What makes Donald Trump and John Wayne heroes of the Christian Right?

 

Faith leaders pray with President Donald Trump during a rally for evangelical supporters in Miami in January 2020. AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

The big idea

White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted “family values” could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as “a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy.” Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.

But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trump’s leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.

As I show in my book “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.

Believing that the feminist rejection of “macho” masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend “Christian America” on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.

Actor John Wayne. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Culture has played a critical role in shaping and sustaining this rugged vision of Christian manhood. In fashioning their masculine ideal, evangelicals have drawn liberally on Hollywood heroes – on mythologized warriors like Mel Gibson’s William Wallace in the movie “Braveheart” and on the heroic cowboys and soldiers played by John Wayne.

Reflecting the onscreen heroism portrayed by men like Gibson and Wayne, this masculine ideal condoned violence in the pursuit of righteousness and justified a vigorous, even ruthless assertion of power.

Why it matters

In 2016, exit polls revealed that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, a number higher than any other religious demographic.

I argue that the language evangelicals used to defend their support for Trump suggests that they were not betraying their values, rather that Trump embodied well the rugged and even ruthless ideal of evangelical masculinity.

“I want the meanest, toughest son of a you-know-what I can find,” explained Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas. In their book “The Faith of Donald J. Trump,” Trump’s evangelical biographers David Brody and Scott Lamb concurred: Trump would “protect Christianity”; he would be their “ultimate fighting champion.”

With his poll numbers flagging, maintaining white evangelical support is critical to the president’s reelection efforts.

That support is likely to hinge not on his presumed morality or Christian virtue, but rather on his ability to project rugged strength and masculine power.

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How I do my work

As a historian, I approach evangelicalism not as a set of abstract theological beliefs, but rather as a historical and cultural movement.

In order to understand American evangelicalism, I surveyed popular evangelical teachings on masculinity, sexuality and family values as revealed not only through sermons but also through Christian radio, film and the Christian publishing industry.

Collectively, books on Christian manhood have millions of copies, sending the message of an aggressive, testosterone-driven ideal of Christian manhood and affirming the new evangelical identity.

What still isn’t known

The relationship between evangelical consumerism and formal religious authorities is a fruitful area for further research. More work, too, can be done to explore how conflicting ideas of Christian manhood coexist within white evangelical communities and how conceptions of Christian masculinity vary across racial divides.

What’s next

I am beginning work on a project that is in many ways a counterpoint to Jesus and John Wayne, tracing the cultural and political ramifications of evolving ideals of white Christian womanhood.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Professor of History, Calvin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

America's inflection point: four key things Africa must watch for

 

EFE-EPA/Jessica Koscielniak / pool

African scholars and policymakers face a tough challenge in analysing how the US presidential election on 3 November might affect Africa-US relations.

This is because of the extreme polarisation of politics that has been growing for decades in the US. Simultaneous national crises have made matters worse. These suddenly erupted over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, its impact on the economy, and fresh evidence of white racism towards black Americans.

In deeply divided America, four clusters of political political conflicts arise over issues of national identity, sustainable democracy, international relations and electoral integrity. Crises in public health, the economy and race relations are adding to these conflicts.

African countries struggle with similar political issues – though in very different local circumstances. They are also afflicted by the global COVID-19 pandemic and economic crises.

These four unresolved and contentious clusters of political issues have confronted the US since it declared independence from Britain in 1776 and created a federal state in 1789. In 2020 many crucial issues have yet to be resolved.

Republican President Donald Trump and his deputy Mike Pence campaign for an ethnic nationalist identity. Their appeal is to white Christian racial supremacists. They also advocate a nationalist and unilateral foreign policy. They back Republican efforts to limit equal voting rights. And they threaten other actions to subvert electoral integrity.

Their Democratic challengers Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris have very different goals. They are campaigning for an America that is more inclusive and equitable. A similar aspiration is enshrined in South Africa’s constitution: to become a country that belongs to all who live in it, united in its diversity.

American inflection point

Harris describes the 2020 election as an “inflection point”. She means a turning point in America’s long curve towards or away from democratic development. It is a nod to an adage attributed to Martin Luther King, and popularised by former President Barack Obama, that:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

This theme threads through the Democratic Platform, with specific promises. Biden and Harris now appear likely to be elected. It’s therefore important to consider what their positions mean for Africa-US relations.

Trump, by contrast, repeats his promise of 2016 to restore America’s “greatness”. His Republican Party doesn’t even offer a new list of goals and programmes for the next four years. Instead, the party republished its 2016 platform with a covering memo praising the leadership of Donald Trump. This leaves voters and foreign governments with little new to analyse.

