The Evangelical Elite Failed Last Night. Bigly.

Now we place them in the time out, put their nose in the corner, and shut off the lights.

Last night, the president-elect of the United States celebrated his election at Mara Lago with a crowd of rowdy, vulgar, and mostly lost people who deeply, deeply love our country. Noticeably absent were the evangelical elite, usually present at such a party, but they weren’t even found at the kids’ table.

Nor should they have been.

Our Evangelical Intelligentsia (a term I’ve been using since 2013), or “Big Eva” as they’ve come to be best known, or “Evangelical Industrial Complex,” if you prefer, were not invited to celebrate with who will become - again - the most powerful man in the world.

They will surely tell you that they dare not sully the biblical office of Public Theologian by currying favor with princes, but their own personal history demonstrates the claim is insincere. They did, after all, fawn over presidents Obama, Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris.

They sent the Democrat incumbents, and even candidates, ingratiating, pathetically panting tweets of adoration for the smallest of accomplishments that don’t explicitly demonstrate contempt for God. In his 2016 meeting with President Obama, Russell Moore sat gushing like a school girl who gazed upon her crush, reporting to the press that the president was “very receptive” to his suggestions.

But when Russell Moore was branded a “nasty guy with no heart” only months before by Donald Trump, Moore and his gaggle of Southern Baptist debutant pastors celebrated that he had provoked the ire of the next president. Suddenly, having a voice of influence in the ear of the president was no longer important, and in fact, a badge of honor could be earned by becoming his enemy.

The amount of QTs of Trump’s now-famous tweet (at the time) consisted of a plethora of SBC Company Men and aspiring evangelical leaders, like former SBC president, Bart Barber, proudly declaring that “We stand with Russell Moore, not Donald Trump.”

And today, for the second time, they will have to sleep in the bed they’ve made.

And, of course, Russell Moore is indeed a nasty guy, and just a few days ago he was repeating the lie that Donald Trump threatened to execute Liz Cheney with a firing squad. In reality, Trump did no such thing, but rather pointed out that war mongers would think differently if they had to serve on the front lines of combat. And he has no heart, as Trump claimed, because Russell Moore - in all of his time as a professional ethicist - has never found a war he wouldn’t use Jesus’ name to support.

However, this post isn’t about Russell Moore, not really. The Polemics Manifesto #2 says, “Polemics must cease to to focus on personalities, and instead focus on principalities.” So consider Russell Moore’s name to be interchangeable with a myriad of others; David French, Phil Vischer, Jared Wilson, Justin Taylor, Mike Cosper, or whatever name you prefer. I speak of the devil’s sinister ministers in general, but more particularly, of Satan himself.

Thankfully, Dualism - the notion that God and Satan are equals - is a heretical untruth. The devil is smart, but not omniscient. He is strong, but not omnipotent. His demons are a lot of places (like the board room of Christianity Today), but not omnipresent. He’s a good chess player, but he is not the master. The best laid plans of rats and demons failed last night, and failed bigly.

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Satan, in all of his finite wisdom, persuaded the Evangelical Elite to cast their dice on red, but it came up black.

Consider how gracious God was to us last night. Not only is our president returning like William Prince of Orange, or some kind of modern Cincinnatus, but those who for the good of King Jesus Christ should not be advising the president will not be advising the president.

Some might insist that whatever religious figures the president surrounds himself with, will be no better. Perhaps Trump will adopt the religious brand of Alex Jones, or start going to Mass with JD Vance or something. But no matter what, that would be better than taking counsel from the evangelical establishment, because despite neither side seeming to hold an authentic gospel, at least those figures love Americans, and the Evangelical Elite do not.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been bookmarking predictions of an election landslide by leftists, only so I could go back on election night and watch their crying videos. I was sorely disappointed, however, to see that they had been silent on X since the polls closed; as I’ve explained, the excitement was astroturfed, and they knew they were going to lose from the get-go. I genuinely felt sorry for the few leftists on the lower rung of the totem poll who didn’t get the memo and were like, “I do not understand what is happening right now.”

However, this morning showed their response. They had to get a good cry out, I guess. Those tweets were vitriolic, blaming white men for their candidate losing, who lost ground with suburban women, rural women, Hispanics, blacks, and Muslisms. They don’t seem to quite grasp that they lost because Trump won record levels of ethnic and religiously diverse support, not because white people came out in droves.

Claims of bigotry, misogyny, insurrection, rape, authoritarianism, attacks on democracy, felonious behavior, and the like, was spewed out like hot venom. In other words, they sounded exactly like the evangelical establishment for the last 4 years. There is no markable difference between the sore-losing response of the most fringe leftists highlighted on Libs of TikTok and the posturing of evangelical leaders during this election cycle.

Oh, sure. Some of the Evangelical Elites weren’t so silly - as those affiliated openly with Evangelicals for Harris - to try to make the case for why Christians should vote for Jezebel. Some thought they were smarter than that.

We were bombarded with tweets, lectures, sermons, articles, and blog posts trying to soothe the conscience of Christians to not vote at all. We were told things like “there is no moral choice in this election.” We heard arguments like, “because Trump isn’t as pro-life as he should be, he’s morally equivalent to a pro-abortion candidate” (what damnable nonsense).

And they endlessly shamed us - in advance - for voting for a “candidate without character,” as they overlooked that Kamala was launched into politics by a married man she was sleeping with. They overlooked that supporting abortion until birth, transgenderism, genital mutilation, and endless wars were all character issues.

In other words, the Evangelical Elite’s distinction from the crying girls and screaming soyjaks on Libs of TikTok this morning is imperceptible.

So, this is the polemics charge for you this morning. Ignore them. Ignore them, and then ignore them even harder. We should be so silent about the Evangelical Elites we have to make up a new form of silence just to accomplish it. Treat them as though they absolutely do not matter any longer.

Because…they do not.

Let us move on from them. God has seen fit to make them irrelevant. God has determined, in his infinite wisdom and divine foreknowledge, to have them place a bet that the devil would not win. Every bit of energy, every ounce of focus that we spend on them from here forward will only serve for us a distraction for doing what we are called to do.

We are the salt and light of the world. Not them. Us. We must do our best to preserve our Republic, pass laws that accord with the Word of God, provide the theological arguments necessary to lead Trump from the place of wise counsel, and blow the doors off the powers and principalities that be.

And most of all, we have to be busy telling the world about Jesus. Trump has ridden the wave of a progressive social revival, and we too, must capitalize on this moment of significance and explain to the masses just what it is that they’re searching for.