Establishment Evangelicals children’s crusade against Trump
From The Christian Post
The holy war was going badly. The enemies of Christianity had been victorious and all attempts to take back lost ground floundered. The problem, some concluded, was that our warriors were not virtuous enough. Their moral impurity prevented God’s blessing. That’s why they lost. What was needed, so they thought, was a band of pure-hearted Christian soldiers whom God could support. Who could be purer than children? Thus was born the idea of the children’s crusade.
In 1212 a shepherd from Germany, Nicolas, attempted to lead a group of children, and others, to the Holy Land, where the purity of their faith would result in the conversion of the Muslims earlier crusaders – sinful adults – had been trying to kill. He even promised that the Mediterranean Sea would part like Moses’ Red Sea so they could march all the way to Jerusalem. On the way, two-thirds of the crusaders died. They only got as far as Italy where they found that the sea wouldn’t part for them.
Today, Christians are feeling defeated. Their influence continues to wane in the culture. Marriage has been redefined and now the marriage redefiners are trying to work their same magic on biological sexual identity; abortion continues unabated even after Roe v. Wade was over-turned and restricting abortion is so unpopular even conservative politicians try to hide from the cause.
Into this culture war, many Christians, like Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, Dr. Michael Brown, John MacArthur, Franklin Graham, and many others have championed Donald Trump as their unlikely crusader. Evangelical support for Trump was greater in 2016 than for any other presidential candidate. Yet, still, there remains a hard core of stridently Never Trump evangelical leaders.
In a July 15, 2020 article, I told my own story of how I had been a Never Trumper but changed my mind as I saw Mr. Trump turn out to be especially supportive of the sanctity of life. He’s nominated consistently pro-life judges, did what he could do to defund Planned Parenthood, and spoken up more loudly on the issue than any president in history. That being the case, why is there, still, that contingent of establishment evangelicals who decry him?
Perhaps no one embodies the call for evangelicals to abandon strategy in our quest to bring peace and justice to America as does David French. French is one of the rare few evangelical writers to have broken through the religious-secular wall and allowed a place at the table of secular journalism as an unashamed evangelical, writing for National Review, Time and, as of 2023, a columnist for The New York Times. He’s also virulently anti-Trump. French is an establishment evangelical who wants to warn us of the corruption that allying with Trump will bring us.
In “Will Somebody Please Hate My Enemies for Me?” French argues that Christians support Trump because they want him to hate their enemies for them, that it’s rooted in fundamental rebellion against Christ’s command to love our enemies. There are several things wrong with this appraisal.
First, I’m sometimes tempted to tell lay-people dabbling in theology that it’s harder than it appears. Don’t try this at home. But that’s too smug. Nevertheless, French’s application is simplistic in the extreme. He assumes that blunt talk is unloving, always hateful. But what if giving the truth straight is what is needed to wake people up to the deception they are entangled in? The Bible is replete with blunt talk dished out straight to sinners, including from Jesus Himself. Was He not loving when seven times in Matthew 23 He told the Pharisees “woe” to you “hypocrites”? The whole argument that Trump is unfit for office because his rhetoric sometimes isn’t polite is an idea more rooted in the country clubs of established gentlemen than in what is really needed in a leader.
Second, while French deplores Trump’s sinful past, he makes no allowance that perhaps he’s changed. There is a gracelessness in French’s Puritanical jeremiads against Trump, no insult intended on Puritans.
“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.” (Romans 13:3-4)
Third, French doesn’t understand what political leaders exist for. They aren’t counselors who are to soothe us with their reassuring platitudes. They aren’t pastors to feed Christ’s sheep, above reproach. They are terrorists for evil-doers (Romans 13:3). That is, the Bible says that rulers are God’s servants to strike terror into the hearts of criminals, thugs, rioters, punks; he’s an avenger “who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). So threatening North Korean dictators that his nuclear button is “much bigger” or sentencing rioters to 10 years in prison is what we should expect of political leaders. French thinks that this is farming out carnal Christian’s hate toward our enemies when in reality it is exactly what leaders are supposed to do.
Finally, French criticizes Eric Metaxas, and evangelicals generally, for supporting Trump out of fear, not faith. Faith, he implies, would require us to never forgive Trump for past sins and never support him, even if he was the only viable candidate who champions Christian principles, even if partially and imperfectly. Abortion, he suggests, will dwindle on its own if only we, in “faith,” vote for the most radically pro-baby-killing major party candidate in US history. How will that happen?
Just like in the children’s crusade, God will bless pure-heartedness, never mind what works. Instead of trusting the war to the hands of sinful warriors, better, they thought, to send innocent children who would certainly be blessed into the fray. The result was predictable, as will be the result if we follow French’s political advice.
I was an athlete in college, a track runner. Once a well-meaning Christian friend advised me that if I’m right with God, God will bless me and I’ll win more races. I found, instead, that God blesses the talented who train hard. In war, God usually blesses the army with the most, best trained and best equipped troops. In elections, he blesses those who can garner more votes. That’s not pragmatism – i.e. “strategy” – becoming an idol. It’s the way God has created things. So, if we want the socialist train with its nihilistic Antifa brown-shirts terrorizing our cities and their equally nihilistic and destructive journalists, professors and judges stopped, then we need someone who is gifted for that, even if such a man is a bull in a china shop, even if he’s likely to over-turn the tables at the cozy tea party of the establishment where even a few evangelicals are allowed a place, as long as they keep their voices down.
Establishmentism
Establishmentism – defending the status quo at all costs – is the final reason why those die hard evangelical never-Trumpers cling to their orange-man-bad campaign. After all, even if the establishment is committed to causes they hate – notably abortion – it’s been good to them. They have well-paying jobs, high profile positions; their articles are published; they get to sit on stage in the panel at big conferences; they get asked to say prayers before the Senate and their names are bandied about as movers and shakers. By “draining the swamp,” disrupting the status quo, threatening not to recognize fraudulent elections, he disturbs their cozy life.
So, for example, one evangelical leader tweeted, on August 18, 2020, “While we should work to end both voter fraud and voter suppression, neither voter fraud and voter suppression in this coming November’s election will de-legitimize the results.” Think about that statement. It’s pure establishmentism.
Put aside, for a moment, that what is called “voter suppression” – namely expunging the dead from voter rolls and requiring voter ID – is only reasonable actions taken to insure the integrity of the election while what is called “voter fraud” (such as using mail in voting to vote on behalf of the dead) is actually voter fraud; put that attempt at moral equivalence aside for a moment. This defender of “the high table” is saying that even if there is enough fraud to tip the balance of the election so that official result doesn’t actually represent who the real voters selected, we should accept the result. A fraudulent election, he says, is legitimate because, if it’s not, the establishment could burn along with everything else. If, for example, Biden’s people manage to send in enough forged mail-in votes in the state that gives Biden victory in the electoral college, we should patiently concede to it. We should be, apparently, the “quiet in the land.” “You won’t get any trouble from us, Mr. Establishment.” No. Those of us with less to lose, no place at the establishment table, and more love of both the constitution and the freedoms and justice at stake in this election won’t settle for that.
We don’t need a children’s crusade. We need someone who will do what a leader is supposed to do and bring justice for those most denied it. Strategy isn’t idolatry. Being the quiet in the land who accept whatever injustice is foisted on us isn’t Christianity. It’s not how we love our neighbors, born and pre-born. We need to be thankful for the opportunity we have now. And we need to vote.
The original, full article: Establishment Evangelicals children’s crusade against Trump
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).