Trump & Pence, Ctd

With regard to the selection of Pence by Trump for the VP slot, a reader remarks:

Calculated move by Trump to pull in the far right ultra conservative wing who despise him.

Another replies:

I always thought the Klan was the far right, and they endorsed him. Who are these people on the far right who hate him, and what do they believe in?

Well, not all on the far Right are KKK – much of the fundamentalist movement is also far Right as a best characterization. And that group seems to be convulsed by Trump. Here’s an article from The Atlantic’s Jonathan Merritt back in September, 2015:

Donald Trump is immodest, arrogant, foul-mouthed, money-obsessed, thrice-married, and until recently, pro-choice. By conventional standards, evangelical Christians should despise him. Yet somehow, the Manhattan billionaire has attracted their support.

According to the most recent polls, Trump is one of the top picks for president among evangelical Christians. One Washington Post poll even had him as the group’s favorite by a margin of six points. His first major rally in the Bible-Belt fortress town of Mobile, Alabama, drew an estimated 18,000 attendees. And on September 28, prominent televangelist Paula White will reportedly lead a delegation of evangelical leaders to meet with the mogul in Trump Tower.

“Why do they love me?” Trump replied when asked about the trend. “You’ll have to ask them. But they do. They do love me.”

Back in May Mugambi Jouet suggested in The New Republic a reason why evangelicals love Trump:

But Trump and his evangelical supporters think alike in more ways than people realize. Fundamentalist approaches to evangelicalism have long fostered anti-intellectual, anti-rational, black-and-white, and authoritarian mindsets—the very traits that define Trump.

The historian Richard Hofstadter explored the roots of the issue in his 1966 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which described how the spread of evangelicalism since the eighteenth century fostered the notion that education is an obstacle to faith. Not all evangelicals thought alike, although many were convinced that people need not read any book except the Bible. As the influential preacher Dwight L. Moody (1837-99) proclaimed, “I do not read any book, unless it will help me to understand the book.” Hofstadter concluded that this anti-intellectual conception of religion extended to life outside the church. Hardline evangelicals became particularly disdainful of reflection and refined ideas, leading some to be drawn to “men of emotional power or manipulative skill.”

I’ve never read Hofstadter, which I now regret a little, as that last phrase, ‘leading some to be drawn to “men of emotional power or manipulative skill“,’ precisely echoes some recent conclusions of my own. Without trying to be offensive (but no doubt achieving it anyways), it had recently occurred to me that if you’re willing to strongly believe in a specific deity to the extent that the deity’s book is the center of your life, you fail to develop the instincts, as it were, to detect the fallacies & frauds employing charismatics, who proclaim falsehoods so loudly, because those same tactics are employed by those who are part of your faith community. There is an important distinction between message and methods of communications, and to my mind an alarming number of people, not constrained to the evangelical fundamentalists, do not understand this. I recall sitting in  two medical conferences about a relative of mine. Virtually the same information was presented, but one MD was very upbeat, while the other (the first one’s partner) was a much more sober person. My Dad and I walked out of the second conference saying nothing new had been learned, but other attendees were deeply swayed by the presentation style. Similar remarks may be made of the evangelical support for Bush & Cheney, and the poor decision making that befell the nation afterwards.

I have to wonder if it’s accurate to say that a true debate between a rationalist of any stripe and a fundamentalist is itself a fraud and a circus, because there is no single metric by which to measure the contestants. The rationalist audience will analyze the facts presented, the arguments built on those facts, and tote up the points for each debater. The fundamentalists, on the other hand, will employ a scale in which defense of the faith is the most important facet. This will consist of appeals to popular parts of the Bible, thus demonstrating some familiarity with the theology. If this reminds you of the debates in the wonderful movie Inherit the Wind, be not surprised, as that’s in the back of my mind as I write this. In particular, remember the fury and discouragement of the rationalist lawyer, played by Spencer Tracy, at the obstinacy of the judge. In more modern times, while I did not watch it, the 2014 debate between Ken Ham, a creationist, and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” and of The Planetary Society played out in the same way, as I understand it. On a far more speculative note, the Turkish upper-classes may have stumbled into this quagmire, and even triggered the attempted coup. Why say “triggered”? Because downgrading reason below faith in a deity and the arbitrary book representing the deity can often lead to poor decisions – and if the populace has been taken in by the methods of those now in power, some military personnel may have felt it necessary to remove those in power and let the citizenry detox, as it were, while those who had been in power are shown to be frauds, charges which have already been flying in regards to Turkey’s President Erdogan.

And then there’s those who’d make democracy a shrine unto itself…. but I shan’t walk down the path today.

There are those evangelicals who don’t care for Trump. In March of this year, the Christian Post covered one such megachurch pastor’s experience – Max Lucado:

Lucado mentioned that his recent blog about Trump got 15 million reads, and said while many agreed with him, others wanted him to “shut up.”

Lucado, who ministers at the Oak Hills Church, said while Trump claims to be a Christian, he is using “a language that is so incompatible.”

Referring to Matthew 12: 34, Lucado said, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. He pointed out that Trump has called 64 people “losers” in a short period of time.

But Trump loves the Bible, as he said a few months ago, “Nothing beats the Bible,” the host said.

Lucado laughed, and then said, the core of the Christian faith is that we are sinners who need forgiveness, but Trump said he didn’t need to ask for forgiveness.

“For a person to say that they are Christians but never need forgiveness is like a swimmer saying I’m a swimmer but I never get wet, and I’m a musician and I never pick up a musical instrument… Grace is the oxygen of Christian faith,” Lucado said.

 

Lucado continued that he doesn’t have an answer to why evangelicals are rallying behind Trump.

“I do not have an answer. I apologize. I have had my own church members come up and criticize me for that blog and I’ll ask them, do you not see a disconnect here? And it’s almost like the ends justify the means in their mind,” he said.

Ed Stetzer on The Exchange blog (hosted by Christianity Today) addresses this issue:

Many evangelical leaders are embarrassed by the evangelical support of Trump. That’s reality. Yet, some of those leaders are responding poorly. Our gut reaction is to dismiss his supporters as not being “real” evangelicals, and to question their faith.

I’d like to suggest a different approach.

Rather than looking down with scorn on evangelical Trump supporters, perhaps we should sit down with them, listen to them, and hear their concerns.

He discusses some of the reasons given by the rank and file evangelicals.

So ….. circling back to the original point: why Pence? Back to The New Republic article by Jouet, and we find the answer: