Herb was urging members of the Church Council to add funds for a neighborhood Vacation Bible School to the church’s evangelism budget. The past summer, Herb and his wife Gena had persuaded the church to approve a special allocation for the effort to reach out to children living a few miles from the church. With the church paying for flyers and supplies, Gena recruited three other church-members (not including Herb) to help her conduct the school, which met at a park in the affluent neighborhood. Gena taught Bible lessons and provided music for the children; the others helped with crafts. After describing what he and Gena had in mind for the upcoming summer, Herb concluded by reminding us of how successful their experiment had been: “From Monday to Friday of that week, attendance increased by twenty-five percent.”
But a few of us on the council were privy to the raw numbers. On Monday, three neighborhood children attended; on Friday, and only on Friday, attendance rose to four children. I don’t recall anyone mentioning the small attendance; still, the Council felt the effort was not an efficient use of time and resources.
Several essays in Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (2019), suggest the mere mention of “81%” generates a frisson of outrage among some evangelicals. (I have friends who have the same response.) Of course, the percentage refers to the evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Those who are so outraged at their fellow evangelicals cannot imagine any justification for voting for such a reprehensible human. Maybe they are right. But I wonder if we will ever know.
In the same book, one editor comments on efforts to explain the 81%: “…even the best cannot explain everything that was pertinent—for example, how much of the 81 percent represented votes against Hillary Clinton more than for Donald Trump.” Well, why not find out? Pollsters and other researchers believe they can tell us within a point or two the percentage of Americans who have cold pizza for breakfast on Mondays. Why not ask, “Was your vote for Trump really a vote against Clinton?”
Michael Hamilton quotes InterVarsity Press’s Dan Reid who exclaimed, “How can Trump have gotten eighty-one percent? I don’t know a single person at IVP who voted for Trump!” One wonders if Hamilton asked, “How many of your co-workers voted for George W. Bush? How many voted for the McCain/Palin ticket?” Are evangelical academics and elites too far removed from the evangelical laborer who thought Trump would be more likely than Clinton to pursue policies that would keep the factory where he worked in this country?
Some writers, though seeming to present themselves as dispassionate analysts, could not keep their anger at bay. Again, consider Hamilton’s mocking comment on James Dobson’s switching his support from Ted Cruz to Trump. “Dobson,” Hamilton says, “helped invent and promote the fiction that Trump had recently and miraculously had a conversion experience. Trump was now—praise the Lord! —'a baby Christian.’” (Emphasis added.) For a contributor to a book that spends so many pages discussing the Bebbington Quadrilateral, such a disparaging attitude toward conversion is ironic. Yes, in some of my earlier essays I have expressed doubt about Trump’s conversion, but I have never invoked the Lord’s name to deny the possibility. (I stopped listening to Dobson long ago but not because I thought him an opportunistic liar.)
In the past few years, I’ve read some pointed books on the shocking alliance between Trump and “the eighty-one percent,” books like the compendium Still Evangelical? (edited by Mark Labberton) and John Fea’s Believe Me. Each of these books begins with the assumption, evangelicals should not have voted for Donald Trump. Some of these books offer to explain why so many benighted evangelicals did just that. Perhaps four years is still too close to the election for a thoughtful book presenting both sides to appear, too soon for those still angry at Clinton’s unexpected loss to realize those who voted for Trump may have prayed about their votes, just as they did; may have given careful thought to their vote, just as they did; may have wished they had another choice, just as I’m sure some who voted for Clinton did (come on, some of you Democrats know you harbored that wish).
Herb and Gena knew their project had failed, knew most of the children in the targeted neighborhood were already on some church’s roll, knew cautious parents would not send their children off to be taught religion by strangers who offered snacks, yet they persisted, perhaps because they wished to embrace a “missional” lifestyle or because they remembered the good old days when children attended VBSs in droves. Whatever the reason, Herb used statistics to try to make his case, hoping that fellow Council members would say, “Wow, a 25% increase! Let’s do it.”
I may be wrong, but I wonder if some evangelical writers, still angry at the outcome of the 2016 election, are using statistics to justify calling other evangelicals (theoretically their spiritual siblings) racists, misogynists, and worse. And conservatives are accused of libeling their enemies! Indeed, their characterization of the 81% might tempt us to believe there really isn’t much to the evangel “those” evangelicals talk about, much reason to believe their conversions implanted a new heart, much reason to believe they even read the Bible, much reason to believe the cross accomplished its purpose (at least for them), much reason to believe their activism is anything but self-centered, much reason to believe the 19% don’t imagine themselves the true “Gospel People.”
As I began work on my doctorate, I took a required course on statistics. It gave me no special expertise, but I know statistics can be a valuable tool for scholars trying to understand the past and the present. But just as so useful a tool as a hammer can be used to bludgeon an enemy, statistics can be used to mask an agenda. About the time I took the course, I came across a statement attributed to Mark Twain (but actually anonymous): “There are lies, d-----d lies, and statistics.” I know people who voted for Trump: I know they give generously to food banks, have friends who don’t look like them, and respect women. I don’t care what the numbers say.
I’m waiting to see a collection of essays, compiled by an editor who didn’t vote for Trump and one who did. For that matter, I’m waiting to see if those who voted for Joe Biden will listen to the new president and stop demonizing those who disagree with them. (So far, it seems they missed that line in his acceptance speech.)
By the way, not that it matters, I followed John Piper and sat this presidential election out. That’s likely the only time I’ve agreed with Piper. But I digress.
