American Christians Face a Choice

ROBERT JEFFRESS, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, has long been one of Donald Trump’s most fawning supporters. By his own account, one reason for his loyalty is that Trump embodies an ethic—cruel, vengeful, and mendacious—that Jeffress and many millions of evangelicals and fundamentalists not only tolerate but welcome.In an NPR interview in 2016, Jeffress explained, “I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek. I’ve said I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation. And so that’s why Trump’s tone doesn’t bother me.”Three years later, Jeffress said that evangelicals “don’t want to see this warrior removed from his place of leadership in our country.” And earlier this year, after Trump’s expletive-laden Truth Social post on Easter, Jeffress once again rushed to his defense. “If President Trump were a third-grade Sunday school teacher in our church, that might be a problem, but he’s not a third-grade Sunday school teacher,” he said. “He’s the president of the United States, and presidents sometimes have salty language.”The justifications offered by Jeffress, by the evangelical leader Franklin Graham, and by countless white evangelicals and fundamentalists who voted for Trump—north of 80 percent in three consecutive elections—amount to something like this: America is engaged in an existential, even cosmic struggle; the enemy is composed of secular, progressive forces who are agents of evil; and Trump’s combativeness and ruthlessness are not vices but necessary virtues. He has been called by God for this moment. Trump’s son Eric said that his father “literally saved Christianity.” [Peter Wehner: The evangelicals who see Trump’s viciousness as a virtue]During the 2024 campaign, Trump reposted a video titled “God Made Trump” on Truth Social and screened it at his rallies. The narrator begins in the same vein as the talk-radio pioneer Paul Harvey’s famous monologue, “So God Made a Farmer,” by