By Dr. Anthea Butler
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies
The University of Pennsylvania
On Sunday, evangelical leader Beth Moore tweeted about the Jericho March, a pro-Trump bacchanal of racism and violence held in Washington, D.C., this weekend. “I do not believe these are days for mincing words,” she wrote. “I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.”
It’s about time. But it’s too late.
Moore, David French, Michael Gerson and other evangelical writers have been wringing their hands for years about evangelicals and Trump. They have made a cottage industry of the “I’m shocked” genre of commentary. This group is quick to proclaim they’re upset every time an evangelical pastor or a political leader widely supported by evangelicals acts up in the name of Trumpism.
This performance of piety in the face of evil is empty, because it does not deal with the core issue: white evangelicalism’s own racism.
Complain as they might about Trump, this president simply tapped into the racist id that has always been a foundation of American evangelicalism. Now that white mobs are marching and inciting violence, they export the racism and violence to a specter called Christian nationalism.