I lay in bed, awakened from what otherwise would have been a restful night of sleep. The question that had plagued my conscience had now intruded upon my sleep: Why do so many conservative Christians so blindly follow Donald Trump?
Certainly, it can’t be because of his impeccable Christian character or values (actions speak louder than words). Faith without right action is dead, or James said something like that anyway.
Anyone willing to open an ear and half an eye can see the values displayed by the former president and now president-elect are less than any standard Christians should attempt to hold themselves to. These people are not ignorant, as some might suggest; among them exist some of the most well-educated and respected people in my life.
Jeff Howard
Others simply would suggest that for conservative Christians, certain issues are more important than others — which of course is true, but that conviction is true for all of us regardless of political proclivity. There must be something else.
Allow me to digress for a moment. I am an avid Tennessee fan, and I’m the pastor of a church in Tuscaloosa Ala. I am living proof that God has a sense of humor. And I’m perhaps the benefactor of a cruel joke.
I have maintained the city life for most of my life at this point, but my upbringing was spent in rural agricultural Arkansas. I joke that in the town where I grew up, livestock outnumbered people 5,000:1; and that comparison might be an understatement. One of the lasting memories of my childhood is that people took pride in their work — not an arrogance but a sincere satisfaction that they were doing good with the gifts God had provided them.
“The cows, hearing their master’s voice, would come from far away in the field to head that call.”
One of the rites of passage in our community, and I assume many rural communities, was “calling the cows.” Usually, the patriarch of a family would literally yell for the cows to come and eat or be counted to make sure they were all safe and provided for. In turn, the cows, hearing their master’s voice, would come from far away in the field to head that call.
The fun for these men would be to get the kids to try to “call the cows” and of course, as you might expect, the cows would not come. The old men would chuckle and then “show us how it was done.” The object lesson was that the cows only listen to their master.
I was the recipient of this object lesson many times throughout my childhood, and I never gained my knack for calling cows.
The irony of that lesson was that it also was a common practice to buy and sell livestock, and given enough time and conditioning, those cows would learn to heed the calling of a new master’s voice. Animals aren’t the dumb beast-of-burden creatures we assume them to be. God truly has made the most amazing creation.
That’s why birds fly out of the path of an incoming hurricane, elephants show empathy and mourn the death of a pack member, and squirrels might just be the greatest forest planters in the world. In so many ways, animals are incredibly intelligent, but they also can be conditioned.
In my nonexistent free time, I conducted a very unscientific study concerning the conservative Christian allegiance to the president-elect. What I discovered was many of these Christians have become conditioned to this particular affinity. When presented with opposing facts concerning the issues they contributed to be being the primary reasons they supported Trump (namely, and in no specific order, issues of border security, being pro-life and wanting a strong economy) the only facts that mattered were the ones that already had been determined by the individual as authoritative and/or important.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez has done some excellent research into what has happened in the white evangelical church over recent decades. With inspiration from her research, I have determined conservative Christians, by and large, have become conditioned to follow Trump in three significant ways:
We have first been taught to fear. I include myself in this category since I identify as a recovering conservative Christian whose only Chrisitan identity for nearly the first two decades of my life was this. And we have been taught to fear in two very distinct ways.
We have been taught to fear in an apocalyptic, the-world-is-about-to-end kind of way (which is not even the correct understanding of apocalypse but that is a different article), and we were taught to fear anyone or anything different than us.
“In the conservative context, the world is always about to end.”
In the conservative context, the world is always about to end and Satan is out there anthropomorphized as anyone or anything that is not “us.” We have perpetually made “them” the demon and “they” are to be feared.
In colloquial, Alabama talk, “Flee from evil or the Devil will get you.”
Second, we have been conditioned to make life simple, and therefore, make issues simple. Don’t worry about the intricacies of issues or people, just give me what I need to know to make a decision. Don’t even burden me with the facts, just tell me how I should think so I do not have to be burdened with the complexity of the issues.
Finally, we have been conditioned to trust authority, or at least the ones we have been told to trust. Simply, conservative Christians have been conditioned not to question authority; they simply come or go wherever they hear the master’s voice.
The problem therein is that the voice calling us as Christians should be the Shepherd, but we have lost our conditioning to hear the Sheperd’s calling.
It is often said of various situations that the problem is too big for me to make a difference. Just because a problem is bigger than we are does not relieve us of our personal responsibility to do our part.
Some will have ears to hear and others simply will not, but our responsibility is the same: To resolutely help the people in our care hear the voice of Jesus calling.
May we never grow weary of ensuring that the voice that our congregation is hearing is the voice of the Good Sheperd calling them and not the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The sheep need their Sheperd now more than ever.
Jeffrey Howard serves as senior pastor at Woodland Forest Church in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He and his family live in the Birmingham area.
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Yes, truth matters | Opinion by Phawnda Moore
Christians who don’t think much of Jesus | Opinion by Brett Younger
Trying to make sense of nonsense | Opinion by Joel Bowman