Evangelicals and Politics Today
Historically, Americans have been skittish about mixing religion, politics, and government; and part of the connection to the old monarchial regime was the overarching power of the Anglican Church and the favorable taxation and property control the church enjoyed. It was taken as a given that there was an unbreachable “separation of church and state” which persisted until the fairly recent evangelical connection to and for the Republican Party; it is ironic that the very strongest opponents of collusion between the church and state had been the independent minded evangelicals.
Politically, socially, economically, and governmentally, there has almost always been conflict that arises when a large denomination of Christianity in America becomes inseparably tied to political policies that advocate for the wealthiest Americans, American exceptionalism, and against poorer individuals who are viewed as unable to “give back” to the US, and the evangelicals were often the most vocal in voicing such opinions.
However, as religious rhetoric has gradually–then more rapidly–become inserted into US politics, both the theology and politics of everyday Americans draw farther away from the dimension of Deus revalatus, Deus absconditus, which prohibits any group from claiming God entirely for themselves and not at all for others.
It is hearkening back to the old English prayer, “God bless me and my son John, his wife and my wife, us four. And no more.”
This claim that God is for us and against our enemies–tied with increasing social expectations of nationalism–has had dangerous results throughout history over time. An impactful consequence of this tie between theology and nationalism is that political and religious beliefs increasingly merge into one encompassing set of values—the true religion, the true church, the true traditions, the true government, and the true people. Specific social issues, such as abortion, contraception, homosexuality, diversity of color and national origin, health problems such as immunization, and even the environment, are increasingly viewed as religious issues by not just evangelical Christians but other like-minded denominations.
Individuals’ faith are often called into question if they hold a view on any one of these issues that is different than the expectation. Marriage is becoming heavily dominated by the concept that one must be of the right faith—especially evangelical—the right political affiliation—Republican, or come from the right part of the country—old Confederate South or the evangelical Midwest. Until fairly recently, the causes of divorce were fidelity, economics, and religion; currently, the leading cause is having differing religio-political points of view at odds with the in-law family.
For decades, evangelicals have propped up Republican presidents even though church attendance and even formal affiliation has fallen steadily and significantly. Evangelicals are still politically vigorous, and they are scoring victories for their chosen political champion. It therefore seems appropriate to examine the political bent of evangelicals because white Americans who align with Trump are more likely to start identifying as evangelical, even if some of them no longer sit up in the pews and to equate their religion with his politics and concepts. There is a popular painting and photo available of a saintly Trump sitting at the presidential desk with the Savior standing behind him in a glowing holy light resting his protective and approving hand on the designated earthly leader’s left shoulder. Trump sells his own MAGA Bible, even with signed copies for those with enough funds to afford it.
Only slightly above 10% of American evangelicals identify as politically liberal—i.e. as a Democratic or Democratic-leaning voter–and more than 56% view themselves as “very conservative” or “conservative”. Even then, it is not enough just to be a Republican, one most be a MAGA [Make America Great Again, the Donald Trump mantra] Republican or be labeled with the negative sobriquet “rino” [Republican In Name Only], a fate worse than being an atheist, apparently.
Under both Bush presidents and then under President Trump, the Republican Party has progressively come to rely on gaining larger percentages of traditionally Republican demographics instead of expanding their voting base. Adding to the schism, many will justify this political decision as a necessity, but rhetoric and projects such as the ones put forward Bush have minority demographics that may have otherwise voted conservative on religious freedom: “Christian” education, abortion, homosexuality, sex education, and a variety of other topics. An example is a Kentucky governor expressed his support for a developer and his construction of a life-size Ark in Williamstown, Kentucky; Kentucky’s state government awarded the Ark Encounter” with and $18 million tax break, despite learning the park would only hire Christian employees.
There are roughly four million Kentuckians. ~33% were members of evangelical Protestant churches [Southern Baptist Convention 24.25%]; ~10% were Roman Catholics; ~9 % mainline Protestant churches [e.g. United Methodist Church ~5%]; ~.05% members of orthodox churches; <1% 0.88% affiliated with other theologies; and 47% were not affiliated with any church. Who represents their interests? Or the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the LDS, or Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Taking the large view of the United States, the religious demographics are: 43-47% Protestants; 30-21% Catholics; Unaffiliated: ~26%; LDS ~2%; Jews ~2%; Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus ~1% each; other religions ~3%. In two separate 5-4 votes, the Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional to display the Ten Commandments on public property as long as the intent of the exhibit is not to push a religious agenda. The commandments are on prominent display in the Supreme Court building itself. It is not the law of the land. What other agenda of any interest is there? Is the United States a “Christian nation”? Is such a designation an actual law? After all, the first commandment is “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me”.
In fact, there are no laws that forbid the worship of all but one god, much less the specific god of the ancient Hebrews. Significantly, American law, in general, is silent on the existence of gods. Opponents claim that the Christian Right is no longer simply a religious movement but has become a driving faction within the Republican Party with eyes toward making it a national legal status along with English only as the official national language.
