Christianity and the American Story:
Or How Can Christians be Trumpists?
Political Scientist Rogers Smith (Civic Ideals: Connecting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History) finds three stories that woven together make up the story of America: 1) progressive democratization, 2) societal pluralism, and 3) universal rights. But he warns of another tradition found in America linked to the European colonialization of America that led to its division into nation states. He calls it the “ascriptive” tradition in which people are ascribed a place in society based on a quality beyond their control. Race, sex, age, class at birth, religion, ethnicity, residence, and country of origin are examples of these qualities.
The ascriptive tradition was present in most of the British colonies before independence and retained through the compromises required at the constitution of the United States. The ascriptive tradition has been embodied in many movements and organizations since the founding of the nation including Jacksonian democracy and the Indian Wars, Civil War, Ku Klux Klan, America First, Know Nothing, Jim Crow, John Birch Society, McCarthyism. Trumpism is simply its most recent incarnation.
Elsewhere I pointed to three strands of the American ascriptive tradition: 1) American caste by skin color (Wilkerson), 2) American ideal of masculinity (Baldwin), 3) Christian dogmatism (Dewey). All is summed up in our veneration to the White Male Christian. In this American tradition, assimilation means 1) becoming White as Irish, Italians, Polish, Hispanics immigrants did to achieve full citizenship and as persons of African descent still must attempt, 2) being “masculine” as women and gay people should be to achieve position and office in society, and 3) accept the Christian belief system.
It is the third strand of the American ascriptive tradition that I want to spend more time contemplating. That is because I have studied and taught Christian theology, studied and taught religion in social science. But most of all this is because I have worked with Christian churches and other “faith communities” in organizing neighborhoods and regions to achieve the story and character of a nation that, aspiring to a “more perfect union,” progressively democratizes its citizens and institutions, includes all as “we the people” without regard to any ascription, and fosters universal rights based on the dignity of every human person. In other words, the ascriptive tradition is a contradiction to the enlightened, admittedly more elitist, aspirations of its educated founders and visionary leaders and citizens.
I want to inquire as to why certain large groups who call themselves Christian and also self-identify as conservative Catholics and Protestants or Evangelicals are so aligned with Trumpism. Earlier, with the help of neuroscience and philosophy of mind, I argue that since we use images and analogies to think, we often confuse our formulations by which we categorize and organize things in our world with the “really real out there.” That leads to the dogmatic fallacy which stops inquiry and thus thinking. Religious dogmatists with fixed ideas and absolute beliefs are thus thoughtless and succumb to the authoritarian mind.
And I continue to argue that Trump’s authoritarian style and his nostalgic return to the truths before scientific methodology, to an absolute notion of right and wrong as contained in revelation or direct experience of God, and to the denunciation of political correctness that softens the old well-established lines between genders, races, religions, countries of origin is an appeal to the dogmatic Christian who wants, perhaps needs, the certainty of belief rather than the ongoing quest and doubt of faith.
After consulting Dr. Willie James Jennings, theologian and dean of Yale Divinity School, I am convinced that the Christian Church itself after its peace with the Roman Empire, but especially during the times of European colonialization, developed a theology of creation, redemption, and sanctification that molded notions of race, sexuality, divine election, and personal salvation that were read out of and into its sacred scriptures and institutions. This Christian worldview that developed in the colonial period in modern America became the interpretive context in classifying the races and sexes, in dominating and consuming the land, and in achieving wealth and property as measures of human accomplishment.
Christian theology in colonial times used the Bible as a story of a new chosen people, surpassing and replacing the Jews, settling the promised land and bringing Christianity to heathens — who were notably darker. The “New Jerusalem” image often served slave owners hold their position over and separate from their black and brown servants. However, unwittingly, Christian conversion permitted the servants to congregate and learn the other story of the Bible, one of liberation from oppression and of leaders who were of and with the most oppressed of society. The stories of Moses, Isaiah, and Jesus guided Harriett Tubman, Fredrick Douglas, and Martin Luther King Jr. One might say that the Black Church completed the Reformation by returning to Moses and Jesus as liberators of the subjugated before Augustine and the Fathers of the Church united Greek philosophy with Roman imperial politics.
Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) confirmed how Protestantism, especially Calvinism, prepared the way ideologically to capitalism with its teaching on the fundamental depravity of humanity, on the absolute power of God who selects and rewards the saved through Christ, and on the preservation of those who God chooses as the saints. In the theory of Scotch economists, God becomes Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand.” And thus Protestant theology is secularized in the British and American capitalism now dominating the globe.
