Who needs theology when you have Trump?

Over the weekend, during a “Freedom Night in America” event hosted at Calvary South OC, a church in California, conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk insisted that Christians were required to vote for Republicans.

You can hear the comments around the 51:48 mark in the video below:

(Follow above article link to view video/photos/PDFs that accompany this article.)

… If you vote Democrat as a Christian, I think you can you can no longer call yourself a Christian. You have to call yourself something else. I do not think you could be a Christian and vote Democrat.

There was no nuance offered on either side of those comments. He meant what he said: In order to be a True Christian™, apparently, you have to believe in the divinity of Christ, accept the Bible as truth, and willingly soak up every ounce of right-wing propaganda that FOX News crams down your throat.

Just like Jesus said.

Obviously, that’s not how it works in practice. As political scientist Ryan Burge has explained, while roughly 80% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, about 58% of non-white evangelicals preferred Joe Biden in the most recent presidential election.

And among Black Protestants, about 90% supported Biden and Hillary Clinton in 2020 and 2016, respectively.

A similar breakdown exists among white Catholics (59% backed Trump in 2020) and non-white Catholics (68% backed Biden in 2020).

Overall, in 2020, 62% of Protestants and 47% of Catholics supported Trump.

Which is to say: There are plenty of Christians who saw no cognitive dissonance between their faith and their vote. Indeed, many of them would tell you the two are in strong alignment. Progressive Christians and Catholics can make a fairly simple case as to why helping the poor, supporting civil rights, lifting the marginalized, and condemning cruelty are extensions of what Jesus preached.

Kirk’s problem—well, one of Kirk’s problems—is that he believes the only kind of Christians who “count” are the ones who share his political views. If you’re not anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, anti-sex, anti-science, anti-church/state separation, etc., then you must not be a True Christian™ after all.

It’s also another way for Christian Nationalists to discredit Black Christians without mentioning their race.

None of this is new, of course. There’s a long history of people who insist that membership in their tribe requires 100% fealty. There are right-wing extremists who think everyone to their left are RINOs no matter how often they vote for Republican policies.

This week, Trump himself said that Jewish people who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and hate “their religion.” (If you didn’t hear about that, welcome to the media circa 2024, where everything Trump does is graded on a curve.)

This isn’t just something Republicans do, either. Biden got well-deserved flak in early 2021 when he said on a radio show that if Black voters “have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” But at least he quickly walked back those comments:

“No one, no one, should have to vote for any party based on their race, their religion, their background. There are African-Americans who think that Trump was worth voting for. I don’t think so, I’m prepared to put my record against his. That was the bottom line and it was, it was really unfortunate.”

That comment is much more sensible. When it comes to issues that affect communities of color, Biden felt his record was better than Trump’s. Fine. But disagreeing with that doesn’t negate someone’s racial identity.

I could say the same thing about atheists. It would be irresponsible to say you can’t be an atheist if you don’t vote for Democrats, or that an atheist Republican isn’t really an atheist (or is a bad one, whatever that means). And I’ve been (fairly!) criticized in the past for saying as much in a headline even if the article itself contained more nuance.

I could, however, argue that people who care about church/state separation, science education, and evidence-based public policy only have one realistic option on the presidential ballot. I could also say that atheists who vote for Republicans are voting for Christian Nationalism and all the consequences that come with it. I could point out the hypocrisy of those who claim to be on the side of reason while voting for people who spread lies at every turn.

To argue, as Charlie Kirk does, that someone’s faith is wholly dependent on their political identity is one of the key consequences of Christian Nationalism. Trump overrides theology. Jesus takes a backseat to January 6. It ignores the diversity of thought that exists within the faith in order to solidify a bond between the most radicalized Christians in the country.

It also means Charlie Kirk believes the most devout Christians in the country are the ones who proudly vote for a thrice-married racist who paid hush money to porn stars he was having affairs with when his current wife was pregnant with his fifth child. A sexual abuser. The Two Corinthians guy. The candidate caught bragging about non-consensually grabbing women because he was a celebrity. The guy who lies about everything. The guy who says he doesn’t need forgiveness. The guy who couldn’t name his favorite Bible verse. The guy who held up a Bible in front of a church after his team used tear gas to drive away peaceful protesters.

Not a single white evangelical church in America would ever allow Trump to be their pastor if they wanted to be taken seriously. Yet more than half of Republican voters seriously believe Trump is a person of faith.

The saddest thing about it, at least anecdotally, is that it seems like a lot of white evangelicals are perfectly fine with everything I just said. Instead of letting a pastor speak for their faith, they’re ceding that authority to a hack commentator. They’re fine with their churches turning into extensions of the Republican Party. As one commenter put it, this church is a PAC with an offering plate. They’d rather be defined by Donald Trump than by Jesus. (Hell, convicted felon and True Christian™ Jenna Ellis agrees.)

The in-group, short-sighted thinking might feel good for the people in that room, but it’ll ultimately push more people away from the religion. When that happens, they can blame the rest of us all they want, but the real cause will always be staring back at them in the mirror.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)