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Who Knows If You Have Not Come into the Kingdom for Such a Time as This?
I come a day late to David French’s recent Corner Post: an open letter to Trump’s Evangelical defenders. Generally speaking, I don’t have much to say about Donald Trump, but I am an Evangelical, and a lot of my co-religionists would probably consider themselves, rightly, the target of French’s letter. I do not find him convincing on the point, but explaining so required more than a comment on the existing thread. Additionally, this is going to be a really inside-Evangelical theology throwdown, so just be advised.
First, let us address what he is right about: Evangelicals don’t necessarily subscribe to formal confessional documents, but I think you would get general assent that the purpose of a Christian is to know and glorify God. So far, so good; but French goes a step further than this. He claims that “defending” Trump is unChristian. I shall presume he does not mean this actually puts someone outside salvation, notwithstanding quoting a passage about apostasy, and that he just means “if you are a Christian defending Trump over Stormy Daniels, you are a bad Christian.”
There are a few immediate issues here: it is not clear what “defending” means, nor who this is actually aimed at. If we’re talking about positive statements in defense of Trump (the famous, and idiotic variant of the “King David” defense), then this isn’t so much an open letter to Evangelicals as an open letter to the two tenths of one percent of Southern Baptist Churches that were mad at Russell More, and also Jerry Falwell, Jr. and other assorted second generations of the Moral Majority. This is probably punching down (there aren’t that many Evangelicals of my acquaintance who would cite Falwell Minor or Franklin Graham as an authority), but so be it. You’ll find more citing Tony Perkins, but Perkins‘ statements are considerably more nuanced than “King David had an affair, too.” (They are much closer to the Exile narrative described below.)
If we expand the definition to cover the majority of Evangelicals who continue to approve of Trump’s performance even after the news of the affair broke in January, I think the invective is excessive. It is true that Evangelicals’ opinion on the importance of morality in public officials has reversed since 2011. I’m not sure polling really covers the actual beliefs of Evangelicals here -which are, in my experience, quite diverse -but taking only the top-line number, it is worth considering what has changed since 2011. I think French severely undervalues the difference in dispensation.
In the 1990s, Evangelicals defended the public morality trench until it was overrun. No less an authority than Rob Long said “it’s allowed now.” (No, I am not going to let this go.) We defended the Presidents shouldn’t lie trench. We defended the marriage is important trench. We defended the single-parenthood is bad trench. And we got blasted off the political battlefield. French acts as if those battle were never fought -let alone lost. French is wrong when he says Americans are souring on Christianity because of Trump. Americans soured on Christianity years ago -which is why they did nothing twelve years ago when Catholic Charities was run out Massachusetts, and they did nothing when the Obama HHS targeted religious employers and institutions. And they’re doing nothing now while California tries to cut off funding to students at religious schools, ban Christian literature, and drive religious adoption agencies out of Kansas, too. They’ll continue to do nothing while public universities drive religious groups off campus, stand by while Christians are driven from medicine, law, social work, or any other profession the Left can get its hands on, and whistle airily about how much more conflict there is in American politics as Christians are driven back behind their own doors. And then told that normal tax credits don’t apply to them, either.
And Americans ignored our warnings three decades ago when we said no-fault divorce was a bad idea. And two decades ago when we said single parenthood was a bad idea. And a decade ago when we said the rapid changes to the sexual culture of the US were going to result in immense misery and pain. And when the misery and pain arrived, we were mocked for trying to ameliorate it.
Americans have been ignoring Christians’ answers to these problems for a long time. And becoming hostile to them. To blame Christians who fled to Trump (and his judicial appointments) for protection from a political faction that openly boasted of its desire to strip them of their rights, shutter their organizations, and drive them from civilization is risible to the point of actual victim-blaming. And for that alone, David French has burned a lot of the good will he built up with me over the past decade.
I know that David French has gotten a lot of flak -up to and including death threats -for his stands. And so I will cut him a lot of slack for this because he is walking the walk. However; volunteering others for martyrdom is not much of an argument. Very few people think Gandhi’s suggestion that Jews walk passively into the gas chambers was good advice. Same applies here. This is basically the reverse of the old “not the hill to die on” argument. The hill to die on is the one that we were already forced off of. And of course, no one is going to actually do that. Convenient.
