An Old Prayer We Need Today

      Sorting through the boxes of books I brought from Ohio to Texas, I unpacked a slender volume a friend gave me a few years ago. It’s a collection of prayers by Reverend Peter Marshall, onetime pastor of Washington D.C.’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, and more famous as the chaplain of the United States Senate from 1947 until his sudden death on 26 January 1949, at the age of forty-six. Many testimonials suggest Marshall, a man of delightful wit, practical faith, and unobtrusive piety was loved by the senators. His final prayer, written just hours before his death, was read to the Senate by the Reverend Dr. Clarence Cranford on 27 January 1949. 

   It was just a week after President Harry Truman’s inauguration. The Missourian had defeated Thomas E. Dewey the previous November in a victory that surprised many. The outcome was forever memorialized in the iconic photo of the victorious Truman holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune bearing the headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Biographers say Dewey would seldom mention the 1948 election, though he apparently believed his failure to pursue a more aggressive campaign, in which he answered Truman’s false portrayal of the republican’s political philosophy, had helped cost him the election.

   Three months after Truman’s re-election, many were still disappointed Dewey had lost. In this context, Marshall produced his final prayer for the Senate. The prayer opens with these words:

Deliver us, our Father, from futile hopes and from clinging to lost causes, that we may move into ever-growing calm and ever-widening horizons.

   We may never know all Marshall had in mind in his prayer, but I can imagine he envisioned the disappointed voters accepting their loss and resolving to work with their former opponents as Americans who had shared in the remarkable process of choosing the nation’s leader, envisioned those from both sides eschewing name-calling and demonizing while learning to respect one another, and envisioned all Americans striving to move beyond the difficult days just past (the Depression and WWII). 

    Maybe we should offer such a prayer seventy years later.

Evangelicals and Trump, Again

 Because what I am about to say might confuse some, let me be clear: I did not vote for Donald Trump. I am an evangelical who feels evangelicals have had a bum rap for the past four years, and have been targeted by critics again the past few weeks. As will be clear, some began taking shots at evangelicals before the polls closed on November 3. There is no one explanation for why evangelicals in such large numbers voted for Trump in 2016. But, whatever the individual evangelical’s reason, I doubt it was because there is something intrinsically wrong with evangelicalism or because some 80% of evangelicals suddenly abandoned their faith. 

Beyond all his brutish behavior and boorish boasting over the past four years, the next ninety or so days may shape how we remember Donald Trump. I suspect many who profess fear the president won’t accept the results of the election, would really like to see him carried out of the White House like a puppy that soiled the carpet. And after that image has yielded all its laughs, they would continue to berate Trump, saying:

• He is racist (perhaps like Woodrow Wilson),

• He is a womanizer (perhaps on the order of Warren Harding or Bill Clinton),

• He is short-tempered and coarse (perhaps like Andrew Jackson or Harry Truman),

• He is a sore loser (perhaps like Theodore Roosevelt) 

• He panders to divisive elements in the nation (perhaps like James Buchanan).

A few historians might even recall he did what he said he would do—quickly adding that what he said he would do was wrong. But, for me, Trump may be most remembered as the man who threatened to ruin the reputation of evangelicalism.

On Election Day, a friend complained of how “80-90% of white evangelicals will vote for Trump and have no qualms about whether that conflicts with their worship of Jesus….” Young, he probably doesn’t realize it’s a bit presumptuous to claim to know the motives and the minds of millions of strangers. I know some of those evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016, and to say they had “no qualms” is slander.

Actually, we don’t yet know how evangelicals voted on November 3. It may not matter, the anger about how they voted in 2016 hasn’t gone away. And probably won’t. Some will never forget Trump kept Hillary Clinton from returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to be in charge this time.  But after four years of thinking about Trump’s election and his presidency, I have two observations. One is obvious, the other not so obvious: 

--That evangelicals helped elect Trump shouldn’t have been surprising.

--After helping elect Trump, evangelicals failed him.

Compelling Reasons

I suppose evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump are under no more obligation to explain their decision than Roman Catholics who vote for pro-choice candidates are obliged to explain their decision. Still, those who praise the latter group, have only contempt for the former. The evangelicals are painted as having abandoned the faith but not the Catholics, even though some may have voted while planning a CYA visit to the confessional just in case God is not as open-minded as their Newman Center director used to claim (CYA: Cinch Your Absolution).

