https://godanddonaldtrump.com/ CHAPTER 4 TRUMP AND EVANGELICALS ★★★★★ ALTHOUGH DONALD TRUMP professes faith in God, he failed the litmus test for many Evangelicals early in the campaign. There were prominent elements among the wider evangelical leadership who said they despised Trump and, until the very end, worked diligently to derail his election. They couldn’t see beyond his past lifestyle, and they were so blinded by their dislike for him they couldn’t recognize the benefits a Trump presidency would bring for the country and the church com- pared with the immensely greater dangers of the Clinton alternative. In their contempt for Trump some of the Never-Trump Evangelicals would apparently do anything to destroy him, even if it meant sending the Clintons and their far-left agenda back to the White House for four more years. As in every political persuasion there were different levels of animosity, but the heated debate taking place among the faithful not only divided loyalties and ended many long- standing friendships; it also gave the media plenty of fodder to show that the
Evangelicals were a deeply divided lot. This was especially true after the Access Hollywood tapes were released October 7, 2016, with video of a ten-year-old conversation in which Trump discussed women sexually and even described groping for their private parts. By then most Evangelicals had already decided to vote for Trump, but the evangelical Never- Trumpers still came out swinging, determined to halt Trump’s momentum barely a month before the election. WORLD magazine, which purports to be the weekly Christian equivalent to Time magazine, immediately called for Trump to drop out of the race.¹ A former WORLD staffer told me the editors had called for President Bill Clinton to resign over the Monica Lewinsky scandal almost twenty years earlier, and it just seemed fair to do the same for Trump when he was found to be immoral—as if there were any equivalence between the two events. The frustrations of Middle America that would ultimately catapult Donald Trump to the White House were shared by Evangelicals, who make up perhaps the largest segment of Middle America. They were frustrated by the Republican establishment repeatedly taking their support for granted. They were wooed
during the election and promptly forgotten when it came time to govern. Many had concluded there wasn’t much difference between moderate Democrats and establishment Republicans on most issues, and that attitude had kept large num- bers of evangelical voters away from the polls for years. Trump appears to be anything but evangelical. Raised as a mainline Presby- terian, he rarely identified with Evangelicals. His marital failures and some of the business interests he has pursued weren’t the sort of things Christians were sup- posed to do. But what was the alternative? Hillary Clinton had been raised a Methodist but became radicalized during her college years at Wellesley and was an acolyte of the radical socialist Saul Alinsky. Over the decades she drifted even further to the left, not only politically but also socially. She became the number one supporter of Planned Parenthood, an advocate for late-term abortions,² and a proponent of same-sex marriage. She has never had a meaningful outreach to evangelical Christians and referred to conservatives as a “basket of deplorables.”³ Not only were her platform policies anathema to all but a few Evangelicals, but her history of corruption, the e-mail scandal that erupted over her private server, and the “pay for play” favoritism she had manipulated through the Clinton
Foundation while she served as secretary of state were enough to turn the stom- ach of anyone who believed in honesty and transparency in government. It seemed inconceivable that any evangelical Christian could overlook such a record, but many apparently did. CHRISTIAN NEVER-TRUMPERS The president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, Russell Moore, found himself in a costly spat when he called Donald Trump “an awful candidate” and said the Christians who sup- port him are guilty of serious error. “The religious Right,” he said, “turns out to be the people the religious Right warned us about.”⁴ In an October 9, 2016, Twit- ter post, Moore said, “The damage done to the gospel this year, by so-called Evangelicals, will take longer to recover from than the ’80s TV evangelist scandals.”⁵ Many in his denomination, however, took exception to Moore’s at- tacks. Rev. Bill Harrell, who helped organize the ERLC, said Moore had gone too far and was out of step with other Baptists. “Since Dr. Moore has taken over,” he said, “there are a lot of things that are being said on various issues that the
