“Trump Should Fill Christians with Rage. How Come He Doesn’t?”

The title of this blog post is the title of Michael Gerson’s Sept. 1 opinion piece in The Washington Post. It probably has been the most often-read op-ed article in the WaPo this month. For those of you who haven’t yet read it (or can’t because of the paywall), I have posted it here.*  

Although the title appears to be quite politically partisan, Gerson’s piece is primarily about Jesus, about the political and cultural environment in which he lived and about the gist of his teaching. In particular, Gerson emphasizes that

* Jesus preached against religious hypocrisy.

* Jesus welcomed social outcasts whom polite society rejected. 

* Most important, Jesus proclaimed the arrival of a kingdom. 

Granted, those three points do not summarize the totality of Jesus’ message, but surely most Christians would affirm those points as being central to Jesus’ teaching.

Although Gerson’s portrayal of Jesus may appear “liberal,” Gerson has been and has remained a Christian evangelical, as I tried to make clear in my May 15, 2021, blog post titled “Michael Gerson: An Evangelical with Integrity.” Thus, he is not criticizing evangelicals from the “outside.”

In his Sept. 1 piece, Gerson clearly states, “Having known evangelicals who live lives of moral integrity and serve others across lines of race and class, I have no intention of pronouncing an indiscriminate indictment.” Then he goes on to assert that

all conservative Christians must take seriously a sobering development in America’s common life. Many who identify with Jesus most loudly and publicly are doing the most to discredit his cause.

He then boldly states,

The main danger to conservative churches does not come from bad laws—it comes from Christians who don’t understand the distinctives, the demands and the ultimate appeal of their own faith.

Consequently, Gerson declares that the evangelical support of Trump and what he calls the Trump movement “deserves some woes of its own”:

* Woe to evangelical hypocrisy.

* Woe to evangelical exclusion. 

* And woe, therefore, to Christian nationalism. 

I agree with Gerson not because I am a Democrat but because I am a Christian who, like Gerson, seeks to put faith above politics.

Although there seems to be “Christianophobia” abroad in the land, Gerson seeks to make it clear that much (most?) of the anti-Christian sentiment is reaction to the questionable public stance of the Christian Right and not to the core teachings of Jesus.

From soon after 9/11/01, there began to be talk of Islamophobia in this country. All Muslims were being vilified because of the vile deeds of the militant extremists. That was highly unfair to the vast majority of the Muslims in the country, most of whom were peace-loving people.

I first wrote about Islamophobia in my 5/5/13 blog post, and then on 1/25/16 I posted “Combatting Islamophobia.” The former article begins, “Islamophobia is defined as “prejudice against, hatred towards, or irrational fear of Muslims.” Such an attitude has been quite widespread in the land.

While the term is rarer, for several years now some have written about Christianophobia. For example, a 3/27/15 Christianity Today article is titled, “What Christianophobia Looks Like in America.”

In that article, author George Yancey, a university professor of sociology, says that his research has shown that in the United States, hateful bigotry is directed not only toward groups such as racial and sexual minorities, but also toward conservative Christians. . . . . It’s Christianophobia.”

All hateful bigotry directed toward racial and sexual minorities must be staunchly opposed. Christianophobia should also be opposed/combatted in the same way that I previously wrote about combatting Islamophobia.

All Christians should not be rejected/opposed because of the way those on the religious and political right are misrepresenting Jesus. This is one of the reasons I find Gerson’s essay so important and worth widespread thoughtful consideration.**

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* This article is quite long: when I put it on a Word document, it was over 4,300 words, more than the combined length of six of my blog articles, which I limit to a maximum of 700 words.

** It is not mentioned by Gerson, but I highly recommend a closely related book: Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals are Destroying our Nation and Our Faith (2021) by theologian Obery M. Hendricks.