Pity poor David French. According to his own explicit standards white American Evangelical Christians would be betraying none other than Jesus Christ by throwing their support behind Donald J. Trump. Now poor Mr. French feels compelled to justify this Christ-betrayal by a vast majority of these evangelicals. Hard times for a rightwing Christian, I guess.
Alas, if only there were some parable out there that would have forewarned the righteous Mr. French not to betray his chosen lord and savior. I bet he would have even paid a small fee to someone who could have told him such a tale. It’d be worth at least, I don’t know, say twenty, no, thirty silver coins.
One year ago Mr. French wrote an article, Don’t Bend Your Knee to Trump, Evangelicals, in which he argued that “A candidate who subverts all of our most cherished values should be avoided at all costs.”
He went on to say that
American Evangelical Christianity [….] represents the body of Christ on this earth. It is a flawed vessel, to be sure, but its moral witness is still of incalculable worth.
Now, it’s not leftists claiming that American Evangelical Christianity “represents the body of Christ on this earth”, and that supporting Trump would be an utter betrayal of that mission — it’s an American Evangelical Christian by the name of David French at NRO making that claim.
French concluded that
Evangelical leaders: If you back Trump, for the rest of your days, you will be forced to live with having had a hand in fracturing our nation on the basis of race, discarding the sanctity of marriage, and scorning honesty itself — all for the chance, the remote chance, that Trump will make one or two decent Supreme Court picks. You will be selling your integrity for the most meager of returns.
[….]
This decision, by contrast, should be easy. Trump is not worth your consideration or even one moment of your time. Let others bend the knee.
Now that Trump has been elected with overwhelming support among American Evangelical Christians, Mr. French has decided that those rightwing Evangelical ideals of “incalculable worth” that represent Christ himself on earth can be tossed to the gutter.
From Pew:
fully eight-in-ten self-identified white, born-again/evangelical Christians say they voted for Trump
Behold, David French’s come-to-Judas moment in his post yesterday:
The False Moral Superiority of Progressive Evangelicals in the Trump Era
While there were some Evangelical leaders who tried vainly to cast Trump in virtuous terms, the more intelligent (and ultimately persuasive) defense was simply that he was the “lesser of two evils,” a person who — despite his many flaws — at least wasn’t actively opposed to the Evangelical community.
We’ve gone from representing “Christ on earth” by opposing Trump to…. meh, Trump’s ok, I mean, he’s got the power now.
French then devotes some paragraphs to matters related to sex, explaining to us how evangelicals are not, in fact, obsessed with sex.
French moves on to NRO’s deepest topic of shame, racism.
None of this, however, addresses the thorny issue of race. There, too, though, the Left can’t claim the moral high ground. Indeed, there is not now on the national scene any distinct political movement that’s offering meaningful solutions to America’s lingering and persistent racial problems.
French next goes on to denounce the supposed “destructive rage” of Black Lives Matter, and the progressive evangelicals that support the movement.
Well, my gosh, no one has built an anti-racist movement that isn’t BLM or left-leaning which rightwing evangelicals could happily join. so unfair!
The central implication of these statements made by our esteemed and highly moral Christian writer is: French can’t even consider, cannot even imagine the possibility that rightwing American Evangelical Christians could “offer meaningful solutions” to anti-Black racism. Because in fact, it can’t: the white Christian Right is, like NRO, racist at its core. So there’s nothing to be done about racism.
Mr. French concludes:
The true political and moral test of any movement comes not in how it handles a surprise election contest but in how it fights the battles to come.
In sum:
French during the election said that white evangelicals should not support Trump, as he is a
candidate who subverts all of our most cherished values [and] should be avoided at all costs.
French after Trump gains power:
White Evangelicals have no need to apologize for choosing Donald Trump
Trump did not corrupt conservatives and the Christian Right. He just exploited the racism, hatred, and moral rot at the center of those movements.