Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
March 30th, 2021
Zaid,
You raise an important question: Are religious Americans more immune to the most polarizing candidates? They were. In the 2016 primary, Ted Cruz was the first choice of churchgoing evangelicals, while Trump had his strongest support among those with lower levels of religious affiliation.
Evangelicals soon reversed their early skepticism and became committed Trump supporters, which provoked hundreds of confused think pieces. But white Christian conservatives are taking their cues from the broader culture. Regardless of whether their assessment is correct, they perceive a secular onslaught emanating from nearly all mainstream cultural, media, and academic institutions.
So they are willing to accept Trump as an unlikely vessel for their protection, even if entails making certain moral compromises. In this defensive crouch, their religious identity has been subsumed under what is essentially a secular movement organized around the person of Trump. As I wrote in my Atlantic essay, these Christians may go to church, but then they also go a Trump rally, where they focus on blood and soil rather than the son of God.
A common Christian culture might have forestalled this, but now that the vast majority of white evangelicals are now firmly entrenched in a Trump-centric Republican Party, their religious and partisan identities have become intertwined. Once you overlay one “divisive” identity with another, you end up with an odd fusion of Christian nationalism, with the nationalist part increasingly winning out.
In my article, I struggled to come up with a comforting “conclusion,” in part because, as someone preoccupied with the darker aspects of human nature, I don’t think that problems necessarily have solutions. I'm not a Christian, so I find myself in the odd position of longing for more Americans to believe in something that I don’t believe to be true. But I don’t have to believe in the truth of Christianity—and what comes out of its creed—to believe that it is good.
Unfortunately, I don't see a religious awakening coming. Fortunately, as a country of believers (in the broader sense), there is still the belief in America, if not the country as it is then at least the idea of what it should be. But, as you point out, American pride is also in free fall. In 2004, 91 percent of Americans were either extremely or very proud to be American. In 2020, that figure dropped to 63 percent.
This pride deficit seems like an odd response to America’s very real sins. I, for one, have long argued that what the U.S. has done in the Middle East is nothing short of destructive. But this record doesn't negate an idea, just as the disappointments of what Muslims or Christians do in practice shouldn't be equated to a failure of Islam and Christianity in theory.
This is why a sustained attack by a small subset of elites—who have outsized cultural influence—on the foundations of the American idea has profound implications. It should be possible to hate what America does while loving what America is.
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