The first time both our kids were old enough to vote in the United States presidential election was the year 2016.
That year, more than 80% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. And here, eight years and one insurrection, later, white evangelicals remain steadfast in that decision and may soon again knowingly elect a president who is a sexual deviant. Adding to his own voice bragging about his complete freedom to commit sexual assault on women, Donald Trump now has a rape conviction.
Kirsten Christensen Roberts
In 2004, our kids were 8 and 5. I was teaching their Wednesday night discipleship classes at our California megachurch. A blockbuster Christian book was selling tens of millions of copies to unbelievers and believers alike. It connected to peoples’ desire to find meaning and purpose in their lives and to know God intimately. The first sentence resonated: “It’s not about you.”
How did we get from that paramount premise of Christianity to overwhelmingly choosing a selfish, cruel narcissist whose every decision is all about him as the leader of our nation?
I say we must look back to August 2005 when Roger Ailes (surprise, this guy also sexually assaulted women on the regular) was named chairman of the Fox Television Group. His boss, Rupert Murdoch, had recently realized the profit potential and influence of what had been considered sleepy Christian media.
That perfect storm led to the monetization of white grievance and the obliteration of truth. Under Ailes, “news” no longer had to be sourced or factual. If you just put “it’s been reported” in front of a fear-mongering statement, it could be presented as news.
And now almost 20 years later, we have Donald Trump, who lies incessantly and is never held to account by those you would think would preach at least a message or two on the ninth commandment during the run up to Nov. 5, 2024.
It’s tough to convince young people now that there is a way, a truth and a life, when truth has no meaning.
“It’s tough to convince young people now that there is a way, a truth and a life, when truth has no meaning.”
Besides the death of truth, what Murdoch’s hate machine has wrought is bigotry in all forms. How do evangelical pastors propose we teach young people they are all created in God’s image, or that Jesus loves the little children of the world, or that God uniquely knitted them together in their mother’s wombs, and ultimately that God so loved the world, when those Christian leaders sit by and say nothing when Donald Trump refers to some of humankind as “animals,” “murders,” “rapists (the hypocrisy!)” and those who object to him as “vermin”?
I’m a SoCal girl. I’ve spent the last 40 years in South Orange County and the past five years living 15 miles from the Mexico border. I know many people who have immigrated without legal documentation. And I know the many, many, upper-middle-class white evangelicals who know them too.
The undocumented in Southern California raise our children (Carmen from Sao Paulo was our nanny), clean our houses, plant our gardens, build our homes, subsidize the cost of our food with their back-breaking 12-hour workdays — six days a week — fix our cars and take care of our old people.
None of these jobs do I see Americans lining up to do. And if you could talk them into doing them, it would be for far more money, which translates into less money for all of us consumers of their labors.
After a life-altering illness slashed our income by two-thirds at the beginning of the mortgage crisis of the mid 2000s, we turned to leasing out our house. It was Juan our painter and handyman, Sergio our plumber, Humberto our drywaller and Miguel our landscaper who kept the place going and the tenants happy. In 2009, to make ends meet, my husband took his concrete mixer and went to work in other states where they still had the land to build PayPal’s, Facebook data centers, Amazon warehouses and all things Google, as well as the infrastructure, homes and businesses that built up around them.
Along the way, he met a guy named Oscar. Years before Oscar had walked from Guatemala to the United States and crossed the border illegally in pursuit of a better life — the life Americans have the good fortune of having randomly bestowed upon us based on no merit at all. Oscar went on to build a business, owning 25 mixers and setting up and operating a commercial truck repair shop. He worked to obtain his citizenship and he employed many people who paid taxes and bought goods and services — which provided employment for other people who bought goods and services, and on and on.
But what Oscar did for us specifically was hire Latin American mechanics who were willing to work on my husband’s mixer at 11 at night after he broke down that day so he could get back on the road the next day and make us more money. Those mechanics charged less and did better work than the local Kenworth where he wouldn’t be able to get an appointment for three days while he made no money and continued to incur expenses.
The shocking thing, but what has become way too commonplace, is this: Of the many old white dudes who brought their trucks to Oscar to fix at all hours, better, cheaper and faster, almost all those guys voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
“What changed my thinking? It was my kids.”
They remind me of the shadow Christians sitting in our megachurches who also voted and plan to vote again for Trump. They are not the 30% of loudmouth MAGA loons but the ones who make up the rest of the 80% of white evangelicals too embarrassed to talk about it. The people who shocked the pollsters in 2016. And the mainline evangelical pastors who are not preaching against racial discrimination leading up to the coming election are complicit.
Meanwhile, we have pastors and influential Christian leaders who want to spearhead the spreading of the gospel to Latin American countries. At the very same time they remain quiet and “above the fray” in their American churches refusing to speak out about the constant dehumanizing rhetoric toward Latin Americans seeking refuge, opportunity and some good news from us Christians here in this country.
I didn’t always think this way. In 1994, driving home in my BMW to my oceanview house, I would listen to the local AM talk station hosts rant and rave in support of Prop 187 “Save our State,” which prohibited undocumented immigrants from using public education, health care and other state services. I was fully on board wanting to protect me, my and mine. Fortunately, despite my selfishness, California decided in court approved mediation that resulted in no child being denied education or health care.
What changed my thinking? It was my kids. The ones who asked me good questions trying to reconcile the teachings of Jesus that I taught them with what they saw going on in the world around them.
Today, they are in their mid 20s and they aren’t buying the answers the church is giving them.
Kirsten Christensen Roberts — Christensen is her father’s name and Roberts her husband’s — has made these names her own with a long marriage to her husband, Jim, their two grown kids and many wise older women. She graduated from Biola University in 1987 and had a long career as a CPA in banking and finance in Orange County, Calif.