John Fea, who teaches American history at Messiah College, is disgusted with his evangelical brothers and sisters. Well, at least with the 81% of them who voted for Trump. In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, Fea explores the historical and theological reasons that evangelicals backed Trump.



He accuses American evangelicals of operating out of fear: xenophobia and racism were, to Fea, key factors. He disparages the evangelical leaders who support Trump, particularly "The Court Evangelicals," pastors who are close to his administration. And he impugns the thinking of anyone who thinks Trump was the best choice for America in 2016.



Once Trump began looking like the Republican choice, there was one thing and one thing only that got him elected: he was not Hillary. Fea makes passing reference to this fact. He writes, "It is impossible to understand why 81 percent of white American evangelicals turned to Donald Trump in November 2016 without grasping their strong antipathy toward Hilary Clinton." After decades of seeing her in public life, many Americans could not stomach the thought of her in the Oval Office (again).



Fea takes great pains to take easy shots at Trump and his many moral failings, which are obvious and indisputable. But he would have the reader think that the other choice in 2016 was a moral giant. Besides her policy positions and actions, which many conservatives and Republicans find reprehensible, what about her enabling her husband's rape and harassment of multiple women? What about her thinking herself above the law regarding a private server and her destruction of devices and data during that investigation? What about her using her family foundation to curry political favor?



We Americans were faced with a binary choice between two candidates with a wide array of moral and ethical failures. For anyone who supported a conservative Republican agenda, Trump was the obvious choice. A year and a half into his presidency, that has been affirmed over and over. On one issue Fea himself acknowledges that "it may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the future of Liberty University . . . may have been in jeopardy had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016. With the Trump victory, Christian colleges are breathing a bit easier these days." On many issues, conservatives and many Christians can breathe easier with Trump in the White House.



I'm sure Fea is a great guy and a wonderful teacher, but as a white evangelical who voted for Trump, I tired of his telling me that I am racist, xenophobic, irrationally fearful, unjustly nostalgic, hypocritical and unchristian to have voted for Trump.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

"Believe Me" takes a look at white evangelicals' support for Donald Trump and finds that this act is not an anomaly, neither have these evangelicals lost control of their minds. The author, however, declares that Donald Trump is unlike any other presidential candidate the white evangelicals have ever supported and proceeds to answer why this is so.

WHO WOULD ENJOY READING IT?
First and foremost, I think Christians will benefit most from the book because of the themes it tackles as well as the historical precedents that put the recent support of white evangelical for Donald Trump in a well-defined context.

Any reader who loves history and politics will also gain some value from this book.

WHY I LIKE IT
This book stays on white evangelicals' fear of foreigners, lust for power to enact policies that favour their views of morality, and the nostalgia for years past when Protestantism and whiteness used to be a key to wealth and power.

The author glances back at years past even before the nation called the United States of America was formed to examine the root of evangelical's approach to politics and how past events came to define how they act in time of elections.

The book made good use of research, interviews, and examination of statements from past and present key figures within the white evangelical circle to explain why the desire to change society through political power ranks high on their strategies.

More importantly, the book tries to show the futility of advancing any cause through negativity and shows us a better way.

......

Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump by John Fea is available to buy from on all major online bookstores from June 2018. Many thanks to Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company for review copy.

