It’s hard to find anything distinctively Christian about Trump’s first 100 days. In fact, there’s been far more cruelty than Christianity on view over his first three months back in office. But white evangelicals still stand with him. As an April Pew Research Center poll found, they support him more than any other Christian group, by far.
There are still countless conservative Christians in the United States. Politics is not their faith, and they will break with any party or politician who contradicts the teachings of Christ. But there is another, more powerful faction in the American evangelical church. For its members, Republicanism is the new political religion, and its creed is whatever Trump wants it to be.
Some other things I did
My Sunday column was about Trump’s clash with Harvard. As a conservative graduate of its law school, I’m very familiar with the university’s long history of censorship and intolerance. I’m very familiar with its left-wing biases. But the school still possesses constitutional rights, and I’m grateful that it is defying Donald Trump:
Harvard’s defense of the Constitution doesn’t absolve it of its own sins, but the defense of the Constitution often comes through imperfect vehicles precisely because shrewd authoritarians often choose unpopular targets.
It’s hard to rally mass movements to support undocumented immigrants, large law firms or elite academic institutions. “Hands off Harvard” isn’t exactly a slogan that will rally disaffected steelworkers to the Democratic side.
American free speech law has been defined when unpopular people or unpopular institutions stand up against the censorship of the age — whether it’s a pair of Jehovah’s Witness sisters who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance during the height of World War II or faculty members who refused to sign certifications that they were not members of the Communist Party during the middle of the Cold War.
While we can applaud Harvard’s decision to confront Trump, the university still needs reform, given its recent history. Harvard’s stand might not make it the constitutional hero that we want, but it is the constitutional hero we need.
On Tuesday, I participated in a columnist round table reflecting on the key moments of Trump’s first 100 days. To me, the Jan. 6 pardons set the tone:
America learned everything it needed to know about Donald Trump’s second presidency hours after it began. He pardoned or granted clemency to the men and women who violently stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. And he ostentatiously removed the security detail for John Bolton, his former national security adviser, who had criticized Trump after an acrimonious departure from the White House.
The combination of these two orders sent the clearest possible message. His friends and personal allies will enjoy protection, favors and perhaps even immunity from the law. His critics and foes, on the other hand, should live in fear.
Finally, last week I had the privilege of talking to two Catholic thinkers I admire, David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, and Leah Libresco Sargeant, the author of the forthcoming book “Dignity of Dependence.” We talked about Pope Francis’ legacy, and this comment from Libresco Sargeant perfectly described what I admired most about Francis:
I think his gift to the Christians of the world, not just the Catholics, is his profound witness against throwaway culture, which comes out, as David says, in his personal presence with people, people with disabilities, with prisoners, with babies, with the elderly.
I think what the church gives that not all Protestant denominations know how to give is it manages to pair that personal attention with the intellectual and theological foundations to support it. So it’s not just a matter of liking the person or having a positive feeling toward the person.
We can ground our question of: Who is a person? Who is it licit to kill? Who is it licit to throw away? — both on that startling witness of his love and then the theological chops to back it up. I think Pope Francis’ personal witness underlines the urgency of not treating people as trash. And that’s only going to become more urgent as a question. He draws attention, and the church has the materials to back up his witness.
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