For those trying to calculate the effects on African nations of an American inflection point, there are four areas to consider:

National identity

White supremacy has been the predominant national identity since America was colonised in the 17th century. Now, with ethnic diversity accelerating, exemplified by the election of a black president in 2008, Trump has stoked a backlash. Deprived of any claim to a strong economy as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, he is reduced to running again as an ethnic nationalist – akin to a “tribalist” in Africa.

In today’s America there are limits to blatant appeals to racial prejudice.

Trump absurdly claims to have done more for African-Americans than any president since Abraham Lincoln. But there are also political limits to how far Biden can go in embracing progressive calls for more rapid and complete integration.

The structural racism cited by the Black Lives Matter movement persists among liberals. But it does so as an implicit “racial contract” sustaining white privilege in access to housing, health care, education and employment. These are familiar issues in African countries, where a white tribal faction has historically dominated.

Sustainable democracy

In accepting the Democratic Party nomination, Biden focused on issues of character and leadership. He had Obama make the case for sustainable democracy and democratic inclusion. Obama pointedly referenced democracy 18 times in an address that reprised themes Africans heard in his 2018 Mandela Lecture in South Africa.

Presidential hopeful Joe Biden addresses the Democratic National Convention. EFE-EPA/DNCC

Trump, by contrast, did not reference democracy once in his unusually long 70-minute address accepting his party’s nomination for a second term.

Obama’s warnings to Americans that Trump threatens the integrity and sustainability of democratic institutions has a familiar ring. In his 2009 address to the Ghanaian parliament, he said:

Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.

Trump, along with his family, cronies and party enablers, appears to have achieved sufficient “state capture” to bring the US to a negative inflection point, as I predicted in 2018 (Chapter 10).

International relations

Of more immediate and practical concern to African nations is whether Trump’s nationalist unilateralism will continue to dominate US foreign policy. Or will there be a turn towards the multilateralism that Biden pledges to pursue? This includes:

• restoring US funding and engagement in the World Health Organisation,

• support for climate change mitigation,

• immigration reform, and

• support for collective security efforts to help Africans implement their commitments to ending armed conflicts.

African scholars also warn of a growing US-China “Cold War” under Trump. This would be detrimental to Africa.

Former US national security advisor and UN ambassador Susan Rice has called for an early summit with South Africa’s president and current African Union chair, Cyril Ramaphosa, should Biden be elected. Similarly, former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Johnnie Carson, envisions a deepening of African-American partnerships under a Biden administration.

Electoral integrity

The threat to American democracy most familiar to Africans is an incumbent’s subversion of electoral integrity. Trump has repeatedly indicated his readiness to do something similar.

African electoral violence specialist Michelle Small has noted the need to compare Trump’s responses to racial protests with efforts to retain power by extra-constitutional means. All members of the African Union, despite democratic setbacks, are still obliged to hold periodic national elections, accessible to external observers.

Well documented interference in the 2016 and 2020 US elections by the Russian government, favouring Trump, may also portend similar risks of foreign manipulation of African elections.

What to expect

For African scholars and policymakers seeking to advance their national and regional interests in dealings with the US, the 59th presidential inauguration will also be an inflection point.

Should Trump prevail, there is unlikely to be any discernible change in his behaviour of the past four years. Occasional private disparagement of African nations and leaders will most likely continue.

There will be continued disengagement from initiatives of concern to Africans in public health, the environment, trade and other areas. His actions towards Africa, as in other areas, lack strategy. But he could still win.

Despite presidential neglect, programmes in public health, trade agriculture, health, education and young leaders launched by Trump’s predecessors would likely continue with bi-partisan Congressional support.

A Biden win offers a much richer field for contingency planning, although resources will be very constrained and attention will be overwhelmingly domestic.

That said, Biden would enter office owing a huge political debt to the support of African Americans. His ticket indicates receptiveness to honouring it, including immigration and other reforms affecting the African diaspora as well as expanding US-Africa partnerships. Planning to take advantage of those contingencies should be a priority in Africa.

John J Stremlau, Honorary Professor of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Why South African opposition's policy on racial inequality is out of sync with reality

 

The Democratic Alliance wants an end to race-based affirmative action policies. EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook

Claiming, as South Africa’s official opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA) does, that policy must ignore race in South Africa, is like insisting that economic inequality should have been ignored in nineteenth century Europe.

