The Great Evangelical Civil War of 2020

There’s a small cohort of Americans who graduated from high school in 1965 and went off to college that year. Their numbers decrease. They’re old now. But for them it’s always the Summer of Love and the Revolution and Woodstock and the White Album, those four years ending with the election of Richard Nixon. Many of us who came of age then feel a need to explain what those years, the late sixties, were like, with one America seeming to disintegrate and another forming – even if no one cares anymore. Okay, boomer, as they say. But something was up. What started with Bill Haley and Elvis, and then the Beach Boys, and then the Beatles and the Stones, changed the sound of the country. Patty Page and Perry Como became prehistoric. And the civil rights movement changed the face of the country.

It was a good time to be alive. John Coltrane was ripping into “My Favorite Things” on stage at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena when the news-kids started running down the aisles with a special edition of the Post-Gazette – the 1964 Civil Rights Act had finally passed. The air was electric. Even a white high school kid with his white-bread date sensed the big change – but maybe you had to be there. And of course there was the Vietnam War just starting then, and blowing up into a massive slow-rolling catastrophe over the next several years.

That changed how everyone thought about patriotism. The Greatest Generation had done the right thing and saved the world. But it was a new world now. The right thing was no longer all that clear. And of course feminism was just stirring, as somehow, before the sixties, career women were an oddity – often admirable, but an oddity. Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver stayed at home – they were moms. That was the norm. Mary Richards was a long way off. And the thought that one day the First Lady would be a whip-smart and forceful black woman, with a law degree from Harvard, who had actually practiced law, would have been unimaginable. Now that’s unremarkable.

But back in 1965 it was different. That September it was off to college – a small liberal arts university in central Ohio, Denison. And that was a place, and a year, teetering between the old America and the new. There were the frat boys in their khakis and madras shirts, and the sorority girls in their shirtwaists, with their circle pins – and a small counterculture starting to bubble up. But that was nascent. Everything was happening elsewhere. The Summer of Love was in San Francisco. Woodstock was in New York. The kids took over Columbia in Manhattan. The Free Speech Movement was in Berkeley. The riots that messed up the Democratic Party convention were in Chicago – and nothing was happening in rural Ohio. The nearest city, an hour away, was Columbus, and nothing ever happened there.

And then it was over. Everyone went back to what they had been doing and had been thinking in the first place. Nixon’s Silent Majority took over. The nation went silent. Jimmy Carter was no radical. Ronald Reagan hated the sixties – when he was governor out here he ripped into that Berkeley crowd. George H. W. Bush was a competent technocrat. Bill Clinton was a “centrist” who’d compromise on anything. George W. Bush was a doofus – no one knew who was really running things. Barack Obama was a breath of fresh air, and hated by those who hated everything about the sixties – and loved Reagan for that very reason. That’s the frat boys and the girls in shirtwaists Nixon-Reagan cohort – the other boomers. And now they have Donald Trump. And it may be that anyone younger shrugs at both species of boomers. Who the hell are these people?

But the division does live on, a culture war that may never end.

Actually it’s getting worse. That’s the view from rural Ohio. Paul Djupe is an associate professor of political science at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, of all places, and he hears this:

As the House has moved through the impeachment of President Trump, voices on the extreme right have been arguing that it’s the first shot in a coming “civil war.” According to conservative evangelical conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles, “The Democrats are forcing me to stockpile ammunition, food, water, and medical supplies to defend my family, home, and church.” In a speech before the Values Voter Summit, Trump similarly said that Democrats were coming for the rights of Christians, which he said he would resist if he stayed in office. Franklin Graham claims that “demonic forces” are pressing for the impeachment of someone that a significant proportion of evangelicals believe is God’s anointed president.

This is new. The sixties weren’t like this. Paul Djupe wonders about this:

Do white evangelical Protestants actually believe that Democrats will strip them of their rights? And is it true that Democrats and atheists want to strip evangelicals of their rights?

Who knows? Run a survey:

Political scientist Ryan Burge and I ran a non-probability sample survey from May 17-18 of 1,010 U.S. Protestants, conducted online through Qualtrics Panels and weighted to resemble the diversity of Protestants in the country. White evangelical Protestants made up 60 percent of our sample.

