LINCOLN AND TRUMP ON “BINDING OUR WOUNDS”

“Let us . . . bind up the nation’s wounds,” the founder of the party of Lincoln exhorted his fellow countrymen in his brief second inaugural address in March 1865.  “It is time for America to bind the wounds of division,” the current standard-bearer of Lincoln’s party told the nation in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

I don’t know if Donald Trump was consciously echoing Abraham Lincoln in his victory speech, but it strikes me as possible, perhaps even likely, given how much the president-elect admires Lincoln.  Trump’s aides have noted that “Abraham Lincoln is going to be an important figure in terms of Mr. Trump’s vision for the Republican Party,” while Trump himself has paid eloquent tribute to his predecessor.  As he explained to columnist Bob Woodward, Lincoln was

 . . .  a man that did something that was a very vital thing to do at that time. Ten years before or 20 years before, what he was doing would never have even been thought possible. So he did something that was a very important thing to do, and especially at that time.

Did you follow that?

I’d consider it a personal favor if Mr. Trump never referred to Lincoln again or repeated his words.  As a historian and a lifelong Republican, anything that intentionally juxtaposes Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump is just too painful. But beyond the personal discomfort that it causes, Mr. Trump needs to understand that quoting a past president doesn’t make him “presidential.”

Context matters.

When Abraham Lincoln spoke of binding the nation’s wounds, he was referring to a rending in the national fabric that he saw as wholly unnecessary and which grieved him deeply.  As a polarized nation careened toward war at the close of the 1850s, the antislavery Lincoln repeatedly told antislavery audiences that they were not morally superior to slaveholding white southerners.

“I have constantly declared, as I really believed,” Lincoln told an Illinois audience in October 1858, that “the only difference between them [the white South] and us, is the difference of circumstances.”  In an 1859 speech in Dayton, Ohio, Lincoln figuratively addressed the South with this promise: “We mean to remember that you [Southerners] are as good as we; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances.  We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have.”

In the process, Lincoln was indirectly admonishing his own followers to avoid self-righteousness and to treat their opponents charitably.   Addressing members of his own party, Lincoln imparted this advice:

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, with one another.  Let us Republicans do our part to have it so.  Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.  Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can.

Even as Union men were dying on the battlefields of Virginia and Tennessee, Lincoln resisted efforts to portray his southern enemies as either stupid or evil, and when northern clergymen would advise him to assure the North that the Lord was on their side, Lincoln consistently demurred.

In sum, when Lincoln famously called for reconciliation in his second inaugural–“with malice toward none, with charity to all”–his plea represented the logical culmination of a humble, gracious, charitable civility that had characterized his public rhetoric for years past.  Mr. Trump, in contrast, has for years sought intentionally to divide the nation as a conscious political strategy.   His language has been caustic, defamatory, reckless, unthinking, bombastic, anti-intellectual, and relentless self-aggrandizing.

Historically, it would be accurate to call him the anti-Lincoln.  Pretty soon, we’ll just call him “Mr. President.”

TOCQUEVILLE ON TUESDAY’S RESULT

Count me among those who are still reeling from the outcome of Tuesday’s election.   Eventually, I want to write about what it all means, but I’ve got to do a lot of thinking.  Our social-media-driven age demands instant analyses—the simpler and shallower the better—and as Baylor University’s Alan Jacobs has observed, almost the only response that’s unacceptable is the plea for more time to think and ponder and reflect before pronouncing.  I don’t care.

For now, all I can do is share what I read in my notes this morning from the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville.  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I spent much of the past summer with that nineteenth-century Frenchman.  I read three biographies about him, devoured his letters from America, and lingered for weeks over his two-volume classic Democracy in America, surely the most trenchant conservative assessment of American politics ever penned.

Alexis de Tocqueville, circa 1850

As a historian, I believe there are many good reasons to pay attention to the past, but one of the most important of those is the possibility of entering into a life-changing conversation about perennial human questions—“a conversation with the dead about what we should value and how we should live.”  Alexis de Tocqueville needs to be one of our conversation partners. He has much to say to us, if we are willing to listen.  And we do stand in need of a distinctively conservative critique, given that neither major party in America today is either able or inclined to offer one.

