The evangelical Trumpians are at it again.
In 2015, Donald Trump rode down an escalator announcing his intention to become America’s political messiah. He knocked off his primary opponents and general election foes one-by-one, dismissing them as “low energy” Jeb Bush, “too ugly” (Carly Fiorina), had too ugly a wife and “lyin’ Ted Cruz,” “Little Marco Rubio” (and not merely in height), “Crooked Hillary,” and “Sleepy Joe Biden.” He thus grasped the Republican presidential nomination and announced, in purely messianic terms, that “I alone can fix” our broken nation.
In addition to such unkind name-calling, Trump also wrested the nomination from the career politicians by pressing every white Supremacist button he could get his stubby little fingers on. Throughout his presidency, he continued to sound these divisive xenophobic notes — birtherism, the “guilt” of the Central Park Five, “crazy” Maxine Waters, the “invasion” of brown-skinned “vermin” at our southern border with intentions “to poison the bloodstream of our country,” and who take “Black jobs,” the “good people” on both sides in Charlottesville, racist attacks on four female House members called “The Squad” demanding they “go back where they come from,” and “shit-hole countries,” to name only a few.
Andrew Manis
Throw in his willingness to “date” Ivanka if she weren’t his daughter, a civil conviction for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, who apparently “didn’t let him do it because he was famous,” one photo op where he held a shrink-wrapped Bible upside down, two impeachments, three wives, six bankruptcies, 34 felony convictions, an intention to “suspend the Constitution,” or to be a Dictator on Day One, several weeks of dismissing the threat of the COVID pandemic that left 1,104,000 Americans dead, and God only knows how many other lies he has told.
To use a line from a popular Christian song, “through it all,” more than 80% of evangelical Christians ignored these facts and voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, with no signs of letting up in 2024.
Since 2016, they have been comparing Trump to Cyrus, the sixth-century BCE Persian emperor who brought the Babylonian captivity to a close and allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. He is hailed as the “anointed one,” God’s man to fix God’s country. And now an assassination attempt has led both Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress to claim God’s protective hand guided the bullet through Trump’s ear rather than into his head.
God saved Trump to save America, God’s “city on a hill.” And since this supposed prophecy regarding our 45th president is found in the 45th chapter of Isaiah, one can hear the oohs emanating from evangelicals everywhere. Since evangelicals reject the idea of coincidence, this prophecy must be true.
Their certainty alone is reason enough for such theological interpretations to be questioned, if not rejected out of hand. Has it ever occurred to Graham or Jeffress or their followers to ask why God did not give lethal heart attacks to the world’s most famous dictators before they killed 45 million (Mao Zedong), 20 million (Adolf Hitler) or 6 million (Joseph Stalin)? Did anyone else observe Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vision of “an angel coming down from heaven that looked like an American flag that saved Donald Trump’s life?” How do evangelicals know it wasn’t Satan, disguised as a red, white,and blue angel of light, saving 45 in order to serve some jail time for his 34 felony counts or other indictments?
“Just a teensy bit of Bible knowledge will reveal that most of the people in the Bible saved by God in the nick of time shared a characteristic Trump completely lacks: They sought after God and acted according to God’s commandments.”
Since we don’t know what we don’t know, such divine riddles are hardly susceptible to definite answers. What we do know is that God’s “thoughts are not our thoughts” and God’s “ways are not our ways.” And just a teensy bit of Bible knowledge will reveal that most of the people in the Bible saved by God in the nick of time shared a characteristic Trump completely lacks: They sought after God and acted according to God’s commandments.
Abraham obeyed the command to follow God’s lead from Ur of the Chaldees to the Promised Land of Canaan. He also passed God’s test of faith, following God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, his son and heir to God’s promise to Abraham.
Or the teenage Hebrew boys Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who refused to bow the knee to King Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. Instead, they told the king to go ahead and throw them in the fiery furnace because they believed God would save them. But if not, they said, they still refused to bow the knee to the king’s idol.
Or Daniel, whose life of faith and obedience to God created a contagion of lockjaw sweeping through the lions’ den.
Or David, a man after God’s own heart, who wrote many of the psalms, and whom God saved from the sword of Goliath, the Philistine giant. But when King David failed and his lust led to an affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah the Hittite, he lost his kingdom and his family.
Do any of these biblical stories even remotely remind you of Donald Trump? Can anyone name even one Christlike act that Donald Trump ever committed in public? For God’s sake, can anyone tell me why Adolf Hitler survived several assassination attempts, one of which led to the arrest, imprisonment and, ultimately, the execution of German Christian theologian and 20th-century saint Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
Or can someone answer the biggest riddle of all: Why in God’s name are all of you so-called “Christians” still voting for Donald Trump?
But that’s a question for another day.
Andrew M. Manis is emeritus professor of history at Middle Georgia State University and author of A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. He is currently working with Mark V. Puroshotham, producer and director of Mercy Pictures, on a documentary based on the book. Learn more about that project by emailing [email protected].