The 2016 election was not the first instance evangelicals supported candidates whose positions didn’t reflect their values. In his acceptance speech, president-elect Biden mentioned how 1932 saw the advent of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” Many Baptists and other evangelicals (called “fundamentalists” then) supported Roosevelt, despite his pledge to overturn prohibition and his seeming commitment to ideologies some found threatening. They heard the counsel of notorious Southern Baptist fundamentalist J. Frank Norris who, having seen the devastation the Depression was causing, brushed aside concerns about Roosevelt and said, “To Hell with your socialism, people are dying.” Teetotaler Baptists like Norris believed they had a compelling reason to overcome their natural inclinations and voted for the man who would reopen the saloons. Today, we don’t look back and call them hypocrites. (Note: As the Depression’s impact began to lessen, Norris raised his voice against FDR’s policies.)

Of course, Roman Catholic Joe Biden and Black Baptist Kamala Harris have supported reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, despite their traditions’ long opposition to abortion and support for “traditional” marriage. Biden and Harris have taken the stands they have taken because they found a compelling reason to do so. Only the most radical call them hypocrites. 

What compelling reasons did evangelicals have to vote for Trump in 2016? There were several. Despite his obvious lack of piety, Trump promised to protect religious rights. Though it may have garnered the most attention in the years before the election, the legal action against the Colorado bakers who refused, on religious grounds, to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple was just one instance evangelicals perceived as a progressive government’s attempt to limit their rights. Then, too, Trump promised to use every opportunity to place conservatives or strict constitutionalists on the Supreme Court (the only hope anti-abortion evangelicals had of seeing Roe v. Wade overturned). The evolution of evangelicalism’s attitude toward abortion is complex and hardly without nuance, yet those who believe abortion a species of infanticide pursue every opportunity to see the practice ended. But the most compelling reason? Trump wasn’t Hillary Clinton.

While her apologists cannot see why anyone would object to the former Secretary of State being president, many Americans believe she (along with her husband) is thoroughly corrupt. Then, too, her words betrayed contempt for the ordinary people Trump attempted to address, who—rightly or wrongly—believed their jobs were threatened by the influx of those entering the country illegally. Instead of trying to calm the fears of such people, Clinton tossed them into a “basket of deplorables.” Van Jones’s passionate statement following Biden’s election has touched the hearts of millions of Americans, but don’t forget his reservations about the choices offered in 2016. The man who worked in the Obama White House and who was one of the few Democrats who believed Clinton could lose said, “You put Hillary Clinton up against Donald Trump, I’m scared by the choice no matter what you do.” Now, four years later, Trump may snatch from her head the crown as the nation’s sorest loser. But I digress. 

The Evangelical Failure

Jeremy Taylor, an eighteenth-century devotional writer whose influence on John Wesley (and, therefore, nascent evangelicalism) was great, summarized his understanding of a proper pastor’s responsibilities. The minister was to expend his energy “to preach to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist the penitent, to reprove the confident, to strengthen weak hands and feeble knees…” If, as some evangelicals have claimed, Donald Trump is a “baby Christian,” he needs faithful pastoral ministry whether he lives in the White House or a penthouse (or the jailhouse, as some of his opponents fondly wish). But it seems certain those evangelicals closest to the president failed to truly “assist the penitent” and “reprove the confident.” The shameful sycophancy of evangelical leaders like William Graham and Robert Jeffress, coupled with Trump’s tendency to eviscerate any who might dare criticize him, permitted the president’s blind arrogance to put the nation’s health at risk, not to mention the damage his attitudes may have done America’s relationship with other nations.

To say or even imply a man with such conspicuous hubris was God’s anointed, was folly. Claiming any who might oppose Trump were under the influence of the demonic, as Eric Metaxas and Franklin Graham did, further compounded their failure to “reprove the confident.” Rather than help Trump see the value of civility and sitting down with one’s opponents to rationally and respectfully discuss differences, they were delighted by his name-calling, demeaning tweets. Such tweets, his admirers claimed, showed he was a real man.

As we might expect, Trump chose successful, celebrity Christians (both male and female) as his closest friends. Doubtless they enjoyed being invited to the White House and being featured in stories about the president’s evangelical coterie. Perhaps these leaders forgot how Billy Graham confessed he had been guilty of “crossing the line” in his relationships with the American presidents he called “friends.”  The evangelist believed he had been too uncritical, failing to acknowledge their flaws. 

