The Religious Right’s embrace of Donald Trump has fatally transformed American evangelicalism. This was the message Dartmouth Professor Randall Balmer delivered to a packed house of students, faculty and community members at the Pugh Hall Ocora on Tuesday, September 10th. A prize-winning historian and commentator on religion in American life, Balmer’s lecture was the first of this year’s three Scudder Lectures that will bring insight to a range of hot-button issues in contemporary American life (link to other two lectures).
In contrast to much of contemporary evangelicalism which has become a legitimating ideology for the damage President Trump is doing to the American social fabric, Balmer argued that for most of American history evangelicalism was a moral force for democratization and concern for the less fortunate. Where nineteenth century evangelicalssupported common schools, worked to end wars, stood up for the equal rights of women, and were critical of capitalism; Balmer held that most contemporary evangelicals, seek to build up sectarian education, support the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, and are proud of their support of free enterprise. To be sure, the Dartmouth professor pointed out, not all American Christian evangelicals embrace Donald Trump. The President’s support is weakest among minority, younger, and female evangelicals. Yet polls consistently show that most do (81%).
Though the catalyst for the emergence of the Religious Right is often thought to be abortion, Balmer argued that the defense of tax exemptions for racially segregated schools such as Bob Jones University prompted Jerry Falwell and others to enter into the political arena. To this was added laments over “moral decay in America, including gay rights and legalized abortion.” Ronald Reagan became the movement’s champion, “despite passing the nation’s most liberal abortion bill while California’s governor.” By the 1980s, an evangelical movement that once identified with the marginalized supported tax cuts for the wealthy, war in Iraq and Afghanistan and, by embracing Trump in the 2016 election abandoned “all pretense that theirs was a movement about ‘family values.’”
For most of American history, Balmer concluded, evangelicals called Americans to their better selves. “By contrast the triumph of false prophets – Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell Jr. – and their unblinking embrace of a mendacious politician leaves behind a movement utterly devoid of moral conscience or credibility.”
A video of the lecture and follow-up questions and answers can be seen HERE: