A prominent evangelical supporter of President Trump explained his frustration with Christianity Today for its recent editorial demanding Trump’s removal and maintained that the moral standards of evangelicals are being politically weaponized against them.
Author and radio show host Eric Metaxas, 56, who was among the nearly 200 prominent evangelicals who signed an open letter rebuking the flagship Christian magazine, also expressed to the Washington Examiner his concern about what he called the increasingly hateful and spiritually dark nature of American public discourse.
‘Very telling’
Christianity Today stoked furor last week when its editor-in-chief Mark Galli penned an article slamming the president as “grossly immoral” and “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.” Citing the publication’s opposition toward President Bill Clinton for “unsavory dealings and immoral acts” in 1998, Galli went on to claim that “the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president.”
Galli called for Trump’s removal and predicted evangelical support for him “will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.”
Regarding Galli’s scathing words, Metaxas said, “Those of us who have been watching Christianity Today over the years have noticed that they seem to shrink from taking anything that smacks of a ‘moral majority, Christian Right’ kind of stand. It’s the sort of thing that seems to make them uncomfortable. And Trump’s election is the worst nightmare of people who are made uncomfortable by previous figures like a Jerry Falwell or [Focus on the Family founder] James Dobson.”
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Observing, “They have admittedly done their best to stay above the fray” during the past three years, Metaxas said he believes Trump’s impeachment offered Christianity Today a unique window to express their long-held opinion. “The occasion of this impeachment — and I would want to put the word ‘impeachment’ in quotes — brought them to a place where they felt they had a good enough of an excuse to say what they’d been thinking all along.”
Referencing Galli’s assertion that the case against Trump is “unambiguous,” Metaxas characterized such a declaration as subjective. “The facts of this case are, at the very least, dramatically ambiguous. This whole presidency seems to be a Rorschach blot for Americans. And we see dramatically different things. So most of us who have supported this president don’t see anything in this impeachment trial that would bolster the case on the other side. If anything, we’ve seen a really historic overreach on the side of the Democrats, which I’m sure is and will harm them politically.”
For Christianity Today to “go so far out of their way to use this as an opportunity to call for the removal of this president seemed at least strange,” Metaxas said. “And probably not just strange, but very telling.”
‘A fool’s game’
Metaxas further criticized the editorial for being unclear. “When you call somebody morally repugnant or anything along those lines, the question is always: compared to what? Those of us who’ve subscribed to the basic theology of Scripture would say that we’re all morally repugnant. So, that kind of a statement becomes meaningless for those of us who look to the Bible for our standards. So, then the question is, what is it that the president has done that makes [the necessity of Trump’s removal] so clear to the folks at Christianity Today?”
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Responding to those who attack evangelical Trump supporters who opposed President Bill Clinton for his infidelity, Metaxas said that such a comparison is “complicated” and that, because the hatred for Trump is so strong, too many are quick to elide over the “very, very significant differences” between the two impeached presidents.
“Trump’s infidelities were committed at least a decade before he became president,” Metaxas said. “That doesn’t make the infidelity any less odious. But when you’re looking for context, whether one commits the infidelities while president of the United States or in the White House itself or not seems to me significant.”
“To be fair to history, you have to contextualize everything,” Metaxas said. “Adultery and infidelity are always ugly, but if somebody does something 10 years before they’re president, certainly that doesn’t rise to the level of if they had done it while they were president. These are facts that never seem to be mentioned, and I always find it strange that evangelicals are somehow supposed to go back in time and look at everything anyone has done. It seems to me that it becomes a fool’s game when we start playing that.”
From Reagan’s divorce to Bush’s youthful drinking and Obama’s collegiate drug use, Metaxas explained how “most of the presidents that we hardly question” were guilty at some point in their lives of what Christians would call grave sins. With Trump, however, Metaxas said Christians are uniquely attacked for supporting a man who does not meet all of their moral standards, which he discerns are being politically weaponized against them.
“I think that here’s the issue: Only evangelicals seem to be the ones who are on the record having standards, and it’s easy to attack standards. When you have no standards, people can do anything, and we don’t talk about it. So I think the only reason that evangelicals are being attacked is because, in fact, we have some standards people can point to, and then they use that to bludgeon us as hypocrites. I think it’s at least complicated and often very unfair and partisan when people do that.”
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Metaxas pointed to how Catholic Democratic politicians who contradict the Church often take no flak. “You don’t have people saying, ‘How can a Catholic vote for a man who openly flaunts the teaching of the Catholic Church, yet calls himself a Catholic?’ We certainly don’t hear that when proponents of late-term abortion and supporters of Planned Parenthood, like Pelosi and Biden, call themselves Catholics and piously talk about praying. We don’t call them out on their hypocrisy. Certainly the people pointing their fingers now at evangelicals who support Trump don’t bring that up. If you don’t bring that up, it seems to me that you don’t really have standards, you’re just playing political games.”
‘Dark forces’
Hearkening back to his recent interview with evangelist Franklin Graham, who likewise slammed Christianity Today for invoking his father Billy Graham in their broadside against Trump, Metaxas said he discerned a spiritual force behind the turmoil fracturing not just evangelicals but the nation.
Graham told Metaxas in November that he believes “a demonic power” is fueling the fury behind Trump’s impeachment. His assertion met with outrage from those who accused both Graham and Metaxas of literally demonizing those who do not agree with them politically.
“When you’re talking about spiritual things, it’s always difficult, because there are many people who have profound misunderstandings of the spiritual realm,” Metaxas said. “When you make a statement and say something is ‘demonic,’ it means different things to different people.”
Because many in the modern world are strict materialists who do not believe a spiritual dimension even exists, Metaxas said, such terminology can be confusing to many who might mistake it for mere name-calling. “I think what Franklin was saying, and what I was concurring with, is that there are dark forces involved in our public life. There are dark forces involved in politics.”
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Singling out abortion as an issue around which he believes demonic power is swirling, Metaxas said, “Most people who know the unborn to be human beings think of the abortion industry as demonic. That certainly doesn’t mean that every person who has had an abortion or who votes pro-abortion is himself demonic … But taking the life of an unborn innocent human being is somehow participating in what we would call ‘demonic.'”
Metaxas lamented in particular the raging at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and said, “The kicking to the curb of things like due process; that kind of irrational, unshirted hatred is fundamentally unbiblical.”
“I think that some of what we’ve seen in our politics, some of the drama and the anger and the permission that people have given themselves to openly and vocally hate this president and his supporters does itself partake of the demonic.”
‘Americans are so fed up’
Ultimately, Metaxas said he believes the elite in society are panicked as they sense the grip of their influence slipping. “The cultural elite, including the cultural elites in the evangelical world, see themselves boxed out of the equation to some extent, and that is why they’re so angry. Most Americans are so fed up with political correctness, for example, that when anyone opposes it, they cheer — even if that person has what they would think of as flaws.”
Trump has been so successful, Metaxas argued, because he has been able to tap into that discontent. “He has understood that the elites have dramatically ceased to speak for the common man in America, whether that common man is an evangelical or not. And I think that folks like the editors of the New York Times and some of the editors at Christianity Today and others like that see themselves being pushed out of any real conversation.”
“And so, I think that they’ve taken to being dramatic in their statements,” Metaxas said. “And I think Mark Galli’s editorial is a perfect example of that.”