If French is writing as if we are still in the early 2000s, when you could imagine Christian moral politics mattered, the Evangelicals I know think we are in something much more like the Babylonian Exile. This is why the King David defense is bad. David actually was one of the Jews and held actual power over them. David’s sins were severe, he confessed them, and though God forgave him, not only David, but all Israel suffered for it. David’s sins are directly responsible for the civil war and division of the Kingdom after Solomon. No, if there’s a David comparison to be made, it’s that for the last several decades, America has been building up one heck of an indictment, and God has decided to finally pass judgment on us.
Thus the proper question to ask is how should the Church comport itself in Exile. There was no order of the Jews to convert the Persians. No doubt that is because of the difference in covenants between Israel and the Church. So abandoning evangelism is, of course, out of the question. But contra David French, we must actually defend the church. We can’t evangelize if we’re wiped out. That means relying on secular rulers who don’t share our beliefs. Further contra French, in the Bible this frequently required compartmentalizing politics and religion.
That probably means swallowing our pride in a few areas, too. Esther was forced into a pagan marriage that violated several Jewish laws. (There’s some debate as to the extent of her assimilation into Persian culture -the King seems surprised to learn that Mordecai is Jewish, for example.) When Haman tries to eliminate the Jews, Mordecai tells Esther to beg the king for defense, even if it gets her killed. “If you keep silent at this time, relief for the Jews will rise from another place, but you and your house will perish. And who knows if you have not come to the Kingdom for such a time as this?” Trump as Ahasuerus is not exactly the compliment comparison to David is, but it has the benefit of accuracy. Multiple wives, raging temper, ill-considered and intemperate orders that can’t be revoked… And also gave the Jews the space and the right to defend themselves against their attackers.
Trump is actually doing better than that. I’ve seen mocking of the idea that Trump asks Pence to pray for him at meetings. Maybe Trump is needling Pence -wouldn’t be surprised. But I don’t find it difficult to believe -he has to know that Evangelicals around the country are praying for him. Evangelicals pray for all our leaders (yes, they sounded a bit forced under Obama after about year 6, but we did it), but is it so hard, after a few prayers, to imagine that Trump came to appreciate it? And he’s done many things in office beyond the simple exchange of judges for votes -which alone would have been enough. He finally moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. We might see a breakthrough in Korea. I don’t particularly care about it, but we got tax reform. Trump has even demonstrated the capacity to, on occasion, not shoot his mouth off without thinking. Which leads to the next point of the Exile.
Jeremiah says to live peacefully in Babylon, and to seek the good of the city. They are told to plant gardens, build houses, marry, and have families. Conservative Evangelicals presumably do think that -despite living in a country that justly suffers divine interdict -that the policies Donald Trump is passing will be good for America. That it will benefit more than just Christians seeking to ride out the current madness. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, after the judgment, after the madness, after Trump -when the sky is done falling and everyone crawls out of the caves -maybe they’ll even reconsider listening to the church.
Which is the final stage of the Exile. Cyrus, predicted in Isaiah 45, allows the Jews to return to their homes. In Nehemiah, King Artaxerxes allows them to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. Daniel was protected by Nebuchadnezzar, and while Daniel and his friends did not participate in the parties and idol worship of the king and his court, they did not attempt to stop them either, except through the example of their own behavior. They might have even converted Nebuchadnezzar to the faith after the fiery furnace incident. Later, they were protected by Belshazzar and Darius -Darius who even foolishly (and he knew it at the time) threw Daniel to the lions. What Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego demonstrated was that you can make a lot of accommodations to a pagan society. What you can’t do is engage in the behavior yourself. And all those accommodations and subordination to pagan kings were necessary to restore Israel.
We don’t control the government, nor is the government in any meaningful way the representative or tool of Evangelicals. In those conditions, I wouldn’t care if Trump were carrying on an affair now. He would be wrong to do so, but that is no longer our concern. And as things stand now — we can probably expect better than that bare minimum from Trump. Cyrus might be a bit much — but at least Darius or Nebuchadnezzar seems possible. Look, call me when Donald Trump asks us to bow down and worship an idol of gold in his image. It isn’t exactly out of the question, but it looks less likely by the day. Until then -we don’t live in a Christian society. We are exiles here -probably until the Son of God appears in the East.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
We have a President that governs like a Republican and behaves like a Democrat.
That’s got a lot of people confused, and it leads to strange hair-splitting debates.
While acknowledging Trump’s character flaws, we should recognize that refusal to fight the left would be a bigger character flaw.
Speaking of character, it was Trump, not Bush, who pardoned Scooter Libby.
