If You’re a Christian Who Voted For Trump, God Help You
By: Michael Arceneaux
Tags: Election 2020, Politics, Religion, Trump, Voting

If You’re a Christian Who Voted For Trump, God Help You

How much longer can a person act as if being pro-life and anti-marriage equality supersedes all other Christian values?

Liberty University students at a Trump rally in 2016. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Last Tuesday, during a 50-minute interview on Fox & Friends, President Trump claimed that Joe Biden wants to take away God from Texans.

“They want to take away your guns, your oil, and your God. That’s what they want,” Trump claimed over the phone. “That’s not for Texas. Texas is not going to be losing their guns and they’re not going to be losing their oil and they’re not going to be losing their religion or their God.”

This spectacularly inane claim recalls a similarly stupid accusation made by the reality game show host and longtime scammer turned president in a separate interview with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera back in August. “He’s against the Bible,” Trump said of Biden at the time. When Rivera responded by noting it was “harsh” to say this about a devout Catholic, Trump — a heathen by literal definition — countered with, “Well, the people who control him totally are. It may be a little harsh for him, but he’s going to have no control.”

Even then, Trump invoked Texas, seemingly disgusted that he was only leading his challenger by one point at the time. (Spoiler: his polling never got any better.) Since then, he’s made these claims elsewhere — notably in other swing states like Ohio and North Carolina.

Trump is too simple for his shtick to be confusing, but for clarity’s sake: Donald Trump is repurposing a familiar trope from Republican campaigns that the Democrat candidate is godless by virtue of not being as culturally conservative as their side is. And it’s not just guns they’re referring to. When Trump mentions the Bible, he’s really nodding to the issues of abortion and any sexuality that rates above zero on The Kinsey Scale.

Despite claims to the contrary, Jesus did not spend all his time on Earth talking about butt sex, lesbians, and what to do with one’s uterus.

For some evangelicals, Biden’s Catholicism is already a source of ire. As someone raised Catholic, I repeatedly had to explain to inquiring minds that Catholics don’t actually “worship the Virgin Mary,” and thus were no less Christian, even if their mass is shorter and their music doesn’t slap as hard as your Baptists’. There is a genuine anti-Catholic bias, but not the kind Republicans have been harping about in defense of Amy Coney Barrett. At the same time, the very religious Catholics out there — say, the Catholic League types — loathe queer people and women who want autonomy over their bodies the same way many of their evangelical friends do.

That is where people “from both sides” meet.

What all these sects of Christianity share is the silly notion that if we banned abortion and sodomy, the United States would somehow magically become the virtuous land it’s never proven to be. Sadly, often, this has been a winning strategy for Republicans, but when the man professing to be defending God and Christian values is Donald Trump, irony and common knowledge about his various strains of indecency ought to highlight what a crock of shit such a claim is. Yet, many people give nods to Trump for purportedly upholding Christian values in America anyway.

And it’s never been just White people.

The week Trump made his repeated claim that Biden has beef with God and will banish the Lord if elected in November, an old clip from The Real featuring the gospel group Mary Mary resurfaced. Tina Campbell, who I used to refer to as “Mean Mary” when I devoured their eponymous WE tv reality series, pissed off plenty of those who consider themselves blessed and highly favored when she revealed her support of Trump. To hear her tell it, the con man and serial adulterer who began his campaign maligning Mexicans as “rapists” and promising to ban Muslims from entering America spoke to her faith and values far more than Hillary Clinton did.

As evidenced by the outpouring of recent responses, many Black people remain angry about this given everything that’s taken place under this hell of a first term.

While I do wonder if Campbell has had a change of heart, the reality is a lot of others haven’t shifted. That’s not to say they like Trump. They probably still would offer minimal spit, at the most, if Trump caught on fire in front of them for the sake of still sliding into heaven, but they give him undeserved credit all the same.

I know plenty of Black Christians who, like White evangelicals, continue to believe that Trump has been a net positive simply because he is pro-life and/or anti-queer.

But how much longer can any person of faith really act as if being pro-life and anti-marriage equality supersedes all other Christian values?

I don’t say this as someone seeking to mock Christianity or pro-life Christians. I am pro-choice because I believe a woman has a right to determine what to do with her own body. I am a practicing homosexual — or at least was before the plague began. Unfortunately, both positions will have plenty of these types to outwardly dismiss me.

I know what I believe in, and I know what they are all taught to believe because I was taught many of these same lessons. I may no longer be in church every week, but I’m confident that if Jesus stepped out and compared me to those giving Trump these spiritual nods, he would stand next to me sooner than any of them.

I understand many want Jesus to be the White dude they see in the pictures, even if evidence continues to suggest that he was a Palestinian refugee. If nothing else, we can all agree that Jesus was an advocate for the migrant, the poor, and all others traditionally maligned in society.

Does that sound like someone Donald Trump, who employs the likes of White nationalist Stephen Miller, would want around him?

Donald Trump is a man serially accused of sexual assault, a proven con man who sold get rich quick schemes to the vulnerable, and an arrogant showboat — and that was all before he became president.

Recently, it was revealed that lawyers cannot find the parents of 545 migrant children separated from their families at the border as part of the Trump administration’s cruel immigration policy. When mentioned at the final debate, Trump didn’t even bother to feign concern.

The King of Kings would not approve of this policy.

Nor do I imagine Jesus being a fan of not only purposely letting hundreds of thousands of people die during a pandemic, but piling on the deaths with superspreader events to salvage his reelection campaign — the only thing that may keep him out of prison (and financial ruin) for his long list of accused crimes.

Some Christians may never approve of queer and trans folk (though I invite them to seek literature or at least documentaries challenging their dubious interpretations of religious texts), but I can’t see Jesus co-signing rising violence aimed against us — another hallmark of the Trump/Pence administration.

Even if I don’t agree with pro-life ideology, I often ask those who do: Has Donald Trump made it any easier to prevent abortions? There is no widespread advancement of sex ed in America. There is no push from the government to provide contraception, no resources to thwart unwanted pregnancies.

As for those already here, has Donald Trump and the Republican Party offered money to those suffering under the mess he made in this pandemic?

Jesus would be looking at those food lines across the country in disgust. Same goes for the homelessness that’s only widening across America.

There is also a Christian case to be made for taking better care of our environment. After all, didn’t God give us this Earth? Should we not take better care of it? Trump is too busy beefing with windmills and “tiny little fish” to take in the gravity of climate change.

In the end, those who find repression rewarding have no idea what true decency is, much less truly embody the values espoused by Jesus Christ.

Donald Trump and the Republican Party may have successfully tilted the court toward a time when women, immigrants, queer/trans folk, and non-Whites generally had less say and control, but to pretend this is a compliment to Jesus is a tall tale I have long grown tired of hearing. Despite claims to the contrary, Jesus did not spend all his time on Earth talking about butt sex, lesbians, and what to do with one’s uterus.

Donald Trump is pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth all rolled into one pathetic man with a horrible tan. There is nothing divine in him; thus, nothing divine can come from his reign of terror.

And if you can’t see the devil for who he is and call it by its name, it’s your soul that needs saving, not any of ours.