Of those white evangelical Protestants, we found that 60 percent believed that atheists would not allow them First Amendment rights and liberties. More specifically, we asked whether they believed atheists would prevent them from being able to “hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office.” Similarly, 58 percent believed “Democrats in Congress” would not allow them to exercise these liberties if they were in power. By contrast, 23 percent think “Republicans in Congress” would not respect their rights; those were primarily the views of a small contingent of white evangelical Democrats in the sample.

Either way, this is an existential threat, and also the end of a functioning government here:

These are extraordinary proportions for a core question in democratic societies: Are citizens willing to extend rights to groups they dislike? If not, the political process can no longer fairly resolve disputes and the nation may turn to violence – just as far-right commentators and public officials are predicting.

This would mean civil war and certainly mean more surveys:

Would Democrats and atheists strip away conservative Christians’ rights and liberties if they could? To find out, I turned to survey data I gathered with political scientists Amanda Friesen and Anand Sokhey from September 20-26, 2016, conducted with a large national sample of 2,517 Americans online through Qualtrics Panels and weighted to resemble the national adult population. This survey asked respondents about their feelings toward various groups and whether they would extend civil liberties to those groups…

The survey respondents were asked to choose the group they “liked the least” from a list that included atheists, Christian fundamentalists, immigrants, white supremacists, Muslims, Trump supporters, Hillary Clinton supporters and homosexuals. Almost a majority of the sample (49 percent) chose white supremacists as their least-liked group. Just 5 percent chose Christian fundamentalists; that included only 5 percent of Democrats and 10 percent of atheists.

And here was the surprise:

Then respondents were asked whether their selected group should be allowed to give speeches in the community, teach in public schools, run for public office and other liberties. Americans are not particularly tolerant of groups they dislike. Only 30 percent are willing to allow their disliked group three or more such activities.

But 65 percent of atheists and 53 percent of Democrats who listed Christian fundamentalists as their least-liked group are willing to allow them to engage in three or more of these activities. That’s a much higher proportion with tolerance than the sample overall.

We found that a smaller proportion of white evangelicals would behave with tolerance toward atheists than the proportion of atheists who would behave with tolerance toward them. Thirteen percent of white evangelical Protestants selected atheists as their least-liked group. Of those, 32 percent are willing to extend three or more of these rights to atheists. In fact, when we looked at all religious groups, atheists and agnostics were the most likely to extend rights to the groups they least liked.

In short, folks on the somewhat secular side of things don’t begrudge anyone their religion, let them do what they will, but that doesn’t go both ways:

Conservative Christians believe their rights are in peril partly because that’s what they’re hearing, quite explicitly, from conservative media, religious elites, partisan commentators and some politicians, including the president. The survey evidence suggests another reason, too. Their fear comes from an inverted golden rule: Expect from others what you would do unto them. White evangelical Protestants express low levels of tolerance for atheists – which leads them to expect intolerance from atheists in return. That perception surely bolsters their support for Trump. They believe their freedom depends on keeping Trump and his party in power.

And Kevin Drum adds this:

The biggest real-world fights are over abortion and contraceptives and cake decorators. Conservative Christians believe that their freedom to refuse these services is also a basic religious liberty, and there’s no question that liberals are pretty determined to take those particular liberties away. Given that, it’s a short step to believe that liberals might someday decide to remove their rights to “hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office.”

And that’s no laughing matter:

It’s impossible to understand evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump without first understanding just how frightened they are of the steady liberal march toward secular hegemony. They consider the aughts and teens to have been a nearly complete disaster, capped by the 2015 Supreme Court ruling forcing states to recognize gay marriage. Many prominent evangelical leaders literally gave up after that, and the ones that didn’t had little hope for the future.

Then, suddenly, Donald Trump showed up and promised them everything they wanted. In short order he became their Joan of Arc, rallying them back to a fight he assured them they could win as long as he was on their side. And rhetorically, at least, he delivered. The fight was back on.

