Last Thursday night, when Donald Trump accepted the Republican party nomination for president, he spoke directly to evangelical Christians.
“At this moment,” he said, “I would like to thank the evangelical community, who have [sic] been so good to me and so supportive.”
I consider myself an evangelical Christian, so naturally my ears perked up. After all, there a lot of issues of interest to evangelicals in this election; right-to-life, the re-defining of marriage, and the nomination of another justice to the Supreme Court, to name a few. Which one of these matters is so important to Trump that he will address it head-on in his acceptance speech?
“An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. I am going to work very hard to repeal that language.”
Seriously? That’s it? I felt like I had just eaten a great big nothing-burger.
This column could be about who really cares about that issue, but it would be a very short column. Instead, let me go deeper and look more closely at what Trump said.
Trump said that pastors and religious leaders are fearful to “openly advocate their political views.” So, what exactly does “openly advocate their political views” mean?
Hints of what Trump is getting at can be seen in his remarks to roughly 1,000 evangelical leaders in June. He said, “I think maybe that will be my greatest contribution to Christianity — and other religions — is to allow you, when you talk religious liberty, to go and speak openly, and if you like somebody or want somebody to represent you, you should have the right to do it.”
So, what Trump means is that we pastors ought to be able to endorse politicians from the pulpit. That’s what he’s getting at. After all, we already have the right to speak about sociopolitical issues.
There are two problems here. First, I honestly do not believe most congregants care who their pastor favors in an election (most could probably guess). Oh, they might have some superficial interest, but the likelihood that the pastor’s opinion will affect theirs is markedly low.
Moreover, the reason I do not endorse a candidate is not because I fear the IRS. I just don’t think that, as a pastor, I am any better at determining who should be our next president than you are.
And if you vote for a particular candidate simply because someone else says you should, then I believe you have wasted a valuable right people in a democratic society enjoy. You have given away your vote to someone else. Essentially, that person has two votes and you have none.
Second, actual, real-live Christians disagree with Donald Trump. In a recent Pew Research Center study, only 29 percent of church-goers said that churches should endorse candidates. In a recent LifeWay Research study, 87 percent of pastors disagreed that pastors should endorse candidates for public office.
But hey, he said he would do something for Christians. Perhaps I should just be happy.
The Democrats, not to be outdone by the shenanigans at the Republican convention, injected their own religious faux pas into the chaos.
When Florida congresswoman and Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation from the latter on the eve of the party’s convention, there was speculation the voices accusing the chairperson of being secretly in the tank for Hillary Clinton had won the day.
But something else was up.
WikiLeaks had published emails it hacked from the DNC in which there was a clear conspiracy of sorts to torpedo Bernie Sanders’ campaign. And what was going to be the big issue that would doom Mr. Sanders? His faith, or lack thereof.
In one email, a staffer suggested the DNC spread a negative article about Sanders, without attribution, that would question his faith. The DNC’s chief financial officer, Brad Marshall, asserted that questions about Sanders’ faith could undermine his candidacy. The idea here was that a lack of religious faith would hurt him in the Bible belt states.
“I think I read he is an atheist,” wrote Marshall. “This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” (I am sure that made Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish, feel much better.)
The irony is palpable. Pander to those who believe in God — who presumably value honesty, integrity and sincerity — by covertly, insidiously and despicably accusing someone else of being an atheist for no other reason than to denigrate that person for for your benefit. And that makes sense to the DNC?
Perhaps in the end, these stories are the same. Both political parties have attempted to use religion for their own purposes. Those who hold political power know God is important to Americans.
They obviously just don’t know what to do with that.