Southern Baptist people at large don’t agree with.” He added, “It’s developed into a very touchy situation, and it needs to be addressed in some way.”⁶ Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Baptist minister, expressed a similar view: “I am utterly stunned that Russell Moore is being paid by Southern Baptists to insult them.” Likewise, Christian talk-show host Janet Mefferd said Moore’s criticism of Trump supporters was unfair and ill-advised. “Most Evangel- icals that I’ve talked to,” she said, “became Trump voters late in the process. . . . I think Russell Moore has made the error of saying Evangelicals who supported Trump are selling out their principles.” Later, in response to his critics, Moore said he didn’t mean to criticize everyone who voted for Trump. “If that’s what you heard me say, that was not at all my intention, and I apologize.”⁷ Dr. Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, took his dissent to another level with an op-ed critical of Trump and his supporters in the Washington Post. Mohler called the Republican candidate an “immediate and excruciating crisis” and added, “I am among those who see evangelical support for Trump as a horrifying embarrassment—a price for possible political gain that is simply unthinkable and too high to pay.” Mohler
was quick to avoid Russell Moore’s mistake of questioning the ethics of fellow Baptists, however, and noted that many friends were Trump supporters. “The leaders I have in mind are principled men and women of Christian character and conviction,” he said. Nevertheless, he insisted, “They are wrong, I believe, to serve as apologists for Donald Trump.”⁸ In a similar vein Andy Crouch, former executive editor of Christianity Today, joined the opposition with a strong critique of Trump supporters, saying, “Enthu- siasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sa- cred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.”⁹ Popular author and columnist Beth Moore surprised a lot of Christians when she went on the attack shortly after the Access Hollywood tapes were revealed with a series of angry Twitter posts: “Wake up, Sleepers, to what women have dealt with all along in environments of gross entitlement & power. Are we sickened? Yes. Surprised? NO.”¹⁰ A short time later she tweeted: “I’m one among many
women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it.” ¹¹ As a victim of sexual abuse herself, she said she could not get past Trump’s vulgar language in the ten-year-old cell- phone video. Several writers and Trump supporters criticized Russell Moore and his fellow Never-Trumpers for driving voters into Hillary Clinton’s waiting arms, noting that Trump had come out strongly in defense of Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones, Gen- nifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, and other women who had been abused by Bill Clinton while he served in public office. Trump invited them to sit on the front row of his campaign appearances, while Hillary Clinton waged a bitter war against them and publicly defended her husband’s inexcusable behavior. In a well-reasoned response to all the rancor and bombast, former Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore pointed out the risks the Never-Trumpers were taking. In an article for the American Spectator he said, “One’s vote is a matter of personal conscience. But to actively support Hillary is to put the other team’s jer- sey on and then run a lap around the stadium.”¹² What made the Never-Trump position so dangerous, as any thinking person should know, was that a Hillary
Clinton presidency would be four more years of everything we hated about the Obama presidency. If that happened, the columnist said, “there won’t be a conservative movement left to rebuild. The Republicans will move to the left. Worse, for Obama to win effectively a third term will be a voter validation of all of the destructive policies of the last eight years.”¹³ Those who were saying Trump’s chances of winning were hopeless, he said, “are the same political geniuses who a year ago assured us that Trump could never win a primary (he won most of them), then that he couldn’t win 50 percent of the vote (he did), then that he couldn’t win 50 percent outside of New York (he did), then they said he couldn’t win a majority of the delegates (he did). . . . On every occasion the Trump haters were wrong.”¹⁴ Fortunately the vast majority of Evangelicals obviously ignored the warnings of the Never-Trump leaders—especially when respected evangelical leaders said they would stand by Trump even though they said they objected to what he said on the tapes. The voters understood the difference between the candidates and decided to give their votes and their support to Donald Trump. Even those who said they would have to close their eyes and hold their noses turned out when it
counted. I call them ABC voters: Anybody But Clinton. SETTING ASIDE DIFFERENCES Looking back, it was the willingness of Evangelicals, Charismatics, and pro-life Roman Catholics to make the commonsense choice that was the real difference in this election. According to the Pew Research Center, eight out of ten self- identified white born-again evangelical Christians said they voted for Trump, while just 16 percent voted for Clinton. This gave Trump a 65-percentage-point margin of victory among white born-again evangelical Christian voters. White Catholics supported Trump by a 23-percentage-point margin (60 percent to 37 percent).¹⁵ The critical element was that each of these communities decided to set aside their differences and disappointments to put Trump over the top. They weren’t going to elect a pastor. As Franklin Graham had suggested, they voted for the only candidate who wanted to make America great again, knowing that a win by Clinton would change America forever and would threaten religious liberty as we know it.