And that leaves liberals like Drum with few options:

It’s not clear to me that there’s much we can do about this. We can’t do anything about the “inverted golden rule,” and we’re certainly not going to stop fighting for gay rights or reproductive rights. That leaves only a more concerted effort to assure evangelicals that they have nothing to fear regarding things like teaching, speaking, and holding rallies. And even that’s a tough nut when evangelicals can look to other countries and see that, in fact, those rights have occasionally been circumscribed to some degree. This may seem like a pretty small and distant issue, but I assure you that Fox News and talk radio report on every single example no matter how small, and they keep it front and center forever and ever.

Understanding your opponents is usually useful because it provides some guidance about how best to respond. In this case I’m not sure it does, but it’s still good to know on the off chance that it might be helpful. Evangelicals are not generally engaged in faux outrage. They are truly scared silly that liberals will steadily and unrelentingly dismantle their rights if they ever get in power again. Just look what happened the last time.

But that doesn’t account for the coming Evangelical Civil War:

The decision by Christianity Today to publish an editorial describing President Trump as “immoral” and calling for his removal drew immediate rebuke from the president himself, who called the outlet “a far left magazine.” The piece drew nearly 3 million unique visitors to the magazine’s website and became the talk of TV news shows over the weekend.

At the same time, the longtime centrist-right evangelical magazine saw a rush of canceled subscriptions – and an even greater wave of new subscribers, magazine President Timothy Dalrymple said. Both he and the author of the editorial, retiring editor in chief Mark Galli, could also face personal and professional consequences, according to interviews with several other conservative Christian leaders and writers who in the past have spoken out critically about Trump.

They described losing book sales, conference attendees, donors, church members and relationships.

That’s a simple threat. Speak out against Trump on anything and you will be cast out and die in the streets or something, and then one guy said he was fine with that:

Journalist Napp Nazworth, who has worked for the Christian Post website since 2011, said he quit his job Monday because the website was planning to publish a pro-Trump editorial that would slam Christianity Today. Nazworth, who sits on the editorial board as politics editor, said the website has sought to represent both sides and published both pro- and anti-Trump stories.

“I never got the gist they were gung-ho Trumpian types,” Nazworth said. “Everything has escalated with the Christianity Today editorial.”

Nazworth, who has been critical of Trump and suggested leaders who supported him have “traded their moral authority,” said he doesn’t know what he will do next.

“I said, if you post this, you’re saying, you’re now on team Trump,” he said. He said he was told that’s what the news outlet wanted to do.

“I’m just shocked that they would go this path,” he said, adding that even though he felt “forced” to make the decision to quit, the parting was a mutual agreement between him and the outlet.

The Christian Post website now belongs to Trump so Nazworth couldn’t stay, and they didn’t want him anyway – mutual consent was easy here – and so it begins:

Since the editorial, many Trump supporters have decried Christianity Today as irrelevant and even “elite.” On Sunday, 200 evangelical leaders and other Trump supporters issued a letter slamming the publication. It was signed by many on the president’s evangelical advisory committee, pastors of Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches, and Christian musicians such as Brian and Jenn Johnson and Michael Tait. Other evangelical leaders published a letter in support of the magazine on Tuesday.

This is war, at least economic war:

Mae Cannon, who has worked for major evangelical organizations like World Vision and megachurch Willow Creek and consulted for Compassion International, said that many institutional leaders fear that their organizations could lose support if they criticize Trump.

“The cost for some of these of speaking out would be losing millions of dollars of donors,” she said. “The organizations could crumble. Do you compromise the mission of an organization to stand up for a moral issue?”

Other high-profile evangelicals spoke of the cost of opposing Trump in the past.

“The cost of this is incalculable,” said Nancy French, who has ghostwritten for conservatives, including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and television personality Sean Lowe.

But she’s a special case:

In 2016, she wrote about being a sexual abuse survivor, questioning how the evangelical community could continue to support Trump after hearing him boast of sexual impropriety on the “Access Hollywood” tapes before he was elected.

Her family has faced costs occupationally, financially and socially, she said. They received threats from white nationalists, after which she purchased a gun and took courses in how to use it. When they lived in rural Tennessee, she said, they were confronted in their Presbyterian Church in America congregation for speaking against Trump. She now declines opportunities to write books with authors affiliated with Trump and has turned more to writing fiction.

“People were emboldened after Trump was elected,” she said. “It feels very lonely.”

