During Thanksgiving week, I watched two movies: Wicked and Gladiator II. Both movies reminded me of evangelicals up to their television satellites and steeples in secular politics.
I watched the citizens of Oz pour into the streets, singing, “The wicked old witch is dead.” When Galinda the “good witch” tried to temper the frivolous bacchanal, the citizen chorus belted out, “No one mourns the wicked.”
I couldn’t stop thinking of the evangelical treatment of Kamala Harris.
Evangelical preachers and MAGA partisans knew no bounds for their descriptions of Kamala Harris. Her skin isn’t green, but she is biracial. Sexist and racist epitaphs were hurled at her. She was called a “commie,” “Joe’s boss,” “Nasty,” “Kneepads,” “Madam Swallow,” “Heels Up,” and “The San Francisco Treat.” Colorado televangelist Lance Wallnau said Harris had “the Jezebel spirit.” Steve Swofford, pastor of First Baptist Church in Rockwall, Texas, asked in a sermon, “Jezebel Harris? Isn’t that her name?”
There’s a structural perverseness involved in using rumors to craft sexist nicknames for Harris. Evangelicalism has a perverse sexual tint. Now, people Donald Trump has nominated for key roles in his administration face charges of sexual misconduct.
Trump’s first nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, withdrew under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations. Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, has been answering questions about a sexual assault allegation from October 2017. A Space-X flight attendant claims Elon Musk exposed himself to her. The company paid her $250,000. Charles Kushner, likely headed to France as the U.S. ambassador is a convicted (Pardoned by Trump) felon.
Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranging to record a sexual encounter between the two and sending the tape to his sister.
Evangelicals are unmoved. They prefer saying, “Ethics be damned” to being damned by the ethics.
Have evangelicals pruned sexual ethics to abortion and transgender people? Kenneth Copeland offers a far-fetched but accurate portrayal of a recurring evangelical dream. He claims he was shown the punishment those who didn’t vote for Trump will face on Judgment Day: They’ll spend eternity listening to the names of all the babies killed by abortion.
“What if evangelicals have become what they have always despised: relativists?”
Perhaps this answer is too easy. I don’t believe evangelicals have stopped believing sexual misconduct is sinful. What if evangelicals have become what they have always despised: relativists? Unable to resist the siren call of the sliding scale, they have plunged headlong onto the slippery slope.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) answers questions outside the U.S. Capitol after successfully leading a vote to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the office of Speaker of the House October 3, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Now sexual conduct rules are not universal. Thus, for example, it has become possible to believe Gaetz is a good Christian even if he had sex with a teenager; that Hegseth is a Christian warrior even though he had “consensual” sex with a woman and paid for her silence, and that Kushner was protecting his family with his sordid exercise of involving a prostitute in framing his brother-in-law.
A series of at least four moves, playing out over decades, led down this slippery slide.
A move from church to politics
After decades of having nothing to do with politics, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority became major players in electing Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. A movement rooted in racism and protection of segregation changed its values to make opposition to abortion the flagship issue of the movement. The church went political.
Now, evangelical churches are complete sellouts to politics.
Pastor Bill Bolin of FloodGate Church in Brighton, Mich., says: “The battle lines have been drawn. If you’re not taking a side, you’re on the wrong side.”
Dr. Malachi (Dr. Run on X): “If your pastor said nothing about voting this election then it is time to find a new church.”
Jerry Falwell gestures while talking with President Reagan after a candle lighting ceremony in support of prayer in schools on Sept. 25, 1982 (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi, file)
Evangelical political movement is rooted in three crucial events moving evangelicals away from traditional Christian ethics: The 1980 presidential election, the 2018 confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the 2008 presidential election.
I trace the shift in ethical understanding from Jerry Falwell’s deception and betrayal of President Jimmy Carter. Falwell fabricated an Oval Office meeting with President Carter where the president supposedly told Falwell he supported gay rights. The story was a complete lie.
In 2018, Kavanaugh faced sexual assault charges from Christine Blasey Ford. Robert Jeffress led the angry charge of evangelicals: “They realize now, conservative Christians, that the left is willing to do whatever it takes to cram their liberal agenda down the throats of Americans, including destroying the foundation of our legal system, the presumption of innocence.”
Jeffress claimed, “Look, our law says, our system says, in the case of a tie, a tie goes to the accused, not to the accuser.”
The third event underscored the dark hole that always has existed in evangelical ethics: the election of Barack Obama as president. Tim Alberta points out that portions of the white evangelical movement were deeply uncomfortable with a Black president, with the leftward shift of the culture, and with advances for gay rights and same-sex marriage.
A move from purity to perversion
The paradigm shift from evangelical purity to evangelical perversion jolts the mind. The word “perversion” may seem a bit harsh, but I am speaking of a general cultural embrace of perversions different from traditional ethics.
“They came to transform this world, but instead they have been poisoned by it.”
When evangelicals burst through the door labeled “politics,” they entered a perverse world. They came to transform this world, but instead they have been poisoned by it. As Charles Taylor points out, “There’s no undoing the secular; there’s just the task of learning how (not) to live — and perhaps even believe — in a secular age.”
Life as such is perverse. Freud argued that perversion is common and universal, even fun. Evangelicals truly believe we are all slouching toward Sodom, but they are quite content with their chosen political candidates playing the part of the men and women of Sodom.
As Joshua Gunn observes in Political Perversion, “Properly perceived, perversity as such is a universally shared human trait and is not to be judged, only understood.”
Pete Hegseth with large Crusader tattoo. (Photo: Pete Hegseth via nstagram)
For instance, as soon as Pete Hegseth faced questions about his sexual exploits, he opened the Trump playbook and played it to the hilt. Deny, deny, deny. Blame the media for daring to publish the story. Change the subject.
