When Trump canceled US aid, these evangelicals rejoiced

When President Donald Trump canceled U.S. grants distributed through church charitable organizations, Phil Vischer posted on X: “The Trump admin sent notices on Wednesday to the Christian orgs that work to help refugees resettle in the US — informing them that all of their contracts have been cancelled. The 45 year-old program, launched by Reagan with broad bipartisan support, is apparently finished. Trump has also canceled contracts for the emergency food supplement the US makes for kids too malnourished to eat normal food. 300,000 servings are now stuck in Georgia. Doctors fear thousands of kids will die as a result.”

The responses he drew from evangelical Christians and other MAGA supports on X were astounding:

“Good, they were aiding and abetting the invasion of our country to displace us and turn the entire country Democrat/communist, whether they knew it or not. We won’t be forced to finance our own replacement. Trump is finally putting an end to it.”
“Awesome. That’s what I voted for.”
“And rightly so when it has been to abused to the point of driving our nation into bankruptcy.”
“Thank God. Our government has used billions of dollars to buy off church denominations and get them to bend the knee to the culture of the day. All without the parishes knowing this was going on at this huge scale.”
“Good, now seize all remaining assets and deport the staff.”

In response, Vischer later reposted a comment from New Testament theologian Laura Robinson: “I have no idea what to do with a Christian who responds to news of starving kids with celebration. It’s like there’s more than one religion called Christianity and one is the perfect inverse of the other.”

The explosion of responses on X demonstrates a MAGA evangelical detachment from the Bible, the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus, the history of the church, and reality. In what Christian world do Christians celebrate the closing of agencies designed to help immigrants and the poor? Apparently, that would be the evangelical world of MAGA.

For Christians to support the defunding of Christian organizations, including evangelical organizations, that serve poor and marginalized people at home and abroad is absurd. But we live in absurd times when lies pass for truth and opinions pass for knowledge.

What they wanted

In Trump, evangelicals got the president they always desired. As Robert Jeffress famously put it, “I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find.”

“In Trump, evangelicals got the president they always desired.”

As a result, evangelicals are on a path to being Trump’s tools — a path leading away from the evangelical commitments to the gospel of Jesus.

David Frum noted, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy.” I think Frum is only partially right. MAGA evangelicals will abandon even Jesus, while still saying, “Lord, Lord!”

Refusing to see the values of diversity, openness and inclusion as Christian values, they conflate secular values with progressive values in opposition to both.

MAGA evangelical response to Trump canceling the contracts of church agencies helping immigrants and the poor has the feel of tearing down the fences to protect the cattle from predators.

In their own words

Beyond analogies, there are hard facts showing the detachment of MAGA evangelicals from reality. I read more than 250 responses to Vischer’s social media posts and here are the themes that sound like the chorus of a bad praise song over and over.

No more foreigners

MAGA evangelicals are more concerned about immigrants than abortion.

“Not our problem.”
“Am I my brothers’ keeper?”
“America can no longer afford to solve the world’s problems.”
“Good, I’m tired of my hometown getting flooded with Somalis.”

The best biblical character I have found to help me understand MAGA evangelicals is Jonah. Here’s a preacher who preached a sermon and the entire city of Nineveh was converted. But Jonah was not happy. Jonah’s absurd performance in the final act of the book — a Jewish comedy in my reading — is one of contempt for God’s mercy for foreigners. MAGA evangelicals play Jonah to the hilt.

Seeing corruption everywhere

And then there’s the idea that church nonprofits are corrupt:

“Exorcising this corruption from churches is an important step.”
“Most excellent. The corruption is being rooted out tooth and nail. So horrific the ‘church’ is central to this malfeasance in the country. No more progressive kingdom building via illegal importation. There is a legal gate and gatekeeper — use them.”

For Trump and MAGA, there’s corruption and fraud here, there, and everywhere. Corruption and fraud hide in the “Deep State” which turns out to be millions of loyal, hard-working civil servants maintaining a government that works for the people.

No care for the poor

MAGA evangelicals have created an impossible situation. They claim to care about the poor, but they are opposed to the government helping the poor. And they don’t give enough of their money to churches and church-related organizations to help the poor.

Here’s a few examples of this anti-government theme:

“Bottom line all these programs were getting more and more corrupt therefore not effective.”
“That’s what happens when they turn grants into a business model for cash. They don’t get to facilitate illegal immigration just to get cash. No one cares that they wave around a cross while doing it.”
“When those ‘Christian’ orgs turn against the country and start a Leftist program of replacement, it’s time to question those who still believe they are Christian orgs — and whether those who laud them are themselves Christians.”
“Good. It was rank disobedience for Christians to outsource charity to Caesar.”
“Good — the work of the church needs support of the church, not unending $$$ taps from governments that start to defacto use you for their purposes.”
“’Christian orgs’ should not be relying on government support, they should be supported by voluntary donations only and be independent of any government and its opinions and agendas.”

What’s missing

George Lakoff offers a reality check on the role of the government in The Political Mind. The ethics of empathy shapes government. “Behind every progressive policy,” Lakoff reminds, “lies a single moral value: empathy, together with responsibility and strength to act on that empathy.”

Government has a moral mission.

President Franklin Roosevelt said: “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it is bad economics.”

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. We know now that it is bad economics.”

A partnership with the government makes sense. But not to MAGA evangelicals. They never have forgiven Roosevelt for implementing portions of the Social Gospel into the government. They still despise the social safety net even as they benefit from it.

Here’s the problem. Evangelicals know the churches lack the money to support the national social safety net. There’s too much need and too little money. By hindering government outreach, evangelicals know they are refusing to meet human needs. They sluff it off to hating government, but what they hate is people, who in their eyes, “get something for nothing.”

President Barack Obama indicated that he, like Franklin Roosevelt, understood that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” not simply as a matter of morality, but also as a practical requirement in a consumption-based economy. As historian Robert S. McElvaine argues, “Just a spoonful of socialism makes the capitalism go up.”

In the final analysis, MAGA evangelicals are fighting against morality and economics.

Forget individual charity

And as for the old notion that charity is up to individuals, there is this one inescapable reality: Individuals can’t meet all the needs of the poor, the sick, the immigrants, the down and out.

MAGA thinks charity is individual and church work. Nothing could be more detached from reality. The average American Christian contributes 2.3% of annual income to local churches. There’s no way the churches can meet the crushing amount of human need in the U.S., let alone the world.

“Church charities should be financed by their parishioners,” one respondent to Vischer said.

Good. Let’s start with your annual pledge. The $200 a year you have been pledging will need to go to $20,000 a year. You ready for that?

And something worse

One set of expressed feelings in the hundreds of posts left me near depression. Somehow, MAGA Christians were celebrating the actions of the administration with glee. The sense of celebration blends joy with cruelty. What if the cruelty is the point?

As I scrolled through the awful texts, I found constant expressions of joy. For example, one man was ecstatic: “Thank God. Now we have to get all the fake ‘refugees’ and the ‘migrants’ that already got dumped into our home by corrupt/greedy NGOs the hell out. Going to take effort, but it’s worth it.”