The party resolved at a recent policy conference to oppose policy that uses race and gender as a criterion. This aims to set it apart from the governing African National Congress, which endorses affirmative action as a means of addressing the inequities created by centuries of minority white rule.

Although this decision must still be ratified by the federal congress, its highest decision-making body, it is sure to become DA policy. When it does, it will settle, for the moment, an internal argument between supporters of this view and those in the DA who want it to accept that race is a measure of disadvantage.

Those within the DA who reject racial redress are overwhelmingly white; those who support it are almost all black (although a black DA official has been the public face of the “colour blind” policy). The references to gender seem to be an afterthought since this was never a source of division within the DA.

As in other countries with a history of racial domination such as the United States, positions on whether race-based redress makes sense are a product not of academic analysis but where people are in society. Whites have been challenging race-based redress in the US for decades because it signifies that they continue to benefit unfairly at the expense of blacks. Black attitudes in the US to racial redress are a subject of debate.

In South Africa, most whites react in much the same way as American whites. Just about all politically active black people believe that prejudice continues to disadvantage them and that racial redress is essential.

Why race still matters

But the fact that many people believe something to be true does not mean it is.

The DA resolution says that

(each) individual is unique and not a racial or gender envoy… Individuals, when free to make their own decisions, will not be represented in any and every organisation, sector, company or level of management according to a predetermined proportion.

Translated, that means no-one should be given a post or an advantage because of their race. Isn’t that a reasonable position in a society which rejects race discrimination?

No, it isn’t. The claim that each individual is “unique and not a racial or gender envoy” bears no resemblance to the reality in which people live. Each black person and woman may be an individual but, because they are black and women, they face obstacles which whites and men don’t.

White people are not considered unqualified for tasks unless they prove themselves (and sometimes even then). Men are not constantly faulted for their emotions, accused of being aggressive when they stand up for themselves and submissive when they don’t. Nor are men subjected to violence simply because they are male. So, we are not “envoys” (whatever that means) for our race or gender, but our experiences are shaped by them.

We are all individuals in theory but, in practice, when one group has occupied all the top positions in business and the professions for more than a century, people assume that only that group has the abilities those positions need. And so “merit” becomes another word for belonging to the dominant group.

If race or gender are ignored, the people who decide who is appointed are likely to assume that only people like them have “merit”. And so, the individuals appointed to top positions will almost always be those who look like the person making the appointments. “Not seeing colour” would be to see only one colour, that of the group in charge.

Racism in sports

Those who hold this view often claim businesses will always appoint on “merit” because they need to hire the best person to make profits. But who decides who the best person is? People are not calculators and their understanding of who is good at a task is shaped by the biases mentioned here. That favourite South African pastime, sport, provides evidence.

Makhaya Ntini, who became one of South Africa’s most successful cricketers, would never have played for the country if one of the game’s administrators had not thought it politic to instruct the selectors to choose him.

Cricket is a useful indicator because personal averages are recorded measuring each player’s performance. In the early years of officially “non-racial” cricket, black players were often passed over for whites whose averages were lower. If selectors were not told to take colour into account, no black person may have played cricket for South Africa.

Opponents of race- or gender-based policies often like to claim that they divert attention from poverty and economic inequality: they may make the problem worse by giving opportunities to well-off people only. If help goes to people who live in poverty, whatever their race or gender, those who really need it will get it and the fat cats won’t be rewarded because they are black or female.

This view scrambles together two issues which are related but not the same: racial barriers and poverty. Racial barriers affect middle-class people. It is they who compete for university places, or professional and business jobs. And so, the poor do not benefit from them. But, unless you want to end all inequality (which few if any opponents of race- or gender-based policy do), they only benefit at the expense of people living in poverty if they receive benefits which would otherwise go to a poor person.

‘Colour blind’ myth

Those who know South African realities will find it weird to imagine “colour blind” policies opening up university places to people too poor to afford the better schools and business and professional opportunities to people who could not afford to go to university.

Of course, it could be argued that race- and gender-based policies disadvantage the poor because the best people will not be appointed to the posts in government, the professions and management on which they rely for service. But that is only true if the best people would be appointed if there no race and gender criteria, which, we have already shown, they would not.

In effect, this claim implies that appointing blacks and women lowers standards and so it becomes another way of saying that black people and women are not up to the job.

So, “colour blind” policies (and their gender equivalents) would not usher in non-racialism, which means that each human being is judged on their ability alone.

They would retard it by ensuring that those who dominated in the past will remain on top. The DA’s policy proposal is not blind to race. It is blind to racism.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.