I’ve seen Trump linked to a desire for black-and-white explanations of the world and to a need for authority. I’ve read discussions that separate personal character from policy, but none of the explanations work that well for me. A lot of these articles have “I’m an anthropologist exploring this strange foreign land” feel to them as opposed to the sympathetic investigation of the phenomenon that I’d like to see.

For whatever reason, this article by Elizabeth Bruenig led me to write this blog entry, my first one that focuses on religion and politics, not religion or politics. Perhaps this article sparked questions and comments because the author (like me) grew up in an evangelical environment but ended up a liberal. I feel the need to put my upbringing into conversation with my adult politics and the current state of politics, and I need to do so without demonizing the tradition in which I was born. Even though I have largely left this tradition, I’m enormously grateful for being raised in it. I fully see the gifts it brings, and I value them.

I was raised in devoted Southern Baptist family in a small Southern town. I participated in “sword drills” (which isn’t as exciting as it sounds, but it does prepare you in case you need speedy non-internet access to, say, Obadiah 2:7); I went to Vacation Bible School. Throughout my teenage years I either played piano, organ, or led the music on Sundays for my small home church. I played piano for a teen gospel quartet called “Cornerstone.”

I would call my upbringing unabashedly “evangelical” without necessarily being “fundamentalist.” I’ve been to funerals so wholeheartedly evangelical that the preacher made an altar call for people to be saved before it’s too late. My mother would automatically tear up whenever she thought about those who were lost and in need of salvation. Evangelism was a watchword for my early church years.

But “fundamentalism” was not. Baptist theology as I was taught it in the 60s and 70s had a strong emphasis on individual thinking. I have heard Baptist leaders criticize fundamentalist black-and-white approaches to the Bible (I remember one striking turn of phrase: “The problem with fundamentalists is that they’re ‘damn mentalists’ with no ‘fun.’ They’re more concerned with the rules in their heads than the love in their hearts.”) There was a proud connection to the “priesthood of the believer,” the notion that no one (not even an ordained minister) could tell you how to interpret the Bible. Everything pointed back to the authority of scripture, but in the end the only arbiter of “what the Bible says” was you and God.

My father was the Biblical scholar of the family, and his individual study led him to some interesting places. His favorite branch of theological study was eschatology, and the majority of the books weighing down our bookshelves were studies of the Book of Revelations. If pressed, I can still reconstruct a pretty good timeline for the Rapture, the Seven Year Tribulation Period, Armageddon, the Thousand Year Reign, Judgment Day, and the New Heaven and New Earth.

As I have noted in a previous blog entry, my autodidact father believed so strongly that everyone was equal in the eyes of God that he opposed the ordination of deacons (even though they’re clearly there in the New Testament). In spite of Paul’s commandment for women to be silent in church, my father came to believe that women should be ordained as ministers (having the approval of an old church stalwart like my father was very affirming for a female Baptist minister friend of mine). These aren’t exactly radical progressive insights, but they were definitely demonstrations to me of how a committed Christian scholar could find his own path.

When I was taught Baptist history, we proudly celebrated the Baptist contribution to the separation of church and state in America (Roger Williams and Maryland). This fierce independence influenced church structure. Although our church belonged to the Southern Baptist Convention, there was no central organization that either chose or recommended a pastor for a church (unlike Catholics, Presbyterians, or Methodists). Each local congregation was free to call whatever pastor it thought was best for them. Looking back, there’s certainly a “states-rightsy” feel to all this (undoubtedly part of being Southern Baptist), though I never noticed it at the time.

I won’t pretend that my small town Baptist church in the 70s was a hotbed of liberal progressive thought. It was, after all, a small town with necessarily conservative values on tradition. Fairly early on I strained against those bonds, leading me to leave that town. Only as an adult did I discover the advantages of that tradition. (I also discovered there’s a weird secret society of lefty academics who came from fundamentalist/evangelical homes, which does make an odd kind of sense. Once you decide that it’s worthwhile to study The Book in deep detail, it’s not that far away to think that maybe other books could be studied in that intense manner, too.)

