The White House staffer who directed Obama’s faith-based outreach has a theory about why evangelicals flocked to the Trump campaign. Michael Wear tells the Atlantic that Christians just wanted protection in an increasingly hostile environment.
The religious right that browbeat the adulterous Bill Clinton less than a decade ago flocked to Donald Trump regardless of his own vulgar and sordid personal past. More than 80 percent of evangelicals punched their ticket for the president-elect. And Wear isn’t at all surprised.
A self-identifying conservative evangelical, the Obama aide offers one of the most pragmatic and perhaps accurate assessments of the phenomenon.
“We can’t expect to have someone who is Christian like us. We can’t expect to have someone with a perfect family life,” he said, “What we can expect is someone who can look out for us, just like every other group in this country is looking for a candidate who will look out for them.”
It’s a valid question how Christians can throw their support behind a man who boasted of his own infidelity. Some have written off evangelicals as hypocritical. But Wear offers a different possibility. They’re pragmatic.
Whether it’s reality or perception, Christians definitely feel under assault after eight years of Obama’s America. So far, their guns, Bibles, and Republican majorities haven’t given them comfort. It also hasn’t sheltered bakeries, florists and churches from the scourge of social justice warriors.
And so finding no ally in the Democratic Party, they flocked to a Republican Philistine. Trump’s divorces and extramarital escapades didn’t bother them at the ballot box. All that mattered was his promise to take a hands-free approach to religious liberty.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
