The Frightful Christian Values of Trumpism

Statistics provided in America after the presidential election show white Christian voters voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, 80-16%. According to The Washington Post, that's the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, when they overwhelmingly chose President George W. Bush by a margin of 78-21%. Actually, The Washington Post argues that religious conservatives have become a corporate sponsor of Trumpism, like Visa at the Olympics, and maybe more like the war veterans backing Zanu PF in Zimbabwe.

Gooding, in her book The Definition of Christianity, defines Christianity as the religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus Christ, or its beliefs and practices. Anyone practising or calling themselves a Christian must manifest Christian quality or character. Personally, my view has always been that the most essential quality of a Christian is charity, because the Bible says, "Faith Without Works Is Dead" (James 2:14-26. Therefore, charity is the main essence of Christianity. Charity in Christianity is not just almsgiving, and should not be seen only as an obligation or duty. Charity is love. Christians believe that God's love and generosity towards humanity moves and inspires us to love and be generous in response.

Jesus taught that to love God and to love neighbour are the greatest commandments. Charity is not an optional extra, but an essential component of faith. However, by propping Trump up, mainly because of his promise to ban Muslims from entering America, the American Christians, who (we should realise) otherwise represents a predominant theme of Westernized Christendom, are proclaiming Christian rhetoric while actively or passively practicing the opposite in reality. Then there are black Christians who blindly go along in the name of Christianity, yet the Christianity of Trump constantly manifest elements of 'Master-Servant' relationship. By supporting such kind of rhetoric those Christians are actually failing to realize the shameful irony that they are largely responsible for refusing shelter and opportunity to some of the world's most helpless and oppressed people. Trump signed an executive order on Friday temporarily blocking entry into the US for immigrants and non-immigrants from seven Muslim countries - Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen yet no one from these countries has ever carried a terrorist act against America. For example, if this policy was implemented before 2001, it would not have prevented the September 11 attacks from happening. Afghanistan as well as high-risk Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are off the list, conspicuously because of Trump's business interests there.

This kind of Christianity reminds us of the kind of Christianity that was associated with slavery, which believed that slavery "stood as an institution of God.", even giving Biblical reasons like Abraham, the "father of faith," and all the patriarchs held slaves without God's disapproval (Gen. 21:9-10), Canaan, Ham's son, was made a slave to his brothers (Gen. 9:24-27) etc etc. The same approach was used to justify Apartheid too and nearly the same approach is used now by Trump, (supported by the Evangelicals who voted him in), to dehumanizing some of the most vulnerable people on Earth. Basically, while the gospels instruct followers of Christ to help the poor, oppressed, maligned, mistreated, sick, and those most in need of help, Christians in America have largely supported measures that have rejected refugees, refused "aid to immigrants, cut social services to the poor, diminished help for the sick, fuelled xenophobia, reinforced misogyny, ignored racism, stoked hatred, reinforced corruption, and largely increased inequality, prejudice, and fear". To some political analysts, this may be viewed as malicious, counterproductive and inept actions, and half-baked work of amateurs who know little about security and little about immigration law, but from a Christian point of view this is about compassion or a serious lack of it. This paints a picture of bullying, a picture of cruelty, and a picture of American shame, largely supported by so called Christian.

What is the morality of supporting policies of a self-confessed immoral individual? Some may argue that it is ironic that we are judging Trump while ‘the Bible says don't judge'. I personally have never bought into this command mainly because I think it is widely misunderstood. Scripture makes it very clear that there is one supreme Judge of all—the Lord God, but if we cannot judge at individual level, how will we, (as taught in Matthew 7:15), distinguish between true and false prophets - because false prophets "come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves"? If judging people is wrong, how can we obey Romans 16:17-18? II Corinthians 6:17? II Timothy 3:5-6? I John 4:1? How can you hate the evil and love the good if you refuse to judge? What about Revelation 2:2? " I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:" Why would the Lord be pleased with these Christians if judging was wrong? Is it not impossible to find someone a "liar" without judging them? I Corinthians 11:30-31: "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." If you are a true Christian, then you belong to God. You are God's child. If you refuse to judge and improve yourself as a child of God, then God will take it upon Himself to judge you. Many of the troubles that we face in life are nothing more than God's way of judging us since we often neglect to judge ourselves.

We also need the wisdom of God to judge good and bad leaders. God Choose our leaders but of course, God could just send a plague or rain down some fire and brimstone, but sometimes he prefers to let others do his dirty work for him. Trump?
So we have the right to make a sober analysis of a suspicious leader like Trump. We hereby have an unrepentant individual who has publicly bragged about committing adultery as he was heard describing how he likes to sexually assault women, by (through his own words) grabbing them by the p**** because he is famous. Trump has mocked and disrespected the disabled by mocking a disabled reporter. The Justice Department in 1973 sued the Trump family real estate business founded by his father Fred for discriminating against Black people seeking to rent apartments in its buildings in New York City and Norfolk, Virginia. Donald Trump, was president of the firm at the time of the lawsuit. Trump has displayed con artist tendencies with his fraudulent Trump University. He is one vainglorious individual who is shamelessly proud, having before boasted that "Nobody reads the Bible more than me." Yet he said that he has never asked God or others to forgive him for anything.

According to many analysts, despite all these vices that Trump has consistently displayed before and during his presidency, American (White) evangelicals, including some black evangelicals as far as Zimbabwe, have gone on to rally behind Trump merely because they believed that the future of the Supreme Court should override every other concern. According to official statistics, 52% of white evangelicals considered the choice of an anti-abortion supreme court judge as most important when choosing between presidential candidates. However, the issue of individual candidate moral uprightness was surprisingly a non-issue while the issue of banning Moslem from the US was top.

Christ calls us to care for everyone, regardless of who they are and where they come from," said Jenny Yang, the senior vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief. "That has to be a core part of our witness - not just caring for our own, but caring for others as well."

If Christians refuse to help and actually use their political advocacy and opinions to further hurt refugees, immigrants, women, foreigners, minorities, the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, the sick, and aren't abiding by the golden rule of loving their neighbours as themselves, then who exactly are Christians supposedly loving? If you find yourself loving yourself or your tribe excessively, you are reaching a point of hating others or other tribes. So while there might be political, economic, financial, and safety reasons for Donald Trump implementing policies that harm people and refuse them help, there are certainly no gospel reasons.