During the primaries some evangelical leaders eager for a standard bearer they could believe in were more likely to vote for “anybody but Trump.” But after Trump won the nomination, they took a closer look, listened to some of their col- leagues and fellow believers who had a broader view, and eventually came around to his message and joined the movement. Ironically it was a secret campaign to unite the movement behind one standard bearer that may have made it possible for Trump to prevail. According to the National Review, in early 2014 a group of about fifty evan- gelical leaders with significant numbers of followers and robust e-mail lists began meeting in various cities around the country to develop a united strategy. They planned to review the options and then take a vote of the members before the Iowa caucuses. If they reached a 75 percent supermajority about whom to sup- port, everyone would pledge to give his or her full support to the person the group had picked.¹⁶ As it turned out, they selected Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and the idea was that each member of the group would roll out his or her endorsement individually rather than issuing a collective statement. This, the group members felt, would
help create the perception that the evangelical Right stood solidly behind one candidate. With so many evangelical candidates in the race, they were concerned that splitting their votes could shatter the spirit of unity and allow a candidate they did not support, such as Jeb Bush, to run away with the nomination.¹⁷ But there were other concerns. To avoid the appearance of backroom dealing, all members of the group were sworn to secrecy. They didn’t want to give the group a name, as if they were members of a secret society, so they called them- selves “The Group.”¹⁸ But nothing in politics remains secret for long, and someone who was present leaked the deliberations of the group’s final meeting on December 7, 2015, in the boardroom of the Sheraton Hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Barely a week later Tim Alberta penned a detailed article for the National Review about The Group, describing the meeting and the fact that it took five ballots to get to the 75 percent supermajority required to bind the membership to support Senator Cruz.¹⁹ Alberta wrote that the group’s effort was “aimed at one thing: coalescing the conservative movement’s leaders behind a single presidential candidate in a show of strength and solidarity that would position them to defeat the
establishment-backed candidate in the head-to-head stage of the 2016 Republican primary.” Cruz was the heavy favorite coming into the December gathering, Al- berta wrote. “He had won each of the previous three straw polls and for two years had tirelessly courted the evangelical leaders who formed the group’s backbone.”²⁰ Whoever leaked the information to Alberta even included vote counts for var- ious candidates in the straw polls. At each meeting participants were asked to list their first, second, and third choices in the straw polls. A first-place vote was weighted with three points, second was two points, and third was one point. In only one ballot, taken in September 2015 at the Family Research Council’s Wash- ington, DC, headquarters, did Trump receive even a single vote. The final tally, the article reported, was Cruz, 48; Rubio, 39; Huckabee, 27; Jindal, 13; Carson, 12; Fio- rina, 7; and Rand Paul, 2. Jeb Bush and Donald Trump each received 5 votes. Other than that, Trump was not mentioned in the article. It was all about how Rubio was giving Cruz a run for his money in the evangelical endorsement sweepstakes.²¹
A WINNING STRATEGY
An unintended twist of providence was the outcome for Rubio supporters within the evangelical leadership. The National Review reported the leader of the Rubio faction was John Stemberger, a prominent Florida attorney who heads up the re- spected Florida Family Policy Council. Stemberger had been very close to Rubio since his days in the Florida state house and was a dedicated supporter.²² He did not endorse any candidate, but when Trump defeated Rubio in the Florida pri- mary, Rubio withdrew from the race, and Stemberger said during an interview that he would be voting for Trump.²³ By the time the race for the White House was under way and the alternatives were clear, many Evangelicals had come around to support the party’s nominee. Trump eventually won them over by convincing the Evangelicals he had their best interests at heart. And in his first hundred days in office he made good on many of his campaign promises, including confirming the most conservative Supreme Court justice in decades, signing an executive order to ease restrictions on polit- ical speech in churches under the Johnson Amendment, and authorizing the mili- tary to launch a series of devastating attacks on ISIS compounds in Syria and Iraq. And in a stunning operation he authorized dropping what was known as “the