Famous words are often uttered by Presidents. For President John F Kennedy, people remember his powerful words "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." President Jimmy Carter is remembered as a man who fought for peace: "We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war." President Barack Obama rode into office under the banner of change said: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." For Donald Trump, it's the cliche "Believe Me," a phrase peppered throughout his rallies and speeches to his party faithful. In this book, author John Fea takes a closer look at Trump's appeal to the evangelical public in America. More specifically, he tries to examine why despite Trump's denigration of women; his superficial Bible knowledge; and multiple moral questions; many evangelicals, particularly "die-hard white evangelical supporters" still think he is a Christian. This contrasts with James Davison Hunter's warning to believers not to politicize faith. The problem is less of Trump but more of the unwavering support for Trump's brand of politics in spite of moral failings. How do we make sense of it all? What does it say about the evangelicals in America? Why are these evangelicals supporting Trump's politics of fear, power, and nostalgia? These three factors are examined in greater detail as Fea looks at why the 81% of white evangelicals supported Trump for presidency. He attributes the frustrations among evangelicals due to the widening separation of Church and State; the secularization of public education; how government is creeping and controlling individual beliefs; and issues like abortion. The desire for change is strong. Underlying this mood is a climate of fear. This fear leads to a desire for power which in turn is linked to a nostalgia of a past where Christendom dominated culture.


This book is Fea's attempt to make sense of why Donald Trump managed to win and why a sizeable number of evangelicals in America voted for him. Instead of targeting Trump, he aims at the underlying subcultures that helped put Trump in office. As a historian, he gently points out that what we had seen in 2016 started way back in the 1970s. There were restless subcultures of triumphalism; desires for Church to influence state; "nativism, xenophobia, racism, intolerance, and an unbiblical view of American exceptionalism." It is a cultural war of left vs right, magnified and intensified. The more the left controls parts of America, the more the right hits back. His aim is to remind the American public, evangelicals in particular that it is God who is going to rule, to bring hope, and to save the world, and not any human person installed in the oval office. Using one of Trump's populist statements, other than "Make America Great Again," Fea chooses the words "Believe Me" which had been used frequently in Trump's rallies and speeches. Whether he is boasting about his own version of women's rights, his stand against racism, or his policies against immigration, he peppers these statements with multiple use of "Believe me." Fea challenges this throughout this book by taking aim at an insecure American evangelical mood and a desperate attempt to bring back the "good old days" of nostalgia into an increasingly complex climate of change.

My Thoughts
First, Fea has a point. In fact, he has a lot of great points to make. By taking aim at the subcultures rather than the president, he is in fact putting the finger on the real problem: A confused evangelical based that lacks direction. Out of this vacuum uncertainty arises the politics of fear ready to fill in the emptiness and disillusionment among evangelicals even as Church attendance wanes and secularism flourishes. Fear is a major trap. Adam and Eve feared not having the knowledge of good and evil and fell into sin. Fear trips us up. Fear makes us think our hasty actions are most rational when they are not. As Fea points out, "fear is a powerful political tool" and it is not surprising if Trump's political team had been using this to their advantage. Moreover, religious fear according to Jason Bivins has that tendency to make people more attuned to feelings rather than facts. This is an important note because it makes us susceptible to external manipulations. From fears of cultural immorality, rising religious extremism to acts of terrorism, one small incident could be magnified into some fearful monster. The Bible reminds us that there is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear. Perhaps, evangelicals must be reminded once again to put their hopes in God, and not their interpretation of some human powers. If there is any conspiracy theory, it would have been the playbook of fear that unless the evangelicals do something, the world will become worse. However, for all the good intentions, the road to making this world a better place has been fraught with misinformation, misguided hopes, and fake news from all sides. The more the fear the greater the susceptibility to fake news, especially information that purportedly supports our cause.

