It does not matter if you are a Christian or not, the Christian subculture has had a significant impact on the present predicament of the American culture. Donald Trump could not have influenced American politics or culture (beyond a silly reality show) without the help of American evangelicals and conservative Catholics.

It was reported that when Trump considered running for president in 2015, a Republican party strategist told him that to have a chance of winning, he would have to win the evangelical vote. To win the evangelical vote, he had to run on a “Pro-life” platform. He did so and carried the evangelical and conservative Catholics and of course, won the election.

In 2016 it appeared that this support by evangelicals was going to be a one-off as many told me that they had to hold their noses to vote for Trump. But since then, there has been a merging of MAGA and many evangelical segments and a cross-pollination of the two subcultures has occurred.

I found this most perplexing in 2016. It had been thirty years since I left evangelicalism, but at the time I left it, their values were almost the exact antithesis of Donald Trump. Since these were good people supporting Trump in 2016, I figured as soon as the dog caught the car (over-turned Roe Vs Wade) their love affair with Trump would be over. Boy, was I wrong? This is why I call “Pro-life” the gateway drug to the MAGA cult.

I want to focus on 2024 to understand this new amalgam of these opposites. I still cannot get my head around it. Jimmy Carter and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde (who lectured Trump at the prayer breakfast) are both throwbacks to a time when the church followed the historical Jesus Christ, above all men, power, or things.

I will share two perspectives to explain this great shift in the evangelical church.

Tim Alberta has one piece to this puzzle. The most pertinent, evangelicals are the most devoted Trump and MAGA supporters. The same group that championed “family values” and proudly gave their daughters “promise rings” a token promise to stay a virgin until the wedding night (I don’t know if they offered such to boys) are profoundly in love with a man who is a serial violator of the entire Ten Commandments, especially sexual sins and is a pathological liar.

Tim explains this cultural phenomenon as the King Cyrus effect. King Cyrus was a Persian king (590-529 BC) recorded in the Old Testament as anointed by God to liberate the Israelites who were taken captive and brought to Babylon, part of the Persian Empire. King Cyrus was not a Jew, did not practice Jewish laws, and like all such kings, often was not a good guy. The conservative American Christians see Trump as an immoral king but anointed by God to liberate their subculture from oppression.

I have to give a back story to this concept of oppression, which will be a nice segue to my own philosophical perspective, which I will share in Part III.

When the Enlightenment started in the seventeenth century (which I consider a magnificent development) part of the Christian culture was challenged. Claims of supernational experiences were (rightly) questioned because many had no evidence. The literal nature of the Genesis story of creation happening in just six days, six thousand years ago was challenged by the evidence from the new fields of geology and paleontology. As new ancient texts of Old Testament and New Testament scriptures were discovered, and found to be different from present translations, higher Biblical criticism, raised questions about Biblical trustworthiness. Darwin’s evidence of biological evolution raised doubts about the Christian culture’s concept of humanity.

In each of these areas, rather than adopting Thomas Aquinas’ approach, who said if nature and scripture disagree then the interpretation of at least one must be wrong, the conservative branches of the Christian church declared these new sciences as of the devil. They, therefore, doubled down, tightening the idea that you must believe the earth to be six thousand years old, the present Bible absolutely perfect, and evolution a lie, to be a real Christian. They made these cultural beliefs essential tenets of Christianity. These are cultural beliefs because the Bible is silent on many of the things the new (past 150 years) evangelicals championed.

As the greater culture moved in one direction, the conservative Christian subculture moved in another. In a very ego-centric way, the conservative Christians felt left behind or oppressed by the greater secular culture. If an evangelical saw a gay couple holding hands (but otherwise, minding their own business), they felt threatened. Why? Because hating gays is one of the central tenets of modern evangelicals. Then comes along Trump who depicts himself as strong and upholding many of the evangelical (not the Bible, but evangelical culture) values. That’s why they idolize Trump so much. Their new savior.

Here is Tim’s take on Frontline

Kristin Du Mez

Kristin Du Mez is a professor at Calvin University and a historian of American Christianity. Her book “Jesus and John Wayne” looks at 75 years of white evangelicalism culminating in the embracing of MAGA.

My perspective of Dr. Du Mez’s thoughts.

When I read her book, Jesus and John Wayne, I found it insightful. I believe history answers so many of the questions we have. But one feeling I got, reading the book, was that Dr. Du Mez has a feminist perspective and may have over-simplified the toxic masculinity that American evangelicalism has embraced. Certainly with this last campaign of Donald Trump, the toxic masculinity theme was found in every corner. It is no surprise that the Fox News culture (the new church of the Christian right) has been a hotbed of sexual harassment and even rape. We need to look no further than Donald Trump himself, with multiple accusations of sexual abuse and rape. While this should be a great turn-off to a Jesus-following person, Du Mez claims, and I now believe, that it is one of the most attractive things that evangelicals love about Trump and his world. They may not say it out loud. “He’s a real man.”

But with further meditation on her words, and looking at my experience with evangelicalism in the 1980s, I now think she might be more right than wrong.

I left evangelicalism in 1990 because of the dishonesty that it required to stay. I am talking about emotional and factual dishonesty. But the so-called straw that broke the camel’s back was my experience with my Christian leader on the mission field in the Middle East.

This man (I’ll call him Don) was put on a pedestal as a godly man that we (men in our organization) should emulate. As Denise and I were preparing to join his team I began to observe disturbing things about him, that you could call “toxic masculinity.”

Near the end of our two-year preparation and raising support, Denise and I had an unplanned pregnancy (with my wonderful son, Tyler). It was hard to practice faithful birth control when we were living in a Volkswagen van for over two years.

When Don found out about our pregnancy, he expressed great disappointment in me (certainly no “Congratulations!”) In private, he asked me to have Denise get an abortion ( his exact words, “Mike, you’re medical, you know how to end a pregnancy”). What makes this so disturbing, is that this organization, The Navigators, was profoundly pro-life as I was at the time.

As we approached our time to leave the States, Denise then six months pregnant, Don (who was visiting the States at the time) pulled me aside, and in private, he asked me to abandon pregnant Denise and our two boys and to come alone, saying, “I’ve found that women and children get in the way of God’s ministry.” He had abandoned his own wife and children in the middle of the street in Beirut, not hearing from him again in over a year.

We had already shipped Denise’s belongings to Cyprus. Denise and I had never spent more than five days apart and now he was asking me to move, permanently, to the Middle East, leaving Denise in the States.

I could go on and on, but his abuse of his own family and mine only got worse once we were overseas. My son almost died when Don refused to allow us to seek medical help. He told me to lie to Denise about our future plans. It was at that point, that Christianity no longer seemed plausible. His last words to me were, “Some day Mike, you need to step up and be the leader of your family.”

Some of the construct of the evangelical world has to do with positions that are not supported in the Bible, or if briefly mentioned, are magnified into primary dogmas of belief. While other issues, that are essentials in the Bible, like telling the truth, are ignored. In a nutshell, hating non-heterosexuals, abortion as the worst sin, men must dominate women, the poor and immigrants are lazy or evil, rational thought is of the flesh (a negative thing) and science is of the devil. It is here, that evangelicalism and MAGA are congruent. Rather than standing in opposition to the lies of Trump, as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde did, they enable his evil.

In conclusion, in my opinion, the evangelical church is dead. I’m not saying the adherers to evangelicals are bad people. Many of my friends in the group are wonderful people, better than me, but their ship is sinking fast. The only saving of that movement is a catastrophic failure of the Trump presidency. Only then, can I imagine a repentance vigorous enough to save the evangelical church.

With strong conviction, but without absolute certainity,

Mike