When Plott asked Sessions, who is now running an underdog campaign to return to his old U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, how Christians could support Trump, he replied with a reference to Egypt and el-Sisi.
“It’s not a democracy—he’s a strongman, tough man, but he promised to protect them. And they believed him, because they didn’t want the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt. Because they knew they’d be vulnerable. They chose to support somebody that would protect them. And that’s basically what the Christians in the United States did. They felt they were under attack, and the strong guy promised to defend them. And he has.”
A few prominent, though isolated, evangelicals have been highly critical of the president. They argue that Trump shows none of the signs of Christian devotion or morality, and that Christians who align themselves with the president are making a crude bargain with a flawed man in an attempt to obtain safe harbor. Michael Gerson, in a 2018 Atlantic cover story, criticized the habit of “evangelicals regarding themselves, hysterically and with self-pity, as an oppressed minority that requires a strongman to rescue it. This is how Trump has invited evangelicals to view themselves. He has treated evangelicalism as an interest group in need of protection and preferences.”
I've seen and heard some variation on "American Christians want a strongman to protect them" theory a few times now, and it raises a couple of thoughts:
* I don't think American Christians are really in danger of losing their liberty -- but they are in "danger" of having groups they have disfavored over time achieve the same levels of liberty they have traditionally held in our society. Southern whites and their allies made similar arguments during the 1960s about Black liberation. To folks who have been on top for so long, equality isn't perceived as a net gain -- more freedom for everybody! -- but as a loss of their own advantages. It's not about liberty. It's about power.
* That said (and here my Mennonite roots are showing) I am constantly confused by the need of conservative American Christians to dominate the society around them when they profess to follow a religion whose central narrative act was one of surrender -- to the authorities, to death -- by the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Jesus didn't seek a strongman to protect him. I'm not sure why his followers think they shouldn't observe and act on his example.
* I don't think American Christians are really in danger of losing their liberty -- but they are in "danger" of having groups they have disfavored over time achieve the same levels of liberty they have traditionally held in our society. Southern whites and their allies made similar arguments during the 1960s about Black liberation. To folks who have been on top for so long, equality isn't perceived as a net gain -- more freedom for everybody! -- but as a loss of their own advantages. It's not about liberty. It's about power.
* That said (and here my Mennonite roots are showing) I am constantly confused by the need of conservative American Christians to dominate the society around them when they profess to follow a religion whose central narrative act was one of surrender -- to the authorities, to death -- by the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Jesus didn't seek a strongman to protect him. I'm not sure why his followers think they shouldn't observe and act on his example.
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