Evangelicals – A Pyrrhic Victory?

Was this win worth it?

Congratulations, evangelicals! Your decades-long effort to secure a Supreme Court packed with judges who will overturn Roe vs. Wade is about to happen. You might also succeed in overturning Obergefell vs. Hodges and banish legally recognized same-sex marriage. So, you win. But I wonder if you have counted the cost of this victory. A Pyrrhic victory is one where you win a battle at a cost so high you lose the larger war.  If your mission is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His saving grace – as “Evangelical” suggests – I suspect you’ve paid more than you intended.

You’re fond of Bible study so let’s explore Jesus time in the desert fasting and the devil’s three temptations (Matthew 4:1-11). The last temptation was when the “tempter” offered Jesus “the Kingdoms of the World” – a quick route to power and control that did not involve crucifixion. Jesus rejected the offer. To a lot of us out here, it looks like you took it. Let me explain.

For the past 40 years, evangelical Christianity has been sharply focused on two social issues – abortion and homosexuality. Many of you are so young you likely do not know that prior to 1978, abortion was a non-issue among Protestants; it was viewed as a Catholic issue. Protestants viewed abortion as a private matter between a family, a doctor, and God. Following the Roe vs. Wade ruling, the Southern Baptist Convention actually passed resolutions in 1974 and 1976 affirming that women should have the right to access abortion. Yet, this was also a time when the conservative churches felt they were losing a culture “war.” Churches were shrinking, social mores were changing, and the country was in chaos over Vietnam and Watergate. This was the church’s moment in the desert and the tempter appeared.     

To create a political movement that would move Evangelical voters into the Republican Party, a GOP strategist named Paul Weyrich proposed the anti-abortion issue as a cause. He succeeded by joining with Jerry Falwell to form  the “Moral Majority” movement, and the Christian Right was born. This was in 1978 – hardly ancient doctrine. Understand this was not a discussion of ethics or doctrine within the church, it was a political strategy to strengthen the Republican Party. All of the Scriptural justifications were given after the fact, when the decision to play that game had already been made. Protestantism interpreted all those same scriptures quite differently before that time. But this movement was successful and the most vocal and visible part of American Christianity became over time a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. It was a stunning victory for the GOP, but less so for Jesus. This group settled on two issues Jesus himself never addressed – abortion and homosexuality, selected because they were emotional issues useful to generate outrage and motivate “the faithful” to vote for a particular party. Falwell and his kind were offered the secular “keys to the kingdom” and they eagerly accepted them. To this day their successors seek to use the levers of state power in an attempt to enforce their beliefs, rather than the conventional tools of doctrine, service, witness or moral persuasion. Church leaders have become the handmaidens and water-carriers of politicians, leading their flocks not to the Kingdom, but to the polls.

What has been the fallout of this deal with devil? The GOP’s institutional capture of white, conservative American Christianity is almost complete. Compared to white evangelicals who in 2016 were motivated to vote for Trump because they disliked his opponent Hillary Clinton (45%), this year increasing numbers of evangelicals say they are voting for Trump because they like him and his policies (57%). Only 20% say they are voting for Trump because they dislike Biden. This is an astonishing moral collapse. Why?

Here is your problem:

Recall that in living memory abortion was a non-issue but today ending it is the justification for abandoning Jesus’ own spirituality. You have alienated a lot of people not just from you or the church, but from Christianity in general. Across every single age group, but especially among the young, the number of those who identify as “nones” with no affiliation to any religion has grown. For example, in 2007, 25% of Americans born in the 1980’s said they were “nones.” A scant 7 years later in 2014, 34% embraced being “nones.” A survey published in the evangelical publication Christianity Today reported that, among young adults leaving churches, 25% did so because they disagreed with their churches political stances and an additional 32% did so because they felt the church was being hypocritical.  Moreover, those “nones” increasingly identify as agnostic and atheist rather than simply unaffiliated; that is to say, their anti-religious positions are hardening. From an evangelistic point of view, this is a disaster.

If Trump is your exemplary leader, you have lost credibility because you have mistaken your mission. It was and is to spread the good news of God’s love and saving grace. You’ve decided instead to play God and try to fix the world using secular tools. That’s not your job and you’ve trashed your ability to do the real one given you. Your ability to witness to the love of God is gone. Who can possibly trust your spiritual judgment when this man is your example? Many of my friends are non-Christians and I listen to them talk. I tell you, now more than ever, you will never be a credible messenger to them. Not ever.

Was it worth it?