White evangelicals have swapped cultural and religious relevance for political power in the hope of creating a society made in their own image, author and historian of religion Randall Balmer said.
But faith groups enmeshed in authoritarian causes like Donald Trump’s MAGA movement typically lose their soul along the way, Balmer said during an episode of the Interfaith Alliance “State of Belief” podcast.
Randall Balmer
“Power is corrosive, and that’s hardly a new observation. But I’ve long argued that religion always functions best from the margins and not in the councils of power because once you begin to crave political power or influence, you lose your prophetic voice,” said Balmer, professor of religion at Dartmouth College and author of numerous books including Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right and Saving Faith: How American Christianity Can Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice.
That’s what happened to the National Council of Churches which, as the voice of Mainline Protestantism, came to wield tremendous cultural influence in the years after World War II, Balmer explained.
But the more acculturated Mainline Christianity became, the less standing the council and Protestantism came to have in society and government as time wore on, he asserted. “They began to lose their prophetic voice and they began that long slide that we’re aware of where Mainline Protestantism, or brand-name Protestantism, is very much on the decline. So, the importance of faith and religion is to speak from the margins.”
It’s much the same trajectory white evangelicals are on with their embrace of Christian nationalism and Trump, he argued: Their claim the nation should be and always has been ruled by Christians of their kind is as dangerous as it is false.
And the movement has alienated its adherents from just about every segment of society and religion, said Interfaith Alliance President and podcast moderator Paul Raushenbush.
“It’s not only an affront to people of other faiths and people who adhere to no particular faith tradition, who are every bit as American as anyone else, but also to the millions and millions of Christians who don’t believe as they do,” he said.
Christian nationalists seek control of government to enforce their vision, just as they have done in school boards across the country, Raushenbush said. “And you have the governor of Oklahoma declaring the whole state for Jesus and his school district leader is now saying the Bible has to be taught in schools.”
Trump was able to win 81% of the evangelical vote in 2016 in part by speaking the evangelical language of victimhood, Balmer said. The same message is behind Trump’s recent promise that, if reelected, he will fix the country so well Christians won’t ever have to vote again.
“One of the reasons they were drawn to Donald Trump is that, frankly, he speaks this rhetoric of victimization better than anyone I’ve ever heard.”
“Evangelicals have long considered themselves to be victims and to be marginal,” the scholar explained. They no longer are in terms of their political power these days. They’re not marginal at all, but they sustain this rhetoric of victimization. And I think one of the reasons they were drawn to Donald Trump is that, frankly, he speaks this rhetoric of victimization better than anyone I’ve ever heard.”
But it didn’t start with Trump, he added. “The great downfall of the Religious Right, in the beginning, was Ronald Reagan. They offered no prophetic voice when Reagan went on a binge of tax cuts for the wealthy. Where were the dissenting voices at that time? Yes, you had people like Jim Wallis and others doing so, but they don’t have nearly the megawatts that somebody like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell had in that era, and they were utterly silent. They were sucking up to power in craven ways that I think ultimately diminished the power of the faith.”
Another driver of Christian nationalism in the Trump era is a longing for a mythical golden age in which all Americans shared a common style of Christianity, he said. “A big part of it is it appeals to nostalgia. And you know that nostalgia is a slippery thing, and we can be nostalgic for things that never really were there. And that helps explain some of the 1950s nostalgia that we hear coming out of that quarter that is looking for a simpler time.”
If there is any looking back to be done, it should be to confront the nation’s “original sin” of racism, Balmer said. “If we are going to reclaim our prophetic voice as people of faith, we have to come to terms with our past … and the fact that the Religious Right was born out of racism. There’s no pretty way to say that.”