Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted
for Donald Trump in the previous election. That’s a record. That’s more white evangelicals than voted
for George W. Bush—and George W. Bush was a white evangelical. This makes no sense to people, especially
when you consider that Trump is not just the most irreligious president in modern history,
that his entire worldview makes a mockery of core Christian values like humility and
empathy and care for the poor; That this individual who couldn’t even name a single verse in
the bible when asked to do so, and yet - and yet - received a record number of votes by
white evangelicals. Scholars of religion—normal, rational, people—have
been trying to figure out why. Why? What happened? And I think that there’s a couple of things
to keep in mind. Number one, it’s white evangelicals. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted
for Trump, but 67 percent of evangelicals of color supported Hillary Clinton. Now, these are people who believed the exact
same thing, whose only real difference is that.. is the color of their skin. So let’s not ignore the fact that there
is a racial element to this support. Jim Wallace, the head of the Sojourners, a
liberal evangelical group, said it best when he said that these white evangelicals “acted
more white than they did evangelical.” And I think he’s right. The second reason I think has to do with the
pernicious influence of something called the prosperity gospel, which has gripped the imaginations
of white evangelicals. This is that version of Christianity preached
by these charlatans like Joel Olstein and T.D. Jakes, the essential gist of which is that
God wants you to drive a Bentley, that what Jesus really wants for you is material prosperity—and
indeed that’s how you know God has blessed you, is by your material prosperity. Many white evangelicals looked at Donald Trump,
and what they saw was a wealthy man. And that wealth, as far as they were concerned,
was just a sign of God’s blessings. And so that freed Trump from having to do
what every other candidate, certainly every other Republican candidate for president has
had to do, and that is: actually prove his spiritual bonafides. Trump never had to do that. All he had to do was just keep talking about
how rich he was. And for a large swathe of white evangelicals
that was enough. Thirdly, Donald Trump did something that no
other president, not even any Republican president courting the evangelical vote ever did. He expressly promised secular power to these
white evangelical groups. In his speeches to them and in the conferences
that he had, both private and public, he very clearly and very explicitly said that if they
voted for him that he would give them “their power back,” even if he didn’t agree with
their pet causes that he would just allow them to have those causes. And you can see as president he’s talking
now about removing, for instance, the Johnson Amendment, which is an amendment that prohibits
preachers and churches from actually engaging directly in politics and preaching politics
from the pulpit. It’s why they get to keep their tax break. No one has ever thought about removing this
requirement until Donald Trump. And now he is very seriously moving towards
allowing churches to take part directly in political activism as churches. But none of this, none of this explains the
most important phenomenon about white evangelicals in America, and that is this: In the span
of a single election cycle, white evangelicals have gone from being the group in America
that is most likely to say that a politician’s morality matters to the group that is now
least likely to say that. Atheists in America think that a politician’s
morality matters more than white evangelicals in America do—White evangelicals who continue
to refer to themselves as value voters. This is a phenomenon that can’t be explained
by just looking at the prosperity gospel or looking at racial matters. What you’re seeing is a gigantic group of
Americans who are fundamentally overturning their core theological beliefs that public
morality matters. And the only explanation that I have for it
is that Donald Trump has turned a large swathe of white evangelical Christianity into a cult,
into a religious cult, a dangerous religious cult. All the signs are there. Donald Trump functions—as he himself admitted
when he said offhandedly that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters—he
has become a kind of a prophetic divine character. Pat Robertson, the head of The 700 Club, a
very influential white evangelical, literally said that God took him in a dream up to heaven
and he saw Donald Trump sitting at the right hand of God. You know who actually sits at the right hand
of God, according to evangelicals? Jesus Christ. In other words, Pat Robertson is saying that
Donald Trump is essentially Jesus Christ. In fact, that’s not that weird. His own evangelical advisor, a pastor by the
name of Jeffers, said not too long ago that he would prefer Donald Trump as a candidate
over someone who “expresses the values of Jesus.” So what we are seeing now is that these white
evangelicals—not all of them but a fundamental core of them—have essentially latched on
to Donald Trump as almost a salvific character. They don’t just follow him. They don’t just agree with him. They almost worship him. And my fear is that, as we know from our very
recent history, cults, when confronted with the realities of the world, can often end
in catastrophic ways. We have a presidency that is deteriorating,
a president that is spiraling out of control. We have open conversations now about the 25th
amendment and impeachment. We have multiple investigations and the possibility
of indictments at the highest level. This is a presidency that is in danger of
completely disintegrating. That wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t
also a religious cult. Because when a religious cult begins to deal
with this kind of situation, when their cosmic ideas are suddenly butting up against the
reality of a failed leadership, they tend to double down. And that’s why I think that we’re in a
very dangerous place as a country right now. Because the only thing more dangerous than
a cult leader like Trump is a martyred cult leader.