mother of all bombs” (called MOAB) on a large ISIS compound in Afghanistan. Even before he decided to make his run for the White House, Trump under- stood that the evangelical Right was a powerful and growing voting bloc. His cre- dentials may have been slim by their standards, but he professed his faith openly and often, and he started on an accelerated learning curve by listening to the Christians he met through his business interests and others he knew only from their television ministries. He made several trips to Virginia Beach, for example, to speak with Pat Robertson, whose presidential campaign in 1988 has been cred- ited with awakening the evangelical political movement. Over a two-year period Trump made nine separate appearances on Robertson’s daily television broad- cast, The 700 Club, and in the process managed to earn Robertson’s endorse- ment. Early in his campaign Trump organized a group of Christian leaders who met with the candidate. This group was initially assembled by Paula White Cain and was made up mostly of Charismatics, including pastor Darrell Scott, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, and a few Evangelicals such as pastor Robert Jeffress, Jerry Fal- well Jr., Ralph Reed, Tim Clinton, and Mark Burns. Then in June 2016 the Faith
Advisory Board was officially launched and names were added such as Dr. James Dobson, Richard Land, James Robison, Baptist minister Ronnie Floyd, and megachurch pastors Jim Garlow, David Jeremiah, and Jack Graham, along with several others, including Michele Bachmann and Bishop Harry Jackson, repre- senting a wide range of social and ethnic communities. To assure the members of the board that he was actually listening to them, Trump met with them regularly and sought their advice on important issues. He had endeared himself to many Evangelicals when he said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, “At this moment I would like to thank the evangelical and religious community because, I’ll tell you what, the sup- port they have given me—and I’m not sure I totally deserve it—has been so amazing and has had such a big reason for me being here tonight . . . .They have much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits.”²⁴ Of course he needed their support, but showing a bit of humility and addressing evangelical concerns in this way was a wise move. On another occasion while meeting with a group of pastors, he said, “While you all were pursuing a higher calling I was running around building
buildings and making money,” implying that he respected their chosen profes- sion as much as his own.²⁵ For all the fuss made over the “evangelical community,” it’s only fair to point out that the evangelical movement was never just one monolithic group; it has al- ways had a wide variety of expressions. The term dates back to the time of Martin Luther and before, but it was not widely used in America until after World War II. After the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948, a group of 348 mostly mainline churches made up of conservative Protestants wanted to differ- entiate themselves from their more liberal counterparts. So they adopted the term evangelical to let everyone know they were born-again believers who teach the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) traces its origin to an April 1942 gathering of a group of 147 people in St. Louis who met in hopes of reshaping the direction of evangelical Christianity in America. Today the organization is less conservative than most of the groups that refer to themselves as Evangelicals. Evangelicals have been considered an important political force for many years, but before the 1970s evangelical involvement in politics seemed almost invisible.
