Michael Brown did a lot of equivocating to justify his vote for the profoundly Donald Trump for president — but at the end of the election process, even he seemed to get tired of it all. His final column before the election, on Nov. 4, and his first column afterwards, on Nov. 8, were focused on analyzing a psalm, copied from a book he wrote: “Whoever wins on November 5, of this we can be sure: America will be in turmoil, and emotions will run high. But for those who have a personal relationship with God, there is a place of refuge from the storm. It is God’s hiding place – or secret place – and it is described in Psalm 91[.]”
Brown’s Nov. 12 column continued his grousing about his fellow evangelicals who made prophecies about Trump that were blown up with his 2020 election loss (despite his own dabbling in it):
It was all the rage back in 2020. A chorus of prophetic leaders announced with certainty that Donald Trump would be reelected and serve a second term in the White House, but he did not – at least, not in 2020. Now that he has been reelected, resoundingly at that, does this mean that these prophets were right after all? Certainly not.
First, some of the “prophets” (I will let God decide their actual status and calling) said that Trump would serve eight consecutive years. They were dogmatic and clear and aggressive, even after the 2020 election results were announced. “Watch and see” they proclaimed, but nothing happened.
Second, after Biden’s victory was announced, the prophets predicting his reelection doubled down. Many said that Trump did win the election, but it was stolen.
But that begs the question: If Trump would win but actually lose, why didn’t God show them this too? This would be like me giving you a prophetic word that a rich man would be giving you a Porsche next week, entirely for free. I just failed to tell you it would be carjacked on the way to your house and you would never see it.
Still, he tried to give then a way out:
You might say, “But what if God did show these prophets that Trump would be reelected, but they just misinterpreted what they saw?”
That’s actually a valid question, and it’s in keeping with biblical prophecy, in which the prophets did not always understand the timing of the revelations they received.
[…]Given that the whole story of Trump’s reelection is almost impossible to believe – whether you’re for him or against, it seems almost miraculous – I have no problem believing that God showed people in 2020 that he would serve two terms.
If He did, the failure was in speaking prematurely and giving false hopes and expectations, rather than praying secretly for God’s will to come to pass based on prophecies received. It would also have been fine if they had said, “God showed me Trump will serve two terms, but I have no idea if they’ll be consecutive or not.” Today, we’d be shaking our heads and marveling.
Let us, then, tread carefully when it comes to speaking for God.
In his Nov. 25 column, Brown served up more equivocation of Trump:
What are the cultural implications of Donald Trump’s decisive presidential victory? On the one hand, he incurred the ire of the pro-life movement by distancing himself from historic pro-life stances, gutting the GOP platform in the process. (He gutted the platform in terms of pro-life issues as well as marriage and family issues.) On the other hand, his victory signaled the large-scale rejection of radical leftist policies, to the point that major, leftist media outlets have been scrambling to move closer to the center. How should followers of Jesus assess all this?
On a certain level, things just got a lot simpler. That’s because it will become increasingly difficult for the church to look to Trump to lead the way on key moral and cultural issues.
To be sure, he has chosen his battles carefully, highlighting the destructive extremes of radical transgender activism while distancing himself from Project 2025. It seems evident that this reflects pragmatism more than (or, at least as much as) conviction.
More and more Americans are saying “No way!” to boys sharing locker rooms with girls and to the genital mutilation of minors. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans have no idea what is in Project 2025, other than the Democrats said it was really, really draconian and evil. Trump campaigned against trans-activism while vigorously declaiming any connection to Project 2025.
Again, he’s a pragmatist, and it worked.
But are transgender children really the biggest supposed threat the country faces? Brown hates transgender people, so in his mind it is. He then fretted that Trump doesn’t hate LGBTQ people or gay marriages and was being too much of a pragmatist to get votes:
So I ask once again, “How should followers of Jesus assess all this?”
It’s really quite simple.
Trump never was and never will be the moral savior of America. As for the GOP, it is not God’s party, championing righteousness and purity in the land. Hardly.
But this is not necessarily bad news, since, as I have stated endlessly over the years, politics cannot do what only the Gospel can do. And while there are highly moral politicians, and while I still prefer GOP policies to Democratic policies, we make a terrible, sometimes even fatal mistake when we look to a worldly system to carry out heavenly work.
[…]That’s why I say that things have simplified for us as followers of Jesus, in particular, for those of us who voted for Trump. We no longer have to present him as Saint Donald (as some almost did in 2016), the champion of the pro-life movement, a fine upstanding Christian.
We can recognize his many weaknesses and appreciate all the good he can do without looking to him to do our job.
Brown concluded: “And while we can seize the cultural movement in which so many radical leftist policies and ideas are being exposed, we cannot let secular culture lead the way. That’s our job.” He apparently thinks it’s also his job to demonize anything not as right-wing as he is as “radical leftist.”