If it weren’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.
Following a meeting between Donald Trump and evangelical leaders, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the leaders of the religious right, declared that the presumptive Republican nominee had recently decided “to accept a relationship with Christ” and was now “a baby Christian.”
For those unfamiliar with the nomenclature of evangelicalism, that statement requires some context. Evangelicals by and large do not believe in what they call baptismal regeneration; that is, they reject the language of the Nicene Creed — “we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” — in favor of a “conversionist” approach. Evangelicals insist that everyone is a sinner and that only a sincere prayer of contrition and an acknowledgment of Jesus as savior brings salvation.
This is what Billy Graham had in mind when he invited his listeners to “make a decision for Christ,” and he would typically guide them through a formulaic prayer, often referred to as the “sinner’s prayer.” For evangelicals, only those who had prayed that prayer acknowledging sinfulness and embracing Christ were “saved” and entitled to call themselves “Christians.” Anyone else, including Roman Catholics and most mainline Protestants, are not truly in the fold; you might say that, in the opinion of many evangelicals, they are CINOs — Christians in Name Only.
If true, Dobson’s revelation about Trump would indeed be extraordinary, especially considering Trump’s statement earlier in the campaign that he had never asked God for forgiveness. Trump also referred to Holy Communion as “my little wine” and “my little cracker.” He claims to be a Presbyterian, but his religious IQ, I suspect, lies somewhere in the single digits. And should we find it noteworthy that the loquacious candidate himself has yet to confirm Dobson’s revelation?
Despite his efforts to “baptize” Trump as an evangelical, Dobson acknowledged that the candidate “doesn’t know our language” and “he didn’t grow up like we did.” Dobson said that Trump used the word “hell” several times during their meeting and “refers a lot to religion and not much to faith and belief.”
(The word “religion” is suspect to many evangelicals; it signals something less than heartfelt faith. I recall my mother telling me that if someone asked my religion, I should respond, “I don’t have a religion. I’m a Christian” — by which she meant, of course, the “born-again” variety of Christian.)
If Dobson’s frantic efforts to claim Trump as a fellow evangelical represent high comedy, however, the reason behind it bespeaks tragedy.
With the emergence of the religious right in the late 1970s, politically conservative evangelicals cast their lot with the far-right fringes of the Republican Party. In so doing, they ignored the teachings of Jesus — care for “the least of these” — and discarded their own heritage as social activists on behalf of those on the margins. Evangelicals in decades past had advocated for minorities, for workers and the poor; they fought for equal rights for women and supported public education as a way to lift the fortunes of those on the lower rungs of society. They were active in peace crusades and even advocated gun control.
The religious right, however, ignored that noble tradition of social activism in favor of a political ideology that favored the wealthy and belittled the poor. Having struck that Faustian bargain with the Republican Party decades ago, Dobson and other leaders of the Religious Right now are desperate to support the presumptive Republican nominee — even if he, now on his third marriage, is hardly the avatar of “family values” that Dobson has been braying about for decades.
I hasten to remind Dobson that there is another candidate running for president this year, a Methodist who actually is fairly knowledgeable about the rudiments of her faith, especially the biblical demands for social justice. No, Hillary Clinton is not an ideal candidate. She’s not terribly strong on environmental matters — Jesus, after all, expressed concern for the tiniest sparrow — and her belated opposition to the Keystone Pipeline hardly qualifies as a profile in courage. Yes, she’s far too cozy with moneyed interests, and Jesus was pretty clear about the love of money and the corruptions of wealth. But consider the alternative.
I understand that Clinton’s insistence that the government should have no jurisdiction over gestation is abhorrent to Dobson and his allies, but at least she has the virtue of principled consistency on an issue that evangelicals began to care about only relatively recently. On the other hand, Trump, to paraphrase John Kerry on a different matter, was in favor of abortion rights before he opposed them.
Rather than ginning up an evangelical conversion for the presumptive Republican nominee, I wonder if Dobson and his allies shouldn’t ask themselves which candidate more nearly represents the “biblical values” they claim to uphold. Jesus, let’s recall, healed the disabled and paralytics; Trump mocks them. Jesus summoned his followers to be peacemakers, but Trump has encouraged violence at his campaign rallies. Does Trump, with his wall and his race-baiting and his casinos and his serial bankruptcies and his checkered marital past, really exemplify the best traditions of evangelicalism?
I suggest that Dobson and his colleagues on the Religious Right consider other evangelical politicians and see how their understanding of biblical values compares with that of Trump. They could start with William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, who defended workers’ rights and women’s rights and was a pacifist before his misbegotten performance at the Scopes Trial sullied his reputation forever.
More recently, Dobson and others could recall Harold E. Hughes, Democratic senator from Iowa, an evangelical and staunch opponent of the Vietnam War, or Mark O. Hatfield, Republican senator from Oregon, a progressive evangelical and cosponsor of the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to End the War in Vietnam. Or Jimmy Carter, a “born again” Christian who understands the importance of peace and justice and caring for “the least of these.” Even George W. Bush, in many ways an anomaly over the long arc of evangelical activism in American history, advocated something he called “compassionate conservativism.” For Trump, however, the word “compassion” does not appear to be part of his vocabulary.
Dobson’s desperation to declare Trump a “born again” Christian betrays how completely the Religious Right has sold its soul to the Republican Party. Leaders of the religious right refuse even to weigh the merits of any candidate who does not claim to be Republican.
As Dobson and his Religious Right confrères know by now, no candidate is perfect. But if they are determined to anoint someone as worthy of their support, perhaps they should consider a candidate who, despite her faults, more nearly approximates the biblical command “to do justice, and to love kindness.”
Rather than baptizing Donald Trump, Dobson and his allies might want to contemplate the possibility of their own conversions.
Randall Balmer is chair of the Religion Department at Dartmouth College and the author of Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.