lesser of two evils

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Thinking about, and with, Al Mohler: America's 'ordered liberty' was set afire -- by Trump

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Thinking about, and with, Al Mohler: America's 'ordered liberty' was set afire -- by Trump

If you have followed the divisions inside the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979, or even earlier, you know this name — R. Albert Mohler, Jr. He was — for some — a L’enfant terrible among the conservatives in the early biblical inerrancy wars who (like him or not) grew, as president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, into one of the most important Southern Baptist voices of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

It would be hard to describe the degree to which many Southern Baptists in the defeated “moderate” establishment detest Mohler, for a variety of theological, cultural and political reasons. At the same time, in the Donald Trump era, there are many in the ranks of far-right Southern Baptist life who view him as a traitor or even “politically correct.”

This is not an easy era in which to lead conservative religious institutions, even those with clout and many supporters. And it’s crucial to know that Southern Baptists leaders were, like evangelical leaders in general, sharply divided on whether to support the rise of Trump in 2015-2016. (Click here for the GetReligion typology describing six different evangelical views of Trump.)

Out of the tsunami of important statements by religious leaders following the U.S. Capitol riot, I have selected — as this weekend’s “think piece” — two articles by and about Mohler, Trump and the hellish scenes of January 6th. The first is a Houston Chronicle interview with Mohler by Robert “wut is happening?” Downen, an emerging religion-beat force in Texas and American in general. The headline: “Evangelical leader Albert Mohler says he’s horrified by chaos at Capitol, but stands by Trump vote.”

Downen notes that:

Mohler is the longtime president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary in Louisville, Ky., and is a contender to lead the SBC when the faith group elects a new president in June.

The evangelical leader has forcefully condemned Trump over the last half-decade, characterizing him as a sexual predator at one point and, after Trump clinched the Republican Party nomination in 2016, Tweeting simply: “Never. Ever. Period.”


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And this just in: Religious left is real, important, rather small and it's old news

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And this just in: Religious left is real, important, rather small and it's old news

Every four to eight years, mainstream journalists start writing hopeful stories about the potential for the religious left — that should be Religious Left — to rise up and save America from the Religious Right.

This is the sort of thing that we write about here at GetReligion and the topic came up again in a post called, “Mayor Pete evolving into Pastor Pete? Prepare for latest uptick in MSM ardor for religious left.” That led to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here, please, to tune that in.

The religious left, of course, has changed and evolved over the decade that I have followed it and reported stories about it. But, basically, we are talking about liberal Mainline Protestants, liberal Catholics, a few evolving evangelicals, liberal Jews and so forth and so on.

The problem, of course, is that so many of those ancient doctrines keep clashing with the creeds of the emerging Zeitgeist (mostly the Sexual Revolution, in post-Roe v. Wade America).

Lots of folks who were part of the old religious left go with the flow. But some are troubled. Go to any traditional African-American church and talk to people. Go to a multi-racial Assemblies of God church. Talk to Catholics who go to Vespers and then stay for Confession.

So, White House race after White House race, we see stories about the latest set of “lesser of two evils” challenges faced by people who are, sincerely, religious/moral traditionalists, but they are also economic populists. There are the people who do not exist, according to MSNBC and Fox News. They don’t fit in the Democratic Party’s faculty lounge or the GOP’s country club.

So is the latest attempt to raise up the religious left a valid story?

Of course it is. The African-American church vote really mattered to Barack Obama (think his evolving beliefs on gay marriage) until the moment in time when he no longer needed those votes.

Latino voters matter, as well. Hold that thought!

The religious left also is very important in mainstream newsrooms — at least the ones in which I have worked.


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Yes, there are strange religion stories out there: Here's a brief reminder of what GetReligion does

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Rare is the day that I do not receive an email or two from readers who want me to write a GetReligion post making fun of something strange that happened in the news.

Some of these letters come from the cultural right. More of them come from the cultural left, asking this blog to blow holes in this or that statement by a Religious Right type.

The key is that they want me to comment on the craziness of the story itself, not whether this news story was handled in an accurate and professional manner. The letters usually include a statement to this effect: If GetReligion was really interested in religion news, you’d be writing what I want you to write about x, y or z.

The problem is that, most of the time, the URLs included in these messages point to perfectly normal news stories about a statement that may or may not be crazy, depending on your point of view. There’s nothing there for your GetReligionistas to note, in terms of really good or really bad religion-news writing.

The key, as always, is this: GetReligion is not a religion-news site. This is a blog about mainstream media efforts — good and bad — to cover religion news. There’s no need for lots of posts that say, in effect: Hey! Look at this absolutely normal news story about something that somebody said the other day.

With that in mind, let’s turn to this question: Did God want Donald Trump to be president?

Let’s start here:

MT. OLYMPUS (The Borowitz Report) — Partially confirming Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s theory of divine intervention in the 2016 election, Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, discord, and strife, revealed on Friday that she had wanted Donald J. Trump to be President.

Speaking from her temple on Mt. Olympus, the usually reclusive deity said that Trump was “far and away” her first choice to be President in 2016.

“I’d been following his career for years,” the goddess of disorder and ruin said. “The bankruptcies, the business failures. There was a lot for me to love.”

Actually, that isn’t a news report. That’s a piece of satire from The New Yorker. However, that sort of demonstrates the tone of lots of the emails that I’ve been getting.

Here, of course, is what that blue-zip-code bible is mocking (care of a Holly Meyer report from The Tennessean in Nashville). The headline proclaimed: “Sarah Huckabee Sanders says God wanted Trump to be president. She's not the only one who believes that.” And here’s the overture:


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Late, but still timely: Complex realities hidden in '81 percent of evangelicals' love Trump myth

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So, did you ever think that American evangelicals would — in terms of their public, mass-media “face” — have an option worse than the Rev. Pat Robertson?

