Evangelicals Worshiping Trump Is as About as Unchristian as It Gets
Trump diehards who believe he’ll bring about a Christian nation kind of get everything about Christianity completely wrong.Matt Lewis
Senior Columnist
Updated Oct. 03, 2023 2:44AM EDT / Published Oct. 02, 2023 9:00PM EDT
Fanatical idol worship was once reserved for rock stars. Today, it is former President Donald Trump who enjoys cult-like popularity.
“I’m going to start crying now,” a middle-aged woman told an interviewer in Iowa, this weekend. “But when [Trump] comes out on stage [and] I can see him face-to-face live, it’s going to be the best day of my life. I love that man.”
She’s not alone. After two impeachments, a Capitol riot, and four indictments, Trump retains a dominant hold over Republicans who have put their faith in “that man.” Literally.
Consider recent news that a prominent conservative group spent $6 million testing more than 40 TV ads, only to conclude that “all attempts to undermine [Trump’s] conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”
And while this is true for many Republicans, Trump’s hold over evangelicals (who constitute a large percentage of Iowa GOP primary voters) is particularly strong. If you want to understand why nothing will sway them, The New York Times columnist David French noted recently that an old friend told him, “David, I was with you on opposing Trump until the Holy Spirit told me that God had appointed him to lead.”
Good luck coming up with a persuasive argument that will trump someone who says “the Holy Spirit told me…”
Never mind the humiliation that pro-Trump prophets have faced for prophesying he would win in 2020—and then that, despite losing, he would be reinstated in 2021. There is a real sense among many Christians (whether this “word of knowledge” came directly from the man upstairs, or was shared second hand) that Trump is still God’s vessel in 2024.
Although I am not a pastor or a theologian, I am a non-Trump conservative and an (albeit flawed) evangelical—which is to say that while I marvel at the hold Trump has over many of my fellow believers, I do not scoff at the notion that the Holy Spirit can guide believers.
This belief no doubt puts me among the minority of Americans today. Even many Bible-believing Christians are “Cessationists,” who believe that prophecies and other “signs and wonders” (like healings and speaking in tongues) generally ceased after the apostles died.
Regardless, the practical problem with prophecies is that they empower every potential crank to justify anything they want to do or say.
Belief in prophecy enables charlatans, to be sure. But it also allows well-meaning, if delusional, people to reverse-engineer rationalizations to do things they want to do, even if doing so contradicts common sense or church doctrine. (But God told me I should leave my family and marry that cocktail waitress!)
In recent years, untold numbers of Christians have employed this permission structure to justify supporting Trump—a man who bragged about grabbing women by their privates, paid off a porn star for sex, and was found liable for sexual assault (just to name a few of his not-so-greatest hits).
