By Emily Swan / Medium
Evangelicalism and MAGA culture are in a symbiotic relationship
In a new book edited by Ron Sider — author of Rich Christians In an Age of Hunger, which has sold more than 400,000 copies — a handful of evangelical leaders sound the alarm about the spiritual harm being done by the current White House occupant. In a book titled The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity, Sider and others lay out a case for opposing Trump’s re-election.
Too little, too late.
Trying to distance evangelicalism from Trumpism is anathema. They are in a symbiotic relationship; a person can not wash their hands of one and not the other, which is exactly what Al Mohler, the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is trying to do. In his recent rambling answers to the New Yorker journalist, he said:
As a theologian and as a churchman, when I define evangelical, I’m really talking about a self-consciously orthodox classic Protestantism that is deeply connected to the church and deeply committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And then you have the media definition of evangelicals, which means anybody who isn’t Catholic or Jewish or something else and, especially as demographers look at the white population, identifies as some kind of conservative Protestant. They just are called evangelicals. — Al Mohler
In other words, “real” Christians aren’t the problematic MAGA people seen on the news. Trouble is, regular churchgoers are Trump’s biggest supporters. To be evangelical means you have to own the evangelical culture that has produced this “fruit,” to use churchy language.