Hegseth changed the subject from his sexual conduct to the alleged vicious attack on his Christian values related to his tattoos. Why talk about sex when you can laud your “Christian” tattoos?
Evangelical leaders wanted to talk about women and combat. Tom Buck claimed women in combat is not biblical. “This is not complicated. Not only is it not biblical, it’s pure common sense.” Denny Burk weighed in: “Of course women shouldn’t be serving in combat roles.”
Charlie Kirk was outraged over the story of Hegseth’s tattoos as symbols of white supremacy: “The AP has a new ‘story’ suggesting that Pete Hegseth was an ‘insider threat’ because of ‘white supremacist tattoos. What made the tattoos ‘white supremacist?’ Because one is of a cross, and another says ‘Deus Vult’ — ‘God wills it.’ The regime hates Christians far more than it could ever hate one of America’s actual enemies.”
Trump is the lead pervert in the perversion band. Gaetz, Musk, Kushner and Hegseth are prominent players.
A move from witness to power
An unmitigated desire for power by evangelicals pushed them to election-denying, sexual assault-denying and a willingness to subvert the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Friedman argues they are pushing the U.S. “into the abyss.”
Evangelicals have clearly stated that what matters is a strong leader, a tough leader. Sexual misconduct is now a misdemeanor among the values of evangelicals.
“Sexual misconduct is now a misdemeanor among the values of evangelicals.”
The evangelical commitment to male hegemony has burst open the talisman of sexual rage and assault that always accompanies cultures dominated and controlled by “strongmen” — dictators, kings, fascists, and authoritarians.
Pastor Robert Jeffress and President Donald Trump pray after Trump signed a full pardon for Alice Johnson for a nonviolent drug offense, in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Evangelicals were hooked. Again, Jeffress told the truth no one wanted to admit: “When I’m looking for a leader who’s gonna sit across the negotiating table from a nuclear Iran, or who’s gonna be intent on destroying Iran, I couldn’t care less about that leader’s temperament or his tone or his vocabulary. Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals.”
Visions of Trump scoring culture war victories, sheltering white people from a brown invasion, protecting them from Muslim terrorists prepared to kill them and their families, defending them from political correctness, fueled by the liberal media and university faculties, and delivering them from the “persecution” they have endured for more than a century — all dance in evangelical heads. All this lives rent-free in evangelical minds.
This is what they believe in: Power.
Eric Metaxas bragged after this November’s election: “Ladies and gentlemen! Heads are exploding throughout the swamp and mainstream media. This is their worst nightmare. Praise the Lord. Justice is coming.”
Owen Strachan couldn’t help but boast: “For years, the church has sought a seat at the table of the Beltway elites. But the days of the church’s Washingtonian captivity are over.”
Denny Burk stuck a finger in liberal eyes: “The election of Trump is a massive repudiation of the Left and of identity politics. In spite of the elite institutions of American life being arrayed against him — e.g., the media, college campuses, the justice department — Trump still won.”
A move from reconciliation to revenge
Rage can blind people to all other legitimate concerns. Rage keeps company with the desire for revenge.
“Rage can blind people to all other legitimate concerns.”
I am convinced evangelicals have been carrying a 100-year-old grudge from the Scopes monkey trial and it has blinded them to the importance of character and sexual ethics. All that matters now is taking their revenge on liberals and Democrats.
In the evangelical mind, there’s only one reality: The liberals have taken everything from us. But we will have our vengeance.
This is where Gladiator II enters the account. The plot of the movie revolves around two men seeking revenge: one for personal reasons and the other for political reasons. Their names are Lucius and Macrinus.
Macrinus, the politician, says to Lucius: “Rage. That rage is your gift.” Evangelicals are determined to exorcise their demon of rage and have their revenge. Vitriol has become the petrol that fuels the evangelical engine with its redundant mistrust, disgust, animosity and resentment.
As Macrinus puts it when he can taste his revenge: “I was owned. Now I will control an empire.”
With the reelection of Trump, nothing seems to stand in the way of evangelical dreams of controlling the nation. This control will come at the hands of men of low character who have engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse.
Samson Puts Down the Pillars (c. 1896-1902), James Tissot (French, 1836-1902) (Image in public domain)
All I have to offer is a biblical story
There may be one weakness in the evangelical moves to the bottom. They put all their trust in a strongman. If the Bible teaches us any lessons, it teaches us God will not forever abide power-mad rulers.
“God will not forever abide power-mad rulers.”
The best metaphor I have found for the future of the evangelicals is in the story of Samson — the perennial strongman of the Bible. Surprisingly, when evangelicals were tearing through the pages of the Bible searching for biblical comparisons to Trump, Samson was one of the suggested candidates.
Samson had a “thing” for prostitutes (Judges 16:1). He was outwitted by a woman named Delilah. He gave her the secret of his strength — his long hair. She cut off Samson’s hair in his sleep, and he was captured by the Philistines.
They blinded him and threw him in prison. The Philistines had a liturgical performance to celebrate Dagon, their god. The people cried, “Call Samson, and let him entertain us.”
Samson grasped the pillars of the temple of Dagon, and with his hair once more long (the Philistines forgot to give him another haircut), he prayed, “Lord God, remember me … with this one act of revenge,” and the house fell on Samson and 3,000 worshipers. The strongman’s life ended in the acts of suicide and mass murder.
Secular politics, structural perversion, sheer power and ugly revenge have combined to push sexual ethics into the basement of evangelical life. As long as MAGA evangelicals remain ascendant, sexual ethics will remain in exile. But that is not the end of the story.
I can hear the Grateful Dead singing, “If I had my way I would tear this whole building down.” And that may be the end of the evangelical story.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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