Newsweek published a cover story that called 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” and in the fall of that year Jimmy Carter, a Baptist Sunday school teacher, was elected president. Suddenly the media were writing about these Bible-believing Christians, many of whom supported Carter as “one of them.” But as Carter’s lib- eral policies turned out to be a big disappointment, the evangelical community shifted its focus and rallied around a movie actor from California named Ronald Reagan. As Carter’s star was descending and Reagan’s was reaching its full ascent, evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson delivered a stirring talk at the Washington for Jesus rally in April 1980. That event put born-again Evangelicals on the polit- ical map in a big way and sent the message that simply being a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher was not all the evangelical community expected from its leaders. During that speech Robertson roared, “You have seen the great silent majority,” to a crowd of two hundred thousand on the Capitol Mall, and at that moment a movement was born.²⁶ Jerry Falwell Sr., who became the unquestioned spokesman for the “moral majority,” did not attend the rally that day, but he would soon become the poster boy of the religious Right. And the religious Right
ended up voting for Ronald Reagan. A MUCH-NEEDED AWAKENING Somewhat like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan was not immediately recognized as a believer. He had grown up a nominal Christian, but after leaving the Democratic Party, which had been his home for many years in Hollywood, he began his move to the right and began listening to Christian friends and advisers who schooled him on essential evangelical beliefs. Perhaps his most successful remark to a Christian audience came during a national affairs rally in Dallas attended by sev- eral well-known pastors. He began his remarks by saying, “Now I know this is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me, but I only brought that up because I want you to know that I endorse you and what you’re doing.”²⁷ At that moment Reagan won the hearts of Evangelicals everywhere. Reagan had been a Hollywood actor, he was divorced, he didn’t attend church often, and his wife, Nancy, was apparently into astrology in a big way. Yet Evan- gelicals did what they would eventually also do with Donald Trump thirty-six years later and adopted Reagan as one of their own. And one reason they did that
was because a substantial majority of believers understood the difference be- tween electing a Sunday school teacher and electing a politician who understood the political and spiritual dimensions of his high office. In Donald Trump’s case one of America’s most respected ministers warned that the nation had fallen too far into sin and only divine intervention could put us back on track. Addressing a huge crowd gathered outside the North Carolina state capitol, evangelist Franklin Graham said he had been traveling to all fifty states calling for a “Christian revolution,” asking believers in every city and town to pray for this nation as never before. Election Day was just two days away, and America’s future was hanging in the balance. “I am not telling anyone who to vote for,” he had warned earlier in an open letter to friends and followers. “God can do that. But God’s people have a responsibility to pray for the nation and to vote. The media want you to think the current presidential election is about personality—but it’s not. The biggest impact this election will have on our nation will involve whom the next president appoints to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court. This will affect the course of America for decades to come.”²⁸ On the night before the election Graham prayed for the country during a
Facebook Live event that was shared by an estimated 1.3 million people. Once again he called for a Christian revolution and urged every participant to vote. In the 2012 election he said twenty million to thirty million Christians stayed home, and that made the critical difference. “We can’t let this happen again,” he said. “The future of our nation is riding on this election: religious freedom, the Supreme Court, protecting the unborn and our families, and so much more. The Christian voice needs to be heard on November 8.”²⁹ Other Evangelicals, such as Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association, without endorsing Trump let Evangelicals know that it absolutely mattered who our president would be. If men and women with no fear of God are allowed to rule over us, our very way of life will be at stake. The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion will be at stake. “It is silly to underestimate the power of the executive branch of government,” Wildmon said. “Secular progressives are on the warpath against Christianity, and they will con- tinue to come after us in many ways, should they win the White House. Yes, God cares about these things. America has been a beacon of light for the world in so many ways based on her Christian heritage.”³⁰
Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson, who now hosts the daily Fam- ily Talk radio broadcasts, has urged Evangelicals to follow the path spelled out in 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says, “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” That Old Testament promise has been adopted by Christians all over the world because it outlines a clear prescription for national renewal. In an article published in Charisma magazine a month before the election, Dob- son told one of our editors, “If we do as instructed, then our gracious Lord will respond with three blessings. He promises to hear from heaven, to forgive our sins, and to heal our land. That is one of the most precious promises in all of Scripture. It’s not too late for America. What we need is a revival that will sweep the nation, as it did in the First and Second Great Awakenings. That is the hope of our nation.”³¹ On his Family Talk radio program Dobson spoke about his trip to Trump Tower in New York on June 21, 2016, when he and a group of a thousand Chris- tian leaders met with the candidate to learn more about his religious beliefs.
