Evangelical leaders have a lot to repent for when it comes to Donald Trump. They made a deal with the devil and didn’t get nearly enough to show for it. Now they need to find a way back from the immoral wilderness — a move that would require evangelical leaders to stop thinking of themselves as the arm of one political party.
It’s clear how we got here. Trump, by his own admission an unrepentant sinner, was evangelical leaders’ golden calf — their ticket to recapturing the glory days of evangelical political influence. This was a Faustian bargain that would have made Elmer Gantry blush, but let’s be honest: They weren’t interested in moral leadership but proximity to the power of the presidency. And that’s exactly what they got. It’s heady stuff being in the Oval Office laying hands on the most powerful man in the world.
Evangelicals didn’t blink in 2020 when the Republican Party eliminated its entire platform and, with it, its pro-life plank. Their blind loyalty never wavered when the platform was replaced with a cultish resolution not affirming life but affirming Trump, whatever positions he might take. What had once been a principled governing philosophy was swapped for snake oil.
Even the shocking capstone of the Trump years — his incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 — wasn’t enough to turn evangelical leaders away. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and an outspoken loyalist, equated the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted for Trump’s impeachment to Judas Iscariot — a jarring comparison his father surely would have condemned
