I Was Wrong About Donald Trump
Way back in October 2016, just a few weeks before Donald Trump was first elected President of the United States, I wrote a blog post titled Thank God for Donald Trump.
My thesis was that conservative Christians in the United States had long put their hope in the Republican Party. Now they were stuck with Donald Trump, a presidential candidate that was so un-Christian in his words and actions that he would force evangelicals to reconsider their reliance on political power.
This is what I said:
My hope is that Donald Trump has helped to bring about the break between the church and politics. Trump may have been exactly what this world (not just the USA) needs to remind us of the weakness of our political leaders.
It was a nice hope but I was completely wrong and very naive.
This is actually not criticism of Trump, as he never claimed to be taking on the role of the one who would cure evangelicals of their political aspirations.
It has been interesting to watch Trump’s evolving relationship with evangelicals. At first there was a currying for his favour. For many, that paid off as his appointing of Chief Justices led to the overturning of Wade v. Roe, the very thing they had been seeking to do.
There was reaction against Trump in some corners of evangelicalism, led by such thinkers as Russell Moore and David French. They held on to conservative theology but saw Trump as incompatible with Christian values, despite Trump’s apparent pro-life position.
During the campaign for the 2024 election, there was a shaking of Trump’s evangelical support. Trump softened his position on abortion to the point that some conservative evangelicals stated they could no longer vote for Trump, seeing him as “abandoning” the pro-life position.
Despite all of this, some criticizing Trump of being too liberal and others of being too conservative, there still has been strong evangelical support of Trump.
My goal of this post is not to analyze the election or even Trump but to reflect on the church. While my hope for the church in my post from eight years ago was fulfilled in a small subsection of evangelicalism, in general Trump still enjoys evangelical support.
Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, he knows how to give Christians just enough but not too much influence. He was able to shift his position on abortion despite many evangelicals claiming that they only voted for Trump to vote against abortion. Some cried foul and yet it did not seem to make much of a difference in the end.
Evangelicalism in general has not given up on its quest for greater political influence. I really thought that Trump would be so distasteful that evangelicals would want to separate themselves from him. And yet even his recent convictions seemed to not dissuade people but perhaps even helped his identity as an outsider.
Ultimately, this post is not about Trump, it is about me. I was wrong. I thought that Trump as a Republican candidate, and at that point only potentially the President, would be a good thing for evangelicalism. I thought his crude character would shock evangelicals out of their pattern of seeking political power. I was wrong.
