How the Corruption of Evangelical Christianity was Predicted by Christian Poetry
This issue of how so many Christian organizations ended up backing Donald Trump, a man who embodies none of their values, is generally examined as a political question. But it can also usefully be seen as a theological one — one which was actually predicted and warned against 350 years ago by Protestantism’s greatest poet, John Milton.
We can argue over what Trump he may be in the political realm — but in a Christian context, there is no question that he is best understood as a Miltonian Satan.
From a secular standpoint, this is not as big an insult as it seems. Milton’s Satan is one of the most compelling characters in all of literature. A personality who is so charismatic that many religious thinkers have been concerned that the epic poem makes Satan too appealing, and heaven too dull.
But that’s the point: the devil was charismatic enough to lead angels in a rebellion against God, and tempt Adam and Eve out of paradise. It doesn’t do any good to call Satan stupid, or arrogant, or incompetent — none of those names change the fundamental fact that the great enemy of God is an electric, charismatic personality, that incites the base passions of even the holy. Say whatever ever else you want to about him, but he is a figure from whom you cannot look away. He was a master of an “attention economy” that makes everything it touches infernal.
The resemblances continue. Both Trump and Milton’s Satan believe they are self-created, against all reason. “Who saw when this Creation was?” Satan asks the angels. “Remember’st thou thy making while the Maker gave the being? We know no time when we were not as now, know none before us, self-begot, self-raised by our own quickening power …”
This is nonsense, of course. Everybody, including the angels, knows God created the angels. Just as everybody knows that Donald Trump got where he is today because he inherited his father’s wealth and business. It’s obvious. But instead of acknowledging this fact, Trump insists against all reason that he is a self-made man, just as Satan argues that the angels are self-created.
What does it matter? It matters because if you were created, you owe somebody something. There are obligations you have to repay, there is something above you. Milton’s Satan denies it. It is his first fundamental sin. Miltonian Trump does too. He owes no one anything.
Milton’s Satan resented humanity, saying that the angels — holier and better — should not serve mankind, even if it was God’s wish. Satan prized vengeance, and anger. He cared nothing for mercy, and he would neither forgive nor allow himself to be forgiven. He would rather poison the earth than lose control of it.
The parallels, once you start down this path, are obvious.
But the point isn’t that Milton’s Satan is bad and evil: the point is that he is compelling. That far from being easy for Christians to resist, he is able to convince the angels themselves to rebel against God; that he is able to talk Adam and Eve into betraying God and losing paradise. Far from thinking it was impossible for a creature as wicked as Satan to gain influence over the holy, Milton’s entire work was a warning to Christians that they are vulnerable to this temptation.
The movement of Christianity towards Trump, in other words, is not a new or unexpected thing — it is exactly the temptation that Christianity has been warning the faithful against throughout its history. The fight against this temptation is basic to Christianity’s notion of evil … as is the understanding that you can lose. That no matter how high and holy and powerful you are, you can be tempted away. We are all at risk of finding Satan so compelling that we lose sight of God’s way. And it’s not that Christians are especially vulnerable to this appeal — but that they have pledged themselves to stand for something higher.
Or at least they had, until recently. Over the last few decades, mainstream Christianity has gotten awfully sick of that cross it was supposed to lug around.
Reading accounts of of 2017’s CPAC, we see what the temptation Milton warned against in poetry look like in real life.
From the New York Times:
“We got a Republican president! Maybe we should quit acting like victims, and be tickled pink it’s not Hillary Clinton,” said DeAnn Irby, a Never Trump voter from Texas. Ms. Irby’s friend Lauren Harger of Manhattan Beach, Calif., agreed, adding that conservatives repelled by Mr. Trump should ask themselves, “Why are you content to be losers?”
The same could be asked about Jesus Christ.
The essence of Christianity, after all, the most fundamental fact without which it means nothing, is that Christ died for the sins of mankind. He let himself be crucified.
For all that he had the power to defeat Pontius Pilot and the Emperor of Rome (much in the way God had with the Pharaoh in Egypt), Christ remained Holy rather than sinking the to level of the world.
And so, in that moment, he lost. Pontius Pilot won. Judas got paid off. And if you admire strength over fundamental values, worldly success over a holy truth, then you are surely a follower of Pontius Pilot, and not Jesus Christ.
For the answer to the questions raised at CPAC are easily found in Scripture: what does it profit a man to gain the world if he loses his own soul?
If your enemy strikes you, offer him your other cheek.
This is not easy — it runs counter to human nature — which is why to embrace it is the act of picking up your own cross. If you’re not willing to let the world crucify you for your principles, then what are you doing except holding out for 30 pieces of silver?
To sacrifice principles for power is how the world is broken. To sacrifice power for principles is how the world is redeemed. Apparently it’s still a work in progress. Milton warned us about that, but modern evangelicals aren’t listening.
