American Evangelicals should feel as though they have inherited the earth. By helping put Donald Trump in the White House, they are in a position to implement the agenda of their dreams. In May, Trump signed an executive order “promoting free speech and religious liberty” that critics say will further erode the wall between church and state. With Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, there is a good chance that Roe v. Wade will finally be struck down. Evangelicals have packed Congress and state legislatures and the courts with Christian conservatives, and have a champion in the executive branch in the form of Vice President Mike Pence.

But there are complications even in paradise, and in a different light the evangelical political movement has never looked weaker. By supporting Trump—who has been accused numerous times of sexual assault, regularly traffics in racism and bigotry, takes evident pleasure in bullying the weakest among us, and can’t name a book of the Bible without tripping over his own ignorance—it has forsaken whatever moral high ground it claims to possess. Trump himself is deeply unpopular, and so, too, are the political tenets of conservative evangelicalism. According to Gallup, 79 percent of Americans overall say abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. Meanwhile, younger evangelicals continue to drift from their elders: 47 percent of evangelicals under age 53 say they support marriage equality. Gerrymandering wins elections, but it doesn’t win culture wars.

The Nashville Statement, then, sounds like the death rattle of a movement that has disgraced itself. Released on August 30 by the Tennessee-based Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), the statement declares, unequivocally, that queer sexual orientations are sins to God. The statement was signed by 187 prominent evangelicals, constituting something like a last stand as gay marriage continues its march to mainstream acceptability. But what is telling about the Nashville Statement is not its homophobia; CBMW, after all, has been opposed to LGBT rights since its founding in 1987. It is that, after decades of giving up ground to the left, and after hitching its star to a president with zero Christian feeling, the religious right is revealing just how much of its philosophy boils down to plain prejudice.





This is evident in CBMW’s roots. Founded by systematic theologian Wayne Grudem, the organization was established to promote the doctrine of “complementarianism.” Complementarians are Biblical literalists, and according to their interpretation of the Scriptures, women and men are to have distinct roles at home and in church. In essence and in practice, women are to submit to men, who are to be spiritual leaders.

Women cannot preach or hold any kind of spiritual authority over men. Men exercise “headship” over their wives, establishing a hierarchy whose basic mechanics differ from denomination to denomination. Complementarians say the doctrine is not misogynistic—indeed, the Nashville Statement claims in its third article that signers do not believe the differences between men and women “render them unequal in dignity or worth.” But the unavoidable truth is that complementarians believe men should lead the church, and women should follow them. This naturally creates a hierarchy, with men at the top. CBMW is patriarchy in its most cartoonish iteration, which is useful in that it clarifies what so many evangelists try to hide.