Trump, Religion, and Religious Criticism: Why I'm putting this project on the side

Greetings all,

I have been slow to post as of late. I have been busy discussing politics and making arguments concerning the political system. 

This will only take up more of my time as Trump has now been elected. I don't have as much time for helping others understand religion when lives, livelihoods, and safety is on the line. I will continue my twitter @areligioncritc, so please follow me there. My Facebook is public, my name is Daniel Ansted, and this is where I have spent most of my social media time as of late. 

There will be updates here occasionally, as I have time, and I hope to resume this project in full in the future. But it is not the way to do the most good right now. I will likely finish my series on Islam (slowly). And make occasional updates as I go. 

I got out of academia, in part, because I wasn't doing all that much that was useful. The difference between governmental theories of atonement vs. penal substitution theories of atonement is not a useful distinction when more living people might suffer. 

Some of my friends and I are discussing what best to do in this aftermath. 

I don't have a strategy as of yet to do good. So if you have suggestions email me at areligioncritic@gmail.com or tweet me @areligioncritic. 

Hope to get back to this someday,

Dan

Trumped up Religion

It is with hesitation that I write this article. Anytime someone tries to psychologize or explain the behavior or thought of another group of people, it is dangerous territory. Even historical explanations of contemporary events can be condescending. However, I feel like I am on solid enough ground to attempt an explanation of one interesting finding this election season.

According to polls, in five short years white evangelicals have flip-flopped on whether an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties.

White evangelicals are, statistically speaking, more likely to vote for Trump. In a recent poll Trump leads Clinton 55% - 2% among likely white evangelical voters.

The obvious conclusion is the shift in the above graph benefits the 2016 Republican nominee more than the Democratic.

So how did we get to this situation? How did Republicans get such loyalty that they have changed their mind on the value of Presidential candidates personal morality so drastically in five years?

To tell the story we have to go into the history of religion and politics in America.

Kevin M. Kruse has documented a large portion of this history in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

For the purposes of this post, he traces a trajectory from the 1930s to the Eisenhower administration till the 1970s of increasing ties between evangelicalism and conservative (Republican) economics.

But that is of course not the whole story. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was legal in all 50 states. Segregationists did use this to their advantage and racism was a catalyst, but the average evangelical cared more about the spike in legal abortions (at least eventually).

Morality, especially pro-life and pro-nuclear hetero-normative family values, became another corner stone of the development of conservatism.

No one was more instrumental in coalescing conserve values than Ronald Reagan, President from 1981-1989.

He spoke the language of the evangelicals better and more consistently than virtually any other President in American history. (Note: Possible exceptions, Eisenhower and Carter).

So much so that Falwell and Weyrich, the leaders of the conservative group the Moral Majority, declared in 1989 that the religious right is solidly in place.

The Republican party had solidly coalesced conservative economics, conservative morality, and conservative politics.

The failed campaigns by Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee showed that America did not actually want a President who was from the religious right.

However, it took the formation of the The Tea Party in 2009 to expose cracks in the unity achieved during the Reagan era. The Tea Party was largely (but not exclusively) libertarian. They were subtly opposed to traditional Reaganesque conservative politics.

For example, Reagan was for amnesty; Trump is not. And Trump got Tea Party support partly because of his immigration policies.

Abortion is still a motivator for Trump supporters, especially as there is currently a Supreme Court seat empty. But personal morality was/is not a central concern for the Tea Party, nor as we see by the graph above is it for the average evangelical in 2016.

This was a relatively quick (and MAYBE unplanned) bait and switch from personal faith and morality a mix of libertarian and conservative policies.

Current events post II: Laudato Si and Republican Catholic Candidates

Laudato Si: a no-win scenario for Catholic Republican candidates.

           

          Laudato Si is the recent Papal encyclical addressing the imminent dangers of climate change. Laudato Si poses a serious, probably unsolvable, challenge to Catholic Republican candidates for president like Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum.      

           

          The majority of the Republican base in a recent Public Policy Polling national survey would support establishing Christianity as the official national religion, suggesting that they would support more religion in politics. However, Republicans also do not want candidates kowtowing to Papal authority. Additionally, the Catholic Republican presidential candidates cannot agree with the Pope on climate change without greatly upsetting their base. With the release of Laudato Si, added to the official social teaching of the Catholic Church, a potential inconsistency became concrete.

           

          In reference to Laudato Si, Rick Santorum said to radio host Dom Giardano: “We probably are better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on what we’re really good at, which is theology and morality.” Notice, in this quote, that theology and morality are in the Church’s domain. However, in the last election cycle Santorum stated that JFK’s speech arguing for the absolute separation of religion and politics into their own domains ‘made him throw up.’ Now that religion has become inconvenient to his politics Santorum is, at least in this instance, advocating for separation.

           

          Jeb Bush is even more blatant, telling Politico: “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.” However, in May of this year at the commencement address at Liberty University he stated that if elected he would let his Christian (Catholic) faith influence his decisions. If religion is less about the political realm, why would his faith influence his decisions?

            

          All of these comments by Santorum and Bush were made before Laudato Si was officially released and to my knowledge neither of them commented on the full version. However, Pope Francis argues consistently in this encyclical that politics, morality, and theology, are not separate in the climate change crisis. In fact, this triad is radically singular in Laudato Si. Not only is the Pope arguing his position well in Laudato Si, he is (obviously) the head of Catholicism, the professed religion of both Santorum and Bush. If the Pope, as spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, does not have the authority to comment on politics, why should we believe Santorum or Bush would be instructed by their faith if elected? We shouldn’t.