Don’t vote Trump for religious liberty
President Donald Trump. Creative Commons photo.
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(OPINION) Many conservative Christians are scared. Author Rod Dreher, whose recently released book on progressivism’s “soft totalitarianism” soared to the New York Times bestseller list, summed up these fears in a recent blog post: The Left is Coming for Christian Schools. His concern is that religious groups that are committed to a traditional, biblical ethic of marriage will be increasingly marginalized and restricted. In response to these anxieties, many conservative religious people turn to a perceived strongman who will keep their institutions safe. However undesirable they may find Trump personally, they hope that he will appoint Supreme Court justices who will preserve their right to exist, run schools and worship and raise their kids according to their religious beliefs. This is why Trump’s son can blasphemously say that Trump has “literally saved Christianity.”
These fears are often countered by others (including other religious people) who argue that traditional Christians have nothing to worry about. There are legal protections in place—both in the First Amendment and in recent Supreme Court precedent like Hosanna-Tabor—that limit challenges to religious communities. And besides, they say, no one is out to get religious conservatives. What results from these dueling perspectives is a debate about the threat of leftist “totalitarianism”—we all peer into our crystal balls and interminably argue about just how bad the future might be for religious people.
I, for one, think it could be quite bad. I am not naïve about the threat to traditional religious communities from certain forms of progressivism. In 2012, I led a ministry that was kicked off the campus of Vanderbilt University for seeking to preserve our creedal commitments—all while Vanderbilt assured us with a fixed smile that they were actually very tolerant of religious people. In 2015, on the day Obergefell v. Hodges was decided, I called one of my best friends who is gay, listened as he enumerated all the ways this decision improved his life, and congratulated him, but I also asked that if my church loses its tax-exempt status or my kids’ Christian school is shut down, that he’d write on my behalf (for the record, he said that he would). Though I cannot predict the future, I understand what is at stake.
These fears that religious conservatives feel are real and ought not be brushed off lightly. Losing our shaping and beloved institutions is a grievous loss. But I do not think our fears can ultimately be answered politically. Instead, we as a religious community must address them theologically. The gospel alone—not Republican politics nor empty assurances that it won’t be so bad—is the proper response to genuine fears. Laws and policies that protect religious liberty are important, but we, as a Christian community, cannot seek those laws at any cost. If we do, we will lose our own souls in the process of preserving our freedoms.
If shoring up religious freedom requires us to champion someone whose administration is responsible for making more than 545 children orphans, someone who in Sen. Ben Sasse’s words “flirts with White supremacy,” who bullies and denigrates others and constantly engages in misogyny, arrogance and divisiveness, then we cannot preserve religious liberty while remaining faithful to the ethical call of Jesus. Self-protectiveness on the part of religious people is understandable, but Christians cannot be one more, self-interested voting bloc. The church exists to glorify God by loving and serving our neighbor. If our own institutional preservation trumps all other ethical commitments, then we have already lost what is most dear.
Given the Trump administration’s shutdown of the asylum system and so-called “Muslim ban,” it is debatable if his presidency has actually benefitted the cause of religious liberty. But even beyond Trump’s policy decisions, Christian complicity in a culture that dishonors the basic dignity and rights of our fellow neighbors, a culture of self-interested narcissism, a culture of self-preservation by any means necessary, will not be one in which religious liberty can flourish. The root of religious freedom amid pluralism is love for our neighbors, especially our ideological or political enemies. We cannot spend eight years supporting a president whose basic modus operandi is meanness and cruelty— who vocally disagrees with the call to love one’s enemy— and then expect anyone to take us seriously when we ask them to respect our religious freedom.
“But wait!” I can hear traditional religious people cry, “Even if we are kind, respectful and honoring of our neighbor’s dignity, they will not be respectful of ours. We can be as ‘winsome’ as possible, and we will still be marginalized as bigots.” I think this may be true, but this objection assumes that kindness, respectfulness and the self-giving love of Jesus is useful insofar as it is a successful cultural strategy. Christian discipleship calls us to radical love for our neighbor and to honor the dignity of those around us. We are called to work for the common good. We are called to witness to a different kind of King and a different kind of Kingdom. These ethical mandates are not contingent upon—nor a guarantee of—any particular outcome. They are a means to no other end other than to know and glorify God.
Forsaking them, however, hurts the mission of the church far more than any policy or law ever could. As conservative pastor John Piper recently stated, “Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year.”
Jesus promised that in this world, his people would face trouble, but he tells us to “be of good cheer” or “take courage” because he has overcome the world. Christ’s Kingship over the world, not political or even cultural strategy, is our rooted hope. Out of this hope, we seek to be faithful to Jesus, to love our neighbors, protect the weak, care for the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow, and create a culture where people—including those who hate us—can flourish.
My deep concern is that we are burning down our own house in the attempt to save it. Curtailing religious liberty in the United States would devastate religious communities and non-profits, weaken our society as a whole, and lead to less freedom and less diversity. But it isn’t the worst fate I can imagine. Far worse would be if in our attempt to protect robust religious freedom, the church would so fearfully compromise the message and ethics of Jesus, that we have nothing left worth preserving.
Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and the forthcoming Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (IVP, 2021). She is also a founding member of The Pelican Project, a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and a monthly columnist with Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Religion News Service and elsewhere.