Why Do Christians Not Speak Out About MAGA Vulgarity?

Why aren't conservative evangelicals upset over the potty mouths at Madison Square Garden last night? Here are a few good reasons.

Language Warning: If you’re easily offended by quotations of crudeness, I apologize. But you’ll see why.

The mega-MAGA rally held in Madison Square Garden last night included no shortage of profanity, irreverence, vulgarity, and crudeness. Why aren’t evangelicals concerned about the tone?

Hillary Clinton was called a son-of-a-bitch and bastard by shock jock radio host, Sid Rosenberg. I’m not sure she qualifies for either epithet, given her gender and the reported marital status of her parents. Why am I more offended that Rosenberg swears incorrectly than that he swore at all? I think that’s the question a lot of evangelicals are asking themselves, and also the question being asked of us.

We should consider this a moment of serious introspection. Let me help you think through it.

Last night’s profanity was full of “many such cases,” as Trump would say.

Comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, made the most headlines for cracking a joke about Puerto Rico being an island of garbage. Never mind that Puerto Rico recycles less trash than any U.S. state or territory and its garbage and pollution problems have been pretty famously reported in the mainstream media and environmental publications. Hinchcliffe responded to outrage on X last night by referring to it as a “set,” indicating that it was nothing more than a stand-up routine.

But why is a former and incoming U.S. president having an irreverent comedian doing comedy at a campaign event? Conservatives pine for the day that presidents would rise to the dignity of the office. You know, like Reagan did when he had comedian Don Rickles do a set at his second inaugural gala, and he opened with a black joke pointed at Emmanuel Lewis’s height (which is a two-fer if you think about it).

So, whatever outrage exists shouldn’t be because politicians don’t have comedians entertain their crowd with jokes. That’s done regularly, but perhaps not at rallies that had zero-chance of not being called Nazi gatherings well before they happened, let alone after.

Musk’s X is full of wagging, angry fingers this morning from professed Christians (and no doubt, some legitimate ones), lamenting the vulgarity, profanity, and irreverence on the part of so many. Some are upset that Harris was called “the anti-Christ,” which is only slightly less hyperbolic than calling Trump Hitler the last 8 years. Harris could not possibly be the anti-christ. We are told that he will have charisma.

Christianity Today’s Rachel Maddow doppelganger, Mike Cosper, unleashed a flurry of nine tweets within a few hours, horrified that the irreverent comedian was being irreverent, and explaining why the comedian with the #1 live comedy show in the country doesn’t understand what comedy is and isn’t. But Cosper isn’t the only professed-but-dubious Christian who can’t quite understand why we aren’t all having heart-attacks of disgust at what we witnessed. There are many more.

Few evangelicals have spoken up about the language. Those who have, like Tom Buck, will tell you it’s not going to change their vote.

So, what gives? Why aren’t evangelicals out in force rebuking MAGA for their use of crude language? Furthermore, if you’re reading this as a conservative evangelical, why don’t you seem to care? Have you searched your own heart?

I have. And my heart tells me I’m not complaining about it for the following reasons.

THANKS FOR READING INSIGHT TO INCITE. THIS SUBSTACK IS DESIGNED TO EQUIP CHRISTIANS TO CAPITALIZE ON THE POPULIST SOCIAL REVIVAL FOR THE SAKE OF EVANGELISM, AND TO SAY THINGS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE GO UNSAID. MOST POSTS ARE FREE, BUT SOME ARE FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY. THANKS FOR CONSIDERING A PAID SUBSCRIPTION (MY CHICKENS HAVE TO EAT).

First of all, to address Tom Buck first, we need not clutch our pearls over the language you heard from Madison Square Garden and no - it is not significantly contributing to the decline of our nation. That might be something a pastor says to accusations of selling-out to MAGA (or earn him praise from Evangelicals for Harris fellow, Dwight McKissic), but it’s just fundamentally untrue.

The number of swear words on American television has grown from 5k in 1985 to 60,000 in 2023. The F-word has been used 22,000 times last year. The record set for the amount of F-words on TV was in 2013, for a total of 30,000 times. The S-word, which is considered worse by Hollywood filters than the F-word for some odd reason, was said 484 times in 1985 and said 11,000 times today. Potty language has become part-and-parcel of the American experience, and it’s everywhere (click here for the stats).

It’s said so frequently that few batted an eye when vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, called Elon Musk a “dipsh*t” just a few days ago. But because a Democrat said it, Evangelicals for Harris didn’t complain about the decline of civility in America. And neither did Tom Buck or any other evangelical pastor because it doesn’t surprise us when Democrats be Democratting.

The most famous songs in the country are replete with far worse language. Take for example, Cardi B’s song WAP, which went 8x Platinum. What the acronym stands for, I’m not going to say, but mostly because my mom reads this Substack. When it comes to offensive language, who are finger-wagging shame-mongers fooling? Nobody cares about the crassness of American culture until it’s two weeks before a major election.

I’ve quickly reviewed both the podcast audio and writings of Mike Cosper (who is always wrong) and the sermon descriptions from Tom Buck (who is always right, albeit usually a day late and dollar short) but have found not-so-surprisingly no contributions on the topic of potty-mouthing.

I know for a fact that Buck is pretty careful about watching his mouth and I’m positive he could articulate a theology of language from the Bible, but Cosper seemed to very much enjoy it back when Big Evangelicalism’s pet gay guy suggested he’d rather people watch soft-core p0rno0graphy than read Pulpit & Pen.

