Michael Brown is continuing to couch his support for Donald Trump with some performative wavering. He spent his July 19 WorldNetDaily column complaining about a pastor who claimed, “If you believe God intervened to save former President Trump, but didn’t intervene to save the kids in Uvalde or Parkland or Santa Fe or Sandy Hook, then you are worshipping partisan politics, not Jesus” — a sentiment forwarded by pastor Zach Lambert and “pacifist Christian leader” Shane Claiborne. He responded by touting his own support for Trump, even as he accused them of “reading the Bible through their particular theological and ideological lens”:
But could it be that Zach, along with Shane, whose article we’ll address shortly, are guilty of reading the Bible through their particular theological and ideological lens, thereby weaponizing scripture for their own cause? Could it be that this sword cuts both ways?
As a two-time Trump voter, I wrote books with titles like “Donald Trump Is Not My Savior” and “Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?” (For me, the “Trump test” was: 1) Can we unite around Jesus even if we don’t agree politically? 2) Can we vote for Trump if he is our preferred candidate without taking on his negative characteristics? In my view, we failed on both counts quite dramatically.)
I also wrote “The Political Seduction of the Church: How Millions of American Christians Have Confused Politics with the Gospel,” with a constant warning not to wrap the Gospel in the American flag.
All that to say I’m sensitive to the concerns raised by Zach and Shane.
At the same time, I find this viral meme both vacuous and even potentially divisive. First, had President Biden narrowly and seemingly miraculously escaped an assassination attempt, most of us would have said that God spared Biden’s life. In other words, our view that God spared Trump’s life was not based on partisan politics but on a sense of divine intervention. It was theological, not political.
He then criticized Claiborne for criticizing right-wing Christians who assume Trump is on God’s side:
He adds, “If our theology does not make us more loving, then we should question our theology.”
Once again, I absolutely concur.
But that actually makes me question whether these kinds of memes and articles express God’s love for Christian conservatives or Trump voters or Republicans or whoever the people may be who believe that God spared Trump’s life. Are Zach and Shane being equally divisive in the name of love?
Shane also states, “Any theology that puts God, rather than sinful human beings, behind a gun or a bomb is bad theology.”
Once again, however, he overstates his case in his understandable zeal to come against a pseudo-Christian, hyper-nationalistic, violence-exalting mentality.
And he fails to realize that God is with the policeman who pulls the trigger to stop a crazed murderer from slaughtering a child in a playground. Or that God is with the sniper who takes out a radical Islamic terrorist who is about to execute peaceful Christians. As the Word says, “For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4).
He concluded by asking Lambert and Claiborne to appear on his radio show.
In his Aug. 2 column, Brown complained that Republicans are no longer hating LGBT people and abortion as much as he does:
As a GOP voter for as long as I can remember, I’m not discouraging you from voting Republican. Not in the least. And as a two-time Trump voter, I’m not discouraging you from voting for Trump. That is not my intent at all, as I personally plan to continue to vote GOP. Instead, I’m urging each of you Christian conservatives who votes for Trump and the GOP to do so with your eyes wide open, recognizing that the GOP is not God’s party and Trump is not the Jesus-centered leader of the Christian right. Far from it.
Already in 2016, a featured speaker at the RNC was gay billionaire Peter Thiel, a personal friend of Trump, who said, “Of course, every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.” (He said this to applause.)
He added, “I don’t pretend to agree with every plank in our party’s platform, but fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline. And nobody in this race is being honest about it, except Donald Trump.”
That was 2016.
Today, Republicans like Thiel don’t need to worry about differing with the party platform. All affirmation of God-ordained marriage has been removed from the GOP platform along with all opposition to same-sex “marriage.”
That’s why the headline to an op-ed on Newsweek by Brad Polumbo proclaimed, “Trump’s New GOP Platform Is a Massive Win for LGBT Americans.”
Once again, Brown equivocated, declaring that none of this should stop anyone for voting for Trump because the other side is “evil”:
The truth be told, despite Trump’s frequent professions of faith (most recently, at a Turning Point USA Believer’s Summit, saying, “I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian”) and despite saying the “sinner’s prayer” privately with different Christian leaders (I’ve heard this anecdotally), there is no real evidence that Trump understands what it means to be a Christian, let alone a “born-again” Christian. (As for Trump being a changed man after coming within an inch of his life, he has jokingly stated the change lasted for a few hours at most.)
That doesn’t mean that Christian conservatives should not vote for him or for the GOP in general. Not at all. What are the real alternatives? Just the Biden-Harris proposals to radically revamp the Supreme Court should draw our serious opposition.
I also believe that we should be deeply appreciative for the great things Trump did as president, including appointing many fine judges to the courts, most notably to the Supreme Court, standing for religious freedoms, moving our embassy to Jerusalem and successfully negotiating the Abraham Accords.
I’m simply saying that we should vote with our eyes wide open, not misrepresenting or exalting Trump, not sanitizing the GOP, and, above all, not looking to politics to do what only the Gospel can do.
So, yes, by all means, get out and vote, and yes, recognize just how debased and evil some of the Democrats’ agenda really is. No argument there.
But then, with far more zeal and passion and focus and energy and effort and devotion, let’s give ourselves to the Great Commission, meaning, let’s be disciples and make disciples. That’s the primary way that America will be changed.
Politics has its place, but politics is not the Gospel, and there is a vast difference between the kingdom of God and the GOP, not to mention an infinitely large difference between a Messianic savior and Donald Trump.
Brown is invoking the “lesser of two evils” argument — but he won’t admit that this means his preferred candidate is, by his own definition, engaging in evil.