Evangelicals supporting Trump must experience some cognitive dissonance when they read Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of their heroes. Bonhoeffer, who could easily have remained in comfort in the United States, went back to his native Germany because he was deeply troubled by the fascist regime of Hitler. Involved in Operation Valkyrie, the attempt to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer was hanged for his faith. He wrote, “If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” How far we have fallen! Now evangelicals support someone with all the signs of being a madman. A man who has said he intends to dismantle democracy itself, if elected. How quickly Bonhoeffer and his important work is trampled underfoot by his own.
Some people express surprise that I still appreciate evangelicals such as C. S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They were believers who stood by their convictions, but who used reason to do so. And yes, Hitler had messianic delusions as well. A poor carpenter once warned of wolves in sheep’s clothing, but then, what did he know? And can we compare Trump to Nazism? Have you read the Project 2025 agenda? An agenda so explosive that the publisher for the book on it (HarperCollins, with a foreword written by J. D. Vance) has put off publication until after the election. You don’t want people to know what they’re voting for, now do you? Wolves dressed up like what? You can’t pull the wool over our eyes.
Photo by Tanner Yould on Unsplash
" data-orig-size="4032,3024" data-image-title="tanner-yould-nbklTnbXZ68-unsplash" data-orig-file="https://steveawiggins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/tanner-yould-nbkltnbxz68-unsplash.jpg" data-image-description="" class="wp-image-16914" width="1024" data-medium-file="https://steveawiggins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/tanner-yould-nbkltnbxz68-unsplash.jpg?w=300" role="button" data-permalink="https://steveawiggins.com/2021/01/16/goats-sheep-and-politics/tanner-yould-nbkltnbxz68-unsplash/#main" alt="" height="768" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-large-file="https://steveawiggins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/tanner-yould-nbkltnbxz68-unsplash.jpg?w=1020" tabindex="0" />Photo by Tanner Yould on UnsplashI have no problems with Evangelicals. Faith is exceptionally important in people’s lives. My concern is the weaponizing of religion by political cynics. They select issues that they know will rile up religious conservatives and use them to glean votes. One of the oldest tricks in the book—known by every stage magician who’s ever stood before an audience—is misdirection. Get people to look over there so you can pull a trick over here. I spent my formative years reading Bonhoeffer, and his reasoned evangelicalism made a lot of sense to me. Of course, this was when the biggest threat we faced was characters like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Now even they are trampled under the iron claws of what has become “conservatism.” Even Dick Cheney has said he’ll vote for Harris. If Hitler hadn’t had Bonhoeffer hanged, modern evangelicals, it seems, would’ve done the job.