Donald Trump as one weird trick for national salvation

I’ve been looking at the megachurch phenomenon, and it’s striking the extent to which it can be thought of as a magachurch movement.

Megachurches are Protestant churches with at least 2,000 members, a charismatic senior pastor (almost always male, which makes one of the original megachurch figures, Aimee Semple McPherson, even more interesting), a generally very conservative theological orientation, and a modern entertainment-oriented worship style. The plurality — about 40% — are non-denominational — although several of the major Protestant sects are represented. They are most heavily concentrated in the Sunbelt and the Old Confederacy, typically in suburbs or exurbs of big cities, where land is cheap enough to support big buildings with sprawling parking lots. Congregants often come from quite a distance to attend — these are not local churches in the usual sense — and the church tends to offer some sort of full service experience, including child care, events during the week, and various opportunities for gathering in smaller groups outside the church itself.

What almost all these churches feature is a strong emphasis on the evangelical concept of being “born again,” which, interpreted uncharitably as I’m going to do here for the purposes of political analysis, can be reduced to the proposition that salvation consists of one weird trick, i.e., accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. If you do that, you’re guaranteed salvation.

This brand of Christianity dodges potentially awkward questions about such a remarkably generous investment scheme through the most extreme possible employment of the No True Scotsman fallacy:

Two common objections to the belief that a Christian cannot lose salvation concern these experiential issues: 1) What about Christians who live in a sinful, unrepentant lifestyle? 2) What about Christians who reject the faith and deny Christ? The problem with these objections is the assumption that everyone who calls himself a “Christian” has actually been born again. The Bible declares that a true Christian will not live a state of continual, unrepentant sin (1 John 3:6). The Bible also says that anyone who departs the faith is demonstrating that he was never truly a Christian (1 John 2:19). He may have been religious, he may have put on a good show, but he was never born again by the power of God. “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16). The redeemed of God belong “to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4).

Megachurches have been a major source of support for Donald Trump. For example, the assassination attempt against him last July was interpreted by many pastors of these churches in explicitly providential and prophetic terms.

Here I just want to throw out the idea that one reason Trump is so popular among evangelicals in general, and megachurch members in particular, is that he’s a charismatic figure who, in political terms, offers national salvation via one weird trick, i.e., if you believe in Donald Trump then the nation shall be saved, because he is the way and the light, sent by YouKnowWho precisely for this purpose.

What I’m suggesting here is that evangelical Christian theology and sociology, especially in the megachurch context, primes people to find Trump’s claims plausible and attractive, rather than delusional and disgusting.

. . . should have also mentioned that another connection between megachurches and the MAGA faith is that both appeal to people who are alienated and looking for community and identity in some larger movement. That megachurches tend to be very overtly patriarchial/misogynistic, and often at least implicitly racist is another point of connection, as is the attraction of perpetual victimhood and supposed outsider status, and the trolling of the Libs (the original Christians were in one sense trolling the entire Graeco-Roman world).