Republished from The Conversation

For a growing number of evangelical Christians, Trump is no longer the lesser of two evils

Stewart Clem, Aquinas Institute of Theology

It has long been taken for granted that the majority of evangelical Christians in the United States will vote for Donald Trump.

That may well be the case. But there are recent signs that fewer evangelicals will support Trump this time around than in 2016.

In an August 2020 poll for Fox News, Trump registered a 38-point advantage over Joe Biden among among white evangelical voters. That is impressive, but it pales in comparison with his 61-point advantage over Hillary Clinton among evangelicals in the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, a Pew survey on Oct. 13 found that white evangelical support for Trump had slipped since August, from 83% to 78%.

Moral motivation

Among those who plan to vote to reelect the current president, “a majority are excited to get behind Trump, rather than being primarily motivated by a distaste for his opponent,” according to a write-up of the Pew survey in the prominent evangelical publication Christianity Today.

To me, this suggests not so much a softening among evangelical voters an intensification of their feelings about Trump. I believe we are witnessing a growing divide between those who love him and those who increasingly question whether he is fit for office. Unlike in 2016, evangelical voters who cannot get excited about Trump are seemingly finding it more difficult to vote for him.

There hasn’t been a lot of research into what is behind this trend. But as a moral theologian, I’m interested in the moral reasoning that some prominent evangelical Christians have put forward in recent months explaining why they won’t be voting for Trump. It seems that at least some are reconsidering the relationship between leadership and character.

Why the change of heart?

When Trump was campaigning in 2016, many Christians conceded that while they didn’t approve of his crude personality or his “immoral” lifestyle, they believed his policies – such as his promises to protect religious freedom and his commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade – were more in line with their religious beliefs than those of Hillary Clinton.

“We’re electing a president, not a pastor,” was a common refrain.

Evangelical Christians in the U.S. are not a monolithic voting bloc that supports conservative candidates. There has always been a politically progressive contingent among evangelicalism. Jim Wallis, founder of the left-leaning evangelical magazine Sojourners, for example, served as a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships. Unsurprisingly, progressive evangelical voters have been critical of the president’s character as well as his policies.

But what appears to have changed of late is that some politically conservative evangelicals – those who prioritize abortion restrictions, opposition to same-sex marriage and religious freedom – agree less than they did in 2016 that Trump deserves their vote.

While President Trump may not be “pastor-in-chief,” many evangelical leaders are reminding their fellow Christians that they should not view the office of president as somehow exempt from what they perceive as biblical standards of leadership. As Christian business leader Sid Jansma Jr. explained in a recent article: “The Bible routinely associates good leadership anywhere with character, including such traits as justice, patience, compassion, humility, integrity, honesty, wisdom, courage and discipline.” Citing the Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy in the Bible, Jansma concludes, “On every Biblical count of leadership, all of the above, Trump fails.”

Prominent evangelical pastor and author John Piper has likewise drawn on several biblical texts when writing about the choice facing voters: “There is a character connection between rulers and subjects. When the Bible describes a king by saying, ‘He sinned and made Israel to sin’ … it does not mean he twisted their arm. It means his influence shaped the people. That’s the calling of a leader. Take the lead in giving shape to the character of your people. So it happens. For good or for ill.”

In this reading, the Bible does not have a category for a good leader with bad personal character. Nor does it seem to imagine that a nation can remain untainted by the perceived moral failures of its leaders.

The lesser of two evils?

In 2016, a considerable number of evangelicals strongly disapproved of Trump’s behavior but could not imagine voting for a Democrat. For these voters, the Democratic Party platform and its positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights was sufficient to render Trump the lesser of two evils.

Explaining this position in 2016, Wayne Grudem, a popular evangelical author and seminary professor, conceded in The Christian Post that the candidate was “egotistical, bombastic, and brash” but that he represented an “unusual opportunity” to defeat the “pro-abortion, pro-gender-confusion, anti-religious liberty, tax-and-spend, big government liberalism” that he associated with Hillary Clinton.

More recently, concern over Trump’s perceived exploitation of Christianity has been enough to change the minds of some voters. Some theologians have argued that he appropriates Christianity for purposes that are contrary to its teachings. Southern Methodist University’s D. Stephen Long went as far as to ponder in one article: “Should we call Donald Trump ‘antichrist’?”

So even for Christian voters who rely on a lesser-of-two-evils calculus, it’s not obvious that Trump deserves their backing. As Piper writes, “I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting and strife-stirring.”

Even from a conservative evangelical perspective, the gains of a Trump presidency are increasingly being weighed against the losses. As the editor in chief of Christianity Today put it in an article calling for Trump to be removed from office: “If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come?”

Despite reportedly mocking Christians and their beliefs behind closed doors, Trump is seen by many evangelicals as God’s chosen candidate. The data, however, suggest a growing divide among evangelicals, with reluctant Trump voters becoming a thing of the past.

Most conservative evangelicals will vote for Trump and will do so enthusiastically. But a significant minority have seemingly concluded that he is in fact the worse of two evils, and they will either not vote or vote for a candidate who is not a Republican – perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Aquinas Institute of Theology is a member of the Association of Theological Schools.

