People have asked me about the news du jour—that the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today (CT) called for impeaching Mr. Trump. As I write, the story is on the front page of the New York Times, is all over cable news, and—surprisingly and perhaps importantly—is even in my local newspaper in Maryville, Tennessee.
I am an odd bird among people in the networks where I run, in that I know this magazine well, but without being part of an evangelical “tribe.” This may mean that the reflections below will throw good energy after bad, and surely there is a risk that they will wash away in the flood of punditry raging around us.
Nevertheless here they are. I'm rushing them out in the form that first gushed from my fingers--as part of a string of letters that I write, on and off, to Senator Lamar Alexander. He agrees with me about little, but still I write because he is smart enough to realize—and probably has cognitive dissonance because he realizes—that he could aspire to the integrity of a leader like John McCain, but instead is living down to the degrading cowardice of Trump’s lapdog Mitch McConnell.
CT’s editorial should matter to people like Alexander, and by extension to anyone affected by their decisions.
Dear Senator Alexander,
I have mixed feelings about the impeachment debate, since its two paltry charges are such a small tip of the iceberg of Mr. Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors. I assume you are smart enough to understand this. So I ask you to consider your conscience, your oath of office, and the future of our children as you decide whether you can do the right thing.
As you do this, I ask you to consider the Christianity Today (CT) editorial that is gaining its ten minutes of fame in today’s news cycle for calling Mr. Trump “grossly immoral” and a threat to “reputation of our country…[and] both the spirit and the future of our people.”
If you don't know, CT is the flagship organ of mainstream white evangelical leaders. Throughout decades of my career as university professor, I have followed this type of middle-of-the-road evangelicalism. I know, for example, how CT eventually came around to mildly distance itself from the US debacle in Vietnam, from Richard Nixon’s crimes, from evangelical opposition to basic women’s rights, and (in more qualified ways) even from opposing marriage equality for LGBTQ people. In each case, CT's change of mind put them near the caboose of a train of accepting changes that had already become clear for a majority of fellow-citizens. So their self-congratulation was not edifying then, just as it isn't today. Yet at least they did accept it, unlike some of their compatriots.
Interestingly for contemplating the present moment, in all these cases CT was, in effect, one of the “last rats off sinking ships” as the ships went down. The simple fact of CT finally changing its mind on a controversial issue was a decent barometer for measuring that a decisive majority of others had already changed their minds.
Today I urge you to consider how many people, not so much on your left but from your own base, that you will alienate if you do not pay attention to what CT’s editorial represents. This issue is subtle because, as you no doubt know, in the short run a super-majority of self-declared white evangelicals will stay strong for Trump. Breaking with him is certainly not their majority trend—and some of them who find Trump distasteful would happily vote for you or Mr. Pence. Others might pull a lever for Trump over certain Democrats using a lesser evil calculus.
But simply to notice this is not yet to consider a major complication—shrinkage in the baseline raw number of “100% of the (remaining) white evangelicals,” as it relates to other religious groups and religious “nones” who are growing at evangelicals' expense due to people defecting. Ex-evangelicals, along with ex-Catholics, are a major feeder for both these latter groups. The widely noted “80% evangelical for Trump” calculus does not include a large group of people who don't show up in the 80% or the 20% because they were formerly evangelicals but now are anti-evangelical defectors on its left. It also excludes a sizable group of those who, although still evangelicals, were raised conservative but are now moderate-to-liberal Democrats. 80% of a small and shrinking pie is not necessarily good. 50% of a pie twice as large has more people.
The CT editorial speaks for many people wavering along these fault-lines.
Taken together the ex-evangelicals and liberalizing evangelicals are far stronger than many people realize. Probably this tendency is already a majority trend among white younger evangelicals who increasingly embrace LGBTQ rights and self-styled colorblind multiculturalism, at least in qualified ways. Such moderate styles of evangelicalism have long been important. Although they have never been a majority stance, probably a third of all evangelicals broadly support Democratic agendas (either in Jimmy Carter’s mold or a more activist style like William Barber’s.)
Importantly, this minority looms larger if we factor black, Asian, and Latinx evangelicals into our working definitions of "evangelical," which often doesn't happen.
It was ridiculous for Trump to tweet that CT is “a far left magazine,” or that it wants as president a “Radical Left nonbeliever who wants to take your religion & your guns.” However, it is true that around half of CT’s readers are either “Jimmy Carter type” Democrats or independents, and many more are never-Trumpers.” Thus it is fair to point out that CT is somewhat liberal by evangelical standards—which by national standards translates to centrist and tilting slightly right—and may not speak for an evangelical majority.
What is not fair is to assume that its minority is insignificant or to discount how CT readers include key pastors and other leaders who preach to many rank and file evangelicals.
