Randall Balmer

The Des Moines Register

If it weren’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.

Following a meeting between Donald Trump and evangelical leaders last month, James Dobson, a leader of the Religious Right, declared that the presumptive Republican nominee had recently decided “to accept a relationship with Christ” and was now “a baby Christian.”

For those unfamiliar with the nomenclature of evangelicalism, that statement requires some context.

Evangelicals insist that everyone is a sinner and that only a sincere prayer of contrition and an acknowledgment of Jesus as savior brings salvation. This is what Billy Graham had in mind when he invited his auditors to “make a decision for Christ,” and he would typically guide them through a formulaic prayer, often referred to as the “sinner’s prayer.” For evangelicals, only those who had prayed that prayer acknowledging sinfulness and embracing Christ were “saved” and entitled to call themselves “Christians.” Anyone else, including Roman Catholics and most mainline Protestants, are not truly in the fold; you might say they are CINOs — Christians in Name Only.

If true, Dobson’s revelation about Trump would indeed be extraordinary, especially considering Trump’s statement earlier in the campaign that he had never asked God for forgiveness. Trump also referred to Holy Communion as “my little wine” and “my little cracker.” He claims to be a Presbyterian, but his religious IQ, I suspect, lies somewhere in the single digits.

Despite his efforts to “baptize” Trump as an evangelical, Dobson acknowledged that the candidate “doesn’t know our language” and “he didn’t grow up like we did.” Dobson said that Trump used the word “hell” several times during their meeting and “refers a lot to religion and not much to faith and belief.”

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(The word “religion” is suspect to many evangelicals; it signals something less than heartfelt faith. I recall my mother telling me that if someone asked my religion, I should respond, “I don’t have a religion. I’m a Christian.”)

If Dobson’s frantic efforts to claim Trump as a fellow evangelical represent high comedy, however, the reason behind it bespeaks tragedy.

With the emergence of the Religious Right in the late 1970s, politically conservative evangelicals cast their lot with the far-right fringes of the Republican Party. In so doing, they ignored the teachings of Jesus — care for “the least of these” — and discarded their own heritage as social activists on behalf of those on the margins. Evangelicals in decades past had advocated for minorities, for workers and the poor; they fought for equal rights for women and supported public education as a way to lift the fortunes of those on the lower rungs of society.

The Religious Right, however, ignored that noble tradition of social activism in favor of a political ideology that favored the wealthy and belittled the poor. Having struck that Faustian bargain with the Republican Party decades ago, Dobson and other leaders of the Religious Right now are desperate to support the presumptive Republican nominee — even if he, now on his third marriage, is hardly the avatar of “family values” that Dobson has been braying about for decades.

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I hasten to point out that there is another candidate running for president this year, a Methodist who actually is fairly knowledgeable about the rudiments of her faith, especially the biblical demands for social justice. No, Hillary Clinton is not an ideal candidate. She’s not terribly strong on environmental matters — Jesus, after all, expressed concern for the tiniest sparrow — and she’s far too cozy with moneyed interests. Jesus was pretty clear about the love of money and the corruptions of wealth.

I understand that Clinton’s insistence that the government should have no jurisdiction over gestation is abhorrent to Dobson and his allies, but at least she has the virtue of consistency. Trump, on the other hand, is all over the map.

Rather than ginning up an evangelical conversion for the presumptive Republican nominee, I wonder if Dobson and his allies shouldn’t ask themselves which candidate more nearly represents biblical values. Does Trump, with his wall and his race-baiting and his casinos and his serial bankruptcies and his checkered marital past, really exemplify the best traditions of evangelicalism?

As Dobson and his Religious Right confrères know by now, no candidate is perfect. But if they are determined to anoint someone as worthy of their support, perhaps they should start with a candidate who more nearly approximates the biblical command “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Randall Balmer, a graduate of Des Moines Hoover, is chair of the Religion Department and director of the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College. He writes for The Des Moines Register, where this column first appeared.

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