John Wilson doesn’t like John Fea’s argument in Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Fea argues that fear is the essential through-line in the story of evangelical political engagement. Wilson says, c’mon, isn’t everybody afraid these days?
Am I afraid of the legacy that Donald Trump and the court evangelicals will leave for the nation and the church? Yes. I am very afraid. But I also realize that I cannot dwell in this fear and, through the spiritual disciplines of my faith, respond to such fears with hope. In other words, I need to trust God more. As the writer Marilynne Robinson once said, “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”
But I should also add that any fear I might have about Trump, the court evangelical agenda, and their legacy is based on truth and facts. This is different from the fear I see among many of Trump’s evangelical supporters.
Most evangelical fear is built upon endless lies. These include the false idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and needs to be reclaimed, the straw man that all Democrats are socialists, Marxists, and atheists trying to undermine American liberty, the idea that impeachment will lead to a civil war, the belief that immigrants will kill us if they get too close, or the conviction that abortion will end if we just overturn Roe v. Wade. The overwhelming majority of conservative evangelical Christians who I know and talk to on a regular basis believe one or more of these false claims. They get their talking points from Fox News and then read the Bible to make it fit with these talking points. They believe that there is a deep state–an illuminati working to undermine God’s anointed president. They are so afraid of Hillary Clinton that they think she should be locked-up. They believe that demonic forces are unraveling America. And if anyone offers an alternative view to these beliefs they will be castigated as a purveyor of “fake news.” Again, I have spoken at length to evangelical family members, readers of this blog, and members of my church who believe one or more of these things. I get their nasty e-mails, social media messages, and multi-part voice messages.
John Wilson–you need to get out more. The fearful people I am writing about here do not read back issues of Books & Culture or attend the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing. They do not talk theology in the coffee shops of Wheaton, Illinois. There is an entire world of evangelical Christians out there who you have not yet met. They are very afraid. They seek comfort in strongmen of both the political and religious variety. Donald Trump and the court evangelicals are exploiting their fears for political gain.
This is very good. There are elite evangelicals who try to claim that the rarefied spaces they occupy are the real evangelical spaces. I don’t think that’s an intellectually or morally serious posture. Fea has his hand on the pulse of the evangelical mainstream, while Wilson appears to be in denial.
But we also ought to be more specific than Fea is here. I’d ask Fea, for example, what is the demographic profile of these evangelicals he is hearing from? Are they white? Are they male? How old are they? The unqualified use of “evangelicals,” which appears at times in Fea’s book too, strikes me as problematic.
We need to be specific, because when we say evangelicals are afraid, it can come across as almost exculpatory. “Hey, they mean no harm, they’re just afraid.” In contrast, what I mean when I say white evangelicals are afraid is that their fear is directly connected to unchristian investments in power and hierarchy.
Thinking about the relationship between proximity to power and fear about losing power helps us to cut through the noise about whether some white evangelical fears are well-founded. The point is that regardless of how legitimate these fears are, lunging for power in the form of Donald Trump is a ridiculous response for which there is no excuse. It’s a response emanating from a place of power and privilege, a response from people who have learned to rely on these advantages (even if only psychological) to feel at peace in the world. The idea of being thrown back on their faith alone is terrifying.
Black evangelicals, in the face of a society far more hostile than anything white evangelicals have known, somehow have managed to avoid investing their political hopes in a Christ-hating demagogue. Imagine that.
Colorblind Christians 