One has to admit that Donald isn’t everybody’s idea of a pious Presbyterian. Though he still maintains some loose connection with his parents’ confession, his behaviour is, how shall I put it, more Playboy than Presbyterian.
And yet he won over Christians by a wide margin: 52 per cent of all Catholics, 58 per cent of all Protestants and 82 per cent of all evangelicals voted for him.
The Catholic vote is particularly notable. After all, some 40 per cent of US Catholics are Hispanics, and, putting it mildly, Trump didn’t go out of his way to endear himself to that group.
Why did Trump win the Christian vote? Here I recall a conversation I once had with a friend, a good Catholic and a good man, even though his politics are somewhat to the left of mine.
The conversation veered towards Franco, whom I described as a saviour of Spain. The man had no wings, but the choice Spain faced wasn’t one between Franco and an angel. It was between Franco and Stalin, and, had Franco lost, Spain today would closely resemble Romania.
My friend didn’t exactly share my enthusiasm for the Caudillo. But, he admitted, had he lived at the time, he would have supported Franco, begrudgingly. Because, he explained, “the other side was killing Catholics”.
But what about a place where no priests are being murdered? Should faith in Christ still skew a person’s political convictions and, if yes, how?
The question is valid, for the dual nature of Christ demands a synthesis of the physical and metaphysical. This is the cornerstone of Christianity, and it’s no accident that the deadliest heresies in history preached the evil of the physical world.
Yet, when Christ said that his kingdom wasn’t of this world, he meant that his kingdom was higher than this world. He thus established the primacy of the metaphysical ideal, which ought to determine how the physical life is lived.
Hence one’s faith should at least influence one’s politics. Otherwise the metaphysical thesis and the physical antithesis won’t meet at the counterpoint of synthesis, thereby flouting the dialectical essence of Christ.
Now skipping some intermediate logical steps, I’m convinced that it’s a Christian’s moral duty to vote for the most conservative (or the least socialist) candidate on offer.
For Christian Socialism (predominantly Protestant) is an oxymoron, as is its Catholic doppelgänger Democratic Socialism. Socialism can no more be Christian than it can be democratic.
Socialism, in its multiple variants, is the most toxic offshoot of that etymological cognate of Lucifer, the Enlightenment. Its animus was rebellion against Christendom, starting with its founding religion. That was the original revolt of the masses, to use Ortega y Gasset’s term.
When it erupted in a violent 1789 outburst, hundreds of thousands of Christians were killed. But the damage went even further than that: the Enlightenment also killed Christianity as the dominant social, cultural and political force.
Everything about post-Enlightenment modernity is an active denial of everything about Christianity: modernity’s statism, materialism, mendacious premises – and its natural political expression in socialism.
The essence (as opposed to verbiage) of socialism is deifying the omnipotent central state, transferring most political and economic power from the individual to a bureaucratic elite ruling in the people’s name. This is the exact opposite of Christian subsidiarity, devolving power to the lowest sensible level.
Financing the giant provider state through extortionate taxation is also the opposite of Christian charity: a man giving his money to a beggar acts in the Christian spirit; one giving his money to a mugger doesn’t.
Ascribing an undue significance to the process by which the ruling elite is formed bespeaks the characteristic modern obsession with formalism. Having failed to replace the Christian content of our civilisation with anything of remotely similar value, the modern lot are obsessed with forms rather than essences.
Hence their fixation on method of government, masking the fundamental kinship of all modern governments, whatever they call themselves. Equally hostile to the traditional organic state, they’re all different parts of the same juggernaut rolling over the last vestiges of Christendom (I make this argument at length in my book How the West Was Lost).
A Christian must feel the inner need to slow down this juggernaut as best he can, even if it can’t be stopped. Hence he’s duty-bound to support the most conservative candidate, in the only valid meaning of conservatism. Only thus can he preserve his intellectual integrity.
Many Christians must perceive this viscerally, even if they haven’t thought it through philosophically. Hence their support for Trump – no matter how thoroughly most of them must be appalled by his vacuity and vulgarity.
I don’t see Trump as a fellow conservative. Had he stood against a George Canning or at a pinch a Ronald Reagan, no right-minded person would vote for him. But, even as the alternative to Franco was Stalin, not an angel, the alternative to Trump was Hillary, not a George Canning or at a pinch a Ronald Reagan.
It’s a damning comment on our time that believers in absolute truth have to become political relativists, choosing not the greater good but the lesser evil. Trump, they decided, was just that – and, God help us all, they were right.
Trump declared himself to be a Christian in one of his speeches – and his determination to end the war on Christianity ( Including Christmas.)
That would be enough for a lot of Christians, who might think that his gropings etc fall into the casting of the first stone category.
The law of unintended consequences has been vindicated twice this year on a grand scale. First came Brexit and now the election of Trump. If the Remainers and Hilary supporters had not been so zealous, they would surely have won.
Correct Mr. Boot. Trump is greedy, a braggart, and a vulgarian, but there is still room in his quarters, cramped and stuffy albeit, for the Judaeo-Christian worldview. The choice for Christians was indeed a “no brainer”.