So, if you oppose him, some patriot will take you out, and take out your family too. Trump doesn’t order such things. He doesn’t have to:

Many evangelicals have felt that Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who was critical of Trump during his campaign, has been much quieter and since 2016 – perhaps because he knows that Southern Baptists heavily support the president. Before the election, Trump tweeted that Moore was “A nasty guy with no heart!”

On Monday, Moore said that he’s tried to have the same posture toward Trump that he did with Presidents Obama and Bush, critiquing him on issues like family-child separation at the border and various immigration policies while praising him on policy changes that could restrict LGBT adoptions. He said that Christianity Today was doing what magazines do, which is to put issues on the table and let people discuss them.

“I think we should listen to one another and not be at each other’s throats,” Moore said. “People have disagreed and yet don’t view one another as existential threats.”

Don’t tell Trump. That’s how he sees the world, but Steve Benen sees this:

While it’s best not to overstate matters – polling suggests Trump’s support among evangelical Christians is much higher than among Americans in general – these divisions and public conflicts are exactly what the president’s re-election campaign hoped to avoid.

Michael Gerson sees that too:

Trump’s swift, disproportionate, mendacious response to the editorial – falsely accusing Christianity Today of a leftist slant and promising he would never again read a magazine he has likely never read before – indicates how crucial to his political survival he believes lockstep evangelical Christian support to be. The president’s most visible evangelical Christian supporters – doing their best to mimic Trump’s tone and approach – brayed in agreement. And some conservative writers were highly critical of the editorial. My colleague Hugh Hewitt pronounced himself “bewildered” that anyone would “seek an absolutist political opinion from a website about evangelical faith.” “Whether Trump is good or bad for the republic isn’t a theological question,” said Hewitt. “It is a political one.”

And that got to Gerson:

Evangelical institutions such as Christianity Today, in other words, should be content to stay in their lane. They should defer to the political experts. Like Fox News. Like conservative talk radio. Like conspiratorial Internet sites. Wouldn’t it be easier for all involved if evangelical Christians simply accepted the proposition that a political coalition with ethnonationalists, led by a malicious, immoral buffoon, is good for the cause of justice and for the cause of Christ? Isn’t it obvious that the appointment of conservative judges should satisfy all the other moral convictions of Christian citizens?

This, after all, isn’t a theological matter. It isn’t a theological matter that evangelical Christians – influenced by conservative media and white identity politics – have become the religious group most hostile to refugee resettlement and most supportive of a policy of family separation at the border. It isn’t a theological matter that loyalty to Trump is making an older generation of evangelical Christians look like crude hypocrites in the eyes of their own children, who are fleeing the tradition in droves.

Evangelical Christians will be given rhetorical deference, White House access and judges and regulations of their liking. All they need to do is set aside their criticisms of cruelty, deception, misogyny, racism and contempt for the vulnerable. All they need to do is forget decency and moral consistency.

The battle has been joined. The war is on. This will be great fun for those of us on the outside here, given the hot rhetoric and the subtle signaling:

The President and the first lady opted to ditch their traditional Christmas Eve plans to spend some time courting evangelical voters in West Palm Beach.

According to the Palm Beach Post, President Trump and Melania Trump veered off course at the last minute, deciding against attending a Christmas Eve service at their traditional Bethesda By the Sea Episcopal Church and went to the Southern Baptist affiliated Family Church Downtown. The more liberal Episcopal church is where the Trumps were wed and where their son, Barron Trump, was baptized.

And here’s the man’s next move:

While the motive for the surprise visit is unclear, it’s the second time in the past week that Trump has made a concerted effort to appeal to evangelical voters, an effort that was unrolled, coincidently, just after the publication of a scathing editorial in a prominent evangelical magazine calling for Trump’s removal from office. When Trump arrived in Florida earlier this week, the White House announced the President would be attending the kick-off rally for a new coalition called “Evangelicals for Trump” next month.

And the rest of us can watch the Great Evangelical Civil War of 2020 from the sidelines, and watch Trump’s base fracture. And course we don’t want to stop this. The work that Denison’s Paul Djupe did shows that. No one wants take away their freedom to tear each other apart, loudly and publicly. That might help to end this national nonsense.