A catalogue of religious deplorables

I've written in the past about how an earnest white evangelical historian sought to understand how his co-religionists could be so enamored of such an ungodly charlatan as Donald Trump. John Fea found fear. Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist who has long explored the intersection of religion and politics; her historical portrait of this catalogue of deplorables is not nearly so charitable.

Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump is a story about the raw hunger for power that animates the leaders of white evangelical Christianity. According to Posner: 

"... as a 'Christian,' Trump was a work in progress. But God had a plan. Trump was a strong leader, a rich man, a successful real estate mogul. Trump might still be a 'baby Christian' in the eyes of some evangelical leaders who decided to back him, but he was nonetheless anointed for this time and place. ... Trump was the strongman the Christian right had long been waiting for. 

"... Trump did not just deliver policy, in a quid pro quo with a voting bloc that fueled his election. He delivered power. ... For the Christian right, Trump is no ordinary politician and no ordinary president. He is anointed, chosen, and sanctified by the movement as a divine leader, sent by God to save America."

White evangelical leaders have spent decades whining among themselves in a self-imposed cultural wilderness, their moral pedestals challenged by the country's fitful and as yet incomplete embrace of racial and gender justice. Even our incomplete progress looked to them like mortal danger to their positions. So they went looking for friends -- and found a lot of unsavory characters. They hooked up comfortably with racist right wing "intellectuals" who glossed bigotry as "conservatism," with direct mail grifters and talkradio shouters, and nowadays with eastern Europe's "illiberal," anti-Semitic, autocrats. They come across as both con artists preying on their sheep and suckers themselves, marks for an array of unethical swindlers. Their partnership with Donald Trump is a perfect match.

Posner's book makes this unappetizing crew more interesting than I would have thought possible (if no more attractive) because there is hardly a major Christian right leader with whom she has not sat down for an amicable professional interview over tea or a lunch. These people are talkers and they've talked to her.

She balances these personal portraits with deep research into the history and web of connections between little magazines with forgettable titles, institutes, think tanks, pseudo-academic foundations and other components of right wing infrastructure that have come together behind Donald Trump. 

 

It's hard to write about these people without sounding as if you have become a conspiracy theorist: their networks are a roiling mixture of enduring racism and nationalism with ephemeral jealousies and intramural squabbles, all outside the ken of mainstream society. The good people at Political Research Associates struggle with this constantly. Posner does a creditable job of describing this unattractive stew.

 

And she has a warning: even if we evict Donald Trump in November, these people have dug into positions of power over decades and aren't going away. The impeachment moment early this year only reaffirmed their devotion to their strongman.

"However his presidency ends, the fundamental damage it has inflicted on our democracy will not be healed overnight. His 'base' is not an accident of his unconventional foray into politics, or a quirk of this particular political moment. The vast majority of white evangelicals are all in with Trump because he has given them political power and allowed them to carry out a Christian supremacist agenda, inextricably intertwined with his administration's white nationalist agenda."