Donald Trump: The Evangelical Christian’s Choice

Donald Trump was the resounding choice of white Christians who identified themselves as evangelical or as born-again. According to exit polls from the November election taken by a consortium of ABC News, NBC News, CBSNews, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press, fully 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Only people who identified with the Republican Party voted for Donald Trump at a higher percentage. Why? What did he stand for that attracted them so strongly.

            Perhaps Reverend James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and Family Talk radio, summed it up most succinctly. He identified three factors: “the sanctity of human life, the Constitutional guarantees of religious liberty that are being shredded , and the promise by Mr. Trump to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court.”

            The first and third of these are the same point: candidate Trump promised to advance the anti-abortion cause and move to prevent more abortions. The second point refers to Christian opposition to the legal advances made in gay rights in recent years and the steps that have been taken to require everyone to obey the law. In particular, it refers to Christian businesses being sued for refusing to sell their products to gay couples (e.g., wedding cakes) and to government officials who refused issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

            Of course this is not the first time that opposition to abortion and gay rights has motivated evangelical voters. When Richard Nixon ran for the presidency after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, he saw it as an issue that could favor Republicans and led his party to emphasize its opposition. Later, in 1979, Jerry Falwell and other evangelical leaders founded an organization called the Moral Majority.

            Although the Moral Majority lasted only 10 years, it paved the way for the entrance of evangelicals into political activity. For decades prior, evangelicals as evangelicals had largely stayed away from politics because politicians did not engage with matters that concerned them, such as preaching the gospel and evangelization. Falwell’s organization provided a way for these Christians to see their concerns in “secular” political terms that encouraged them to get involved and to vote.

            The Moral Majority’s platform emphasized three issues that still resonate today: traditional family values, opposition to abortion and opposition to gay legal rights. While most of the organization’s members and contributors were believers, the platform deliberately left out the Christian emphasis on the key teachings of Jesus, in particular, communicating the gospel and salvation, and helping the poor and downtrodden.

            The three issues emphasized by the Moral Majority were key issues of the 2016 election, more than 25 years after its demise. All three swirled around Donald Trump. On the one hand, Trump made clear his opposition to abortion. He said many times that he opposed gay marriage equality, although he was less consistent on that point.

            On the other hand, perhaps the most problematic aspect of Trump for evangelicals was his failure to live up to the picture of a traditional family man or to biblical expectations of a somber and mature male leader of society. It was not just that he had been divorced three times and had committed adultery, it was that his speeches and ongoing “tweets” were often contrary to Christian expectations of moral behavior—especially with regard to his treatment of women and those who opposed him.

            It is clear from the vast majority of votes Trump received from evangelical Christians that in the end this last concern was less important than his position on abortion and gay rights. Evangelicals did not want him to represent Christianity and its beliefs, but to be their champion in the opposition to abortion and to gay marriage.

            Perhaps evangelicals should be congratulated for voting on principle rather than “identity politics.” After all, the Christian in this race was Hilary Clinton, a person who attended church all her life, taught Sunday school for years, and who regularly sought God’s guidance through prayer, both in private and with colleagues and staffers.

            During the coming years, it will be interesting to see how matters play out. Will Donald Trump deliver for his ardent evangelical supporters? Will he come to be seen as their representative, whether as a champion or as a tarnished man? Will the future of evangelical Christianity be strengthened or weakened?
January 2017

St. Patrick’s Parade: Who can Celebrate?

The annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York went ahead last Monday (March 17th) just as it has for decades. Touted as America’s oldest and longest parade, nearly 200,000 people participated and perhaps a million spectators watched and cheered, most of them wearing green. The parade has no floats, just groups of people walking, from civic associations like the firemen and policemen to Irish dancers and pipe bands. They wear their uniforms or traditional costumes and proceed behind a banner identifying their organization.

This year, the parade took place without New York’s major, Bill De Blasio, and without the sponsorship of the Irish beer-maker Guinness. This is significant, for New York politicians always march in the Irish parade and Guinness has come to symbolize Ireland more than any other drink. Indeed, Guinness may be the only commercial brand immediately recognized as Irish the world over.

The reason for this decision is clear. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the private Irish-American fraternity who put on the parade, decided to exclude openly gay participants more than two decades ago. They have retained that exclusion this year despite the increasing legal and social acceptance of gay marriage.

Both the mayor and the brewery decided that inclusion of all New Yorkers (the parade is in no way limited to Irish participants only) was paramount and that the exclusion of gay participants was blatant discrimination.

The explicit reason given for the continuing exclusion of gay marching groups is that homosexuality is against the Hibernians’ Irish Catholicism.

That is an interesting position, because the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin has been inclusive for decades, letting gays and any other group to participate. A few years ago, a gay-themed float won the float competition.

So in the end, it boils down to Catholicism. The teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, like many other Christian churches and denominations, forbid homosexual practices of any sort. This is an official doctrine that goes back centuries, if not millennia.

Yet in a democracy, we also ask about the people, the individuals that make up the Catholic Church. Last year, the newly inaugurated Pope Francis authorized the first-ever official church survey of Catholic opinion on matters relating to belief, doctrine and practice.

One discovery by the Pope’s poll was that American Catholics were among the foremost supporters of gay marriage, with 54% being in favor. Other surveys observe the same phenomenon. In 2010, a Gallup poll showed that 62% of Catholics thought that homosexual relationships were “morally acceptable,” while in 2011, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found 63% of white Catholics thought same-sex marriage should be legal. Catholics favor gay rights and gay marriage more than any other religious group in this country.

So which Catholic position should the Ancient Order of Hibernians represent, that of Church doctrine or that of Church members?  It seems that the Hibernians have decided to enforce Catholic doctrine on their parade, rather than listen to the people of the Church to which they belong.

This places the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the odd position of allowing non-Catholics and non-Irish to march as themselves, but excluding Irish Catholic gays.

Yet when CBS asked Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who presides over the Catholic diocese in New York, for his view on the matter, he responded by saying, “I know that there are thousands and thousands of gay people marching in this parade….And I’m glad they are.” Perhaps next year they will be able to publically say so.