Explainer: Understanding the Evangelical Freak-Out Over Trump Nominations
There's a reason leftist evangelicals are losing their minds right now, and it's called "projection."
Within weeks of Trump’s candidacy for U.S. President in 2016, establishment evangelicals (who also go by the name Big Eva, the Evangelical Intelligentsia, or the Evangelical Industrial Complex) stopped laughing and started jeering. And they jeered harder than they ever have for a Democratic candidate.
Their hatred for Donald Trump paralleled, almost precisely, Trump’s opposition for the Uni-Party (which is what you call Republicans and Democrats whose differences are trivial, but act in tandem in their allegiance to big government and the status quo). To me, the similarities between (for example) never-Trumpers like Bill Kristol and Russell Moore, were evident. Trump’s opponents in both the Republican Party and evangelicalism were (1) largely useless men, who (2) wear their badge of “stalwart” in order to undermine the cause they profess, and are (3) deeply offended at the notion institutional corruption exists.
In the primary process during the summer of 2016, I spoke to my dad, who wisely ascertained that hatred toward Donald Trump is palpable because great offense is taken by the establishment GOP primarily due to his promise to “drain the swamp,” or root out institutional corruption in the beltway. Although both of us were highly skeptical that Trump was a principled conservative, we also surmised that the man was a wrecking ball to the government machine. And although I supported Ted Cruz in that primary, we also both seemed to be in agreement that the worst that could happen if Trump won, is that some china might get broken in the shop.
About that time, I also saw the Evangelical Intelligentsia respond to Trump in tandem with his opponents in the GOP establishment. The comparison of expressed angst between the two groups was largely the same:
1) A general guffawing that a “Deep State” exists within the governing apparatus
2) A panicked concern that bureaucrats within the organization might lose their job
3) A palpable angst that those with longstanding control might lose it
It made total sense, when looking at the Evangelical Intelligentsia’s guttural, almost instinctual and innate hatred of Donald Trump, that it was a reactionary response to the burgeoning movement of Populism.
Populism is a social or political movement, in which the general public grows convinced that corruption exists and reform is necessary, precisely because those who are in control are unresponsive to needs within the general population. Populism is the movement in which the majority of people begin insisting that the majority is listened to, and this type of movement is the natural enemy of established power dynamics. When people stop believing that their leaders naturally care for them, then old leaders are removed and new leaders, who promise to carry out the will of the people, are installed.
Going back to at least Andrew Jackson, the political establishment characterizes leaders who ‘blindly’ do the will of the people as being Cro Magnon, as neanderthals, as unsophisticated rubes who don’t understand the burden of leadership or the weightiness of the office which must do what is best, despite it being unpopular with the people.
In other words, anti-populist sentiment masquerades in an arrogant paternalism. It’s an, “I know what you idiots want, but I’m in charge and I have to do what’s best for you” ethos. And this works, most of the time. But eventually, when it becomes clear that the interests of the people are so routinely overlooked even to the harm of the people, they adopt populism and heads start to roll.
In December of 2017, I re-published an article explaining this connection between Trump-hating among the political establishment and Trump-hating among the evangelical establishment, originally published by SBC Today (I have forgotten the original author), The Evangelical Deep State. I published part 2 of that article in January of 2018 and Ed Stetzer called it, “The rantings of a crazed conspiracy theorist.”
Essentially, it explained that yes, an Evangelical Deep State exists, and drew a line from funding sources in evangelicalism from sources like the Acton Institution and the Kern Foundation, directly to SBC leaders.
Most of the leftward trajectory in the SBC could be traced through one man, Albert Mohler, and this chart has been near-famous for years, precisely because it shows the picture of his influence so well.
I repeatedly spoke of the Evangelical Deep State, and posited solutions, such as the formation of an Evangelical Dark Web that could challenge the evangelical establishment like intellectual freedom fighters, until the information we brought to the table “breached containment.” And I would consider Megan Basham’s book being published, Shepherd’s for Sale, as the moment our decade of work indeed breached containment.
In the last few days, you’ve seen incredible pushback for the Evangelical Intelligentsia - who never supported Trump to begin with - lose their ever-loving mind over his cabinet nominations. Consider the list:
Trump nominated (well qualified) Pete Hegseth to the Defense Department, who was dismissed from duty defending the U.S. Capitol on January 6 because he was believed to be a Christian extremist.
Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard to the National Security Administration, who was put on a terror watch list because of a far-fetched claim by Hillary Clinton.
Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to the Justice Department, who bull-dogged Merrick Garland to expose his law-fare against Donald Trump.
Trump is appointing Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to the Department of Government Effeciency, with the promise that they will cut government waste and corruption.
Trump’s appointments demonstrate, beyond a doubt, that he is going to stick it to the establishment. He has taken those wronged by the Deep State - like Hegseth and Gabbard - and putting them in charge of the institutions that targeted them.
His nominations demonstrate that Trump is absolutely focused on turning over rocks and uncovering the misdeeds of the Deep State over the last four or eight years. One can only imagine what horrific secrets Matt Taibi will be able to publish, as he did when Musk got the keys to Twitter.
Trump is coming to Washington D.C. with a giant flashlight and a can of Raid.
Watching evangelical leftists, like Mike Cosper, perish at the thought of the Deep State becoming untangled from American “Democracy” shows the same panic as exhibited in the Beltway. And, that panic is for the same reasons.
What is it about cleaning up waste and rooting out corruption is so off-putting to the Evangelical Establishment? The answer, for us, is certain.
Those who have run evangelicalism for so long, the heads of our denominational entities, our seminary presidents, the leaders in Christian book publishing, and the authors at evangelical journals and magazines and websites, have only maintained power because the people at the very bottom of the pyramid scheme - the Christians who attend church each week and support the scheme with their tithe dollars - have been largely unaware of the corruption.
Southern Baptists had no idea that they were giving 6 million dollars a year to Russell Moore for him to undermine political conservatism in every imaginable way. They had no idea that they supported 6 seminaries who were graduating women with pastoral degrees and promoting Critical Race Theory. Evangelicals had no idea, when they supported The Gospel Coalition, that it had become a Democrat Political Action Committee opposed to Christian values and was not, in fact, Gospel-Centered.
Watching Trump stir up a populist uprising politically, made them very nervous ecclesiastically.
Consider, for example, how devastating it would be if somehow the populist uprising came to Southern Seminary, and the extent Albert Mohler went to in order to suppress The Dallas Statement and to keep his faculty from signing it, could be made known to Southern Baptists. That, for them, would be a nightmare.
Thankfully, the Populist Social Revival that America is now experiencing is indeed bleeding over to evangelicalism and our institutions are starting to feel it. The Evangelical Deep State comprised of useless men in useless positions of influence who influence precisely no one, and are looking nervously over their shoulder, in case the movement spreads.
It will.
In all the ways Donald Trump has surprised us, the greatest is this; in a way that only God intended, the phenomenon of Donald Trump is actually reforming American Evangelicalism…for the better.