The nation’s future will be 'decided in the pulpits and sanctuaries of American churches': columnist

Last month, the Pew Research Center noted in an article that for much "of the last decade, observers have been trying to understand why so many highly religious Americans have a favorable view of Donald Trump, asking how values voters can support a candidate who has been divorced twice, married three times and found liable for sexual abuse."

In a Sunday, April 21 op-ed published by the New York Times, columnist David French points points to the juxtaposition of "great good" and terrible evil" often on display throughout American Christian churches.

French writes, "American evangelicalism is best understood as a combination of three religious traditions: fundamentalism, evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. These different traditions have different beliefs, different cultures and different effects on our nation."

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While the Pew Research Center also reports "about two-thirds of adults" in the United States identify as Christian, the Times columnist argues that "the future of our nation isn’t just decided in the halls of secular power; it’s also decided in the pulpits and sanctuaries of American churches."

French writes:

Roughly speaking, fundamentalists are intolerant of dissent. Evangelicals are much more accepting of theological differences. Fundamentalists place a greater emphasis on confrontation and domination. Evangelicals are more interested in pluralism and persuasion. Fundamentalists focus more on God’s law. Evangelicals tend to emphasize God’s grace. While many evangelicals are certainly enthusiastic Trump supporters, they are more likely to be reluctant (and even embarrassed) Trump voters, or Never Trumpers, or Democrats. Fundamentalists tend to march much more in lock step with the MAGA movement. Donald Trump’s combative psychology in many ways merges with their own.

A Christian politics dominated by fundamentalism is going to look very different from a Christian politics dominated by evangelicalism. Think of the difference between Trump and George W. Bush. Bush is conservative. He’s anti-abortion. He’s committed to religious liberty. These are all values that millions of MAGA Republicans would claim to uphold, but there’s a yawning character gap between the two presidents, and their cultural influence is profoundly different.

The columnist adds:

Pentecostalism is arguably the most promising and the most perilous religious movement in America. At its best, the sheer exuberance and radical love of a good Pentecostal church is transformative. At its worst, the quest for miraculous experience can lead to a kind of frenzied superstition, where carnival barker pastors and faux apostles con their congregations with false prophecies and fake miracles, milking them for donations and then wielding their abundant wealth as proof of God’s favor.

On the other hand, French writes, the Pentecostal church also has the capacity to display "an extreme form of Christian supremacy, one that would relegate all other Americans to second-class status," by exercising "one of the most toxic and dangerous Christian nationalist ideas in America — the Seven Mountain Mandate, which holds that God has ordained Christians to dominate the seven 'mountains' of cultural influence: the family, the church, education, media, arts, the economy and government."

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The columnist adds, "It’s mostly Pentecostal pastors and leaders who have told their flocks that God has ordained Trump to rule — and to rule again."

French emphasizes:

The American church has been the cause of much heartache and division. It is also the source of tremendous healing and love. We saw both the love and the division most vividly in the civil rights movement, when Black Christians and their allies faced the dogs and hoses all too often unleashed by members of the white Southern church. We saw this on Jan. 6, when violent Christians attacked the Capitol, only to see their plans foiled by an evangelical vice president who broke with Trump at long last to uphold his constitutional oath and spare the nation a far worse catastrophe.

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French's full op-ed is available here (subscription required).