Stewart Clem, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology, Aquinas Institute of Theology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Republished from The Conversation

The history of oath ceremonies and why they matter when taking office

Joanne M. Pierce, College of the Holy Cross

The confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett have drawn much notice for her religious worldview.

Barrett’s alleged commitment to a small Christian religious group, People of Praise, has raised concerns. This covenant is a formal pledge to remain a member for life, following its authority structures, religious beliefs and expectations for service or charitable activities.

Barrett must take an oath – both governmental and judicial – swearing impartiality if she is approved for the post of a Supreme Court justice. Some commentators have questioned this apparent permanent commitment to an ultraconservative “fringe” group and whether that might interfere with her ability to genuinely practice this impartiality.

As a scholar of medieval Christian liturgy and ritual, I believe this is a moment to understand why oaths are so important, as well as how they came to be such an important tradition.

What is an oath?

Some philosophers and anthropologists define an oath as a ritual act, or more specifically a “speech act.”

An oath is one kind of speech act. Taking an oath expresses a specific intention to others, using words like “I promise to” or “I swear that.” The intention when taking an oath is not limited to the moment someone articulates the words of the oath.

Oath-taking is also about the intention in the future to commit to act in a certain way. One example is the vows taken by couples during their wedding in front of witnesses.

British philosopher John L. Austin called oaths “performative utterances.” The engaged couple, for example, declare their act of marrying each other by speaking their vows to each other. They make a deliberate choice of their own free will.

Roman soldiers and allegiance

The ritual of taking oaths goes back centuries in Western Europe.

In antiquity, oaths were often demanded of religious and governmental leaders, as well as those in certain professions. In ancient Rome, oaths were also demanded of soldiers.

The most solemn military oath – directly invoking the Roman gods – was the “sacramentum.” By this oath, soldiers swore allegiance to their specific general or commanding consul and, later, to the emperor. Disobedience could earn severe punishments.

On some occasions, oath-breaking was tested by resorting to divine intervention. The virgin goddess Vesta was one of the most important in Roman religion. Her priestesses, the Vestals, or Vestal Virgins, therefore took an oath of chastity for their 30-year term of service tending to the ever-burning sacred fire of Rome, Vesta’s sacred hearth, as well as other rites.

Vestals accused of breaking that oath were judged by the high priest of Rome. Since a priestess was a sacred person, her blood could not be shed. If found guilty, the priestess was buried alive, with a lamp and a little food, and left to the judgment of Vesta. If any condemned Vestal were innocent, it was believed that surely the goddess would free her from her living death.

Oaths in the Middle Ages

In medieval Europe, Christians continued to take oaths. The religious and secular worlds were closely interconnected for most of these centuries, and most oaths referred to Christian beliefs.

In the early Middle Ages, Christians took oaths in the name of God, often while holding a religious object like a relic of a saint or a book of the Gospels.

In most cases, oaths were not strictly person to person, but involved the wider community in some important way. Kings took coronation oaths, swearing to rule justly and safeguard the people of the kingdom; lesser nobles took oaths of fealty to greater nobles, often for protection and material advantage.

Religious leaders like bishops and abbots also became part of this oath-based system, since they, too, had secular jurisdiction over important tracts of land. Breaking an oath was believed to bring down the wrath of God in time, but other than that, upholding one’s personal honor and reputation within the local community was a key consideration.

Until the early 13th century, Christian rites would accompany the earlier Germanic practice of trial by ordeal. In these earlier centuries, most local people accused of a crime could be found not guilty by compurgation – that is, through oaths made by other respected members of the community testifying to the accused’s honest character.

In other cases, often involving strangers to the local community, the accused could be cleared only by a divine intervention.

After a night of fasting and prayer, the accused would undergo a physical ordeal, like carrying a heated block of iron over a set number of steps or by being thrown into a pond to sink or float.

If the accused did not develop blisters or was “accepted” by the water and sank, that was understood as God’s declaration of his innocence. As time went on, scholars and ordinary people increasingly criticized the reliability of trials by ordeal.

By the 13th century, the procedures of the court trial were defined and adopted, both in canon law – that is, the church law – and in secular law.

Why oaths matter

When drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the Founding Fathers rejected some of the legal practices of the British system of law. One such rejection was of the “religious test.”

In Great Britain, all office holders had to affirm the religious doctrines of the Church of England. But in the independent United States, there was to be no such religious restriction placed on federal officeholders. Preserving religious liberty was a primary concern protected by the Constitution.

One of the British legal practices the Founding Fathers did include in the Constitution was the swearing of oaths upon entering federal governmental service. However, these oaths were not taken to pledge loyalty to a single monarch, but to “protect and defend” the Constitution itself.

But “swearing-in ceremonies” communicate far more. Supreme Court justices take two oaths, one judicial, and the other constitutional. The oath ceremony is still a serious performative utterance.

