A Time for Christians To Be the Nation’s Healers

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(OPINION) The tragedy that occurred in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday provides a strategic opportunity for Republicans to break free from insanity and become a constructive part of our two-party system once again.

Conservative-leaning Christians, who are being blamed nationally and globally for making a Trump presidency possible, should be in the vanguard of this honorable undertaking to restore American democracy.

The fragmented nature of the 2016 Republican presidential primary season enabled the least qualified of the 17 candidates to gain enough momentum, based on hardcore support from a minority of right-wing voters, to win the nomination. Once that happened, conservative Christians, like other faithful Republicans, entered into an awkward marriage with a pompous, blustering candidate who was the first choice of only a few of them.

Politically active conservative Christians don’t like breaking up marriages, and they don’t like the other party’s policies. So their only viable option was to back President Trump and his administration—no matter how disrespectfully he behaved, how far he strayed from reality, or how erratic his policymaking.

As Stanley Milgram’s famous psychology experiments in the 1960s showed, once one agrees to start administering electric shocks to an innocent victim, there is no convenient place to stop. As President Trump administered increasingly severe shocks to our democratic system, damaging our nation’s image abroad, few of his supporters jumped ship.

Instead, over the last four years, firm criticism of Trump from within his own party came mostly from people who had never boarded the Trump train in the first place. That pattern was equally true among Republican leaders as within evangelical Christian circles. Consider the most notable critics: Justin Amash, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) (except for a brief truce), David French, Peter Wehner, Max Lucado, Mark Galli. None are defectors from Trumpism.

Evangelicals have been widely disparaged for abandoning principles by supporting Trump. To me, this criticism is too harsh. After all, in holding their tongue and extolling Trump’s successes while remaining largely silent on his deficiencies, they weren’t doing anything different from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

(Granted, for readers who don’t see McConnell as a paragon of virtue, the analogy may seem ineffective. But conservative Christians deserve some slack. They were in the same no-win dilemma as McConnell: either undermine your policy goals or yoke yourself to a crazy president.)

As Trump became increasingly unhinged in the weeks following the 2020 election, few wanted to cross him. It seemed easier to just tolerate his antics until the clock ran out on his administration. But that silent toleration leaves in place the specter of Trump continuing to exert enormous influence in Republican politics going forward.

All that changed on Jan. 6, when Trump’s bashing of his own vice president for obeying the Constitution and his role in inciting a historic riot at the Capitol may have finally made it a liability to side with him.

But even if Trumpism follows McCarthyism into the dust bin of ignominy, many problems won’t disappear with it: extreme polarization, distrust of public information sources, a lack of respectful discourse and a Republican party torn and tattered by four years of transformation into a personality cult.

For their own and the nation’s benefit, nobody is better positioned to lead us out of this abyss than the country’s widely respected conservative Christian leaders. Some have political connections. Others are apolitical. That doesn’t matter; political unity isn’t what we need now. Prominent evangelical Christian pastors and parachurch leaders across the country should easily be able to agree on points like these:

·       Showing respect toward people with whom we disagree, rather than demonizing them.

·       Basing our opinions and actions on credible information rather than conspiracy theories.

·       Caring for our neighbors and communities.

·       Looking for ways to build bridges between ideologically opposed groups.

·       Encouraging respectful public discourse and mutual understanding on divisive issues.

·       Selecting and promoting leaders based on their character, competence and wisdom.

·       Resolving our differences without violence.

That last item should be self-evident, but after our most riotous year in a long time, we can’t assume anything. In fact, all these points should be common sense, yet they desperately need reaffirmation today.

A call to live out these principles could gain wide-ranging support from both secular and religious figures across the political spectrum in the wake of what happened on Jan. 6. Certainly, in this time of great national strain, followers of the Prince of Peace should view becoming emissaries of peace to our frayed society as an obvious and urgent priority.

Bruce Barron is executive editor of the Evangelical Review of Theology, the World Evangelical Alliance’s quarterly journal. He is a former congressional aide and author of six books on U.S. religion and politics. The views expressed in this essay are his own and do not represent official WEA positions.