Wheaton College has had a bang-up month for revealing that it is increasingly adopting the wisdom of the world.
On September 12, 2024, less than two weeks before early voting starts, Wheaton’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics, run by left-leaning Vincent Bacote, invited not one, but two anti-Trump speakers: Tim Alberta and Curtis Chang.
Tim Alberta is a “staff writer for The Atlantic. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019, he published American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. … In 2023, he published, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.”
Curtis Chang—good buddies with David French, Russell Moore, and Francis Collins—is “a consulting professor at Duke Divinity School” and “a former senior pastor of an Evangelical Covenant Church.” He is the co-author, along with Nancy French, wife of Trump-hater David French, of The After Party: Towards Better Christian Politics.”
Here is an excerpt from a Chang opinion piece published by The Hill just two months ago—a dishonest bit of demagoguery:
Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony accounts was a victory for the rule of law. But it won’t shake his core base support among white evangelicals. That’s because the quasi-mystical bond they share is based on something more than facts; it’s rooted in “evangelical anxiety.”
Understanding why this dynamic exists — and what drives it — requires penetrating the emotional connections between American evangelicals, conspiracy theories and anxiety. The future of American democracy will hinge on healing the root spiritual dysfunctions that drive evangelical anxiety.
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So why, then, have Trump’s many criminal cases actually increased his support among this community, which historically has concerned itself with moral uprightness?
The answer lies in the vulnerability of evangelicals to conspiracy theories. A stunning 74 percent of white evangelical Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Even before this, 62 percent of white evangelicals said they believe that a cabal of unelected government officials was plotting against Trump.
Far from dislodging it, the recent string of legal cases against Trump only confirmed the evangelical belief that the “system” is out to get him — his conviction is sure to have the same effect.
The attachment of evangelicals to the conspiracy mindset is difficult to overstate. As a former pastor and a divinity school faculty, I encountered this firsthand in my efforts to persuade evangelicals to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
You might roll your eyes at the irrationality of it all. And you’d be right: Conspiracy theories are irrational. They don’t operate on the level of cold, calculated logic, nor are they meant to. Instead, they are emotionally driven. And the key emotion in play is anxiety.
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Think of a conspiracy theory as a highly toxic drug that targets the evangelical nervous receptors for uncertainty and loss and provides a momentary release from those feelings.
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Conservative evangelicals are highly vulnerable to conspiracy theories because they are poorly equipped to tolerate anxiety.
Numerous televangelists and popular preachers enjoin Christians to “pray anxiety away,” fostering the expectation that God will magically protect them from all uncertainty and loss. Evangelicals are being quite literally taught that they should not tolerate anxiety. Consider the political impact of this widespread belief: If you are not supposed to experience anxiety, it means you must avoid the possibility of loss. Therefore, you will naturally turn to any object — whether that be a conspiracy theory or a political leader — that promises loss avoidance.
Enter Trump, who not only identifies the hated outgroup but promises deliverance from it in one fell swoop.
A “quasi-mystical bond”? Lol. Nope, it’s not a “quasi-mystical bond,” “evangelical anxiety,” or any other psychobabble nonsense socially constructed by Chang that unites evangelicals against Kamala Harris. It’s good old-fashioned horse sense and working claptrap radar.
Regarding Trump’s 34 felony convictions: No mention from Chang that many well-respected attorneys and law professors believe the thirty-four felony convictions against Trump represent an egregious political abuse of the justice system.
Regarding beliefs about 2020 being a “stolen election” and about unelected government officials targeting Trump: No mention from Chang of the Democrats’ abuse of government power to influence the 2020 election by pressuring press outlets and social media to ban or bury news stories. No mention of the manufactured Russia/Collusion hoax—a project of Hillary Clinton’s campaign—that involved the FBI, CIA, and congressional Democrats, like lying Adam Schiff.
Regarding evangelical beliefs on anxiety: In buttressing his peculiar claim that evangelicals expect God to “magically protect them from all uncertainty,” Chang doesn’t link to any evangelical theologian or well-respected pastor. Instead, he links to a short theologically sound blog post from a Christian musician about Philippians 4:6-7, which says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Did Chang even bother to read the post or just the title?
Not surprisingly, instead of inviting a speaker who would challenge Chang’s claims, Bacote invited Christian journalist Tim Alberta who echoes Chang:
Now let me just say, like, theologically, there’s really a choice for Christians to make throughout the ages when it comes to feeling threatened, feeling endangered. You can reach for the sword or you can reach for the cross. Now when you reach for the sword that is often in terms of seeking political, cultural, social power, military power, the power of the state to protect you and to punish your enemies and to sort of subjugate those who would attempt to subjugate you.
And I think what I’m trying to get at is that many American evangelicals have become so frightened, have become so panicked, have become so fearful, that they have reached for the sword. And the sword is Donald Trump.
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Let’s pretend that you really are being persecuted. Right? Which in the American context, you’re not, right? We know what persecution looks like. But let’s even pretend that that’s what’s happening here. The question again becomes, how do you respond to it?
Do you reach for the cross or do you reach for the sword? And again and again and again, what we see is that these people are reaching for the sword.
They are not following the biblical blueprint laid out in the New Testament. I mean, Jesus’s disciples were rounded up and killed by the state en masse. And how did they respond to it? They responded to it by praying for the people who were killing them. So, there’s a clear biblical teaching about how we are supposed to respond to the culture when it turns against us. And we, in the American context, are doing the exact opposite.
Did Chang and Alberta together concoct this bizarre theory about evangelical Christians being beset by terror and incapable of tolerating stress?
Alberta sets up a false dilemma between faith and political participation (i.e., the cross or the sword). Describing political participation as a “sword” is weird for a Christian political writer who spends a lot of time trying to convince Americans of the evil of Trump and the failings of his supporters.
It would have been helpful if Alberta had mentioned that in the biblical blueprint laid out in the New Testament, Christians were not part of the government. Christians had no power or authority to participate in government. Here in our constitutional republic, we the people are the government. As we pray, we also have the right and civic obligation to run for office and/or vote, and/or try to effect just, compassionate laws that reflect truth.
Donald Trump is no more “the sword” than is Kamala Harris or whoever is pulling her strings and moving her lips. And Christians are far less panicked than are the caterwauling leftist women whose chief legislative goal is legalizing de facto infanticide and the climate Chicken Littles who keep prophesying the end of the world any minute now.
Other than David French and Russell Moore, I’m not sure what evangelicals Chang and Alberta are hanging out with, but it’s definitely not the evangelicals I know. Since Chang and Alberta seem to spend their time among demagogues with fanciful imaginations, I will tell them why many evangelicals support Trump despite his personal flaws and flawed rhetoric.
Kamala Harris has lied for four years about Biden’s mental acuity–lying which betrayed the trust of Americans and endangered the country. And she continues to lie by omission and commission about her values, beliefs, policies, and flip-flops.
Moreover, evangelicals believe Republicans offer better policies than Democrats on protecting the unborn, fixing the economy, protecting women’s sports and girls’ locker rooms, securing the border, restoring military power, restoring international peace, making American energy-independent, preserving Second Amendment rights, and protecting speech rights and religious liberty.
Maybe in 2024, Bacote could work a little harder at non-partisanship or at least at concealing his leftism.
