At the Summer 2019 National Conservatism Conference, Yoram Hazony framed definitions of national identity with theology. “You throw out Christianity, you throw out the Torah, you throw out God, and within two generations people can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman,” he said. “They can’t tell the difference between a foreigner and a citizen, they can’t tell the difference between this side of the border and the other side of the border.”
If you look at evangelical critics of President Trump and his administration’s immigration policies, you know that Hazony’s assertion stumbles over theists—Christians, even—who are reluctant to draw a distinction between American citizens and Central Americans seeking a home in the United States. Some of this reluctance is based on heartfelt opposition to a crass and narcissistic president. But it also reflects a basic evangelical tendency. Ever since the eighteenth-century awakenings that George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards made famous, the personal holiness that is supposed to accompany genuine conversion has posed a large obstacle to moral compromise. As much as moralism has afflicted religious politics in the United States, evangelicals suffer from a strain of prissiness that outdistances most other believers who make America their home.
Recent books by John Fea and Peter Wehner display this evangelical idealism. They are remarkably useful for understanding how broad swaths of American Protestants assess not simply the presidency of Donald Trump but the history and character of the United States. Both authors are laymen in evangelical churches and have no professional standing as church officials. But both writers are also experts in professions that encourage members to make judgments about American politics and society. Fea teaches U.S. history at Messiah College, an evangelical liberal arts school in central Pennsylvania, and Wehner has been a staffer in three Republican presidential administrations and is now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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