Elections have consequences. Do they ever! We saw them in spades last week, delivered by the Supreme Court. First, they ruled that public tax monies in Maine can be used in school voucher programs to send children to private, religious schools. Second, they invalidated a 1911 New York law that had allowed the state to deny a permit to carry a firearm outside their homes absent a “proper cause.” Third, the Court struck down Roe v. Wade that, for fifty years, had granted women the Constitutional right to abortion.
Thanks to DJT, there are now six members of the Supreme Court who have a vision of this nation that is at odds with a majority of its citizens. They want to install into law the vision of America espoused by a coalition of evangelical Protestants and ultra-conservative Catholics, a group hardly representative of the US population. Polling has shown consistently that over 80% of white evangelical Christians voted for ex-president Trump. Those voters considered him their leader; and Republicans still consider him the leader of the Party. So what is their vision of America’s future? Knowing that tells you all you need to know about who should be in power in Washington.
First, their vision is authoritarian. The Republican leadership in Congress is afraid of Trump. They kowtow to his every whim, not wanting to ruffle his feathers. Under that regime, we would have government by the personal whim of the head man, Trump. Second, their vision for America dismisses the rule of law. Look at how their leader, the ex-president, pressured local election officials after the 2020 election and state elected officials and the Justice Department and Vice President Pence—all trying to subvert court findings, overturn legitimate recounts, and alter the Constitutional powers granted the Vice President. Trump is not going to change. Third, the America they want to create would be a government of white men, by white men, and for white men. Recall that after the march of Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there were good people on both sides. And late in the day on January 6th, when the then-president went on television, he bid farewell to those who had invaded the Capitol with “I love you.”
Sociologists Samuel Perry and Philip Gorski have pointed out that “the Holy Trinity of Christian nationalism [is] freedom, order and violence.” Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty observed in the Summer 2022 Report From The Capital, “What is obviously missing from this trinity is love, the centerpiece of the Christian life. When love is absent, hate moves in, and it festers and kills.”
Make no mistake, the main impetus behind Donald Trump’s rise to power is religious. The day after the January 6th Insurrection, the Religious News Service carried this dire warning by researcher Robert P. Jones (CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, PRRI): that we should not “downplay the role a disfigured form of white Christianity played that day.” He continued, “If we don’t take those crosses, Bibles, shofars, patches, t-shirts, and flags seriously, we will not understand the current threat facing our democracy today.”
Tyler noted later in her essay that what we saw on that January day was “our faith masquerading in the ideology of white Christian nationalism ... We understand that to criticize Christian nationalism is not anti-Christian. Indeed, it is our commitment of Christian values—like love—that leads us to work to dismantle Christian nationalism.”
Finally, there are many other Christianities than those represented by white Protestant evangelicals and ultra-conservative Catholics. We should not let one small sliver of Christendom call the shots politically in this country. Or any country. According to the PRRI 2020 census . . . only 14% of the US population identifies as white evangelical Protestants, and white Catholics make up only 12 % of the population, while the religiously unaffiliated account for 23% of the US population. Since 2013 religiously unaffiliated citizens have outnumbered white evangelical Protestants, white mainline Protestants, and white Catholics. Since 1996 the percentage of the US population that identifies as Christian has dropped from 65% to today’s 44%.
So, who’s running the show, Trump’s show? Is that what you want? Government of whom? By whom? For whom? It’s our choice, and we haven’t chosen very well lately.
Dr. Conville is a professor of communication studies (ret.) and a long-time resident of Hattiesburg. He can be reached at rlconville@yahoo.com.