So what would Tocqueville think about the outcome of Tuesday’s election?  I’d be blowing smoke to say that I know for sure.  But below are some observations that Tocqueville shared after his visit to the United States in 1830-1831.  I find them eerily prescient.  You can read them and decide for yourself.

• “Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.”

• “What democracy lacks . . . is not always the capacity to choose men of merit but the desire and taste to do so. . . . I am satisfied that anyone who looks upon universal suffrage as a guarantee of good choices is operating under a total illusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages, but not that one.”

• “Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once.  They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. . . .  They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors.”

• “For my part, I own that I have no confidence in the spirit of liberty which seems to animate my contemporaries. I see plainly that the nations of this age are turbulent, but it is not clear to me that they are freedom loving.”

Your thoughts?

MEDITATIONS FOR THE VOTING BOOTH

It’s almost midnight on November 7^th, and soon one of the most divisive and controversial presidential campaigns since the Civil War will finally be over (hopefully).  Within the next twenty-four hours somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred million of us will cast our votes for the nation’s highest office (on top of nearly half that number who have already voted).  No matter who wins, it will take a long time for the nation to recover.  Early in his public career, Abraham Lincoln observed that democracy requires three things to flourish: a people who are united among themselves, have faith in free institutions, and are guided by reason.  If he was right, we’re in trouble.

Many of us will go to the polls deeply troubled for the future of our country.  Some of us will also carry a burden for the future of Christ’s Church, fearfully convinced that the outcome of the election will determine its future as well.  Early this summer, I wrote an open letter to evangelical leaders in which I implored them to share the theological principles and scriptural precepts that guide their thinking about politics, in particular their decision to support the Republican nominee.  I am still waiting.

On one hand, we’ve been told that a twice divorced casino mogul known for his bigotry, adulation of power, and contempt for constitutional constraints is a wonderful father and faithful Christian, which should make our decision simple.  Conversely, we’ve been told that character doesn’t matter—we’re “not electing a pastor,” after all—and that a host of pragmatic reasons dictate that we ally with a scoundrel to bring down a villain.   I can imagine Winston Churchill saying such a thing.  I’m not so sure about Jesus.

I’m not qualified to offer a set of systematic theological principles to guide our thinking about the mess that we’re in—that’s why I have so genuinely longed for our leaders to teach us.  Like many of us, I think we’re faced with a set of awful options when we go into the voting booth tomorrow.  It occurs to me that these extraordinary circumstances have exposed the theological shallowness of my own thinking about politics until now.  In years when one major candidate seemed clearly superior to the other, no very deep thinking was required.  But now that we effectively face a choice between the two most unpopular presidential nominees since the beginning of polling, each deeply if differently flawed, I find myself groping for scriptural principles upon which to make a decision.

If Donald Trump had a particle of integrity, and if I thought he truly cared remotely about the sanctity of human life and the importance of religious freedom (instead of stumbling on both positions just recently while reading “Two Corinthians”), and if I thought he could be trusted to make wise nominations to the Supreme Court, and if I thought he possessed the political acumen to steer genuinely sound nominations through a bitterly divided, dysfunctional Senate (which will soon either be almost evenly split between the parties or have a slight Democratic majority), and if history showed that ostensibly conservative nominees to the Court reliably espoused conservative positions once on the bench (which it doesn’t), then we could have a really good discussion about whether the ends justify the means and God would have us ally with someone as morally offensive as Donald Trump to accomplish some greater good.

In case you missed the italics, however, there are way too many “ifs” in that long sentence to base a decision on.  I know that many evangelicals have concluded that a Trump presidency—however distasteful and even frightening—is simply the price we must pay for a conservative Court for the next generation.  Their motives may be honorable, but I fear their reasoning is dreadfully misguided.