The concept of the United States being or becoming an exclusive Christian Nation or further that there should be a “Christian empire”—at least in part spread by the United States—comes from a poor knowledge of history. There, are potentially dangerous connections to historical religious nationalism and the catastrophes they have caused throughout the world. Roman persecution of early Christians is the legitimate stuff of legend. The close tie of Eastern churches to the Byzantine Empire at the end of the first millennium was a major cause for the Great Schism in 1054 between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich promoted a political party version of Christianity through their “Positive Christianity” as justification for human rights atrocities against the “untermenschen” nonChristian, nonAryan, nonGermans.
There is abundant historical precedent for Christian imperialism resulting in degradation of Christian morals, atrocities, and loss of life—consider for a moment the inquisition, the burning of heretics, the abuse of the Spanish Conversos under the influence of clergyman Tomas de Torquemada, refusal to ordain women to the priesthood, antisemitism, antiscience (e.g. the punishments for opponents of the incorrect church theory of the sun rotating around the earth), and antievolution (an antiscience viewpoint shared with Protestants and other religions), the crusades, sale of indulgences, perpetration of religious wars, decimation of colonized people in the name of God, religious based hypernationalism/jingoism, decimation of native peoples in the Americas by European infections including small pox and syphilis spread along with the Gospel message, concentration of wealth and power from one bishopric down to the next over centuries, etc.
Protestants have their share of such efforts at domination and with similar untoward results: consider that early Protestantism was not a single, unified, coherent, movement; it was a movement that was characterized by conflict, tension, and angry flux from the start. Protestants assert that The Reformation had to be political because the medieval church had become a political power, and the popes had claimed authority over the secular rulers. The current mix of religion and politics in the United States echoes some of that sentiment. Linked religious and secular authorities emerged from the Reformation stronger than ever, note the present election year politics in the US.
Martin Luther did not envision a state where public dissent from official church doctrine and official church practice would be tolerated. Nor did he envision a state where non-Christian religions or atheism would be tolerated. His Protestant Church—especially in Geneva–not only claimed power in theory but strove to practice it and penetrated every aspect of life with its regulations. He had close relationships with helpful princes that have led some to speak of Luther’s Reformation as a “princes’ reformation,” meaning it was primarily a political revolution.
Luther publicly condemned violence; but some of his followers took up arms; in the name of secularization, reformists mounted sieges, confiscated legally owned Catholic church property, and fomented the German Peasants War. There was no individual freedom of religion in Switzerland—or indeed all of Europe—at that time anyway. The maxim of cuius regio, eius religio [“whose region, his religion”] meaning that citizen subjects had to adopt the faith of their rulers. Dissenters who did not want to convert usually had to emigrate elsewhere to a region where their faith was the state religion.
John Calvin established a special court called “the consistory” to hear cases of moral lapse such as blasphemy, adultery, disrespect to authorities, gossiping, witchcraft, and participation in rites considered superstitious by church authorities, for which the punishments were dreadful among his constituents.
Protestants instituted the fratricidal English Reformation and the tyranny of King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell resulting in wholesale theft and slaughter of priests and Catholic churches. The Act of Supremacy in 1534 declared the king the “only supreme head of the Church of England” a political monarch with no real religious involvement otherwise. The first of the French Wars of Religion—a series of armed conflicts between Catholics and Huguenots–started with a massacre of Protestant Huguenots and soon convulsed into atrocities on both sides. Interreligious conflicts led to wars in many regions of Central Europe, with equal blame for both sides for the deaths and destruction, all in the name of hegemony for either the Catholic or Protestant factions involved.
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation era conflicts–the European wars of religion– especially the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40% of its population.
In the American colonies, in 1620, the Puritan pilgrims received a charter from the King of England that legitimized their colony, allowing them to do trade and commerce with merchants in England, in accordance with the principles of mercantilism. Flagrantly intolerant civil and religious restrictions were most strictly applied by the Puritans of Massachusetts which resulted in various banishments applied to dissenters to enforce conformity, and also the branding iron, the whipping post, the bilboes, and the hangman’s noose, in liberal use. Notable individuals persecuted by the Puritans include Anne Hutchinson who was banished to Rhode Island during the Antinomian Controversy and Quaker Mary Dyer who was hanged in Boston for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony—all in the name of the “true religion” in association with the true political government, based on self-serving and corrupt economic policies.
Definitions have changed significantly. One of the most important is that of “religious freedom” which is now widely deemed by religionists to mean that their religion has the right both to its own beliefs, but also to determine—under the law–the lifestyle of dissenters, such as the LGBTQ community and their practices, the practices leading to free and open voting which impact minorities who may vote otherwise, and for whom, by whom, and in what manner, governing should be carried out in their “Christian Nation”.
