Billy Graham learned fairly early on in his remarkable life that it was a mistake to drag religion into partisan politics. It was ironic, then, that a few days after Graham’s death, a man named David Brody had a column in the NYT that essentially said that Trump, regardless of his personal weaknesses, was the evangelical movement’s best friend, because he delivered consistently on the “macro” level.
Evangelical Christianity, at this rate, is becoming the white nationalist wing of the GOP at prayer. That has two impacts, both extremely negative, on our country. From a political perspective, it means that the left is viewed not just as misguided, but as the devil’s spawn, which makes compromise and bipartisanship much more difficult. On the religious side, the association with Trump is bound to accelerate the decline of Christianity in this country, particularly with younger people.
With his fixation on “macro” issues for Christians, Brody is basically saying that Christians aren’t out to save souls; they’re just another right-wing interest group, like the NRA and the Chamber of Commerce, protecting their own endangered sphere and imposing their views on the rest of us by force. They will pay for it in the end, and, in all likelihood, so will we.