So here is what I am meditating on these last hours before voting myself.  I’m suspecting that, however we vote, our decision will say something about our view of divine sovereignty and human identity, that is, how we understand God and how we see ourselves.  In church this past Sunday, our congregation sang a familiar praise chorus with the words “Our God is an awesome God / He reigns in heaven above / with wisdom, power, and love / our God is an awesome God.”  And before I knew it, my thoughts were on the impending election (confession: my mind sometimes wanders in church—sorry), and I found myself asking whether we really believe this when we go into the voting booth.  If so, in what ways will a robust confidence in God’s sovereignty and power inform the votes we cast?  And how, exactly, might our faith in God’s sovereignty and power square with the conclusion that we must support the “lesser of evils” to promote a “Christian” outcome?

And then our pastor began his sermon.  While preaching on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, he took us briefly to a relevant passage in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews.  The verse that caught my attention was chapter 13, verse 14.  In my New King James translation I read, “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come,” and again my thoughts turned to Election Day.  When we pull the curtain behind us and cast our ballots, will our actions reflect our identity first and foremost as Americans—more specifically, as Republicans or Democrats—or will we self-consciously remind ourselves, as the apostle Paul taught the church at Philippi, that “our citizenship is in heaven”?

Will we think of ourselves as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth,” to return to the language of the book of Hebrews, or will our identity and motivation be grounded elsewhere?  Will we see the election as our “last chance” to save America or make it great again, or will we believe the Scripture’s assurance (in Hebrews 12:28) that “we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken”?

In context, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews is combining assurance with admonition.  The full verse reads, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and Godly fear.”  The full truth of this passage is beyond my comprehension, but the writer seems to be telling us that a key to serving God acceptably is realizing where our identity is grounded and where our hope lies.  You should read these verses in context and decide for yourself how they may apply.  As for me, I’m having a hard time squaring them with the pervasive pragmatism that so many of our leaders seem to have adopted.

I’ll be voting tomorrow, but not for either major candidate.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON THE CHOICES BEFORE US

“Think of your forefathers!  Think of your posterity!”–John Quincy Adams

In his 1838 address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, a young Abraham Lincoln told his audience that the most serious threat to America’s political institutions did not come from a foreign invader.  “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?” he asked.  “If destruction be our lot,” Lincoln warned, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Lincoln grounded his argument on three main points:

1) The “strongest bulwark” of our democratic form of government is “the attachment of the People.”

2) Free government is never more vulnerable than when the public has concluded it cannot, or will not, protect them and champion their interests.  In such an environment, the majority may eventually conclude—recklessly, emotionally—that any change is better than no change since “they imagine they have nothing to lose.”

3) Such a negative environment is fertile ground for tyranny.  Ambitious individuals will inevitably arise from time to time, individuals who will “thirst for distinction” and who will attain it, if possible, at whatever cost.  When such a figure arises, “it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”  When these attributes are not in place, the people may actually embrace the future tyrant and become active agents in their own downfall.

This is the earliest known picture of Lincoln, taken in 1846, eight years after he addressed the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.

So how do we guard against such an outcome?  Key to Lincoln’s prescription was his realization that popular attachment to the government is not just something that happens when government does its job.  Lincoln insisted instead that attachment to the government is a political quality that the American people must constantly, consciously cultivate.  “How shall we fortify against” the loss of faith in government, Lincoln asked?  We do so, he maintained, by promoting respect for the rule of law and by replacing passion in the public square with reason.

“Every lover of liberty” should swear to honor the law, Lincoln lectured his lyceum audience.  The people should purpose to make “reverence for the laws . . . the political religion of the nation.”  This didn’t mean blind submission to every government edict, but it did a mindset that patiently addresses injustice within the rule of law, working to alleviate ills without violating the Constitutional forms necessary for liberty to flourish over the long run.

In addition to inculcating such “reverence,” Lincoln called on his audience to promote rationality.  Popular passions may have played a role during the American Revolution, Lincoln admitted, when the patriots of 1776 labored to establish liberty.  But passion is actually an obstacle to ordering and sustaining liberty, Lincoln maintained.   Repeatedly, Lincoln directed his audience to passion as the “enemy” of those who would live by the rule of law.  He speaks of “mob law,” the “mobocratic spirit, “the growing disposition to substitute the cold and furious passions” in the place of “sober judgment.”

Passion “will in future be our enemy,” Lincoln concluded, precisely because, when combined with a loss of “attachment” to the government, it leaves the public ripe for exploitation by the ambitious demagogue who “thirsts for distinction” and will do all within his power to attain it, “whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.”