From the southern plantation to the northern industrial corporation, the hallmark of an American conservative today, north and south, is the market as the source of freedom and government as the source of constraint. Very different from the experience of the Black Church. (See “Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom,” the Nation. And consider Karl Polanyi, Great Transformation, who traced the ascendency of economics over politics with the commodification of land, labor, and money.)
To oversimplify, American Evangelical Protestantism in the 19th century split into two parts, one focusing on personal salvation whereby an individual accepted his sinfulness and repented, that is, “washed in the blood of Jesus.” The other was public whereby persons gathered together to attend to social justice issues and especially abolition and prohibition. Private Christianity made it easier for the churches to be separate from politics which belonged to the state. This in turn provided more support for taking care of one’s own life and keep politics out of family and economic affairs.
As industrialization proceeded after the Civil War, people moved into cities where there was immigration (often from Catholic countries), crowding, family breakdown, poverty, and inequality. Many of the churches inspired by the Second Great Awakening and the Social Gospel began focusing on the sins of society which led them into political concerns. Roman Catholics had developed their own social gospel in what they called the “social teachings of the church.” This movement in mainline Protestant and urban Catholic churches related to the Progressive Era of societal reform and onto the New Deal, post WWII prosperity, continued urbanization, Cold War anti-communism, human rights movements abroad and, in collaboration with the Black Churches, civil rights movements at home.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, many Evangelical Churches, reading the Bible along with mainline churches preached not only personal sin but also social sin through the first Man and salvation through Jesus sacrifice on the cross. They helped people in poor neighborhoods through settlement houses and charities. They reached out door to door to invite people into a welcoming faith community. They supported education and public health. They condemned what alcohol abuse was doing to families and communities and worked to prohibit “demon rum” not just by conversion but by law.
Today many “free” or non-denominational churches with roots in the rural south and west condemn Satan’s influence in urban life and the secularist modernity and humanism as taught in schools of higher learning. With highly entertaining preachers, they form megachurches that foster Christian beliefs into all aspects of their lives and oppose secular humanist or progressive beliefs. They organize their own centers of learning to combat “liberal” views on sexuality, abortion, gay unions, and social diversity and especially government and legal support for those views.
The theologians of this “fundamentalist” Christianity disallow the High Criticism tools of scientific history in interpreting the Holy Scriptures. They deny or avoid conclusions of science with its critical thinking when they conflict with literal understandings of revelation in the Bible. They also shun “liberation theology” when it employs interfaith social action to change societal, economic, and political structures which they often associate with atheistic socialism. Rather they concentrate on personal salvation by rejecting Satan and being born in Christ.
The split in Christendom today, Catholic or Protestant, is primarily between those whose beliefs are primarily based on prescriptions or dogmas texted in the Bible (fundamentalist theology) and those whose beliefs are primarily based on the stories of Jesus and others inspired by Jesus while understanding those stories within the context of the words and actions of Jesus and his followers then and now (critical theology). The first or evangelical Christianity is called conservative and holds for an unchanging belief system that directs the community and shapes the world. The second or liberal Christianity holds for a developing belief system through the interactions of persons within a diverse community and with an evolving world.
Thus, I think it clear why mainly White evangelical churches gravitate towards Trumpism while the black and liberal churches align more with social change and the progressive tradition. The conservative wing of Protestant and Catholic churches which emphasizes the abiding truth of beliefs regarding human nature in race, religion, gender, sexuality, and beginning of life[i] is joined by the fundamentalist economic dogma concerning the acquisition of property (land, labor, and money), i.e., individualistic economic behavior protected by a non-interfering government.
But what the Evangelicals also teach us is the importance of moral and religious values in bringing us all together beyond the present great divide in our epistemology, economics, religions, and political parties. And we need to learn from them in order to pass beyond Trumpism. Shall we call for a Third Great Awakening? Maybe as part of the United States Semiquincentennial Celebration on July 4, 2026?
[i] The divine infusion of the soul at conception is a dogma in both conservative Protestant and Catholic churches. While many liberal Catholics and Protestants do not approve of abortion, they do approve of religious freedom so that religious beliefs are not imposed upon others. There are many philosophical viewpoints as to when life, that is specifically human, begins. I argue against abortion as a violence which should only be committed if necessary. I also argue that the pregnant woman should make that determination not the government. No Catholic politician I know promotes or argues for abortion while at the same time is committed to the right of freedom of and from religion including the reproductive rights of women. I have written more extensively on this here.