TIM COSTELLO looks at why US evangelicals are so supportive of Donald Trump – and the role the Persian ruler Cyrus, mentioned in the Bible, plays in that…
Friends often ask me these days, with genuine puzzlement, why American evangelicals are so rusted on to supporting President Donald Trump. I seem to be spending a lot of time explaining this enigma. The bewilderment comes from a simple moral equation. Evangelicals are well known as being obsessed with personal morality but Trump seems to present as an utterly immoral man. How does this equation work?
At a superficial level it is explicable. I answer by saying that evangelicals believe Trump is like the pagan King Cyrus who, though being a Persian infidel and brutal, was used by God as His instrument. They argue that is what God is doing through Trump in ‘Making America Great Again’. And, they posit, the Biblical parallels are clear: Cyrus, the Persian ruler who overran Babylon and allowed the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland, is mentioned in Isaiah 45 while Trump is the 45th President of the US. Trump’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem is like Cyrus enabling the Jewish exiles to return from Babylon to Jerusalem.
Yes, so the evangelical argument goes, Trump may be immoral – but so was Cyrus. Trump, through his crudeness, lies and disruption of the elites is a bully – but so was Cyrus. Unacknowledged by those who support such arguments is that Trump’s behaviour gives them permission for their worst instincts like race baiting and chants of “lock her up” (initially aimed at presidential candidate Hillary Clinton but now extended to former President Barack Obama). But then Cyrus broke heads. Both he and Trump are bullies but are used by God.
President Donald Trump wraps up his speech at a campaign rally at Fayetteville Regional Airport, on Saturday, 19th September, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. PICTURE: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.
So how is this President actually fulfilling Gods purposes? Well, for the Trumpian Christians, the defining faith issues in Scripture are not racism, climate change, healthcare or guns but rather their touchstones are abortion and gay marriage, support of Israel and their own religious liberty. They see religious liberty as proclaiming a nation under God – a Christian nation expressed in rejecting secularism. A Christian nation with the Ten Commandments in its courthouses. Trump’s Supreme and Federal Court appointments of conservatives will serve to protect their faith issues. A triumph for the cause of the Gospel as they understand it.
But, I am asked, doesn’t the Bible by implication encompass all these justice issues of both the left and right in its pages? Yes, I say, but the bulk of American evangelicals have made their choice on the issues that in their minds are critical. And white evangelicals are convinced there is no systemic racism resulting in it being ignored as an issue. The issues of climate change, healthcare and gun reform are seen as being pushed by a leftist, secular agenda. In their terminology ‘socialist’.
“I know the answers I give my secular friends do not satisfy. How to explain that Biblical Christians worshipping the same God and reading the same Bible are now polarising again into camps of white and black with the so-called ‘moral majority’ endorsing the most immoral President in US history. It remains deeply discombobulating”
Trump, who is utterly transactional, gets this. Although in 2000 he was pro-choice and recommended a universal healthcare system like Canada’s, he came to recognise the seething resentment and grievance power of this bloc of evangelicals. In the 2016 primaries, he shamelessly promised to deliver the evangelical’s agenda in return for their unwavering support. Consistency and convictions have never seemed to trouble him. Winning is the art of the deal and evangelicals have hardly wavered on their side of the deal.
But Trump’s race baiting has deeply divided the church. The latest Barna polling shows that practising Christians have changed their minds on addressing racial injustice and moved away from being motivated to address it. Now 30 per cent of white practising Christians say they are not motivated to address the issue – that figure was only 17 per cent in 2019 – while a staggering 52 per cent of white Christians do not believe the US has had any racial oppression in its history. Meanwhile, for Black self-identified Christians the motivation to address racial injustice increased from 63 per cent in 2019 to 70 per cent in 2020. The racial divide in the US church’s response to the issue of race has never been starker.
I know the answers I give my secular friends do not satisfy. How to explain that Biblical Christians worshipping the same God and reading the same Bible are now polarising again into camps of white and black with the so-called ‘moral majority’ endorsing the most immoral President in US history. It remains deeply discombobulating.
I have been reading the prophet Isaiah. And beginning in chapter 41, before the prophecy about Cyrus, and while the people of Israel are in exile, the prophet depicts a trial which posits Yahweh against foreign gods. Who is the true God? In the ancient world, the proof of a god’s divinity was his power to win military victory for his own people. That a god should prove his divinity by letting his own people be destroyed as a nation was undreamt of. That was the case for Yahweh. But following the judgment announced on Israel through the pre-exilic prophets – loss of land, temple, king and nation – Isaiah goes on to say in chapter 45 that Yahweh would save and restore them through a foreign pagan king.
Proof of Yahweh’s divinity is that He acts in history as a whole and is not just a tribal, national God. There is a continuity between His word of judgment and the destruction of Israel and His word of salvation (using Cyrus) and Israel’s return from exile. As Isaiah 46.6 puts it: “I am the first and I am the last and beside me there is no other God”. But this proof breaks the link in the ancient world between a god’s lordship and the political power possessed by his sphere of influence.
US evangelicals believe their nation to be exceptional, a city on the hill or light in a dark place. God’s nation. They will not join the International Criminal Court or sign the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or participate in the Paris climate change accords because US hands cannot be tied. Why? Because it is the definition of freedom in the world. It is now the chosen nation under God.
What, then, to make of the mightiest military power in the world suffering losses from Vietnam through ISIS in Iraq to Afghanistan and now being humbled in losing its trade pre-eminence to China? They conclude it must be because liberal left governance has led to abortions, gay marriage laws and secularisation – the rejection of being a nation under God. Thus, the groundswell of outrage and anger. Thus, the appeal by Trump who claims to be an ‘outsider’ who agrees with their grievances.
“‘Make America Great Again’ depends on the US becoming (more) ‘Christian’ so God can then reinforce their political influence. Not for them a God who might send them into exile. In their minds they cannot imagine a world without America’s greatness and dominance in the sphere of geo political influence. If that happened, then contrary to Isaiah’s trial and proofs, their god could not be the true God.”
‘Make America Great Again’ depends on the US becoming (more) ‘Christian’ so God can then reinforce their political influence. Not for them a God who might send them into exile. In their minds they cannot imagine a world without America’s greatness and dominance in the sphere of geo political influence. If that happened, then contrary to Isaiah’s trial and proofs, their god could not be the true God.
Evangelical VP Mike Pence, a graduate of Wheaton College – which stands at the heart of evangelical America, recently themed his speech at the Republican National Convention around the US flag, nicknamed ‘Old Glory’. He finished with these words: “So let’s run the race marked out for us. Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory and all she represents. Let’s fix our eyes on this land of heroes and let their courage inspire. And let’s fix our eyes on the author and perfector of our faith and our freedom and never forget that where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. That means freedom always wins.” The flag and Jesus become one in the chosen nation.
Really? No, Mr Vice President – because no flag and no nation is the chosen one. Jesus is the Chosen One and the true suffering servant of Isaiah. There is no other.
Rev Tim Costello is one of Australia’s most well-known Christian social activists, a former chief executive and chief advocate with World Vision Australia, and currently executive director of Micah Australia and a Senior Fellow of Centre for Public Christianity as well as a member of the Sight Advisory Board.