But secondly, having ruled out some political vulgarity as the cause for the decline of Western Civilization (rather a symptom of it), then why are we so offended? Or, in our case, not so offended?

Simply put, we do not believe that the language of MAGA-Americans is any worse than Democrat-Americans.

I’d rather not stoop to engaging in what-aboutism, but I don’t have a choice. Consider, for example, my reference about Tim Walz from earlier.

Or consider, when in 2008 Hillary Clinton was prefaced a question by an LA Times reporter, referring to George W. Bush as “the bastard,” she only smiled and gave it a good cackle. Or consider Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass” or saying he needed to find out “whose ass to kick” over an oil spill. In fact, Obama explained to his own left-wing comedian, Jerry Seinfield, why he uses profanity. I don’t remember Tom Buck and Dwight McKissic having this conversation then.

But all that aside, we recognize that no matter what is said of Kamala Harris, it could not possibly be as incendiary and ass^ssination-invoking as constantly referring to Donald Trump as Hitler or Mussolini. So frankly, everybody complaining can go jump into a creek on that.

And third, we recognize that Washington D.C. is a swamp, a jungle, and heartless wilderness. And in short, we don’t care if our political candidate is a beast. In fact, given the landscape of a swamp, a jungle, or a heartless wilderness, we want a beast. And Donald Trump is a beast.

Sure, the Deep State of American Evangelicalism chortles at the suggestion an actual Deep State in the Beltway exists. But they also made fun of us for every conspiracy theory in the last 5 years that turned out to be as true as the gospel. Who cares?

I might spend another post explaining that the most visceral hatred of Donald Trump that Big Evangelicalism has is directly related to his promise to “drain the swamp” and they are frightened at the notion of swamp-draining in their own institutions.

But the reality is, we don’t want a debutant; we want a savage.

Conservative evangelicals, also known as “the only legitimate Christians” are fine with a savage in savage times and savage lands.

We spent years being told that character didn’t matter because “we’re not electing a pastor.” Do you remember back to the 1990s? I do. That was their mantra. And although that’s theologically imprecise (government is a minister of God’s will according to Romans 13:4, which is why nations like Canada and Great Britain call them Prime Ministers), we also recognize that leaders who wear Christian as a badge on their sleeves often do not have the Conviction to Lead, no matter how many books they sell by that title.

We recognize Jimmy Carter taught a Baptist Sunday School class for 104 years. We recognize House Speaker Mike Johnson was once seen as the heir apparent of the Moral Majority. We recognize Russell Moore was once The Chosen One to lead evangelicalism through the desert and into the Promised Land.

You might be noticing a theme with all those names. We don’t give a flaming bag of dog feces about any of them, consider them all pretty darn traitorous to the cause they claim to represent, and don’t trust them. If anything, the conservative evangelical’s affinity for Donald Trump’s leadership style can only be understood in light of the absolute failure of evangelical leaders to do anything but betray their causes.

In actuality, only the taking of God’s name is “profanity” (IE the act of profaning, or making a holy thing seem less holy). The term for what we witnessed last night is “vulgarity,” which is what the Papists called Bible translations in anything but Latin following the invention of the printing press. It means “to make common.” And the language exhibited last night at Madison Square Garden is not making such language common. In our culture it is already very, very common.

None of this is to excuse salty speech or negate Ephesians 4:29 in regard to “not letting unwholesome things” come out of our mouths. That’s all true and good. It’s also true that the other side in this binary election also uses vulgarity, but in addition they want to chop off your son’s penis and replace it with a festering wound, but only if they don’t get to chop his head off in the womb.

Our political opponents are not civilized. They are barbarians. They are brutes. They are literally a death cult who want you stop having children, but if you have children, they want you to hand them over to join dancing drag queens in the street. I can’t imagine any group better epitomizing Vikings plundering the shores of Europe with bear heads strapped upon their backs as a hood.

Maybe, and just hear me out, it’s okay for conservative evangelicals to recognize that Ned Flanders is not the right guy to stop them, and neither is Reverend Lovejoy or Hank Hill’s methodist lady preacher, Reverend Stoop, or Bobby’s youth pastor, Pastor K. I’m running out of cartoon references, but you get the point.

The scold-mongering happening right now, from both the political left and the evangelical left (but I repeat myself) toward conservatives, demanding that we censor ourselves or - better yet - that we censor Donald Trump and his campaign, are just using our virtue against us. And shame on them for it.

If the truth is told, none of us like the language we see coming from any segment of the political world. If you had listened to the crowd at Tucker Carlson events last month when Rosanne Barr and Kid Rock swore profusely, you can tell from the nervous laughter mixed with awkward silence in the audience that we don’t like it. But, we also refuse to let the Devil’s minions convince us to quiet their opposition.

We will not, because God does not require his people to be stupid. They are not sincere in their guffawing and we do not have virgin ears. We hear this language every time we turn on the radio and read it every time we go online. It’s just like Satan to use our virtue against us, and make us blush when MAGA swears but are guilted into compliance when the rest of pop culture does it.

But most of all, conservative evangelicals are under no misunderstanding that the people we want in office are all believers. No one is really that gullible. Rather, we are convinced that both sides are foul-mouthed pagans.

It’s just that only one side wants us silenced, locked up, or dead.

Why are we not speaking out against profanity used by MAGA? It’s because that is a dumb idea when we’re trying to win an election to keep pro-lifers out of jail and keep our children’s genitals in tact, and pragmatism is not sinful.