What It Means to Be Moral. Phil Zuckerman

      In the United States today, conservative, Evangelical, and usually white Christians—and fellow travelers who subscribe to a similar theistic morality—wield a significant amount of influence on our school boards and city councils, in our military and state assemblies, on our radio waves and cable channels, and in our Congress, Supreme Court, and Oval Office.

      The most obvious example of the Evangelical ethos and its unholy influence in America is the fact that 81 percent of white Evangelical Christians supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election.¹¹ That constituted a higher percentage of white Evangelical support than that which went to previous Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush. And according to a 2018 analysis conducted by American sociologist Andrew Whitehead, the single greatest predictor of who supports Trump is not their economic standing, not their demographics, not their views on race or gender or immigrants—nor a host of other possibilities. Rather, the most robust predictor is a particularly nationalistic form of Christian identity: those who think that the government should advocate Christian values, those who think that the United States is a Christian nation, and those who see the success of America as part of God’s plan, unambiguously constitute Trump’s sociopolitical base.¹²

      These nationalistic, Evangelical Trump supporters are men and women who attend church more frequently than other Americans, who insist that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and who claim to be the most devoutly committed to Jesus. And yet the obvious paradoxical contradiction is that they overwhelmingly supported a presidential candidate who—in both word and deed—has violated just about every ethical precept Jesus ever preached.¹³ Jesus was quite clear that we can’t serve or worship both God and Mammon (wealth), that the meek and the poor are blessed, that we are to be charitable and merciful, that we are to open our hearts and doors to the despised minorities and immigrants in our midst, and that truth sets us free, and the Prince of Peace unambiguously preached that “he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” And yet the vast majority of those strongly religious Americans who presumably know these things by heart—conservative, Bible-believing Evangelicals—rallied around a Republican presidential candidate who is the very embodiment of Mammon, publicly mocks the meek, is selfish and spiteful, corrupt and militaristic, refers to the poor as “morons,” incites racist xenophobia, stirs up nationalism and tribalism, shuts the door on poor refugees, rips immigrant children from their parents, bolsters authoritarianism, derides truth and despises facts, and loves the gun lobby.

      It is impossible to not be both disturbed and alarmed by the reality that such Evangelical Christians—who claim to know and love Jesus more than anyone—remain the demographic most eagerly supportive of ongoing political agendas that go against nearly everything Jesus ever taught. These same men and women who claim to most faithfully worship God, and claim that their worshipping of God makes them moral, are simultaneously the ones who condone and support the most immoral leaders, exhibiting the most unethical attitudes. That is, those publicly pious individuals, groups, and movements across this nation who most proudly promulgate a shiny breastplate of moral righteousness are simultaneously the men and women who most vigorously aid, abet, and advocate immoral, unethical social regression.

      When it comes to aiding and abetting such Christ-cloaked social regression, we can obviously look to the most popular pious pundits out there, individuals such as Sean Hannity, a staunch Catholic who produces conservative Christian films while simultaneously cheering on President Trump’s most repressive and undemocratic policies, or Baptist-turned-Catholic Laura Ingraham, a Trump apologist who mocks the victims of school shootings and justifies taking immigrant toddlers away from their mothers, or Jesus-loving Ann Coulter, who drools hatred and vitriol upon the crucifix always nestled between her clavicles, or Catholic Bill O’Reilly, who delights in fanning racism and militarism with an arrogant gloat, or Baptist Mike Huckabee, who sends out racist tweets and fights against equal rights with his Gomer Pyle smile, or conservative Christian duck hunter Phil Robertson, whose Christ-based jihadism is mired in homophobia, or Jewish Dennis Prager, who peddles fear and falsehood ever so politely while championing Trump’s agenda—and all of them doing so while proudly proclaiming to be people of faith. But these celebrities are merely the most well-known profiteers of a flagrant hypocrisy that runs very deep and wide in this nation, a particular form of holy hypocrisy predicated upon a long-standing contradiction: that those who are the most religious among us—those who claim to be the most devoted to the Lord—generally tend to advocate the most immoral policies and platforms, and are often the most inhumane in their opinions and worldviews.

       Pious Politicians

      Consider the Christian politicians who constantly claim to be doing the good will of God as they advocate for laws and policies that only serve to cause harm and suffering. For instance, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, is a Rapture-ready Evangelical who works to limit the rights of gays and lesbians, actively thwarts attempts to stop global warming, cozies up to murdering dictators, and fights to inundate America with lethal weapons. Evangelical Republican Scott Pruitt, who was Trump’s first pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, packed his office with industry shills and did all he could to undermine regulations that protect our land, water, air, and the ozone layer; Pruitt claimed to take a “biblical view” of our planet’s circumstances, publicly arguing that global warming is good for humanity.¹⁴ And former Texas governor Rick Perry—an Evangelical Christian and the current head of the Department of Energy—openly denies the science behind global warming,¹⁵ thereby allowing planetary degradation to proceed unhindered. Tim Walberg, the Christian congressman from Michigan, publicly fights against attempts to stop climate change, insisting that “if” climate change is really a problem—which he denies—then God will surely come in and fix it.¹⁶ North Carolina representative Larry Pittman, a Christian man who once compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler, continues to craft and push legislation that actually increases global warming.¹⁷ Additionally, the current governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, is another Evangelical who fights hard to dismantle laws that protect the environment. Of course, no danger is more pressing than climate change, and the Evangelical goal of allowing it to continue will cause unimaginable pain and suffering in the decades ahead.

      The Evangelical senator from Oklahoma Jim Inhofe not only disregards climate change as a hoax, but actively fights against gay and lesbian civil rights, fights against even the most minimal gun safety legislation, and strongly supports the Israeli destruction of Palestinian national life because he believes God mandates such oppression. Tennessee congressman Scott DesJarlais, a churchgoing, outspoken Christian, doggedly fights against providing affordable health care to the poor—not to mention the fact that he pressured his girlfriend to have an abortion, even though he claims to be antiabortion.¹⁸ Evangelical Republican Jim Banks, a congressman from Indiana, works hard to stop stem cell research¹⁹ despite the fact that such research could alleviate countless cases of suffering and fight the battle against ailments such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, strokes, etc. The Christian governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, denigrated students publicly demonstrating for safe schools as “shameful” and offered up “prayer” as the only solution to gun violence;²⁰ he’s also signed legislation allowing foster care agencies to discriminate against non-Christians.²¹

      The nation’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, is a hard-core Evangelical who actively seeks to undermine and underfund public education, using her office’s power instead to “advance God’s kingdom.”²² Republican and Christian fundamentalist Greg Gianforte, the congressman from Montana arrested for body-slamming a reporter against a wall and then onto the ground, argues against retirement—because if Noah was still working at the age of six hundred, why should older Americans stop working?²³ So much for compassion for our elderly. Republican and born-again Christian Abigail Whelan, a state senator in Minnesota, fights to allow wealthy corporations the opportunity to avoid paying taxes, further increasing the unfair tax burden on working-class people, all in the name of loving Jesus.²⁴ Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama has committed himself so strongly to building a giant border wall to separate Mexicans and Americans