So what would Lincoln think of the 2016 presidential campaign?  Who knows.  But you don’t have to go too far out on a limb to conclude that he’d think we’re in danger.  What did he say is the greatest bulwark of our political institutions?  The attachment of the people to the government.  What did he conclude is one of the foremost obstacles to liberty?  A people guided by passion rather than reason.   And what should we look for when a people driven by passion lose faith in their government?  Danger.

Americans have no good choices when they go to the polls next Tuesday.  Through her own apparent dishonesty and dissembling, Secretary Clinton has done her fair share to engender popular disillusionment with the career politicians in Washington and thus weaken “the attachment of the people.”  But what Clinton has accomplished inadvertently, Donald Trump seeks to do intentionally, actively fueling contempt for government while channeling our darkest passions.  Fear and resentment, however justified, do not make a sustainable basis for democracy, but they can propel a demagogue to political power.

“I WILL KEEP YOU IN SUSPENSE”: TRUMP’S RECKLESS BREAK WITH HISTORY

As a historian, I thought the defining moment in last night’s third and final presidential debate came when moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News asked Donald Trump if he was prepared to accept the outcome of next month’s election should he be defeated.  “I will look at it at the time,” Trump equivocated.  “I will keep you in suspense.”  In that one brief exchange the Republican nominee turned his back on centuries of American history and proved beyond doubt his utter unfitness for the nation’s highest office.

The thirty-nine men who signed the final draft of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 did not foresee the development of permanent political parties and would have been distressed by the prospect.  In Federalist #10, James Madison famously descried the tendency to divide into factions as a “dangerous vice” that threatened free government.  Factionalism produced “instability, injustice, and confusion,” i.e., “the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

George Washington similarly deplored political parties and warned the nation against them before stepping down as the country’s first president.  Washington condemned “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” and described them at length for his fellow countrymen.  He warned that partisan spirit “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, [and] kindles the animosity of one part against another.”

Yet political parties developed, nonetheless, and when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson squared off in the presidential election of 1796, the country understood that they represented two distinct political factions that had morphed into formal political parties–Adams’ Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans.  (Due to a Constitutional quirk, the victorious Adams and his defeated rival would serve as president and vice-president, respectively.)  The election of 1796 did not involve a “campaign” as we would recognize it today, however.  It mostly consisted of elite statesmen writing letters to other elite statesmen on behalf of their chosen nominee, and neither candidate openly sought support for his election, as that was then considered unseemly.

All this changed in the election of 1800.  By this time the country was badly roiled by external dangers and internal dissension.  Britain and France had been at war since 1793, and the parties differed sharply as to how the infant United States might preserve both its neutrality and its dignity in a world at war.  The pro-British Federalists had signed a humiliating treaty with the British just before Washington left office, and then the Federalist majority in Congress had begun to mobilize for a possible war with France.  Convinced that the Federalists were bent on war, the pro-French Democratic-Republicans cried foul.  Viewing their opposition on the brink of war as a threat to national security, Congressional Federalists responded by passing the Sedition Act of 1798, which effectively made criticism of the government a crime.  Refusing to back down, Democratic-Republican leaders Jefferson and James Madison declared the law illegal and urged state legislatures to “nullify” it.  At no time other than the Civil War have Americans been so bitterly and so deeply divided.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were opponents in one of the most bitter presidential elections in U. S. history.

The genteel, decorous, largely behind the scenes campaign of 1796 devolved into an acrimonious, ugly, public war in 1800 when Adams and Jefferson squared off a second time.  This time both parties mobilized a print campaign, enlisting partisan authors to abuse the other party in newspapers, pamphlets, circulars, and broadsides.  Democratic-Republican writers castigated the Federalists as closet monarchists and Tories in league with Britain to subvert American liberties.  They were the puppets of international financiers whose goal was to reduce the people of the United States to “rags, hunger, and wretchedness.”  At best, their economic policies were products of “imbecility and impudence.”