Above all, these evangelical leaders failed to see the repercussions of their unqualified support for Trump. They forgot the warning of the late Charles Colson, a man who knew a little about politics and its temptations, “When the church aligns itself politically, it gives priority to the compromises and temporal successes of the political world rather than its Christian confession of eternal truth. And when the church gives up its rightful place as the conscience of the culture, the consequences for society can be horrific.”

These leaders not only failed Trump, they failed their evangelical brothers and sisters. Because of their failure, many are unable to differentiate the values of historic evangelicalism and the ideology of right-wing conservatism.

Ancillary Observations

Just as I was embarrassed by the fawning attitude of Trump’s evangelical supporters, I was disappointed by the conceit of those who were so above voting for such a flawed candidate they preferred renouncing the name “evangelical” rather than ask if somehow they had remained blind to their favorite’s flaws—and never, ever asked why so many of their spiritual siblings, including some famed for moral rectitude bordering on  priggishness, should feel compelled to vote for someone like Trump. In short, their devotion to Clinton seems no less uncritical than the devotion to Trump displayed by the scruffiest Proud Boy.

If those thinking of abandoning evangelicalism would listen, I would remind them of the rich history of the term “evangelical.” I would tell them of how Evangelicals were at the forefront of social change in 18th and 19th century Britain, of how American evangelicals like Katharine Bushnell passionately called for equality for women (in Bushnell’s case, basing her claims on a detailed, scholarly analysis of the Bible), of how evangelicals opened hospitals, orphanages, and schools in all the lands where they went as missionaries. I would warn them against a kind of pervasive American provincialism that infects the most liberal of us, reminding them that evangelicalism is a worldwide phenomenon, that William Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. are not representative of all evangelicals. In the recent book Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (2019), Mark Noll, one of its authors, reminds us that “from a global perspective . . . the fate of evangelicalism depends on more than the ebb and flow of parochial American concerns.”

And, then, I might tell the young friend I quoted at the beginning about another friend of mine. Will, a fellow pastor and a man with strong opinions, knew more about contemporary American politics than anyone I have ever known, before or since. Shortly before his death a few years ago, Will began to insist “no Christian could vote Democrat.” In this opinion he was immovable. Doubtless my young friend, a committed Christian and a Democrat, would be incensed. He might even tweet his outrage. Then, I would gently remind him of how much this sounded like his opinion of fellow-Christians who voted for Donald Trump. 

It’s called reproving the confident.

Praying on Election Eve

 Anne Lamott tells of a friend who begins her day with the prayer, “Whatever.” She ends her day praying, “Oh, well.” 

Over the years I attended many denominational meetings that took place only weeks before an election. Usually the moderator would include in his benediction, along with prayers for travelling mercies and blessings on the churches represented, a phrase like, “Lord, we pray for your will to be done in the upcoming election.” To this, the assembled pastors and church leaders would intone, “Amen.” Then, weeks later, at least some of those who had endorsed the seemingly bipartisan spirit of that prayer would complain about the results of the election.

How should we pray on this day before the election? Should I say THE election? After all, many a pundit has said this is “the most important” election in our lifetime. (Seems we’ve had a lot of those in recent years.)

I confess I am feeling the weight of not being able to join my friends at our weekly lunch (a situation first imposed by the pandemic and then rendered permanent by our cross-country move): there is no opportunity to laugh away the angst generated by this election. Or maybe these usually optimistic guys are also fearful of what will happen after November 3. This stressful year has seen both the Left and the Right spawn groups willing to meet disappointment with violence. 

Nearly a half-century ago, I did a pastoral internship under Ira Stanphill (1914-1993). Stanphill wasn’t a Baptist but he still graciously allowed a student at a Baptist seminary an opportunity to meet with him weekly and listen to his wisdom. Though he was a successful pastor and evangelist, his real legacy is found in the songs he wrote. His “Room at the Cross for You” was often used during the invitation at Billy Graham crusades. But another of his songs is on my mind on this election-eve. Written in the midst of the turbulent post-war years, I Know Who Holds Tomorrow, speaks of the inevitable flirtation with anxiety even in those who know the futility of worry. The song's refrain speaks to situations like those we face this election:

Many things about tomorrow

I don't seem to understand

But I know who holds tomorrow

And I know who holds my hand.

That’s certainly more comforting than, “Oh, well.”