Second, the danger of "court evangelicals" is spot on. Lord Baron reminds us of the danger of power that, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People who have direct access to the institutions of power are always beholden to the policies and wishes of the powerful people in office. The way recent firings of "top advisers" and dissenting voices is a case in point. If one has to toe the line set by the powers, where is freedom of speech and expression? The desire to appease the ruler and the need to rationalize policies will lead to a complex situation of compromise and unbiblical acts. Fea describes the "court evangelicals" as coming from the three major streams: 1) Christian Right; 2) Independent Network Charismatics (INC); and 3) Megachurches that flaunt the prosperity gospel. They are also looking to get Trump to help them with their cause, which makes it a symbiotic relationship. Fea makes a point about how Trump was more attracted to Christianity via the Prosperity Gospel more than anything else. Why? Based on Trump's close relationship with Paula White, a prosperity preacher, the one who declared Trump having a "born-again experience," and the way the preachers had come out to support him, Fea comments that "Donald Trump and the prosperity gospel are a perfect match." This is not an unreasonable nor unrealistic assessment. It would seem like both these court evangelicals and Trump himself are using each other as means to their own ends. Plus, Billy Graham who was once a "court evangelical" learned the hard way about the seductions of power. For example, he regretted that Nixon was one person in his presence and another in his absence. Court evangelicals may enter the white house religious scene with good intentions but the seductions of power and worldliness may corrupt these very intentions. Thus, having top religious leaders rubbing shoulders with top political bigwigs may not be a good idea after all.

Third, is Fea overly critical and cynical of Trump? Honestly, Christians are split. Some would say that any tilt toward a simple majority would only be slight. The split roughly parallels the Left-Right cultural distinction, which is a sad reflection of the state of the Christian Church today, that it has become too fused with culture than with Christian principles. Walking a fine-line between critique and encouragement is tricky. On the one hand, Christians must be the conscience of the state, as taught by the late civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King Jr to let truth speak to power. On the other hand, we hope that the religious leaders would have an inside track to help guide the president on what is the right thing to do for the nation, not just for the Church. King's reminder is most apt.
“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.” (MLK Jr)
If this book can become that conscience, that guide, and that constructive critic, I believe Fea's voice would be prophetic indeed. Whatever the case, his call for us to resist the three forces of fear, power, and nostalgia is relevant. Let our choices be led by faith, not fear. Recognize the seductions of power and to resist its temptations with all our might. Instead of being stuck in our nostalgic past, look forward to the new Jerusalem that only Jesus can bring forth.

Dr John Fea is Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. He blogs about the intersection of American history, religion, politics, and academic life at "The Way of Improvement Leads Home." This book was written after settling from a wave of emotions from shock, to sadness, to anger, and finally to measured reflection about the recent American Presidential elections and the state of evangelicals today.

Rating: 4.5 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of William B. Eerdmans and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

This book was a really interesting analysis of the evangelical right and their interest and support for Trump. Interesting point of view , was worth reading it.

My earliest clear memory of American politics is of conservative Christians howling “Character counts! Bill Clinton is not morally qualified to be president and must be impeached!”. Fast forward to 2016 and many of these same voices eagerly led 81% of white Evangelical Christians to vote for a profane, lecherous bully…but it’s okay because “we’re voting for a commander in chief, not a pastor in chief and he’s going to appoint such good supreme court justices.” Major cognitive dissonance! This book, written by a self-identified Evangelical historian who is appalled at this pragmatic hypocrisy, explores how this came about.

His main premise is that the evangelical “political playbook” has been driven by three factors:

- Fear: “If you don’t vote for/donate toward/support [fill in the blank] you’re going to lose your religious freedom (and guns)!”

- Power: “We must have people in positions of high authority who are on our side or we cannot properly influence society!”

- Nostalgia: “We need to get back to ‘the good old days’ when everyone acted like Christians and things were so much better” (as long as you were white, male, and born in this country)!

He seeks to demonstrate that these three factors have long been a part of the American political landscape and have caused a variety of sinful/hypocritical behavior along the way (racism, or at least calloused insensitivity toward people not just like me, being a major focus). Because he is primarily historian, the author doesn’t offer a lot of commentary and what could have been done differently. However he does suggest that rather than play power games, maybe Christians need to take the role of outsiders “speaking truth to power” with hope for the future…more like prophets than a courtiers.

I greatly appreciate the main thrust of this book, and it has helped me think through some things related to the unedifying spectacle that was the 2016 election. That said, I don’t know how convincing the book would be to someone who wasn’t already inclined to agree with the author. His presentation isn’t always carefully argued/sourced, as he occasionally takes an approach that sounds like “most scholars agree on [insert interpretation of data without presenting the data itself in any detail]…”. Another issue was that along the way I spotted a couple factual errors (the worst being identifying DACA as pertaining to children born in the US!), which made me question his credibility a bit.

