(Note: In the following essay, I use the terms Christian fundamentalists, Christian right, and Evangelicals interchangeably. There may be differences of meaning in the terms, but I basically use all three terms to mean Republican, conservative, church-going, self-described Christians.)
Lots of Democrats have been wondering why Republican Christian fundamentalists are supporting an immoral character like Donald Trump this year. Objectively, Hillary Clinton is far more Christian and far more moral than Donald Trump, and the Democratic Party platform is far more consistent with Jesus’s teachings than the Republican platform. So how come self-proclaimed Christians are still going to vote for Trump?
To Democrats, Evangelicals always seem to change the rules in the middle of the game. Before St. Ronnie appeared, the Christian right would never have voted for a candidate who was divorced. But, suddenly, that didn’t matter when Reagan came along. Various and sundry GOP senators and congressmen have been caught in blatant hypocrisies—pounding the podium about family values while cheating on their wives or bashing gays while soliciting male prostitutes. Yet it seems they are always forgiven. Evangelicals prefer the thrice-divorced and profoundly profane Trump to a genuinely Christian and moral Hillary Clinton. The Christian fundamentalist philosophy seems to be IOKIYAR1. Why is that?
Many of us don’t understand why Evangelicals reject the Democratic Party and its platform of giving a helping hand to the poor and downtrodden. After all, Evangelicals frequently act in a generous, loving, and Christian manner in their own communities. In my experience, they are mostly kind, well-intentioned people, and their churches often provide shelters and soup kitchens and disaster relief for the poor. Why don’t they support that work by voting for Democrats? What’s up with that?
Maybe it’s because the Christian right is misogynistic2. They won’t vote for Hillary Clinton because they want a father figure and reject the premise of a woman in a leadership role. Misogyny is very real, but Evangelicals didn’t have a problem with Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away from the presidency, and I suspect they would hypothetically support her against, say, Bernie Sanders. How is that consistent? Why vote for Palin and not Clinton?
Then racism is the source of the problem, one argues. No doubt that is part of it, too, but many evangelical churches welcome blacks and Hispanics and do outreach in local minority communities. Yet they’re voting for Trump, too. Why?
It must be Hillary herself. The vast right wing conspiracy, aided by the MSM, has demonized her. Do you really think that’s the reason? Do you honestly think Evangelicals would be voting for Bernie or any other Democrat short of Evan Bayh? They haven’t voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Why not?
Wait a minute. The answer is simple: Abortion. Democrats are Pro-Choice and Republicans are Pro-Life and to right-wing Christian fundamentalists, it’s a choice of condoning murder or not. That is true, and it is the ultimate objective for many. But, taken on its own, it doesn’t really hold up. Instead of accepting Bill Clinton’s offer to make abortion safe, legal, and rare, they doubled down on a complete ban. Why don’t they take sensible steps to reduce abortion—like real sex education, distribution of condoms, and easier adoption laws? They don’t seem interested in actually reducing abortions. How come?
In addition, in this particular election cycle, Trump was for abortion before he was against it, and many Evangelicals must be aware that Trump can’t be trusted on this or any other issue (despite his recent efforts to reinforce his “pro-life stance”). In the primaries they mostly backed Ted Cruz, who at least had some consistent ideas and principles (no matter how repugnant). So why are Evangelicals flocking to a libertine liar like Trump, who has no real principles on any subject, including—or perhaps especially—abortion? It’s a mystery, right?
These are all legitimate questions, but I believe that what appears to be cognitive dissonance and maddening inconsistency by the Christian right actually reflects a completely consistent underlying motivation.
To discover that motivation, I refer you to one of the best essays I have ever read at Daily Kos. The Deeper Issue at Hand was written on August 30, 2008, by LithiumCola, an excellent essayist who published 420 diaries here but who, alas, last published in July 2009. I urge you to read the essay (which got 890 recommends).
Obviously, that 2008 diary does not discuss the Trump craziness or the overt racism of this year’s election, but the essay does hold up insofar as it offers an explanation of why the Christian right cannot abandon the Republican Party. LithiumCola says that for Christian fundamentalists the argument in elections these days is not really over issues or policies or even candidates. The real argument is over whether we should or should not be a small-L liberal democracy. He says:
Here then are the disputants in this argument over what politics is for in the first place. On the one hand, there are those who think that political argument is best aimed at perfecting a pluralistic society of equal citizens who do not agree on metaphysical questions of purpose and meaning, but nevertheless wish to live together under conditions of amicable cooperation, and on the other hand those who think that political debate is about winning, precisely, the metaphysical argument—about settling fundamental questions of purpose and meaning on the public stage.
(emphasis added)
The argument goes like this: Pluralists say that we agreed at the outset of the Republic that metaphysical questions would not be debated in the political arena, i.e., live and let live when it comes to questions of purpose and meaning (i.e., religion). They see the introduction of metaphysical debate into the political arena as theocratic and unconstitutional. Fundamentalists argue that refusal to debate the metaphysical is, in itself, a metaphysical (religious) position, i.e., pluralism (which they call “secularism” and equate to atheism) is more important than God. The fundamentalists see this prioritizing of “the secular” (atheism) over God as an infringement of their own religious freedom and therefore unconstitutional. That’s why the right claims that “secular humanism” is a “religion” (it’s not). This Constitutional dispute is a key reason the SCOTUS (and, by extension, the presidency) is so critical to both sides. As LC put it so succinctly,
to a fundamentalist, there is no difference between attempts to take religion out of the public square and attempts to crush it. To a fundamentalist, everyone is having the same [metaphysical] argument that they are having.
So, the most critical thing to the Christian right is that Republicans encourage religious argument in the political debate, while Democrats reject that idea in favor of the pluralistic principle the framers enshrined in the Constitution (no religious test for office allowed) and the Bill of Rights (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). That’s why Evangelicals will vote for Trump despite his moral failings. Trump has certainly used religion in political debate when he thinks it gets him votes, and, since he has no real principles or religious beliefs, he doesn’t care if anyone else does either (except to the extent that he can use it for his own aggrandizement).
What the Christian right wants is for the political argument to be about religion, and, of course, for their “moral law” to prevail. They will do anything to get there, even if it means supporting oligarchs or fascists, although I’m sure they’d prefer a theocracy. On the other hand, Clinton and the Democrats
do not want to address metaphysical questions on the public-political stage. This is not because they think they cannot win but because they think they should not win.
(emphasis original)
Democrats believe they should not win the metaphysical debate because they believe that metaphysics should not be the debate. This belief is why the Christian right will never support a Democrat as well as one reason why I consider Republicans to be subversive.
LithiumCola had it right. A pluralistic society is anathema to Evangelicals and is the underlying reason they support the Republican Party. Unless one of the two major parties changes its position on this foundational Constitutional principle, Christian fundamentalists will stay firmly in the GOP column, no matter whom the Republicans run or what their policies are. This principle is why Democrats’ “reasoned arguments” and “Christian appeals” don’t work on Evangelicals and why they will vote for any Republican, no matter how deplorable he or she might be.
1IOKIYAR = It’s OK If You’re A Republican
2I enjoyed Drbirdheart’s essay very much and agree with the idea that we all have prejudices that we need to be aware of and need to address both personally and politically. I disagree with the idea that misogyny is the real reason for Trump’s success. I think there are many reasons, misogyny not least among them. In this diary, I am discussing a specific set of Trump supporters only—the Christian right—and what I think their underlying motivation is to support Trump. This diary is not a response to anyone else’s diary. I’ve been working on it for several days. I added the link to Drbirdheart’s diary because it was relevant to misogyny as a motivator and because I think it’s a very worthwhile read.