His article is a bit lengthy but it's worth reading if the question of how a religious conservative can support the president is one that interests you. Here are a few outtakes:
There are two competing interpretations of Trump’s enthusiastic support from religious conservatives: that it is a lesser-of-two-evils transaction based on self-interest, or that it shows a voting bloc compromised by every form of democratic vice, whether racism, nativism, or nationalism.Martin includes a description of a friend of his who is doubtless typical of many religious conservatives:
They will vote not so much for Donald Trump — with his uncouth speech and incessantly immature tweets — as they will vote against the worldview of the Democratic platform. Those who make this calculation are not sell-outs, nor have they forfeited the credibility of their values carte blanche. For blind allegiance does not explain the voting relationship. That religious conservatives are not progressives does. Between Never Trump and Always Trump is a third category: Reluctant Trump.
[A]n event on October 10, 2019 explains the odd-couple relationship of religious conservatives and Donald Trump. That evening, during a CNN townhall on LGBTQ issues, the now-former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke proclaimed that churches failing to toe the line on gay and transgender rights would lose their tax-exempt status in his administration. O’Rourke’s comments represented a high-water mark of a culture that has jettisoned anything resembling a Christian moral ecology.
For years, religious conservatives predicted that the sexual revolution would eventually affect government policy and directly threaten churches. They can now point to O’Rourke and other examples as evidence of a massive cultural shift that has realized their predictions. Even the most convinced progressive should sympathize with religious conservatives who are concerned about federal law possibly turning against them.
Consider the Democrats’ garish and unapologetic devotion to abortion in the latest stages of pregnancy. Anyone who wonders why religious conservatives cannot bring themselves to vote for Democrats simply does not understand the religiously formed conscience that shudders at America’s abortion regime.
This sentiment was intensified during last week’s State of the Union address, when Democrats sat stone-faced at President Trump’s call for banning late-term abortion. A moment of such moral contrast demonstrates why religious conservatives do not care about the endless think pieces criticizing them as soulless hypocrites. They will endure that criticism if it means the chance to end abortion through Supreme Court appointments.
To understand this complexity, take my real-life friend. Let’s call him Steve. Steve is a white evangelical in his forties, a middle-school teacher, the father of two daughters, and a deacon at his Southern Baptist church. These are identities that media narratives depict as culprits for Trump’s ascension: White, male, Christian, middle-class, husband, father. He’s the token “white evangelical” that the media depicts as red-state reprobates.Martin then adds some concluding thoughts:
But there is more to Steve. Steve serves the homeless, sees diversity as a pillar of God’s creation, and helped an Iraqi refugee family resettle in his own hometown. I daresay he cares more about justice in real life than those who preen about it on Twitter.
Steve voted for Trump, and will again. Why? For one, he thinks abortion is America’s Holocaust, and will not support any party that supports abortion on demand. Whatever Trump’s eccentricities are, Steve won’t vote for a progressive, even if the media tells him that to do so would save America and its institutions.
For Steve, saving abstractions like “America” and its “institutions” can make America a lot less worthy of survival if abortion on demand continues apace. To the average religious conservative, in fact, saving America means saving it from the scourge of abortion.
Those are the stakes that many religious conservatives live with. My advice to progressives is that, if they want religious conservatives to let go of their devotion to the Republican Party’s platform, progressives should weaken their commitment to unfettered abortion access. The same goes for their support for gender fluidity, and opposition to any person or institution that does not affirm such things as gay marriage.Indeed, it's fair to say that this administration's political agenda is not just "less hostile" to all expressions of religious faith, it's actually, contrary to the alternatives, not hostile at all.
Until that happens, complaining about “white evangelicalism” and ascribing to it every imaginable authoritarian impulse will be like shouting into a void; no one will listen.
Donald Trump is not the savior of American Christianity. At best, he’s a bed of nails on the road, temporarily halting secularism’s advance. Yet the choice for so many religious conservatives is between someone who is crude and profane but who will defend their values and an eloquent politician who will undermine their faith and advance an agenda they see as barbaric and unjust.
Here’s my plea from one religious conservative to other religious conservatives in 2020. If the majority of us vote for Trump, let’s do so not because he’s a Protector of the Faith or a champion for “taking America back.” He’s neither. Instead, view him as a flawed, complex political figure whose admixture of vanity and pragmatism is resulting in a political agenda that is less hostile to Christianity than its alternatives.
What was the alternative in 2016? Voters were given a choice between two morally compromised candidates, the policies of one were seen by religious conservatives as an almost certain disaster for the country and the policies of the other as possibly salutary. Which one should a religious conservative have voted for?
What's the alternative in 2020? Voters are given a choice between a party which is willing to demand that taxpayers subsidize and oversee the annual slaughter of a million unborn babies and an incumbent who, despite his character flaws, has appointed judges and jurists who will protect our freedoms and who may eventually end the slaughter. Which one should a religious conservative vote for?
Religious conservatives care about the poor and the marginalized, or at least they should. No president in history has done more to help the poor - by lowering minority unemployment to record lows, increasing blue collar wage growth, establishing enterprise zones in poor communities and implementing criminal justice reform - as this president. So who should a religious conservative vote for?
For many religious conservatives their support for Trump is tentative. It's contingent upon his conduct in office. As long as he does nothing Clintonian to disgrace the office and continues to uphold the First Amendment and appoint jurists who'll do so, they're willing to suffer his childish, neurotic outbursts and offer him their support.
He may be only a bed of nails on the road to a totally secular state hostile to traditional economic, social, civic and moral values, but sometimes a bed of nails in the road can force a change in direction. Meanwhile, I think most religious conservatives will prefer to vote for the bed of nails than for life in the fast lane to a secular nirvana.
