President Donald Trump has “done great damage to Christian witness” alongside the “catastrophic damage” he has done to the country as a whole, but as one Christian political activist wrote for The Hill, a “turning point” is coming soon away from this destructive “corruption.”
Svante Myrick is a Democratic politician best known for his tenure as the progressive former mayor of Ithaca, New York. He now heads up People for the American Way, an established liberal political activism group founded by TV icon Norman Lear. In his latest column for The Hill on Monday, he wrote about the damage he has witnessed Trump inflict, both from the perspective of an American and a practicing Christian — and argued that voters are finally sick and tired of it.
“What could make people more cynical about politics than Republicans who loudly declare their devotion to the Constitution but abandon the rule of law, embrace or excuse Trump’s self-dealing and devote themselves to making it harder for people to vote?” Myrick wrote. “And what could make people more skeptical about Christianity than religious leaders who pose as champions of truth while embracing or excusing Trump’s lying, cruelty and relentless attacks on the dignity of his political opponents? How about leaders who preach that political engagement is a Christian duty, but then viciously smear Christians who don’t share their belief that Trump was anointed by God?”
Myrick also argued that the treatment of avowed Christian Democratic midterm candidates — like James Talarico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas — has been particularly “revolting and revealing.”
“MAGA pastors and pundits have savaged the faith of Talarico, who has respectfully challenged Republican colleagues in the state legislature who fly a banner of Christianity while enacting harmful policies. For that he has been insulted as a ‘fake’ Christian and much worse — a ‘tool for the devil’ and ‘son of Satan,'” Myrick detailed. “All while avowedly Christian leaders rally around Ken Paxton, one of the most notoriously corrupt figures in American politics. “Vice President JD Vance, who notably tried to school the pope on the application of Catholic social teaching, outright lied about [Adam] Hamilton’s faith and declared that the author of 30 books about Christianity was not a real Christian. It was as pathetic as it was dishonest.”
The political right’s use of faith, he added, has for decades been contrasted by their pursuit of policies that have “made people’s lives more fragile and less free.” Under Trump, these evangelical conservatives have undertaken a sinister “deal,” in which they have looked the other way on his “greed and amorality” in exchange for him granting them greater and greater political power.
Now, however, as “religious right leaders are doubling down on their devotion to Trump,” voters seem sick of the game, for now.
“Polls suggest that plenty of American Christians, including many who voted for Trump in the past, are done with his bigotry, bullying and indifference to the ways his policies are making life more difficult and less affordable for millions of families,” Myrick wrote. “That gives me hope. But there are good reasons not to be complacent… polls may not be capturing the impact of the religious right’s big data and big money driven voter turnout operations that are spending tens of millions of dollars to try to preserve Republican majorities in Congress and ensure that Trump can continue to operate without oversight or accountability. And I’m afraid that whatever illegal schemes Trump’s team might employ to interfere with the elections or refuse to honor the results, he will be able to count on the support of many of the religious right figures who have backed his other lies.”