30 years ago, the pastor of my small-town Texas church took his Sunday morning pulpit to declare that the House of Representatives was now under republican control. “If this doesn’t excite you” he preached, “there’s something very wrong.” As a new convert to Christianity, and somewhat uninterested in politics, it wasn’t clear to me why this was such a good thing, or what it had to do with JesusI, so I faked an approving nod and clapped along with everyone else. Over the next few years, and through hundreds of conversations about Jesus and politics, I learned that no self-respecting Christian could be anything but conservative.
From our vantage point, liberal folk didn’t care about unborn babies, or go to the right kind of church, or in general possess anything that resembled a moral compass. They were godless; modern-day Ninevites worthy of our segregation. When we spoke of them, it was less than kind, most times far afield from the precepts of love and humility outlined in our holy writ. We were good people; they posed some level of threat to just about everything we valued.
Years later, after graduating with a Master’s in Theology from one of the most conservative evangelical seminaries in the country, I married a not-so-conservative physician, moved to Colorado, and began a career in pastoral ministry. The cultural differences between Texarkana and Downtown Denver were legion, especially with regards to politics and religion. I was unprepared for the difficult, secular, highly educated conversations that followed, and painfully discovered the truth that always lurks on the other side of the story.
Since then, the divide between conservative evangelicalism and just about everyone else has widened. America got woke, elected a black president, ramped up her racial justice conversation, normalized the Gay and Trans communities, legalized pot, and in so many other ways stomped on our hot buttons like never before. By the time Trump came along, we were primed to put a stop to this nonsense. It didn’t matter that he was accused of sexual assault by a legion of women, or that he called for physical violence at his campaign rallies. The Access Hollywood tape alone should’ve ended our support.
But he spoke our language, frequently affirming that liberals were the scourge we all believed them to be. Our country was allegedly in ruin after the Obama administration and Donald Trump promised to regain everything that was lost. It didn’t matter that he did bad things; “all politicians do bad things,” we said as we ranked him the best president America has ever seen.
Up to this point, my camp had racked up loss after loss in the political arena, now threatened by anything that didn’t sound like us. It was time to fight, and this guy was our warrior. We finally had a leader who understood us, one who would stand face to face with America’s greatest evil. Maybe we’d win this time.
It’s no surprise that we gave carte blanche to the hate speech that so characterized his administration. I’m not merely referring to his personal attacks on individual politicians and others, or the way he emboldened hate groups, but his unrelenting assault on any American who doesn’t support him. In too much of his rhetoric, this cross-section of our country is said to have one aim: the destruction of America.
His magnum opus of course was his Jan 6 address to a large gathering of angry, white patriots – many of them evangelical – allegedly cheated out of an election and ready for the fight they’d been dreaming of.
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore…”
“We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy”
“…our country will be destroyed and we’re not going to stand for that.”
“…you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”
“Our country has been under siege for a long time.”
“They want to indoctrinate your children. It’s all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy.”
“They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it.”
“…if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
None of that was intended to incite hatred and/or violence against a particular race, religion, gender identity, socio-economic status, caste, etc. By today’s definitions, Trump’s speech doesn’t qualify as hate speech. But his words were clearly intended to convince a large group of Americans that another large group of Americans must be opposed. Because he employed themes like ruthlessness, siege, assault, the indoctrination of children, and the destruction of our country, his hoped-for level of opposition was unmistakable: Trump made a call for violence without making a call for violence and his army responded accordingly.
None of that would’ve happened apart from an hour-long address that too closely resembled hate speech. The target might not qualify, but the content rivals that of any of history’s despots, influencers, and big-mouths who manipulated the emotions of their supporters and spoke hatred into being.
If Trump’s pre-riot pep-talk qualifies as hate speech on any level, we didn’t catch it. To us, it was all true. Still is. Not only was an election stolen, it was the liberals who pulled it off. “We knew this was coming,” we told ourselves, “how could we be so stupid?”
Trump’s “Stop the Steal!” rhetoric fueled our anti-liberal flames like never before.
But our problem isn’t with crafty, manipulative politicians who can convince us of just about anything. We are segregated, and our objectivity has suffered for it. Anything that doesn’t reek of white, straight, conservative, suburban evangelical Christianity cannot possibly emanate from the almighty and is therefore unholy, unclean. Evil. Any media outlet that supports the 2020 election results, for example, is clearly biased. If lawmakers launch audit after audit and determine no significant foul play, they’ve drunk the same Kool-Aid.
The same goes for other difficult issues that have arisen since Trump took office: COVID, fuel prices, inflation, etc. Any data or opinion that doesn’t indict liberal America is quickly dismissed. When the most qualified people in the world offer their rigorously researched, peer-reviewed perspective – even when theirs represents the vast majority of qualified opinion – we’ll accuse them of being part of this unprecedented, worldwide conspiracy if they in any way fail to think like we do.
We are now rid of just about anything that might challenge our point of view, or help contain the anti-everything wildfire that’s made such a smoldering mess of our objectivity.
Ironically, our contempt has segregated us from the truth and made us suckers for everything else.
That’s the fruit of segregation, especially when it’s fueled by the volatile mixture of religion and hatred. If we don’t get a handle on our hatred, our journey from truth will continue to grow, if you can imagine such a thing, as will our inability to catch it when our favorite politician, many times over, turns to the time-honored, tyrant-tested tradition of hate speech.
How many times throughout history have God-fearing people been suckered into this God-mocking garbage?
We should know better.