The appointees take these oaths in front of witnesses, who are themselves representative of the entire community the appointees will serve.

Appointees to the Supreme Court commit themselves, not to a partisan political agenda, and not to a cult of personality or to the judgment of popular opinion. They commit themselves to “protect and defend the Constitution” and “administer justice without respect to persons … faithfully and impartially.”

Justices might be impeached by Congress for failing in “good behavior.” But in practice, justices serve for life, until death or retirement, and are bound in good conscience to carry out their “duties” as they have sworn to do.

The conscience of appointees, not the preservation of their personal reputations, has been the focus of these “oaths of office” for almost 250 years. This is as true today as it was in 1787.

Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Republished from The Conversation

Why masks are a religious issue

Leslie Dorrough Smith, Avila University

Seemingly everyone has an opinion on masks: when to wear them, how to wear them, which ones are best and even whether we should be wearing them at all.

For those in this last camp, a popular argument is that the coverings aren’t the problem, but being forced by a government entity to wear one is. It’s the mandate, not the mask, some might say.

Some anti-maskers have claimed that being forced to wear a face covering violates their religious rights. Back in May, Ohio State Rep. Nino Vitale, a Republican, publicly rejected mask-wearing on the grounds that covering one’s face dishonors God. This view is echoed by some individual faith leaders, with churches flouting requirements that congregants wear masks. Meanwhile, media-savvy pastors have put anti-mask posts on Facebook that have been viewed millions of times.

And a recent study revealed that the rejection of masks is higher in populations that associate with conservative politics and the idea that the United States is a divinely chosen nation.

Is it that masks are a religious matter, or is religion being used to suit people’s political agendas? Socially speaking, both things can be true.

The function of religion

As a scholar who studies Christian conservatism and its impact on culture, I believe society often adopts an overly narrow understanding of how religion works.

Using religion to support one’s political interests is generally viewed as a negative thing that represents the hijacking or twisting of religion. Such a view is echoed in the words of preacher and activist Rev. William Barber, who said Donald Trump’s alliance with evangelical Christians was a “misuse of religion.”

From a scholarly perspective, though, all forms of religion affect society in some way – even if those outcomes are deemed undesirable or unethical by certain groups. Examining how religion operates in society can help us understand why the conversation over masks has recently turned religious.

In his landmark analysis of the social impact of religion, scholar Bruce Lincoln argued that there is no realm of life that cannot somehow be made religious. This is not because there are topics that are specific or unique to religion, but because of what happens to the authority of a claim when religious language is used. In other words, when people use religious speech, their authority is often perceived to be heightened.

For example, if someone plans to marry a partner they don’t appear to like very much, their claim that “we’ve been together a long time” may not come across as a convincing argument for a wedding. But what if that same person says that “God has brought this other person into my life”? That reason may be more readily accepted if the public hearing these words is already open to religious ideas.

Taking this approach to religion doesn’t mean that all religious claims are factually true or ethical. It also doesn’t mean that the people who use religious language are insincere or even wrong. Rather, the function of religious speech is to amplify the authority of an idea through appeals to seemingly unquestionable authorities, like deities and “ultimate truths.” If a statement does this, Lincoln concludes, then it is religious.

Special authority

These are important considerations for the debate over masks. Using religious language to justify an anti-mask position is a move intended to amplify the voices of those who make this claim. And public health issues have long been a concern of American religious groups.

For example, when it comes to childhood vaccinations, arguing for exemption on philosophical or moral grounds will work in only 15 states. But arguing a religious objection will be accepted in at least 44 of 50 states. The difference is that, in the United States, religious claims are often granted a special type of authority.

Consider also that Americans generally accept the circumcision of infant boys on religious grounds. This is true despite the fact that some medical authorities and activists have questioned both the ethics and health impact of performing this specific surgery, which is otherwise elective and cosmetic, on a newborn.

This does not mean, however, that if religion is involved, then anything goes. As recently as 2014, a faith-healing couple was sentenced to jail time after the preventable deaths of two of their children. The couple claimed that seeking medical care was against their religion.

These examples provide some clarity on when religious rhetoric is successful and when it is not. Groups, beliefs or practices that are already popular or commonplace often appear to get a boost of authority when religious language is used to describe them. If the claim is unpopular or the group is not considered mainstream, then religious language may have little impact.

Barometer of public opinion

Masks are a religious issue because some people have described them that way. But this does not mean that such religious claims have successfully granted them authority. Despite an existing partisan divide on the matter, there is still no widespread sentiment among Americans that a government mask mandate is religiously problematic.

This means that those who rail against masks for religious reasons may not gain a lot of traction right now among the wider American public, when more than 6 million Americans have so far been infected with the virus. There is simply too much fear presently to make that a popular line of reasoning.

But if that number wanes, I believe it is entirely possible that religious rationales against masking could receive renewed, and even broader, support as the culture’s interests change.

This is a good reminder that whether religious ideas take hold is not so much a matter of “truth” or ethics. Rather, the issue at hand is often the barometer of public opinion.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that 6 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus to date.

Leslie Dorrough Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Avila University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.