Federalists gave as good as they got.  Federalist writers accused Jefferson of being an atheist (false), of fathering “mulatto” children (probable), and of being an unabashed supporter of the French Revolution (undeniable).  If Jefferson was elected, they prophesied that America would suffer the “just vengeance of Heaven.”  The worst excesses of French radicalism would come to America: “dwellings in flames, hoary heads bathed in blood, female chastity violated . . . children on the pike and halberd.”  (Translation: if the other side wins, cities will burn to the ground, the aged will be murdered, women will be raped, and children will be speared.  This was hardly a golden age of civil discourse.)

In the end, the Democratic-Republicans won the election by a hair, with Jefferson claiming the victory in the electoral college by a vote of 71-68.  (Technically, Jefferson tied with running mate, Aaron Burr, but that’s another story.)  John Adams had every reason to view the outcome as illegitimate.  Schemers in his own party, most notably Alexander Hamilton, had failed to support him.  What was worse, Thomas Jefferson owed his slender electoral margin to the fact that his support came disproportionately from states with large slave populations; thanks to the Constitution’s “three-fifths” clause, those states were entitled to extra electoral votes.  Had the Founders not made this compromise with the owners of human property, Adams, not Jefferson, would have gained the victory.

Yet Adams did not contest the election formally, nor openly condemn the outcome.  And Jefferson, for his part, used his inaugural address not to castigate his opponents but to seek common ground with them.   “Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind,” he exhorted.  “Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. . . . Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

So transpired the first transfer of power from one political party to the other in U. S. history.  It was, despite the acrimony on both sides, remarkably peaceful.  Both parties submitted to it.  Both sides respected the outcome, despite the depth of their differences and the magnitude of what was at stake.  This was not something the Framers of the Constitution in 1787 could  have predicted.  It is not something Americans in 2016 should take for granted.  It is, in fact, one of the most precious legacies we have inherited from our forebears.

Either Donald Trump doesn’t know this, or he doesn’t care.

IT’S NOT ABOUT DEFEATING HILLARY—IT’S ABOUT THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH

I continue to feel ill at ease when I speak forthrightly in this space about contemporary politics.  I began this blog some four years ago because I wanted to be in conversation with other Christians about the intersection of the love of God, the life of the mind, and the study of the past.  Put differently, I felt a growing burden to speak to the Church about how to remember the past faithfully.  Many of you have been drawn to Faith and American History because of a similar concern.  I value your time and your trust, and I do not want to abuse either.

And yet I feel compelled to take a public stand.  Every year in my senior seminar for graduating history majors, I require the class to read a 1940 essay by Archibald MacLeish, American poet, playwright, and Librarian of Congress.  Written at the outbreak of WWII, MacLeish’s essay, “The Irresponsibles,” was a passionate jeremiad directed at the American Academy.  Germany, France, and Japan had succumbed to totalitarian dictatorship and the world was erupting in flames, but western scholars, MacLeish lamented, were doing nothing to impede the progress of trends that were systematically, inexorably destroying freedom of thought and expression in far-flung reaches of the globe.  Condemning “the organization of the intellectual life of our time,” MacLeish condemned the “scholar” who “digs in his ivory cellar in the ruins of the past and lets the present sicken as it will.”

The crisis confronting the American people in 2016 is not equivalent to the threat posed by European fascism in 1940, but it is ominous in its own way.  Through his repeated claims that the electoral process is “rigged” or “fixed,” Donald Trump is doing his best to undermine the very foundation of American democracy, namely popular confidence in the democratic process.  This is cynical nihilism incarnate, an utterly reckless willingness to destroy if he cannot rule.

But as dire as this threat to our political system may be, as a Christian scholar I am far more concerned by the threat posed to Christ’s Church.  It is a threat inseparable from the Trump campaign, but ultimately posed not by Trump himself but by evangelicals who continue to defend him.  Evangelical support continues to be robust, even after the release of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video so damaging that even Trump himself was temporarily—very temporarily—contrite.  A poll of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute completed after the release of the video still found that two-thirds of likely evangelical voters intended to support the Republican nominee.  And apart from the Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs of the more “fair and balanced” media, Trump’s most outspoken defenders in recent days have been evangelical leaders such as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Jerry Falwell Jr.

