The Christian vote is flocking to Trump, the least likely leader of Christians
One of the great mysteries of the Donald Trump era is why so many Christians view him positively.
Of the 46 men who have been president, only three were not associated with a Christian religion. But none of the 46 — except Donald Trump — has so regularly and openly violated bedrock Christian teachings. So far as we know, none of the others has gone on record, as Trump did in his book “Think Big,” denouncing Christians as "fools," "idiots" and "schmucks."
Consider the Ten Commandments. Trump’s prosecutions show he has violated numbers 9 (“You should not bear false witness”) and 10 (“You shall not covet”). And now he’s asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let him violate the 8th Commandment as well: “You shall not steal.”
Nevertheless, before Trump's hush-money trial revealed salacious details of his life, a Pew poll found that two-thirds of white evangelical protestants viewed the former president favorably. Now, Trump has allied himself with Christian nationalists who want to abandon the separation of church and state and turn their values into law. In other words, the dictums of the minority would be forced upon the entire country.
In the 2020 election, exit polls indicated that more than 80 percent of white evangelical protestants voted for Trump. According to one religious leader, the former top official for the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, a significant number of conservative Christians think Jesus' teachings are too liberal: "That doesn’t work anymore." They prefer to follow Trump in America's culture wars.
Trump opens some of his rallies with a video that begins, "On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: I need a caretaker, so God gave us Trump." Evangelical TV pastor Hank Kunneman describes the former president's criminal charges as a battle between good and evil. "The hand of God is upon him, and he cannot be stopped."
That remains to be seen.
Let's dig deeper into how Trump's words and behaviors square with the Christian Bible.
In sworn testimony during Trump's hush-money trial, the publisher of National Enquirer revealed that Donald Trump had worked "hand in hand with the infamous national tabloid to…smear his political opponents with shameful lies and innuendo." The Bible says, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." (Exodus 20:16).
According to Proverbs 6:16-19, the Lord hates "a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." The Washington Post found that Trump told nearly 30,600 lies while president, more than six per day. Editorialists and historians have called him the most "accomplished and effective liar" ever in American politics," and a "serial liar" who "will say anything to satisfy his supporters or himself'."
Trump was found guilty of a multi-year scheme to fool lenders by misrepresenting the value of his assets. But the Bible says, "No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house" (Psalm 101:7).
Now, Trump is selling Bibles to profit from the same scripture that condemns many of his actions.
Trump's un-Christian behaviors are especially egregious when they threaten irreparable damage to the environment. The National Association of Evangelicals points out, “We are not the owners of creation.” Instead, “we are ... summoned by God to ‘work it and take care of it.’” (Genesis 2:15)
Yet, Trump's administration reversed, revoked or rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. He withdrew the United States from the international agreement to get the mother of all environmental crises, global warming, under control. He still calls climate change a "hoax." And he promises that "drill, drill, drill" will be one of his first dictates if he wins the office again.
These positions directly contradict Laudato Si, the historic encyclical Pope Francis issued in 2015 about caring for "our common home." The pope wrote, "Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. Yet, we are called to be instruments of God our Father, so that our planet might be what he desired when he created it. …
“The problem is that we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis. … There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected. … The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels."
Pope Francis issued an addendum last fall, scolding world leaders for failing to confront global warming. He criticized "attempts to deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue," the world's "growing technocratic paradigm," the tendency to view nature as "an object for exploitation," and ineffective world organizations.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America says, "We see the despoiling of the environment as nothing less than the degradation of God's gracious gift of creation. … God's command to have dominion and subdue the earth is not a license to dominate and exploit it.”
The Evangelical Environmental Network has issued a "Declaration on the Care of Creation," which says, "God's purpose in Christ is to heal and bring to wholeness not only persons but the entire created order.”
However, the most relevant and important citations from the Bible right now are from the Sermon on the Mount and Jeremiah 14:14. Jesus warned, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." In Jeremiah, the Lord warns, 'The prophets are prophesying falsehood in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them, nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a false vision, divination, futility, and the deception of their own minds."
This November, every voting station in the United States should have those warnings posted outside.
William Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations on national climate and energy policies. He is a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy.