Evangelicals Rethinking Trump Support

‘How Did We Get Here?’ A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump

January 13, 2021, 5:08 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
by Rachel Martin

https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2021/01/20210113_me_how_did_we_get_here_a_call_for_an_evangelical_reckoning_on_trump.mp3

As fallout continues from the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol, Ed Stetzer, head of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, has a message for his fellow evangelicals: It’s time for a reckoning.

Evangelicals, he says, should look at how their own behaviors and actions may have helped fuel the insurrection. White evangelicals overwhelmingly supported President Trump in the 2020 election.

Some in the protest crowd raised signs with Christian symbolism and phrases.

“Part of this reckoning is: How did we get here? How were we so easily fooled by conspiracy theories?” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “We need to make clear who we are. And our allegiance is to King Jesus, not to what boasting political leader might come next.”

Members of the audience react as U.S. President Trump delivers remarks at an Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch at the King Jesus International Ministry in Miami, Florida, U.S., January 3, 2020.
REUTERS/Tom Brenner

In the interview, Stetzer also laments that evangelicals seem to have changed their view of morality to support Trump.

“So I think we just need to be honest. A big part of this evangelical reckoning is a lot of people sold out their beliefs,” he says.

Here are excerpts from the Morning Edition conversation:

You write that “many evangelicals are seeing Donald Trump for who he is.” Do you really think that’s true? There have been so many other things that Trump has said and done over the past four to five years that betray Christian values and their support didn’t waver. You think this time it’s different?

I think it’s a fair question, and I’ve been one for years who was saying we need to see more clearly who Donald Trump is and has often not been listened to. But I would say that for many people, the storming of the Capitol, the desecration of our halls of democracy, has shocked and stunned a lot of people and how President Trump has engaged in riling up crowds to accomplish these things. Yeah, I do think so. I think there are some significant and important conversations that we need to have inside of evangelicalism asking the question: What happened? Why were so many people drawn to somebody who was obviously so not connected to what evangelicals believe by his life or his practices or more.

You write that Trump has burned down the Republican Party. What has he done to the evangelical Christian movement?

If you asked today,

How Jerry Falwell, Jr. Influenced Trump’s Election

Predictions sometimes come true.

And paybacks aren’t always hell.

The NY Times and other news agencies are reporting that Liberty University is in the process of a forensic audit to examine the school’s operations during Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s tenure as its President.

You had to have known (i.e., strongly suspected) that it would happen.

Falwell, Jr. is a real estate attorney-developer whose father, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr. founded the school, and was founding pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. As well, he founded the long-defunct “Moral Majority” – a right-wing Christian religious political action group which was extensively involved in Republican politics, and was predominately concerned with social and cultural matters, and vehemently opposed Civil Rights for anyone but heterosexuals.

Others in the same era include James Dobson, a psychologist and founder of “Focus on the Family” who frequently pointed to Judeo-Christian holy writ to support his theories, the Rev. Don Wildmon, a United Methodist pastor and founder of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based American Family Association, and the American Family Radio network which began as Low-Power FM stations in small communities and neighborhoods throughout the nation, and numerous other predominately White Protestant religious figures, including many in the so-called “blab-it-and-grab-it” heterodox pseudo-faith movement also known as the “prosperity gospel” preachers such as Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, Jerry Savelle, Marilyn Hickey, Kenneth Hagin, Sr., T.L. and Daisy Osborne, and John and “Dodie” Osteen, whose son Joel, with his wife, now occupies their former positions in the church they founded.

Perhaps now you can better understand the basis for some, if not much, of the shenanigans with the Republican party’s fawning obeisance to Evangelicals. Simply put, it’s payback, because they put them in power. You’ll see that theme emerge again, later in the article.

But back to the matter at hand.

And that is concerning Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s tenure as Liberty University President and Chancellor.

NOTE: For sake of simplicity, and ease of understanding, the junior Falwell will be referred to simply as “Jerry Falwell,” except for instances in which it is pertinent to mention his father, the late “Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr.”

Liberty University today (Monday, August 31, 2020) released a statement regarding their objectives, which also mentioned that they would be pursuing an investigation of Falwell’s time as President. Their statement read in part that,