Evangelicals Who Sacrificed Their Faith for Trump

I don’t believe in religions, but I respect people who believe in their religions. I have evangelical family members who I can trust to have deep, honest conversations about faith and politics without resolve to confrontations. I often questioned them on how they have come to accept Jesus. I was not trying to be ignorant, but I couldn’t find their answers convincing. Unlike science, math, or logic, religion makes no sense to me.

Every evangelical family member I have talked to had offered to pray for me after all of my questions. I accepted their prayers out of respect, but I know prayers never worked. Nevertheless, I consider evangelical family members to be grounded with high standards of morality. They are successful and generous. They are happily married and raising their kids well. I look up to them in those regards.

Their support for Trump; however, goes against their faith. Trump mocked evangelicals behind closed doors. “Those fucking evangelicals,” he said, “Can you believe people believe that bullshit?” On the other hand, evangelicals have considered him a “baby Christian” or a “born-again Christian.” Most Vietnamese-American Christians go as far as worshipping him as someone God had chosen to fight against the communists and China. The more I learn about these moral corruptions, the more I question their credibility. The hypocrisy is just too glaring to ignore.

My wife keeps telling me that I am being too harsh on them and that I don’t understand the reason they support Trump. From my conversations with them, I understand their religious view on abortion and Trump can help them with his appointments of conservative justices on the Supreme Court. Just for that issue alone, they are willing to sacrifice all other Christain values. Pro-life is the commitment to the sanctity of human life from the beginning to end. Allowing 220,000 deaths caused by the coronavirus is not pro-life. “It is what it is,” he said. Trump doesn’t care about human lives. He is just hijacking their faith for his own political gains. If people of faith trade moral integrity for political power then I do not want to be a part of it.