Here’s the toxic racism and misogyny you let loose with a vote for Trump

If Kamala Harris had won, no Black people would be receiving text messages threatening to make them slaves again, and no women would be being told, “Your body, my choice.” When Trump wins, those things happen. And when Trump loses, insurrections happen.

That is the harsh reality we’re facing in the wake of the 2024 election, thanks to millions of Christians who voted for Trump despite knowing who he is.

Of course, some moderates and supposed independents are poking their heads out to play the “both sides” card. And there are even some liberals, such as Bill Maher, who are blaming the left for going “too woke.” Apparently, asking Americans to use people’s preferred pronouns is considered extreme enough to warrant voting for a rapist who wants to send in the military to remove millions of families from their homes, put Christian nationalists in charge of our schools, and place conspiracy theorists at the head of our public health.

The data are clear. According to the 2024 PRRI American Values Survey, 62% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen and are more than 3.5 times as likely as Democrats to say Americans may need to resort to violence in order to save the country from the other side.

While many Christians who didn’t vote for Trump are claiming Trump supporters are hypocrites, the reality is that they’re not. The reason they’re voting for a violent man is the violent theology they celebrate has conditioned them to embrace violent men. And as we’re seeing through the second coming of Trump, his ascension to power is accompanied by violence against minorities and women.

Selected to pick cotton

The text messages being sent to Black and Hispanic people across at least 30 states as well as Washington, D.C., claim that the recipients were “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.”

The messages include personal information, including the recipients’ names. Retired FBI agent Kenneth Gray told CNN, “Whoever is responsible for this did some real research not only putting together the target list, but also crafting a message that had info that made it seem real.”

One 15-year-old Hispanic boy received a message claiming he has been “chosen to be part of group B to go pick cotton at a plantation” and “will be picked up by a black van and to be ready by 6 p.m.” His mother added, “He said a lot of his Hispanic friends have also gotten the message saying that they will be deported, so they’re getting different messages, just worded a little differently.”

A 12-year-old girl received a message that included her personal name and said, “You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Please have your belongings together by ten sharp. Our executive slaves will pick you up in a yellow van.”

“The unfortunate reality of electing a president who, historically, has embraced and at times encouraged hate, is unfolding before our eyes,” said Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP. “These messages represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel emboldened to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear that many of us are feeling after Tuesday’s election results.”

Trump administration officials deny having anything to do with the text messages. But their plans for mass deportations remain.

And unfortunately, discovering where these message came from is proving to be especially difficult even for the FBI because the sender is using an anonymizing software that hides their location.

‘Your body, my choice’

When white supremacist Nick Fuentes posted on X, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” young men began repeating the phrase.

Again, Trump administration officials want to act like they have nothing to do with it. But the reality is Trump has been accused of rape or sexual assault by 26 women and has publicly bragged about sexually assaulting women. And all of that preceded white evangelicals and traditional Catholics voting for him three times.

Not to mention the attacks on bodily autonomy of women after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade.

After the audio was released in 2016 of Trump bragging about grabbing women, Trump claimed it was “locker room banter.” Shortly after, I was in a meeting with other business owners when one of the women asked if men actually talk like that in the locker room. All the other men in the meeting, who were also conservative evangelicals, started laughing and said, “Yes.”

I eventually became a stay at home dad. So maybe I don’t understand what being a man is supposedly all about. One person responded to my post on X about this by saying, “Jokes ain’t threats.”

But besides just the dehumanization of it, the problem we’re facing today is that these messages are being promoted not simply by young men trying to be funny online, but by Christian pastors who wield the authority of God.

You exist to sacrifice and serve powerful men

Earlier this year, these conservative evangelical men came to the defense of pastor Josh Howerton of Lakepointe Church in Dallas.

Howerton told women from the pulpit that on their husband’s wedding night, they are to “stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do.” Like Trump and those defending these violent messages, he later claimed he was just joking.

But he also told women to treat their dishonorable husbands as kings, saying: “You cannot disrespect a man into respectability. Here’s how it works. Give him a crown and then he becomes a king.”

Then just before the election, Howerton told his congregation faithful Christians must vote for the candidate who opposes transgender people and would secure the border.

“Knowing that his penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife.”

Another popular misogynistic pastor this year is Mark Driscoll. When Driscoll was pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, he told the men of his church their penis was God’s penis. Then Driscoll added, “Knowing that his penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.”

