Evangelical Support for Trump as a Moral Project: Description and Critique | January Issue
The January issue of the Forum features David Barr’s (University of Chicago) essay, “Evangelical Support for Trump as a Moral Project: Description and Critique.” The rise of Donald J. Trump to the presidency has caused a crisis of misunderstanding in American politics. From the perspective of his critics, his ethos, rhetoric, and politics are so self-evidently evil, they cannot imagine how anyone could support him from anything other than depravity or ignorance. This essay makes the case that there is a deeper meaning beyond this apparently obvious one, and realistic political analysis requires that we recognize it. Barr argues that many American evangelical Christians support President Trump as an expression of a positive moral vision for American government and society. Drawing on the work of political scientist Benjamin Lynerd, Barr shows the deep roots of the affinity for Trumpism found in the political theology of American evangelicalism. Those affinities explained, it concludes with a turn to the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr and current research in the sociology of religion to show the errors and perils that result in and from it.
In the coming weeks, we will publish scholarly responses to Barr’s essay. We invite you to join the conversation by submitting your comments and questions.
Posted Essays:
- David Barr (University of Chicago), Evangelical Support for Trump as a Moral Project: Description and Critique
- Benjamin Lynerd (Christopher Newport University), On Political Theology and Religious Nationalism | a response
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Image: Donald Trump bows his head during a prayer while surrounded by Vice President Mike Pence, right, faith leaders and evangelical ministers after signing a proclamation declaring a day of prayer in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Sept. 1, 2017. Trump declared Sunday, September 3 a national day of prayer for Hurricane Harvey victims. (Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg via Getty Images)
David Barr is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on Christian social and political ethics, especially environmental issues. His dissertation draws on the work of Reinhold Niebuhr to offer a Christian realist environmental ethics. David blogs about religion and political discourse on forthesakeofarguments.com.
Benjamin Lynerd is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Lynerd’s book, Republican Theology: The Civil Religion of AmericanEvangelicals, offers an historical and theological account of the hybrid position evangelicals have long affected to hold in American culture—as champions of individual liberty and as guardians of American morality. Republican Theology traces the contentious political journey of evangelicals from its earliest moments, laying bare the conceptual tensions built into their civil religion. His forthcoming work is on democratic theory and discourse ethics.
The Martin Marty Center's Religion & Culture Forum is an online forum for thought-provoking discussion on the relationship of scholarship in religion to culture and public life. Each month the Marty Center, the research arm of the University of Chicago Divinity School, invites a scholar of religion to comment on his or her own research in a way that "opens out" to themes, problems, and events in world cultures and contemporary life. Scholars from diverse fields of study are invited to offer responses to these commentaries.
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The Religion & Culture Forum is edited by Joel A. Brown, Divinity School PhD student in Religions in America. Emily D. Crews, Divinity School PhD candidate in the History of Religions, was the previous editor.

