How Evangelicals View God As Like Donald Trump

Why would I say that “Evangelicals View God as Like Donald Trump”? It struck me quite suddenly recently that there is a parallel between how Evangelicals view “faith” and how they approach political leaders. When we realize this, we understand what an appalling view of God they have, and it makes sense of their support for Donald Trump. Let me explain.

For conservative religious people, “faith” means unquestioning allegiance to God and their faith, understood as a unified package. Since no one can genuinely say they understand the Trinity, the incarnation, and other important doctrines, what this ultimately means is that one is required to pay lip service to God. The people who have said that they would believe it if the Bible said “2 + 2 = 5” illustrate this well. Such a statement is meaningless. There is no way to actually believe that if you have two bananas and add two more you have five bananas. (To do so would be, well, bananas.) Saying this isn’t faith or truth, it is pandering.

Salvation Through Pandering?

Now let’s think about why people pander. They pander someone when they want something from them, obviously. Evangelicals want God to give them salvation. Thus they seek to pander God.

I am not persuaded that conservative religious people actually believe that God is unaware that such statements as “I’d believe it if it said that Jonah swallowed the whale” are meaningless nonsense. That’s what is disturbing. The view of God one ends up with is a dictator who prioritizes allegiance over truth, and demands that you demonstrate it if you want to be spared.

In essence, another version of “bow to me or I’ll torture you.”

I wrote the above before the murder of Renee Good, but some of the responses to it (even from some who would call it tragic) illustrate the point. They say that if she had simply submitted to authority, she’d be alive.

In the United States, there are laws that reflect a belief in objective morality, which is not “do whatever an authority figure tells you or die” but “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” So-called Conservative Christians like to insist that the Founding Fathers were Christians (and some were), but when push comes to shove many of them clearly don’t think that a liberal lesbian has unalienable rights.

Let’s circle back to how we’ve already seen that Evangelicals view divine authority. If you are told to move, move. If you don’t and you die, or suffer eternal punishment, the fault is yours.

Divine Bullying and Child Sacrifice

The problem with this view of God as the ultimate bully can be seen in the Abraham story. If you are persuaded that God is demanding that you kill your child, should you do it? Some claim that the problem is a false one because God is good and so would never demand that.

Except that according to the story in Genesis, God did demand it, and Abraham took the demand seriously. According to the story as we now have it, it was just a test, and as a result the text becomes a means to argue against the practice of child sacrifice that prevailed for a long time in ancient Israel.

If you say that whatever God demands must be right, and so you should obey whatever God commands, it does not allow that morality is something that we can figure out, which is what Jesus taught. Morality is empathy. Morality is doing to others what we would want done to us. Thus human sacrifice is wrong. You can say that therefore God would never demand it, and that is fine, so long as you acknowledge that there were biblical authors who thought otherwise (see Ezekiel 20:25-26).

There are many aspects to this and many details that one could explore, but I want to stay focused on the point that Evangelical support for Donald Trump reflects the way they view God.

Conservative Christianity?

I write the above as someone who was once a conservative Christian. When I was one, it meant something that I don’t think the term does any longer. A conservative Christian might serve in law enforcement but we would have expected a conservative Christian police officer, for instance, to be more likely to respect the humanity of a criminal and want to reason with them rather than shoot them. When I was in those circles, no one who shot someone and walked away uttering two swear words would be likely to pretend to be a conservative Christian. If they did, we’d evangelize them, or question their salvation, or call upon them to repent of their backsliding. Yet the father of the ICE agent and murderer Jonathan Ross claims that his son is a conservative Christian. The claim to be Christian is dubious in view of his actions and his language. But even the claim to be conservative must be challenged. What is he conserving? He is certainly not a conservative American. He seems to hate America, with its emphasis on the right of every individual to life (among other things).

Perhaps at the heart of the problem is what is at the focus of this blog post. Evangelicals view God as like Donald Trump. If you want to keep your political position and career, pander to the tyrant. If you want eternal salvation, pander to the Tyrant.

As a liberal Christian rooted in emphases that go back to the very beginnings of Christianity, and as an academic who studies many aspects of religion but above all else the Christian scriptures, I am happy to admit that there are elements of this view of authority in the Bible. These were the assumptions about authority in the ancient world.

Yet we also see running throughout a challenge to this view, even if it also influences depictions of rulers both divine and human. Ahab cannot seize Naboth’s vineyard just because he is king and get away with it. David cannot rape Uriah’s wife and have the man murdered just because he is king and get away with it. They do these things, but prophets step forward to challenge and condemn.

Donald Trump is doing a lot of things, and his henchmen are doing likewise. Thank God that there are prophets who are stepping forward and speaking out against this.

Evangelicals view God as like Donald Trump. If they want to get right with God, they need to view God as one who would inspire a Nathan or an Elijah to challenge someone like Donald Trump.