I remember the moment vividly. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected in November 2016 I frustratedly asked Alexa: “Why are Americans so stupid?” After scarcely a pause Alexa referred me to an academic article which listed the weaknesses of the American educational system.

Some months later I attempted to repeat the exercise. This time the same question was played with a dead bat: “I’m not quite sure how to help you with that.” My assumption is that others had discovered the algorithm’s decision to treat the question seriously and that the programmers had been told to avoid giving a factual answer to such a revealing question.

As Donald Trump stands for election for a third time there can’t be many people who remain undecided about him. I have wasted far too many hours trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump and I don’t feel there is anything I can add that hasn’t been written many times already.

When I was involved in training teams from local churches to think and plan missionally we summarised the necessary characteristics of leaders who could be trusted. We advised that the only quality that was essential, and should never be disregarded, was character. Most shortcomings can be made up for by others on a well functioning team. But significant character flaws are always going to lead to disaster somehow. The way a person behaves in their private life will always leak into their public persona – so if they can’t be trusted at home don’t provide them with a public platform. To my mind Donald Trump fails every test of a competent and trustworthy leader, with his character failings being top of that list. My opinion on Trump is clear – and I have tried hard to see beyond my opinion in order to understand him – but that is not what this series is about.

In this series of posts I address a question that those of us who believe the teachings and example of Jesus are relevant in the public realm should be very concerned about. Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters have always been found amongst America’s evangelical Christian community. And statistics seem to indicate that his popularity is greater amongst that demographic than it was eight years ago.

I spend most of my life outside church and mainstream Christian circles, and my experience is that the link between Trump and Evangelicalism is impacting the way curious onlookers feel about the church. I find myself in a similar place to Dietrich Bonhoeffer who, on observing the degree to which much of the established church in Germany was in thrall to Hitler and the Nazis, began to see the need for a clarification and redefinition of what it meant to follow Jesus. In the days before he was executed Bonhoeffer began defining what he called a ‘religionless Christianity’ might look like.*1

I’m certainly not implying that following Jesus and being part of a church are synonymous, but when it is perceived that the church is compromised by yet another scandal, this time in orange human form, my experience is that it becomes even harder to speak of Jesus. I think it may be time well spent to think deeply about these things.

The second post in the series will examine the statistics. I will then try to discern how “a man who embodies so many sins – including all seven deadly ones; is there anyone who better exemplifies a noxious combination of pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth? – can be so widely embraced by the religious right.”*2 But the purpose of this series is not to mock, stoke fears or simply repeat the blindingly obvious. My concern is to prepare ourselves, and those we lead, so we are able to face the challenges of the next few months head-on, and in such a way that affirms our commitment to living according to the wisdom of Jesus our Lord.

*1 This series of articles written by Richard Beck are a good place to begin – https://richardbeck.substack.com/p/bonhoeffers-religionless-christianity

*2 See https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/01/religious-right-evangelical-christians-donald-trump