If there is a silver lining to be found, it is the indication that large numbers of evangelicals are still undecided.  A poll released by the Barna Group last week suggests that nearly three out of ten aren’t sure how they will vote.  If you fall into that category, won’t you please take note of the arguments below?

Rather than make the case myself, I can happily refer you to a growing number of prominent, theologically conservative evangelical voices who make the case against Trump better than I can.  In the last ten days, these were some of the most eloquent evangelical arguments against the Republican nominee to appear:

* Andy Crouch, executive editor of Christianity Today, “Speak Truth to Trump”

* Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, “If Donald Trump Has Done Anything Right, He Has Snuffed Out the Religious Right”

* Julie Roys, journalist, blogger, and radio host on Moody Radio Network, “Evangelical Trump Defenders are Destroying the Church’s Witness”

* Collin Hansen, editorial director for the Gospel Coalition, “This is the Last Spastic Breath from the Religious Right before its Overdue Death”

* R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “Donald Trump has Created an Excruciating Moment for Evangelicals”

I encourage you to read each of these carefully and prayerfully and decide for yourself, but here is my executive summary of the five pieces linked above, taken as a group:

First, all agree that Trump is morally disqualified to hold our nation’s highest office.  For example, Andy Crouch writes of Trump,

He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn. He is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.

Al Mohler agrees, observing that “the Republican nominee is, in terms of character, the personification of what evangelicals have preached (and voted) against.”

Married three times, flaunting Christian sexual mores, building his fortune and his persona on the Playboy lifestyle, under any normal circumstances Trump would be the realization of evangelical nightmares, not the carrier of evangelical hopes.

In sum, Mohler concludes, “Donald Trump is not just disqualified from being a Sunday school teacher. Honest evangelicals would not want him as a next-door neighbor.”

Second, these writers make clear that the most important thing at stake in the current campaign is not a Democratic or Republican victory but the testimony of a Church that claims to believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.  Crouch describes the danger this way:

Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.

Russell Moore offers a similar warning:

What’s at stake here is far more than an election. In the 1980s, many evangelicals quietly cringed when they saw the endless stream of hucksters called “television evangelists” on the airwaves around them. . . . When one after another fell into open scandal, it wasn’t just their prosperity gospel voodoo that was disgraced before the world, but the reputation of the entire church. And yet the damage done to gospel witness this year will take longer to recover from than those 1980s televangelist scandals.

Julie Roys perhaps puts it best.  “How on earth can evangelicals maintain any moral platform from which to speak out against abortion and gay marriage if we’re going to dismiss and normalize adultery and sexual assault?” she asks.

Donald Trump may do less damage to the country than Hillary, but he’s done far worse damage to the evangelical church than anyone in recent history. And let’s remember, the church — not politics — is the only real hope of reforming the character of this nation and saving it from destruction. That’s why the witness of the church is simply not worth trading for a political victory.

Al Mohler sums it up this way: “The stakes could not be higher. Jesus famously asked, ‘What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?’ (Matthew 16:26)  Those are the questions now faced by America’s evangelicals.”

“MAKE THE CONFEDERACY GREAT AGAIN”

There was a brief flap at a Donald Trump rally in Kissimmee, Florida on Thursday when a Trump supporter displayed a huge Confederate battle flag near the speaker’s platform.  Similar flags, emblazoned conspicuously with “TRUMP 2016,” were for sale in the parking lot outside Kissimmee’s Silver Spurs arena, but Trump campaign officials evidently blanched at it being hung almost within spitting distance of the stage.

The flag’s owner, a twenty-seven-year-old Trump supporter from Deland, Florida, grudgingly agreed to remove the flag but refused to believe that Trump himself would have objected to it.   The real culprit was the media, which is evidently controlled by Yankees.

The New York Times reported the owner as being upset but exonerating the Republican candidate:

It kind of upsets me a little bit, but because of the dishonest media, which he [Trump] talks about, because of that, it forces them and ties their hands to do certain things so that the media doesn’t take something and spin it and turns it into something that it’s not.

Erring on the side of caution, in other words, the Trump staffers decided to remove the rebel flag lest the media try to sensationalize the incident and turn the flag into some sort of controversial symbol.  How dishonest!

