I’ve grown increasingly disappointed with Eric Metaxas over the last year. I used to really like Eric and his work. Of course I didn’t always agree with Metaxas on everything, and he seemed a little bit too “Chuck Colson-esque” at times (though I admire and respect a lot of Colson’s work too, especially his prison ministry). But Metaxas was, and is, a talented writer and speaker. The Socrates in the City events he hosts are often a joy to watch and listen to.
However, Metaxas seems to have bought into the lie that many American evangelicals (sociologically-speaking) have been sold in this last election cycle. Namely, the lie that conservative American Christians simply had to vote for Donald Trump or risk descending into an existence of socialist, secularist, state-sponsored persecution, the likes of which would have made the Decian persecution of the third century look like child’s play. This, of course, was one of the key factors that led to the much-discussed figure of roughly 80% of white, American evangelicals voting for Donald Trump.
Of course, this was fear mongering. One need only look at Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East fleeing from the murderous rampage of ISIS to see what actual persecution looks like. However, after his first week in office, Donald Trump has begun to institute the type of harsh sanctions that people like Metaxas feared. Of course, the difference is that it is ethnic and religious minorities who are bearing the brunt of such acts, rather than the Eric Metaxases of the world.
Much of this can be seen in a recent interview Metaxas had with The Atlantic’s Emma Green. While Metaxas has some good points (e.g., his analysis of the disdain that much of the media has for working-class Americans and the resulting backlash), the majority of the interview feels like Metaxas trying to defend a morally indefensible administration. I honestly felt bad for Metaxas trying to defend Sean Spicer’s first press conference and his “alternative facts”:
I would give Sean Spicer a pass. I wasn’t happy about what he said. But I just thought, “Given the context, no wonder they’re crazy angry.” It was a bad start, but I kind of understood how it happened.
I find this all sadly ironic coming from Metaxas, the author of best-selling biographies on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce. I’ve read through Metaxas’s Bonhoeffer bio twice, and while it anachronistically casts the German pastor in the mold of an American evangelical (Bonhoeffer was a German, neo-orthodox theologian who, like Karl Barth, does not fit into either of the Right/Left dichotomies we Americans divide Christianity into), it does an admirable job of demonstrating the Bonhoeffer’s efforts to defend Jews and other minorities from the fascist regime of National Socialism. While Trump is no Hitler (thank God), he does have fascist and nationalist tendencies. What is sad to me is that someone like Metaxas cannot seem to see that he has done the opposite of Bonhoeffer in so adamantly defending and supporting Donald Trump’s campaign and administration.
I still count Eric as my brother in Christ and I hope that he will come to see the error of his ways in selling out to a corrupt, extreme-Right political regime (just as I also hope my more progressive Christian brothers and sisters will see the error of selling out to the extreme Left). If and until he does so, all I can say is that he is hurting his Christian witness in extreme ways. For many non-Christians, voices like Metaxas are the face of conservative, orthodox Christianity. And if this is what evangelical faith looks like, those same non-Christians (who might otherwise be compelled by Christian faith) will want nothing to do with it.
As America continues to become a post-Christendom country, we cannot afford to harm our witness by so radically aligning with one political extreme or another. That is not to say we shouldn’t be politically engaged. We should be. That also is not to say that we cannot support either the Republican or Democratic parties. We can (though after this election, I followed George Will’s example and went from a being a Republican to a conservative Independent).
It is to say that even in the midst of being civically and politically engaged, we must never forget that our first allegiance is to Christ and His Kingdom, and any sort of temporal political activity that harms our witness as emissaries of that cruciform polis has descended into the realm of idolatry. And that includes the activity of leaders like Eric Metaxas.