Trump wins!

This is part of the email going out to my congregation this morning:

“He who sits in the heavens laughs.” Those words from Psalm 2:4 certainly rang true last night. In the providence of God, we have just witnessed the greatest political comeback in American history. Donald Trump has battled back from losing the 2020 election and the January 6 debacle, from multiple impeachments and indictments, from various hoaxes and conspiracies, from efforts to bankrupt him and imprison him, from lawfare and assassination attempts, from media hostility and suspect election results, to complete what can only be considered a political resurrection. Trump’s relentless persistence paid off in a massive way. After he was shot in the ear, he urged his supporters to fight, and he proved to be quite a fighter himself, running by far his best campaign. The whole thing is really quite remarkable and uniquely American. As someone who waited in line about two and a half hours to vote for him yesterday, I’m very thankful.

There is no reason to think Trump is a man of genuine Christian faith. He is not a bastion of righteousness in his personal life and he does not hold to biblical positions on the most central moral issues of the day, such as abortion and marriage. Church does not seem to be a significant part of his life and on the few occasions he tries to cite the Scriptures, he does so in a clumsy way that betrays his unfamiliarity with the Word of God. But despite all these shortcomings, he has proven to be friendly to conservatives and to evangelicals, and so I think it’s perfectly fitting to celebrate his victory. Trump’s electoral win does not solve the deepest problems afflicting America because those problems are spiritual in nature; the political problems we see are just symptoms of the real, more fundamental problems. But Trump’s election buys us time and creates new opportunities. Trump’s win is a win for the church and for faithful Christians. Trump’s victory is a slap in the face to a lot of people who, frankly, needed slapping, including the horrific, useless mainstream media and those who have divided our country by engaging in identity politics. The fact that Trump made solid gains with racial minorities is a hopeful sign that many Americans are realizing that our focus should be on policy and not skin color.

Trump’s win taps the brakes on the runaway freight train that is the progressive agenda. The question before us now as Christians is simple: Will the church take advantage of the moment we are now in? Our backslidden nation is in desperate need of evangelization and discipleship. Only the church can provide what America needs most. We have work to do!

Let’s commit to pray for our nation. Pray for President-elect Trump, both the state of his soul and the wisdom he will need to make proper use of his office; pray that we would be a land that respects the rule of law, and that our laws would be consistent with the law of God; pray that faithful churches in our country would be bold in proclaiming God’s truth and applying God’s Word to all of life; pray that we would have a peaceful transition of power; pray that our nation would repent, return to the old paths, and enter a new era of righteousness, peace, and prosperity; pray that God would be merciful to us. If America is going to be great again, America must be faithful again, so pray that she will be.

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Making America great again requires church, family and state all working together and moving in a Godward direction. America cannot be great without great policies and great leadership. We cannot be great without defined borders, without being respected on the global stage, without encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation, without cheap and affordable energy. The bloat of government waste and bureaucracy have been holding us back from greatness; it’s time to do something about them.

America cannot be great so long as our churches are mediocre. We need churches with beautiful, reverent worship. We need churches that powerfully sing God’s praises and cry out to him fervently in prayer. We need churches that boldly preach biblical truth. We need churches that practice discipleship and discipline. America will never be great without great churches spread across the land. The greatness of the church in our land is the key to national greatness.

America cannot be great without intact and strong two parent families, without moms and dads who love each other and love their children. We need to recover a sex ethic. We need to restore marriage. We need a resurgence in true education. We need to increase our marriage rate and birth rate. America cannot be great without great marriages, great families, and great schools. We cannot be great if men refuse to step up and fulfill their responsibilities; we cannot be great so long as our women generally reject motherhood and homemaking; we cannot be great if we coddle our kids instead of discipline them; we cannot be great if our schools brainwash kids rather than teach them to think. America cannot be great again unless her families are great again. America cannot be great without great husbands and fathers, without great wives and mothers. We have an opportunity to make America great again. Will we take it?

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A note I wrote a few weeks ago:

Trump’s electoral success is impossible to conceive of apart from the culture’s shift to “negative world,” which Aaron Renn conveniently dates to 2015, right before Trump shocked the world the first time. In truth, Trump’s success is proof that negative world is real, and that our culture really does have a different system of values than it did a generation ago. 

I’ve seen some Christians blame Trump for our culture’s descent into crassness and vulgarity, but this confuses cause and effect. Trump’s political career has benefitted from cultural degradation  but did not cause it. He implicitly acknowledges he was unelectable because of character/lifestyle issues 20+ years ago. By 2016, the culture had caught up with Trump’s coarseness.

The one who presided over our cultural degradation more than anyone else was probably Barack Obama (culminating with the Obergefell ruling and the rise of critical race theory/identity politics). Pop culture has had a vulgarity problem for a long while now, but there’s no question it’s considerably worse than it used to be. Things like internet porn and the popularity of debased rap music have been instrumental in the breakdown over the last 20 years. Trump really can’t be blamed for any of that.

Likewise, Trump removing abortion from the Republican Party platform is more a reflection of cultural shifts than the cause of them. There are a few GOP leaders, like DeSantis, who thankfully hold the line on the life issue. But the GOP has cared very little about abortion for a long time. Ironically, Trump is the one who actually moved the ball on the issue when his judges produced the Dobbs decision. But Trump cannot be blamed for the fact that most Republican governors who had an abortion referendum on their state ballots last week did hardly anything to protect life in the womb. We do not have a Trump problem in America; we have a moral rot that goes much, much deeper. Many, many red state Americans are pro-Trump and not pro-life at the same time. They care much more about the other issues of the day, and they’re fine to take a hands-off approach to abortion. Much of the country is dominated by a Christless conservative populism right now. If that’s going to change, it will be because the church’s ministry brought about the change. We cannot expect our politicians to do what the church should do. 

Bottom line: Americans will not get higher quality presidential candidates in terms of character and lifestyle until we are a higher quality people. In the meantime, Trump is vastly preferable to the electoral alternative. One can celebrate Trump’s triumph while having eyes wide open to the flaws of the man, his movement, his electoral base, and our nation as a whole. Trump’s win does not bring about the cultural changes we need, but it gives us as the church a better opportunity to press for and work for those changes (eg, doing evangelism and discipleship). It’s ironic that many Christians who denounce Trump for not being Christian enough also denounce Christian nationalism. If anything, we need a strong Christian nationalist movement in order to establish a higher moral baseline for presidential candidates. It makes no sense to insist on Christian candidates while denying the nation should be Christianized. Many Christian’s have openly said, “We don’t want a Christian nation.” Ok, then. You got it.