….he sez as he winds up for the pitch:
Oh you’d love that wouldntcha? Actually so would I! (Nah, just funnin’….)
But no, see, y’ever hear of the Cold War? Or ever hear the expression “war of words”?
They also serve who only sit and chat.
Yes I’ve heard of all of these euphemisms for the moral equivalent of war ever since the Left invented them a century ago. The concept is every bit as stupid and dangerous as it was when it was War Socialism or The War on Poverty.
Hmm.
The feeling I get is that David French is not responding to high profile evangelicals, it is that he is responding to fellow evangelicals in his own church community. I am sure he is feeling frustrated by personal conversations he is having where his friends and acquaintances reflexively defend Trump. It is frustrating to people like David French as he sees it as ceding the moral high ground. I am not religious, and I see it too.
There is a lot of political tribalism going on nowadays – and people are defending Trump mostly because he is “on our side.” We can see it in many of the comments above.
This topic must have struck a nerve with me, because after sleeping on it and going to church, I have more to add.
The first clarification or correction is my statement, in #47 above, that if President Trump were in my Christian fellowship, the proper thing to do would be to expel him. This is too hard on the President.
Expulsion from fellowship (discussed in I Cor. 5 and Matt. 18) is for ongoing sinful behavior that repeatedly refuses loving efforts at correction. It may only apply to public sins that would bring the fellowship into disrepute. This should be obvious, because if our rule is that we must expel anyone who sins, I would need to expel everyone in my fellowship, starting with myself.
For purposes of argument, I assume that the President has had multiple adulterous affairs in the past, including one with Stormy Daniels some years ago, and that he arranged for payment of hush money to her during the campaign, though in a legal way (meaning he did not use campaign funds).
Now imagine that he is in my own little Bible study group. How would I deal with him? Expel him?
Probably not. The expulsion rule is for ongoing sin. As far as I know, the President is not currently having an adulterous affair. So, he has this past sin — probably lots of them, as do I — and I would counsel him to confess them and repent and dedicate himself anew to doing better in the future. Which is pretty much the rule for everybody, starting with myself, each and every day. I would also counsel him to forthrightly confess this partiular sin (the one involving Daniels), and probably to admit generally that it was not the only time.
Here’s a challenge to Mr. French. Aren’t we also admonished not to be gossips? How does this factor into our proper reaction to the President’s flaws?
And I plan to continue to use it against the left every chance I get.
There is a bunch of stuff I have been reluctant to learn about to embrace. I don’t like thinking about how government force gets seized—and therefore the means of production, capital, and individual’s labor— with politics. The problem is, the system went bad decades ago and now this stuff matters. Alinsky tactics. Cultural Marxism. The Frankfurt School. Keynesianism enables all of this stuff in a pincer movement. They are very good at taking ground and keeping it, both because of endemic, structural issues and because they have a strategy. Twitter has been very eye opening in this sense. It sucks.
The debt, dependency, and rent seeking just keeps going up and up.
“Democracy” isn’t what you think it is.
Yeah, and the government doesn’t need guns to kill people. In a nationalized healthcare system, for example, it can just remove nutritional supplementation and water from baby boys against their parents’ wishes.
Anyone who thinks this can’t possibly happen here is not paying attention.
Danger on the Left.
Look at that g d “head tax” they are trying to enact in Seattle. How did it come to this? Can any of you trace it back?
I don’t like Ron Paul, but the sooner we get a collapse in the sense he blathers about, the better off we are.
That’s why we’re supposed to be a republic. The people we elect are supposed to have better sense than to spend us into oblivion. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way.
Hopefully this will be my last comment on this post.
I think that Mr. French’s criticism of evangelicals is completely wrong. He cites the words of Jesus about specks and planks in the eye. There are two major points in this teaching. First, we need to focus more on our own sin and less on the sin of others. Second, we need to resist the temptation to judge the severity of sin. Mr. French disregards both of these teachings.
What, precisely, is his standard? That our leaders must be absolute paragons of moral virtue? Well, no one is. No one ever has been, except that one carpenter from Galilee.
In my personal opinion, President Trump is the most difficult politician that I have ever decided to support. I decided this very relutantly, and explained myself here at Ricochet. I supported Walker, then Rubio, then Cruz, and vigorously opposed Trump. I lost that argument.
I do not know President Trump’s character. My opinion is that that he is boorish, rude, sexually immoral, and prone to deception (usually by exaggeration). I was gravely concerned about all of this.
I decided to vote for him anyway, because the alternative was far worse. The Stormy Daniels story changes nothing, because I factored it in from the beginning. There is no point in talking about it. I would rather, therefore, focus on the positive, and there has been a whole lot of positive.
Mr. French chose otherwise. He decided to put himself above the fray, supporting neither Trump nor Clinton. I found this position to be something close to juvenile. Something like declining to fight the Nazis, because our ally Stalin was just about as bad. FDR reportedly said: “My children, you are permitted in time of great danger to walk with the Devil until you have crossed the bridge.”
President Lincoln faced a similar conundrum. Grant was accused of being a drunkard (true, I think), unfit for duty (wrong). Lincoln’s ultimate decision was simple: “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”
I do not think that I, or my fellow Evangelicals, will be sullied at all by our relucant support for President Trump.
To the contrary, I think that if his aiding and abetting of the Leftist campaign against the President leads to its natural outcome, it will be Mr. French’s job to write another piece confessing his error (as he did about SSM, when it was too late). I hope that this does not happen.
The stakes are enormous. I believe that Clinton’s first SCOTUS appointee would have tipped the balance on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and our right to bear arms.
Maybe President Trump is a devil, maybe not. My choice is to keep walking with him until we’re over the bridge. And perhaps, if I’m walking with both the President and Jesus, the President will notice that he’s walking with Jesus too. Because he’s not actually the Devil.
Jack Fowler at National Review has an excellent rejoinder to French as well:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/donald-trump-evangelicals-catholics/
This is really, really complicated. Basically, Woodrow Wilson centralized the government and you literally have to have a discretionary central bank to be a global power. Better us than anyone else, but it’s hell to “manage”.
Be sure to vote like it matters, because it doesn’t. lol
Right now government and politics has more force than Judaeo-Christian values. Act accordingly.
Someone please bottle this discussion and force it into the GOP Ruling Classes brains. The Republic hangs in the balance.
Yes! Excellent! Thanks for the link.
And I’ve mentioned this in passing before…
It matters too much to these people that Trump doesn’t meet their moral/behavioral standards. The presidency matters too much. It’s been trending this way for a long, long time, but Obama’s capriciousness (read: lawlessness) pretty well sealed the deal. If Trump’s greatest sins are personality-driven and he otherwise gets policy right? I count that a major victory for the Republic.
When I heard excerpts of his Day of Prayer speech, I felt a further blossoming of something the previous administration had all but extinguished—hope. Yes, he has feet of clay—we all do. Yes, he has made serious mistakes—who among us hasn’t? But the longer he has been MY President, the more Presidential he has become—Twitter, off the cuff remarks, and all. If he runs for a second term, I will vote for him.
I’ve noticed a similar thing. The Trump of November 2016 was a much better Trump than that of 2015. The Trump of 2017 was even better.
Against his critics’ predictions and unlike them, Trump has proven capable of learning.
I’ll be happier voting for him in 2020 than I was in 2016.
That reminds me. The happiest vote I ever made was my second vote for Reagan in 1984. The choice was as clear as it gets and the good guys won.
Still, I saw Reagan as the leader of the Executive Branch and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, not as my moral or spiritual leader. I saw him as the best man for a very important job.
When I looked in the mirror after the vote, I saw plain ol’ BastiatJunior – not Ronald Reagan.
To reiterate my earlier position, the sexual sin interests me the least in all this.
As you and others have said, it’s A) More than 10 years old; and B) Of zero surprise to anyone. Had the Whitehouse said, “The president has never claimed to live a blameless life, but is now happily married; we will not be answering questions about these matters,” I’d be content. Grossed-out, but content.
What concerns me far more is that Trump, 1) As a candidate, had his attorney purchase Daniels silence in the last weeks of the election, which is likely a campaign finance violation* and 2) As president, had Whitehouse staff obfuscate (if not outright lie) about the hush-money to the public. This is not only more recent, but is — as of last week — ongoing. It also further erodes his staff’s ability to be taken seriously, which helps no one but the Left.
* Even if the NDA/hush-money is totally legal, I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of presidential candidates purchasing the silence of others, even if that purchase is 100% consensual.
I remember being opposed to Clinton’s suborning of perjury in the Monica Lewinsky matter when nobody left or right seemed to assign high importance to it. I have been wondering what I should do if it ever turns out Trump has done something that bad.
Because ethics shouldn’t be relative.
I’ll say it again: French is trolling the edges of the Trump coalition, trying to get his numbers down, trying to get him to lose the next election and to damage him as much as possible during his presidency. This guy is as mean as a leftist. Seriously.