In case you’re interested, I’ve written at considerable length about the historical arguments both for and against the Confederate battle flag.  You can find them here, here, here, here, and here.

TRUMP, CONSERVATISM, AND CHRISTIAN WITNESS

I had the privilege earlier this week to be interviewed by one of my former students, Daniel Davis.  Students like Daniel are one of the main reasons I love being at Wheaton College.  Some of my fondest memories are of the long conversations we had at the campus dining hall over the years, and I left every one of them thankful and encouraged.  Daniel is now working in Washington, D.C., and he and a few other recent Wheaton grads have started an online journal called Ecclesiam, with the goal of promoting constructive discussion of cultural issues in the light of the gospel.  Daniel interviewed me for their podcast, “Point of Contact.”

Daniel and I talked for about 75 minutes in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the importance of history to the Christian, what it means to approach the past Christianly, and some of the light that a historical perspective might shed on the current presidential contest.  If you’re interested, you can view the podcast, titled “Trump, Conservatism, and Christian Witness, here.

 

“AMERICA IS GREAT BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD”—PART TWO

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Alexis de Tocqueville, circa 1850

Today is Alexis de Tocqueville’s birthday (he would be 211) so it seems fitting to feature what are arguably the most widely quoted lines from his classic study of American society and politics, Democracy in America.  Tocqueville’s tribute to America has been a favorite of American presidents (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bill Clinton), congressmen, cabinet officials, and other politically-oriented public figures such as Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, and Ben Carson.  And if you were listening carefully to Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at last night’s Democratic National Convention—thanks to reader Gary Hotham for pointing this out—you may have noticed her implicit tribute to Tocqueville in the course of rebuking her Republican counterpart:

“You know, for the past year, many people made the mistake of laughing off Donald Trump’s comments – excusing him as an entertainer just putting on a show. . . . But here’s the sad truth: There is no other Donald Trump.  This is it. And in the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn’t get: that America is great – because America is good.”

The only problem with these numerous tributes to Tocqueville’s wise assessment of America—as I noted in my previous post—is that Tocqueville never wrote the lines that we attribute to him.

Now, thanks to the timely assistance of reader Lynn Betts (thanks, Lynn!), I am able to tell you that, it is almost certainly the case that the quote originated with two English Congregational ministers who traveled in the United States in 1834, three years after Alexis de Tocqueville’s more famous journey.  In volume II, p. 226 of the second edition of their book A Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches by the Deputation from the Congregational Union of England and Wales (London, 1836), we read where authors Andrew Reed and James Matheson wrote:

Universal suffrage, whatever may be its abstract merits or demerits, is neither desirable nor possible, except the people are the subjects of universal education and universal piety. America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud.

Unless the reverends Reed and Matheson were themselves plagiarizing an earlier source, it seems almost certain that they are the authors of the lines so commonly misattributed to Tocqueville.  But even here, note that the quote as commonly repeated differs in one significant sense from the original from Reed and Matheson.  While the English visitors offered a tentative prediction, “America WILL BE great IF America is good,” the quote as politicians and pundits are fond of repeating it is dogmatically assertive: “America IS great because America IS good.”

Tocqueville would have been amused, but not surprised, by this telling modification.  His letters home reveal more than a touch of impatience with Americans’ relentless boasting about their country.  “We are still baffled by the sheer quantity of food the people somehow stuff down their gullets” Tocqueville wrote to his mother five days after landing in the United States.  “So far this is the only respect in which I do not challenge their superiority; they, on the other hand, reckon themselves superior in many ways.  People here seem to reek of national pride.”

Over the course of his nine-month journey across the United States, Tocqueville actually found much to admire about American democracy, but his views can’t be reduced to the equivalent of a campaign slogan.  In my next post I’ll have some thoughts on what Tocqueville really believed about the sources of American happiness.

Back soon.

TRUMP’S “EVANGELICAL EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD”

I would like to have been a fly on the wall at Tuesday’s gathering of more than a thousand evangelical leaders and activists with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.  The meeting has garnered comparatively little media attention thus far, in large part because the assembly was closed to the press—all news outlets, not just those on Donald Trump’s black list—and second-hand testimony is only slowing beginning to come in.

