Trump Prophecy

It's no secret that evangelicals, especially white evangelicals, were, and are, one of Trump's most loyal constituencies. This is, in the eyes of an onlooker like myself, quite the conundrum; how can a man as sacrilegious as Trump become the poster-child for some of the most religious people in the nation? Welcome to the world of "rugged Christianity."

We all remember how in early June 2020, President Donald Trump had federal officers use tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a peaceful protest so he could stage a photo op outside St. John's Church, which sits across from the White House. This was the performative dimension of his entire presidency captured in a single act of entitlement and narcissism. And we all know that the photo was him virtue-signaling to hos most loyal constituency, the white evangelicals. While it was believed that evangelicals voted for Trump for pragmatic purposes while holding their noses, it has become clear in the aftermath of his presidency that they are indeed his biggest fans. As an example I've included a video that shows one of several Pastors who, long after Trump lost the elections, insists that Trump is the rightful president of America. He's also one of several Christians who prophesied that Trump would win the elections...

Trump may be the least devout president America has ever seen. He has had several run-ins with the law, has never been seen reading a Bible, has never talked about the Bible, Christ or God, is a notorious adulterer, has five children from three marriages, and was caught on tape talking about sexually assaulting women in the "Access Hollywood tapes." How did all this not prevent devout Christians, whose main slogans always start and end with "family values," from embracing this man as their leader? In fact, they did more than that: the zeal of their support for trump sometimes seems to supersede their support for Jesus Christ himself. Watch the below linked video and see if you can tell if Trump's just a political leader, a spiritual leader, or the second coming of Christ himself. It's bizarre, and I can't tell...

I came across an article on Vox that explains how Trump was destined to become the poster-child for white evangelical America. It contains an interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez who wrote the book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation and is a historian who has spent 15 years studying evangelicals. Here's her answer to why Trump has become so popular among evangelicals:

What I look to as a historian is this critical period in the post-World War II era when these gender ideals fuse with anti-communist ideology and this overarching desire to defend Christian America. The idea that takes root during this period is that Christian masculinity, Christian men, are the only thing that can protect America from godless communism.

At the same time, you have the civil rights movement destabilizing white evangelicalism and conceptions of white masculinity. Then you have feminism destabilizing traditional masculinity. And all of this comes together for evangelicals, who see their place in the culture slipping away, and they see their political power starting to erode because of this cultural displacement. That’s the moment when you see Christian nationalism linking together with a very militant conception of Christian manhood, because it’s up to the Christian man to defend his family against all sorts of domestic dangers in the culture wars, and also to defend Christian America against communists and against military threats.
_{source: Vox}

This explains it all; evangelicals' love of Trump in a nutshell. I recommend you read the entire article, as it goes a lot deeper into this particular kind of Christianity and how John Wayne, Mel Gibson, Ronald Reagan and most recently Donald Trump have become its role-models, even more so than Christ himself. In fact, Jesus Christ is way too soft to be the machismo role-model of the new militant nationalist "rugged Christianity" that has become the norm among evangelicals. Now, enjoy the video; I found it hilarious and deeply troubling all at once, but it shows perfectly how blind faith in a popular strongman can derail into sheer insanity...

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