I’m going to have to ask you to show your work here. David French has been on the forefront of the fight against leftism for over a decade including as President of FIRE. He’s done as much or more to fight for conservatism and free speech than any member, or former member, of Ricochet.
Great Post and probably the best summation I have read concerning the believer’s political predicament to date. I have to continue to remind myself that with a voice so small as to be insignificant, troubles so discouraging, and detractors so numerous that it should only serve to drive me more often to my knees in prayer instead to my feet in indignation.
Deus in Manus
Tolerance is a working principle that enables us to live in peace with other people and their ideas. Most of the time, it’s a very good thing. But it is not an end in itself, and tolerating or excusing grave evil in a society is itself a grave evil. The roots of this word are revealing. Tolerance comes from the Latin tolerare, “to bear or sustain,” and tollere, which means, “to lift up.” It implies bearing other persons and their beliefs the way we carry a burden or endure a headache. It’s actually a negative idea. And it is not a Christian virtue. Christians have the duty not to “tolerate” other people but to love them, which is a much more demanding task. Justice, charity, mercy, courage, wisdom – these are Christian virtues; but not tolerance.
I think this is what Mr. French is talking about when he says: “We are not told to rationalize and justify sinful actions to preserve political influence or a popular audience”.
And he is right. Instead, we are called to love them, to will their good. And I think this is what we (I’m Catholic, and I include my Catholic friends, and I would hope most Evangelicals) want with President Trump. We know he is a sinner, as are we (I have no more claim to purity than does the President).
These thoughts came to me when reading this article and these words from St. Francis de Sales in his Introduction to a Devout Life:
I imagine I could form a friendship with the President, but not if he continued to act in the way he did in his life as a playboy billionaire. I’m a forgiving guy because I’m not one who can cast the first stone.
Mr. French, with respect to Evangelicals, seemed to only focus on “defending” President Trump. I would like to see him call out his brethren to love (will the good of) the President.
Well, the first rule of hush money is “don’t talk about hush money.” The second rule of hush money is…
I’d go with obfuscate, unless you are willing to believe he gathered his communications staff in a room, came clean about every detail, and then told them to go and say something else. I find that highly unlikely. So I don’t hold it against the staff.
Apart from the purient details (porn star, wife w/ newborn, “hush money”), is this story really worth more airtime than say, the leaders of the two Koreas hugging like brothers and signing intent documents to end the world’s longest current running war?
As to his staff, the media (and the left, but I repeat myself) aren’t going to believe them no matter what they say. As to the rest of us, it depends on the topic at hand.
Say did you see that Rosie violated campaign finance laws? To a lesser degree than Dinesh, as far as we know, but still 5.7K compared to 20k means she should get at least a quarter of the time Dinesh got. (That works out to a few years probation and 2 month in a “community confinement center” – what a great euphemism.)
It’s such a non-story. And “campaign finance laws???” Really?? The guy is a billionaire who pretty much self-funded his campaign. I’m sure he could cover a ND agreement from one of many pots of money. If you’re looking to get the guy on any technicality you can find, though…
I thought the campaign finance laws hinged on Cohen paying off Stormy with his own money. How can Trump, in using his own money, violate campain finance law?
I can see a really weak case if Cohen did the payoff on Trump’s behalf – instead of contributing to Trump’s campaign, he pays off Stormy, but that’s a really big assumption.
I thought Trump reimbursed Cohen after the original story broke claiming Cohen paid off Stormy and questions of CFLs.
I’m barely paying attention to this story, so my facts are probably wrong.
Ok. I just read all the actual statements in timeline fashion at USA Today. All the claims of lying and obfuscation come from the most cynical reading of the statements and are predominately found in the analysis provided by editorialists (not gonna call you journalists any more).
Is it still lying if the statements don’t match what you think happened?
Campaign finance laws require disclosure of all expenditures. They are also very obtuse. I can surely see some “rule” that expenditures to prevent negative information coming to light being interpreted to mean, well, whatever the members of the FEC want it to mean. As long as that interpretation includes a dispensation for the Clinton campaign to not report expenditures on the dossier, including funds spent on their behalf in Russia (Russia-Russia-Russia) while at the same time censoring President Trump’s attorney for paying off a porn star for exploits of a decade ago.
I can also foresee a rule that if a candidate self finances, all of his expenditures are subject to campaign finance scrutiny-ALL of his expenditures.