According to an article in the Atlantic, Ben Carson, Jerry Falwell Jr., and pollster George Barna were among those addressing the audience.  After Trump spoke,  former presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee moderated a scripted Q&A which Christian author Eric Metaxas described in a tweet as “eye-opening.”  Hmmm.  The most detailed first-hand evidence concerning the substance of Trump’s remarks comes from a tweeted video of a portion of the address from a Christian radio host in the audience.  The video captures Trump discouraging the audience from praying for our nation’s officeholders.  “We can’t be, again, politically correct and say we pray for all of our leaders,” Trump explains, “because all of your leaders are selling Christianity down the tubes.”

Three quick reactions come to mind: First, the quote is quintessential Trump—a sweeping declaration unburdened by evidence, appealing to emotion instead of reason, and designed to prey on the fear and anger that it incites.

Second, to the degree that evangelicals buy into such rhetoric, it encourages us to conceive of ourselves as an innocent and aggrieved majority in need of a political savior, rather than as pilgrims and strangers called to be light to a fallen world while recognizing that our citizenship is in heaven.

Finally, given Trump’s self-professed veneration for the Bible (he claims to  like it even better than The Art of the Deal), I am struck by his disregard for the New Testament’s stricture that “prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence” (I Timothy 2:1-2).  I guess the apostle Paul was simply too “politically correct.”

The Trump campaign followed up Tuesday’s gathering by announcing the appointment of an “Evangelical Executive Advisory Board.”  According to the official media announcement, the group of twenty-five mostly white male pastors will “provide advisory support to Mr. Trump on those issues important to evangelicals and other persons of faith in America.”  The press release goes on to explain that the creation of this board represents Trump’s “endorsement of those diverse issues important to Evangelicals and other Christians, and his desire to have access to the wise counsel of such leaders as needed.”

The announcement continues, supposedly quoting Trump as saying, “I have such tremendous respect and admiration for this group and I look forward to continuing to talk about the issues important to Evangelicals, and to Americans, and the common sense solutions I will implement when I am president.”

So let’s boil this down and see what we have: A candidate known for his erratic inconsistency and unpredictability has just issued a blanket endorsement of  “issues important to evangelicals” without naming a single one.  A supremely self-confident celebrity famous for going his own way has promised to take seriously the “wise counsel” of evangelical advisers “as needed.”  (Who will get to decide when he “needs” it?)

Should anyone find this reassuring?  More to the point, would anyone who takes the Constitution’s checks and balances seriously fail to shudder at Trump’s confidence that he can unilaterally “implement” solutions to the issues that concern evangelicals (whatever they are)?

You can find the list of Trump’s evangelical advisers here.  I’m not familiar with the majority of those on the list, but a minority I surely recognize: James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress, Ronnie Floyd, David Jeremiah, and Ralph Reed, among others.  The Trump campaign’s press release makes clear that the individuals named to the board “were not asked to endorse Mr. Trump as a prerequisite for participating on the board,” and some of those named have been openly critical of Trump in the past.  And yet, can anyone doubt that Trump will use the very existence of the board as a campaign talking point to buttress his appeal among the evangelical rank and file?

As I write this, I am mindful of a book that I read earlier in the summer: Christianity and American Democracy, by Hugh Heclo.  Heclo is a professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a scholar who has spent much of his career exploring the interactions of faith and politics in American life.  In the book, which originated in a major public lecture at Harvard a decade ago, Heclo describes and evaluates the interplay of democratic values and Christian convictions since the American founding.  The general pattern that he describes should give every Christian pause: when tenets of orthodox Christian belief have clashed with prevailing democratic values, it is more often Christian belief that has retreated and conformed to the democratic culture, not the other way around.

Even more to the point is Heclo’s timely warning:

Worldly power, being worldly, is always ready and willing to use religion to win fights with political opponents.

 Whatever the motives of those who have accepted a position on Trump’s advisory board, I fear that they are being used.  And if Heclo is right, the end result is less likely to be a government that is more Christian than a Church that is more worldly.