Overall, I think that this is worth reading as a critique from someone within the Evangelical movement even if not all of his arguments are as fleshed out as they could be.

A staggering 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump! How are we to explain this? Fea, an astute historian from Messiah College, identifies an unholy trinity of fear, power and nostalgia as being at the roots of this bizarre voting pattern. As he explains:

‘I approach this subject not as a political scientist, pollster, or pundit, but as a historian who identifies as an evangelical Christian. For too long, white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for a national past that may have never existed in the first place.’ (6)

As one would expect from a professional historian the book is well documented - there are over 20 pages of endnotes. The book then is no knee-jerk response to a strange event. Fea carefully analyses the background to Trump’s victory. He examines why Trump was chosen by evangelicals over Cruz, Rubio and Walker - all had strong Christian leanings - they perceived Trump to be a strong man who would protect them from the cultural shifts of the Obama legacy. Fea shows how Trump followed the playbook written by the Christian right such as those that comprised the Moral Majority. A playbook that that tapped into fear and anxiety. Fear of communism, of immigrants, of non-whites, and more recently of Islam — and fear of big-government interference. In Chapter 3 he examines the history of this fear, tracing it back to the Puritans and their fear of a spiritual and moral decline, and with creating a moral panic against witchcraft and Catholics. As Fea rightly observes:

‘Nearly all the anxieties evangelicals faced in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries carried over into the fundamentalist movement of the twentieth century.’ (90).

All this shows to understand the present we must understand the past.

Chapter 4 examines those that Fea has labelled the ‘court evangelicals’:

‘The roster of court evangelicals includes Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., Southern Baptist pastor and Fox News commentator Robert Jeffress, radio host and “family values” advocate James Dobson, evangelist Franklin Graham, Christian public relations guru Johnnie Moore (who claims to be a “modern day Dietrich Bonhoeffer”), longtime Christian Right political operative Ralph Reed, culture warrior Paula White, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and megachurch pastor Mark Burns.’ (57)

Paula White is allegedly the person who ‘led’ him to Christ. These evangelicals it seems have endorsed Trump in return for political influence, for power (albeit illusory); they see Trump, as a ‘baby Christian’, and as a strong man who will save the USA from secularisation. Some even have described Trump as a Cyrus figure!

The final chapter examines possible meanings behind Trump’s phrase ‘Make America Great Again’. What exactly does ‘again’ mean? Fea with his great historical insight shows that there hasn’t been a time when America was great! All that Trump has done with that phrase is tap into a sense of nostalgia for an illusionary vision of America as a Christian nation.

The book probably won’t convince all the 81% of evangelicals of the error of their ways— not least because the majority won’t read it. But, for those that do, it will give them pause for thought and hopefully help them to see that in supporting Trump they have colluded with the spirt(s) of the age and have bought the term evangelical into disrepute. As Fea has shown it is more fear, power and nostalgia rather than the lordship of Christ that caused them to support Trump.

This book should be required reading for all US evangelicals.


Contents
Aknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Evangelical Politics of Fear 11
2. The Playbook 37
3. A Short History of Evangelical Fear 65
4. The Court Evangelicals 99
5. Make America Great Again 133
Conclusion 155
Notes 167

I was given an ARC of this book by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I thought that this book was a really interesting analysis of the evangelical right and their interest and support for Trump. I thought it was an interesting addition to the literature about the increasing divide happening in the United States - with other books such as "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance. That said, I think other books are better. This has some writing issues, and doesn't always read as the most compulsively readable book. However, especially for those who are interested in more academic-style books, this is a fantastic analysis of not only the Evangelical's relationship to Trump, but also the complexities and growth of the movement itself.

3.5 stars.

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