During the Q&A session Dobson posed a question to the candidate referring to the Christian faith of the founders of our country and the Christian principles contained in America’s founding documents. Then he asked Trump how he would defend America’s religious liberties if he were elected president. At that point, and also during a smaller, more intimate setting, the candidate assured the leaders of his firm support for religious liberty and his plans not only to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices but also to eliminate the punitive Johnson Amendment and to be a defender of Christian values. At the end of the evening Dobson was asked for his candid reactions, and he said, “Only the Lord knows the condition of a person’s heart. I can only tell you what I’ve heard. First, Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit. I also hear that Paula White has known Trump for years and that she personally led him to Christ. Do I know that for sure? No. Do I know the details of that alleged con- version? I can’t say that I do. But there are many Christian leaders who are serving on a faith advisory committee for Trump in the future. I am among them. . . . How will that play out if Trump becomes president? I don’t know. It is a good start, I would think.”³²
Then Dobson added, “If anything, this man is a baby Christian who doesn’t have a clue about how believers think, talk, and act. All I can tell you is that we have only two choices, Hillary or Donald. Hillary scares me to death. And if Chris- tians stay home because he isn’t a better candidate, Hillary will run the world for perhaps eight years. The very thought of that haunts my nights and days. One thing is sure: we need to be in prayer for our nation at this time of crisis.”³³ Later, in his official endorsement, Dobson said, “I am endorsing Donald J. Trump not only because of my apprehensions about Hillary Clinton and the dam- age she would inflict on this great country. I am also supporting Mr. Trump be- cause I believe he is the most capable candidate to lead the United States of America in this complicated hour.”³⁴ Evangelical influence in our culture often seems insignificant. The media rarely report on Christian issues except to mock outspoken believers or to accuse oppo- nents of abortion and same-sex marriage of bigotry. But a momentum has started among conservative Evangelicals, and the Trump presidency has given renewed strength and support to a growing Christian resistance movement. The struggle no longer consists of Republican versus Democrat, Left versus Right, or
conservative versus socialist, but as I will explore later, an even more critical and widely recognized area of conflict, nationalism versus globalism. For the past three to four decades the religious Right has been defined by its beliefs concerning “abortion, family, and marriage,” and for most of that time the Republican establishment used our limited political position to manipulate Evan- gelicals, whom they viewed as a useful but troublesome voting bloc. But the momentum that brought record numbers of Evangelicals to the polls in 2016 has introduced a new paradigm that includes a new battle plan with a new narrative. Life and family issues are still very important, and ministries devoted to those causes will continue to wield influence in national affairs, but evangelical resis- tance to the trendy but toxic globalist agenda has become an even greater area of focus for many believers. Tom Ertl, a businessman and Presbyterian layman from Tallahassee, Florida, has served as national media coordinator for Christians for Trump and has been an observer of Christian political action groups for decades. His concern, as he told me in a number of conversations, is that Christian leaders have tried to en- gage in the political arena without a fully developed worldview and epistemology,
a fancy word that means “the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.”³⁵ “Their worldview,” Ertl says, “has been an odd mixture of a little Bible, general conservative thought, American traditions, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News sound bites.” This limited worldview has resulted in the inability of the Christian Right to advance a Christian position in the political and cultural spheres. For Christians the Bible has always been our source of knowledge. It embodies God’s tran- scendent revealed Word, offering real and practical solutions to all the issues of politics and culture. But when Christian leaders attempt to blend biblical prin- ciples with sources outside Scripture, it almost always ends in a compromised and ineffective Christian position. If the Christian Right ever expects to be effective in helping to shape and trans- form the culture, Ertl told me, our leaders must be equipped with the proper intel- lectual tools to do battle against those forces that oppose our beliefs and are working day and night to transform this once Christian country, which was found- ed on the Word of God, into a secular state and a culture we will no longer recog- nize. That means Christians will need a comprehensive biblical worldview. It’s
critical, Ertl says, that Christian activists have the knowledge, tools, and political perspective to do intellectual battle and not simply engage in ideological gymnas- tics. And that only comes from a thorough understanding and application of the Word of God. Ultimately, I believe, leaders such as Franklin Graham, James Dobson, and oth- ers have been making this argument for years. If Evangelicals are to be a force for good, they must first be a force for God. And that means they must use their God-given reason and understanding to know how to use their rapidly growing influence in the marketplace of ideas. In 2016 Evangelicals managed to come to- gether in sufficient numbers to put a “baby Christian” (to use Dobson’s expres- sion) in the White House. If they can continue praying and working in unity, who knows what could happen next?