Driscoll continued his fascination with penises this year when he went on Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht’s podcast to promote Trump. Driscoll and Feucht were claiming Kamala Harris is a modern-day Jezebel character from 2 Kings 9 and said Jezebel surrounded herself with eunuchs. So when Feucht asked Driscoll what has been missing, Driscoll answered, “Balls.”

“Balls,” Feucht repeated.

“Balls,” Driscoll confirmed.

“Well said. Yeah,” Feucht agreed.

Then Driscoll added, “That’s what’s missing. The de-masculination of men.”

And who did Trump meet with in Atlanta about adding a faith office to the White House that “directly reports to him to protect and preserve the church”?

Mark Driscoll.

Then on election night, Feucht tweeted, “The men of America are rising up.”

Get on the bus, or get run over and blown away

Ten days prior to the election, Feucht led a weekend of worship warfare in Washington, D.C., that included celebrations of Israel bombing Iran, songs about “taking ground” and pastors invoking the word “theocracy.”

Trump himself greeted the worshipers by video and thanked Feucht for gathering the worshipers together. Then the event started with the National Anthem and a call to worship that talked about God’s enemies being scattered, fleeing and being blown away like smoke and dying while God’s people celebrate.

“His threat was a reference was to genocide in the biblical book of Joshua.”

In their private event Friday evening, pastor Russell Johnson said they were taking “their position on the wall with a trumpet in one hand and a sword in the other to call the nation back to God.” His threat was a reference to genocide in the biblical book of Joshua.

And all this fits in with Driscoll’s approach to being a pastor. Referring to his elders and congregation, he once said: “There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus. And by God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done. You either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus. Those are the options.”

These are the men Trump tapped into in order to rile up white evangelicals to vote for him.

How the Cross promotes violent men and crucifies women

“But this isn’t the gospel,” other Christians say. Instead of pointing to political power, many Christians want to point to the Cross.

But even Christ and the Cross itself get framed in ways that promote violence.

When men are told to be like Christ in conservative Christianity, they tend to resonate with the authority of Christ. For example, at Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” event in D.C., the blood of Jesus was talked about as “the highest authority.” It wasn’t about God identifying with those who suffer, but about God identifying with the powerful. And in the world of conservative Christianity where Howerton, Feucht and Driscoll think what’s missing is “balls,” the highest authority is men.

But when Christ is spoken of in regard to women, it’s always about Christ’s sacrifice. New Testament scholar Laura Robinson explained earlier this year that white evangelicalism’s hero Elisabeth Elliott’s work is “geared toward the theme of self-sacrifice — that giving things up, humbling yourself, following God, and rejecting personal desires or feelings is the way of the Cross. … This message of self-sacrifice up to and including self-martyrdom is a message that Christian people have returned to again and again through history.”

In her book Sex Tech, and Faith, Christian ethicist Kate Ott says the theme of Christ’s sacrifice is given “a gendered twist” that harms women.

“This is horrific theology.”

And one way we see this is through how women’s bodies are treated when it comes to health care. Earlier this year, a Catholic woman named Jessica Hanna died after choosing to refuse cancer treatments because she was pregnant. Rather than having an early abortion that would allow doctors to scan her body and treat her cancer, she ended up dying.

According to Hanna, “The difference between (my Good Friday) and that of Jesus’ is that I indeed deserve my time here walking to Calvary and he certainly did not. In fact, it was my sins that led to many of his excruciating pains. For myself, my suffering is an offering given back to him not only to atone for the crimes I committed in my life but also to cooperate with the body of Christ to offer atonement for others as well.”

This is horrific theology. As the husband of a cancer survivor, I have to say that women do not deserve breast cancer due to crimes and sins as a way of offering back to Christ an atonement. We shouldn’t be promoting Hanna as an example deserving of sainthood for other women to follow. Instead, we should be deconstructing the violent theology that killed Hanna before it kills any other women.

Whatever comes of the investigations into the threatening text messages being sent to Black and Hispanic people, and whatever people think about sexually coercive jokes by pastors and frat boys, the reality is that violent men are promoting a violent theology that ends up having the collateral damage of violence against nonwhite people and women.

At some point, we need to be honest about the connections from the root to the fruit and all the branches in between. If we don’t start taking sacralized celebrations of hierarchy and violence seriously, then we’re going to look back at the American carnage and wonder why so many people ended up dead.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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