A strong (Christian) man in America?

‘Donald Trump is our man, he is cleansing the world of the sinful filth of the liberals’, is what I hear many of my evangelical friends in the United State saying.

For them, he is not only the “America first man”, but also the hope of all orthodox evangelicals, a “man of God,” a “messenger of God.” [1]

72% of American evangelicals support their president's policies. [2]

A man with such a dubious past, burdened by fraud and immoral acts, to say the least, a man whose mouth spews a torrent of foul insults, who only ever has himself in mind and praises himself to the skies – is this supposed to be the new saviour of the world? A saviour sent by God?

How do all these things fit together? What makes this man so appealing to so many evangelicals in the US? And, is it his fight against liberalism?

I myself am anything but a liberal European. I was born and raised in the Soviet Union, did not believe in God or the devil for a long time, and then came to believe in Jesus in the mid-1970s and soon ended up in a Soviet labour camp. And all because I wanted to follow Jesus and his Word.

My subsequent expulsion from the country ultimately saved me from certain death. I was never liberal.

But I am radical in following my Lord Jesus Christ. And as a follower of Jesus, I want to remain so. And as such, I cannot remain silent when I observe the euphoria of my brothers and sisters in the USA.

‘Then you should be happy about President Trump’, I hear again and again. ‘He fights against every kind of liberalism’. No, I cannot be happy about Trump and his administration.

How could I? Someone who uses his fight to praise himself and fill his pockets with even more money, while at the same time leaving the poorest of the poor without any financial support and even denigrating them, is not a follower of Jesus in my eyes, but a cunning scoundrel who knows how to play on people's issues so that they eat out of his hand.

No, in my eyes, Donald Trump is not a Christian president. He deals with Mammon, and that is the root of all evil.

Blindness

‘But many famous Christian personalities see it differently’, I can already hear some object. Indeed, well-known evangelicals in the US support the president, including James Dobson and Franklin Graham, to name but a few. [3]

Vishal Mangalwadi, the evangelical Indian philosopher, for example, literally cheered the American invasion of Venezuela and the arrest of the dictator Maduro. International law aside.

How do people like Mangalwadi arrive at such a strange assessment? Don't they see how duplicitous and unstable Trump and his administration are? Are they blinded by his fight against the political elite, liberalism, and genderism in the US and worldwide? Why are they unable to discern the spirits?

In fact, Trump seems to be succeeding in his campaign against genderism and homosexuality, abortion and pro-family issues, which are so central to evangelicals that the rest of his agenda seems unimportant to them.

In doing so, they seem to forget that even Jesus warned his disciples that at the end of time many would come and speak in his name and then deceive many (Matthew 24:5).

“Evangelical speech” is by no means a sure sign of authenticity. In chapter 25 of the same Gospel of Matthew, people are judged before God’s court according to whether they have cared for the hungry, strangers, and the poor. And if they don’t, they are radically condemned.

It is not their stance on conservative issues or even their fight for purity that matters here, but their care for the poor, the homeless, strangers, and the needy. But the Trump administration has no eye for these people. Instead, their funds are cut, they are brutally rounded up and deported. The fact that this tears families apart and possibly exposes people to certain death, seems irrelevant at first.

How can people who follow Jesus and read his word overlook all this? Why are they blind in their right eye? Of course, Trump and his accomplices spread the message of systematic abuse and corruption in countries in need of help and claim that they are only fighting illegal immigrants, drug lords, and criminals.

ICE and USAID

But the everyday reality of how the immigration authorities treat immigrants in the US tells a completely different story. Abuse, corruption, and crime, which undoubtedly exist, are used here as a welcome excuse to implement their own much more far-reaching plans. And these seem to be in sharp contrast to the Word of God.

The authorities do not even shy away from murder. Not seeing what the whole world already sees? How blind must one be? And is the justified joy over a president who also protects the lives of the unborn and fights genderism reason enough to support him? In any case, I find it difficult to reconcile these two poles of an extremely eccentric and hedonistic personality.

And then there is the radical closure of all American aid programs for the world's poorer countries, in Africa, for example. Without asking why these countries have slipped into bitter poverty and how much of their misery is due to Western economic policy, the people themselves are declared parasites and slackers who deserve no mercy.

With the withdrawal of American aid money, many hospitals and nutrition programs have already had to close. According to Trump, this is an extremely wise move. The disadvantaged should finally take care of themselves and not rely on the American people.

Strangely enough, American companies have not withdrawn from these region but are exploiting the neglected poor even more intensively.

Evangelicals should stand up for the disadvantaged

If we follow Jesus, we as evangelicals should stand up for the disadvantaged of the world and not support a self-obsessed multimillionaire who cleverly increases his wealth at the expense of others.

Evangelicals should seek God’s kingdom first and not silently help build the kingdom of the technology controllers from the much-praised America. Where money rules the world, ruin is not far away, “for the love of money is the root of all evil,” as the Apostle Paul sums up in 1 Timothy 6:10.

It is high time that global evangelical networks such as the WEA or the Lausanne Movement take a firm stand on the behaviour of the current American administration. For those who remain silent today will have to reap the fruits of sin tomorrow.

Donald Trump is no beacon of hope for the followers of Jesus in the world; if anything, quite the opposite. He is skilfully building an autocratic system in his own country on the shoulders of many evangelicals.

Evangelicals must wake up from their dream if they are not to be confronted by a nightmare. And some are already doing so, like one of his most ardent supporters, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, who turned away from Trump because she wants to follow Jesus, and Trump does not [4].

She is right about this: Trump does not follow Jesus. And Evangelicals should not follow him!

Johannes Reimer, in Germany, is professor of missiology and former director of the Department of Public
Engagement of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).

Notes