For two decades there has been a strong cohort of young evangelicals entering not-Republican spaces that either fall under the evangelical umbrella or are adjacent. One subset calls itself “progressive” or “emergent” evangelicalism. (This group has long been fed up with CT for waffling instead of breaking with Trump, and we must grasp how CT is chasing after them in the hope of not losing them entirely). Another subset says “if being evangelical means supporting Trump, I guess I’m not an evangelical. I’m out.” Sometimes this means a clean break with identifying as Christian; the trumpeted sharp rise of “nones” is fueled by this reaction. Sometimes, equally significant but far less trumpeted, it means moves toward mainline Protestantism, whether in vociferously anti-evangelical postures or in a gray area of overlap between liberal theologies and quasi-evangelicalism.
Framed this way, it is a major misunderstanding to assume either that an overwhelming majority of Protestants are evangelical, or that an overwhelming majority of the evangelical fraction is hard-core conservative. In fact there is rough parity between left-leaning and right-leaning Christians, arrayed more in a bell curve than in two separate camps, at the level of grassroots sensibilities and underlying common sense.
Meanwhile nearly everyone (including evangelicals, although they may repress the cognitive dissonance) assumes, as a matter of common sense, that trying to square Trump’s behaviors with Christian values is absurd and grotesque. The Christian case for Trump must fall back on lesser evil logic or it collapses. But, right here, CT is stepping in to argue that, even in terms of evangelical self-interest, being in bed with Trump is the greater evil.
The CT editorial is important for shining ten minutes of fame on such cracks in standard assumptions about how “normal” Christianity relates to Trumpism.
Senator Alexander, I'm sure you know that the sort of swing voter who first supported Bush, then Obama, then Trump has been crucial to your party's success in close elections. But if so, you should pay close attention to these cracks. Yes, the raw number of defectors will be smallish. And, no, it won't help their visibility that liberal pundits will be dismissive: “Bush, then Obama, then Trump, really?!?” Again: “It took you forty years to be colorblind’—and now with an analysis that discounts structural racism, really?!?”
But you should not underestimate this group’s share of the swing voters in swing states. Although the evangelical leaders who read CT will not convert all that many constituents—especially those who watch 25 hours of FOX for every hour they are in church—still it is easy to imagine CT’s stance as a barometer predicting a 10% downturn in evangelical support for Trump, partly masked in the poll results because many of this 10% will be newly disavowing evangelicalism. That is plenty to lose a lot of elections for Republicans.
My feelings about this matter are mixed. Part of me wants Trump's evangelical allies to shrug off CT's arguments and hold their rank-and-file to lower than the 10% attrition I expect. I suppose this result would turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for Republicans, and this could tempt me because I'm not a Republican. Likely if Trump is swept into power by evangelicals this would imply, if we wait to look under the hood after a couple of years, an absolute shrinkage in the overall container of "all the evangelicals" which would be more damaging for Republicans in the long run—even if we can safely project ongoing Republican supermajorities among those still loyal to this shrinking group.
So it could turn out better in the long term for Democrats if today’s crack in the evangelical front is quickly sutured by Trumpians—because mainstream evangelicalism in the Trumpian mode is a machine that produces disgusted ex-evangelicals. CT is speaking to this dynamic when it says that evangelicals “are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence…the whole game will come crashing down…on the reputation of evangelical religion.”
But as noted my feelings are mixed. If CT's anti-Trump intervention (plus related shifts elsewhere in this orbit) has a decisive impact in the short run—if this turns out to be the moment when Trump’s house of cards comes crashing down, or when his ship starts sinking with the rats fleeing out—it is hard not to welcome this. It's just that such an outcome would bode better for the capacity of evangelicals to rebrand, as they often done in the past. CT is trying furiously to do that now. My ambivalence comes from knowing that its preferred scenario might turn out better for Republicans in the long run.
So, Republicans can pick their poison: if you approach this editorial thinking about cold Republican self-interest, it offers you a lose-lose choice.
In this context I want to insist on something I've often written to you before. Removing the criminal Trump should not be a partisan issue. I support his impeachment on moral grounds and out of concern for the legitimacy of our system despite my judgment that getting rid of Trump would help Republicans more than Democrats.
Admittedly the wild card in this train of thought is whether Republicans like yourself actually care about destroying the legitimacy of our political system. Do you plan to consolidate a de facto one-party authoritarian regime through corruption, voter fraud, and packing the courts? Do you simply hope that you can rig the system so thoroughly that you will not to need to care how small a minority you represent, and by extension you will not need to need to worry about your moral legitimacy or the attrition in your voting blocs?
Senator Alexander, I hope you don’t want to be part of such a destructive and corrupt scenario. I want to think better of you than that. Are you sure you do not want to join the people—now including the most distinguished evangelical journal—who have sufficient moral principle and respect for our Constitution and national interest to break with this terrible trend? I believe you can do this.
It bears repeating that CT was among the last mainstream voices to “get off the sinking ship” in the Nixon era. It lived not only to tell its story but to thrive.
Please speak out strongly to remove this disgraceful criminal from office and move us forward in healing our country before it is too late.
Sincerely,
Mark Hulsether