My experience in the Baptist church was always a mix of local conservative values/rituals and potentially liberal theology. The theological message that came through to me was about a community of believers each seeking to find her/his path to God through Scripture, and that vision is still a big part of who I am. I watched at a distance as the Southern Baptist Convention tacked doctrinally to the right in the 80s. Perhaps the breaking point was an official repudiation of the idea of the “priesthood of the believer” as a group of strongly minister-centered churches came to power in the denomination. And there’s been no turning back after that. In my eyes (although I’m a Presbyterian), I never left the Baptist church; the Baptist church left me.

And so I’ve viewed from afar as “evangelical” (meaning “wanting to extend the Kingdom of God,” an impulse shared in differing degrees by all Christian churches) and “fundamentalist” (meaning “an overt return to a perceived core set of values”) apparently merged and took on a coherent new politics. And here is where I begin to be unable to recognize the version of the Gospel that circulates among the community that used to be my home.

If you look at the Elizabeth Bruenig article (and here’s a related one), there’s a consistent set of positions voiced by evangelicals. At least in the realm of politics, fundamentalist evangelicals are portrayed as united around opposition to abortion and climate change explanations; they favor lower taxes; they prioritize immigration; they focus on a conservative approach to gender, sexuality, and marriage. (There is no question raised that perhaps these policies are not embraced by large numbers of evangelicals, so I assume that this is correct. I would love to hear if that depiction in the press is an oversimplification.)

My question in return is (and this is now an outsider’s question): how the hell did these get to be the central values of the Gospel? I can understand believers coming to individual conclusions about each other those political issues. I could see the evangelical Christians of my upbringing having different opinions about these matters. How did evangelical Christians as a whole come to adopt these political stances as central to the faith, as something that unites believers?

The thing that really clicked for me in this article about evangelical support for Trump was the preponderance of “war” language. Christianity is under “attack” from an “incursion.” “Persecuted” Christians have been forced onto a “precipice” on the verge of a “catalysm.” They need to erect a “fortress,” and so they need a “protector” to look out for their interests. This wartime mentality means that you might have ally yourself with a “bully” in order to “defend” yourself.

War rhetoric calls for an all-out effort. It suspends our standards of decency while the fighting is ongoing. We use another set of (martial) laws that bypasses our normal rules for how we treat each other. War doesn’t tolerate dissent; you’re either for us or against us.

If you are in a war, then you can’t be picky about your protector. Criticisms of that protector aren’t going to matter much to you; in fact, they may remind you of how persecuted you feel. You thank God you have a bully who will attack and not just defend, because this isn’t just warfare; it’s a battle against unseen “principalities and powers.” It’s a battle on a cosmic scale with Armageddon surely around the corner.

As the son of self-taught Biblical prophecy scholar, let me tell you that nobody does stakes like Christianity can. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a bunch of secular johnny-come-latelys compared to us. We invented the apocalypse (which might be our most widely marketable product these days). If the end of the world is nigh, you’re just grateful that someone is fighting for you in a good Old Testament “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” manner. Your enemies need some good old-fashioned smiting, and it’s good to have someone who isn’t bound by “cheek turning” principles on your side of the war.

And thus we return to one of the continuing themes of this blog: the power of words. On the religious side of the blog, I’ve advocated for calling yourself a “follower of Christ,” not a “Christian.” I’ve talked about the benefits of calling God Father and mother. I have asserted that calling each other by our preferred names is helpful for creating dialogue. Words frame our experience. Reasserting that you are in a war creates that war, even if external circumstances do not support that claim. You find supporting evidence, and this colors your world to make the war emotionally real.

In spite of the fact that I have largely left this tradition (or that it left me), I hope I still have enough credibility to say to evangelical Christians: this is not war. You are not under attack. You are not being persecuted. If you step away from that language, you will discover that Christianity is being criticized, that it is less central to culture than it once was. That’s not the same as “war,” and it is a damaging overreaction to speak that way.

(More on the pros and cons of “war” next time….)