I know, I know. That’s a high bar to clear, or a low one — depending on your point of view.

It seems that lots of journalists — no, not ALL of them — get an idea stuck in their heads every decade or so and they start acting like some vast, complex group of Americans can be accurately represented by one person (Robertson, for example) or even one statistic (81 percent of white evangelicals voted for You Know Who).

Here’s the irony: It’s kind of like what Donald Trump has done with America’s journalists, taking biases and inaccuracies that can be found in a few cases and turning them into a simplistic vision of the whole. Thus, Trump often stomps on the First Amendment-protected role that journalism is supposed to play in American public discourse.

Oh, I do realize that Robertson is still out there, cranking out soundbites (like this).

But that’s really not the topic we covered during this week’s Crossroads podcast (click here to tune that in). The goal was to discuss WHY some journalists seem so anxious to play this game. With that in mind, let’s flash back to a journalism think piece that I wrote in 2005 for the Poynter Institute. The headline: “Excommunicating Pat Robertson.” Here’s the overture:

Let's pretend it is Oct. 1, 2005.

After a long, long September of storms, Hurricane Wilma misses the Keys and veers into the Gulf of Mexico. It heads straight for Louisiana.

After a long, long day in the newsroom, you sit on the couch flipping from one cable news channel to another. Then you see a familiar face in an MSNBC tease and hear, "We'll be back, live, with the Rev. Pat Robertson, who says that this new hurricane is more evidence that God is angry at New Orleans because ..."

Pause for a minute. When you hear these words do you experience (a) an acidic surge of joy because you are 99.9 percent sure that you know what Robertson is going to say, or (b) a sense of sorrow for precisely the same reason?

If you answered (a), then I would bet the moon and the stars that you are someone who doesn't think highly of Christian conservatives and their beliefs. If you answered (b), you are probably one of those Christians.

In other words, we have reached the point where some journalists are happy to see Robertson's face on television screens, because every time he opens his mouth he reinforces their stereotype of a conservative Christian.

Wow. The more things change, the more that they stay the same.

So, GetReligion readers, how do you feel when a news organization hits you with yet another reference to the fact that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election?


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Horror on the border: Some journalists starting to spot old cracks in Trump's support

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Remember that "lesser of two evils" theme in some of the coverage of Donald Trump's run for the White House?

The whole idea was that there were quite a few religious believers -- evangelicals and Catholics alike -- who were not impressed with The Donald, to say the least. However, they faced a painful, hellish decision in voting booths because the only mainstream alternative to this bizarre GOP candidate was Hillary Rodham Clinton, someone whose record on religious liberty, right-to-life issues, etc., etc., was truly horrifying.

Thus, that lesser-of-two-evils equation or, as a prophetic Christianity Today piece put it: "Most Evangelicals Will Vote Trump, But Not For Trump." Here at GetReligion, I addressed this pre-election trend here: "Listen to the silence: It does appear that most evangelicals will reluctantly vote Trump."

Now, ever since, I have urged journalists to look for the old cracks inside the evangelical and Catholic support for Trump. Yes, lots of white evangelicals were part of Trump's early base during the primaries. But just as many voted for him on election day while holding their noses (or while carrying a barf bag). At some point, I have argued, journalists could look for these cracks and find important stories.

This brings me to that New York Times headline the other day: "Conservative Religious Leaders Are Denouncing Trump Immigration Policies."

Conservative religious leaders who have long preached about the sanctity of the family are now issuing sharp rebukes of the Trump administration for immigration policies that tear families apart or leave them in danger.

The criticism came after recent moves by the administration to separate children from their parents at the border, and to deny asylum on a routine basis to victims of domestic abuse and gang violence.

Some of the religious leaders are the same evangelicals and Roman Catholics who helped President Trump to build his base and who have otherwise applauded his moves to limit abortion and champion the rights of religious believers.


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Former GetReligionista explains: Why voting for the 'lesser of two evils' is still evil

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Often, painful lessons are the ones that matter the most.

That has certainly been the case, over the past two years, for many evangelical Protestants here in America. Could you imagine, in the past, a politician being hit with the kinds of accusations made against GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore -- some of them backed up with impressive on-the-record evidence -- and seeing large numbers of evangelicals claim that they were more determined than ever to vote for him?

At the same time, the Donald Trump era -- broadly defined -- has offered many journalists a chance to realize that evangelicalism, even in predominately white congregations, is not a political and doctrinal monolith.

We are seeing new attention given, at last, to the evangelical left. Many reporters are also learning that there is a difference between evangelicals who enthusiastically embrace a Moore, or a Trump (think primary voters), and those who cast votes for these kinds of men with agonizing reluctance, or refuse to do so at all (think general elections).

The bottom line: Some of the most devastating commentary on Moore, and Trump, has come from scribes with impeccable conservative credentials, in terms of politics and Christian doctrine (the later of which is more important, as far as I am concerned).

With that in mind, please read the following think piece for Joe "GetReligionista Emeritus" Carter, a former mainstream journalist who now edits the website of The Gospel Coalition. The headline: "The Nonpartisan Solution to Our Roy Moore Problem."

This is strong stuff. So let's get started with this summary material near the top.

Journalists and news consumers: As you read this, you should be asking whether or not you have seen this evangelical perspective included in mainstream news coverage of the train wreck in Alabama.

As we have discovered over the past two years, so long as the flawed candidate can be considered the “lesser of two evils” (i.e., not a Democrat), then some evangelicals believe we can vote for them and keep a clean conscience.


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