Everyone in the world knows – or thinks they know – that American evangelical Christians are purveyors of industrial scale hypocrisy. They have more sex with a greater range of partners than David Bowie in his pomp. Jimmy Swaggert. Ted Haggard. Jim Bakker. The dozens – literally dozens – of lesser names committing fraud and adultery and drug crimes and sometimes all of these things in one afternoon.
And now look at them all fawning over Donald Trump, the foul-mouthed, pussy-grabbing pagan president.
And be filled with righteous contempt; file this love-in under ‘evangelicals doing what evangelicals always do’ … and move on to more interesting topics?
The world has tended to. But brilliantly and thoughtfully, in the audio documentary and in articles across this site, the mapping of a more subtle view of the white evangelicals’ love for Trump has begun.
It needs to be said loud and clear: white American evangelical Christians are not all hypocrites. Again and again, in my many years reporting around the USA for the BBC, I met evangelicals who were not just decent people but committed to helping and loving those around them. I had no personal brief for them – I am an atheist – but in soup kitchens, in prisons, in places where most Americans do not go, I met them and talked to them and came to admire them. They believe things and live by them and those values led them to pull the lever for Trump and, mostly, not regret it.
Faith, after all, is about belonging and culture as much as actual religious prescriptions and proscriptions. Sometimes, indeed, it is about little else. On the other things: the actual teaching on abortion, or homosexuality, or the right balance of distributional justice, some evangelical Americans have very strong views, but it’s their sense of community – of ties to one another – that create the strongest feelings.
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