President Trump at the Values Voters Summit: The Donald, Defender of the Faith?

Donald Trump, White House photo

Conservatives like old-time things. Christianity is the United States’ old-time religion. So, many conservatives like Christianity. Unfortunately, Christianity is not a particularly conservative religion. Feed the poor? Show hospitality to immigrants? Love immigrants like your own citizens? The love of money is the root of all evil? Does any of that sound like the Republican Party agenda? No, of course not.

For the most part, Republican Christians do not support Donald Trump because he stands for Christian values. He does not. They support him because they feel threatened and Trump reaches out to them as no president has ever reached out to them. With all the talk of impeachment, betraying the Kurds, and a temporary rebellion in the Republican-controlled Senate, President Trump knows where he can find his closest friends. He finds them among white evangelicals. A few days ago, he visted the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC to give a powerful, rambling, angry speech at the Values Voters Summit. Mainstream reporters and rhetorical scholars probably don’t even know that such a summit exists. But it does. Trump speaks to the group regularly, and it is important to Trump's continuing success with his core voters.

Trump told the Values Voters Summit that they are under attack and he is their defender. He promised to be their hero. In Trump’s vision, people who oppose him oppose Christianity. And the values voters loved it.

Here is how Trump began his argument:

“You are the warriors on the frontiers defending American freedom. We meet tonight at a crucial moment in our nation’s history. Our shared values are under assault like never before. Extreme left-wing radicals, both inside and outside government, are determined to shred our Constitution and eradicate the beliefs we all cherish. Far-left socialists are trying to tear down the traditions and customs that made America the greatest nation on Earth. They reject the principles of our Founding Fathers — principles enshrined into the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that our rights come from our creator. (Applause.)”

Trump did not speak language of mercy, forgiveness or turning the other cheek. Trump told his audience that they were “warriors.” They were “defending American freedom.” They were fighting because “our shared values are under assault like never before.” Trump welded conservative religion and conservative politics together as if they were the same thing: “extreme left-wing radicals . . . are determined to shred our Constitution and eradicate the beliefs we all cherish.” He cleverly linked the Declaration of Independence with religion: “the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that our rights come from our creator.”

Religious tradition + political tradition = Trump. A simple equation!

Trump did not pretend that he spoke for Jesus' teachings. That wasn’t his point. Why would anyone think it was? His point was to fight for tradition as the values voters understood tradition. Period.

Have you ever read a spiritual warfare book? I’ll bet that most of his audience members had. Democrats were, in Trump’s frightening vision, opponents of all religion, and, Trump warned, values voters needed to fight them:

“On every front, the ultra-left is waging war on the values shared by everyone in this room. They are trying to silence and punish the speech of Christians and religious believers of all faiths. You know it better than anyone.”

"On every front" was war talk, like the Western Front in World War I, or the Russian Front in World War II. That was powerful: Trump told the Values Voters that the left wing was at war with them. Indeed, the left wing, he said, wanted to attack them, deprive them of their livelihood, and threaten their families:

“They are trying to hound you from the workplace, expel you from the public square, and weaken the American family, and indoctrinate our children. They resent and disdain faithful Americans who hold fast to our nation’s historic values.”

How about violence? Now, I recall that the Bible makes various statements about weaponry. Here’s one of them: “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” But we all know that conservatives favor an armed citizenry. Implicitly rejecting Jesus' teaching about weaponry, Trump spoke for the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms:

“We want a powerful Second Amendment, which they don’t want. (Applause.) Right, Dana? They don’t want — I wouldn’t say they’re too much into the Second Amendment, the world of the Second Amendment. I will tell you, if certain of these people — I would say almost anyone — your Second Amendment is in serious, serious trouble. Serious trouble.”

What does that have to do with Christianity? Not much that I can see. The conservatives like the old-time things, and one of the old-time things is the old-time religion, and the values voters also like the old-time Second Amendment, so there Trump goes!

Christian conservatives do not support Trump by accident. They support him because they want a Christian warrior to fight for what they believe. They want someone to oppose the liberals who they think are out to crush them. In the 2016 election, white Christian evangelicals could have thrown their support behind Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, both of whom were churchgoing conservative Christians. Instead, they lined up behind Donald Trump. For that matter, they could have lined up behind a Methodist Bible study teacher named Hillary Clinton. They rejected all of those candidates. No, Trump was the fighter they wanted, the hero they craved, the defender of their faith. He was the Crusader who would stomp on the infidels.

And what about values? Trump’s speech never mentioned mercy to immigrants or compassion for the poor. He talked, instead, about liberal indoctrination, risks to the Second Amendment, and the right of conservative families to raise their children as they see fit. Those are values. Yes, the Values Voters want someone to stand for their values. But the values they stand for are not the values that liberal Christians expect them to stand for. Instead, they have stirred patriotism, the Founding Fathers, violence, resentment, and sexual morals into a conservative Christian values recipe that they feel – perhaps correctly – liberals reject.

Mainstream pundits, not to mention most of my academic colleagues in communication, are mystified that conservative Christian voters don't merely support or tolerate Trump, but love him to pieces. It shouldn't be a mystery. Just pay attention to what they believe and how Trump talks to them.

Also, Trump devoted much of his speech to the impeachment controversy. What does that have to do with Christianity? In some sense, nothing! In some sense, however, impeachment had everything to do with the values that the Values Voters craved. I'll talk about how Trump worked the impeachment issue into this Values Voters Summit speech in an upcoming post.