Guest Blog by Rev Dr Rollin Grams.
[Dr Grams is deputy head of the PhD programme, Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life. He was formerly Associate Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, USA. The author of numerous articles, he also co-authored with S Donald Fortson Unchanging Witness: The Consistent Christian Teaching on Homosexuality in Scripture and Tradition. His online blog Bible and Mission can be accessed at www.bibleandmission.blogspot.com]
Many American orthodox, Evangelical Christians saw their hopes realised on 20th January, 2025 when Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States of America. According to George Barna, Director of Research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, persons identifying as Christian voted 56% for Trump. While Catholics voted for Trump 51% of the time, Protestants did 60% of the time, both Evangelical church attenders and white, ‘theologically defined born-again Christians’ each voted 64% for him, and Pentecostal church attenders voted 74% for him. Barna wrote,
… among self-identified Christians, President Trump won a 56% share of their vote. And because Christians represented 72% of the voters who turned out, their support for the re-elected Republican made the difference in the race.[i]
While Barna’s statistically supported survey provides much rich data to scrutinize, such as how Christians voted on the issues, the following report is my own perspective on the 2024 election.
Many Christians eagerly awaited the end of the Obama-Biden era of Democrat ascendency since 2008. They saw it as an increasingly postmodern and post-Christian government. Progressive Evangelical elites and institutions often joined the West’s cultural elites over so-called ‘social justice’ matters represented by Democrats, but the average Evangelical and Pentecostal seems to view the Democrats’ rule as an oppressive, big government, Orwellian social Marxism that opposed Christianity every step of the way. The glimmer of light that Trump offered in his first term of office in 2016-2020 was darkened by numerous, typically lying, campaigns to undermine him, including at times from his own Republican Party. Nobody knows what the next four years will bring in a very turbulent world, but Christians have some reason to hope now because the government has returned to common sense.
Seventy years ago, the Democrat Party was a labour party that largely appealed to the white working class and opposed big business. The South, often approving of racial inequality, was solidly Democrat and had been so since before the Civil War. Today, the South is solidly Republican. Thanks to Trump, Republicans have turned from being the party of big business and the status quo to being a populist movement that represents the labour, middle class, calls for fairness and equality under the law, and argues for ‘common sense’. They defend nature, truth, liberty, equality, small government, and capitalism over against the Democrats’ gender diversity, personal ‘truth’, controlled speech, equity (an imbalance of justice due to social inequality), a nanny state big government, and socialism.
As Western culture moved from modernist assumptions to postmodernist assumptions, the Democrat Party carried their agenda further and further. Enlightenment Modernity was both anti-faith and accepting of faith as a private matter. It believed in universal, scientifically defensible, objective truth. Christians could live, somewhat uncomfortably, in this world. Postmodernity briefly accepted faith as legitimate alongside other presuppositions that championed subjective presuppositions and constructed, functionally satisfying, personal ‘truths’. As it hardened in the Obama era into a postmodern, Western tribalism, it especially rejected Christianity as one of the West’s institutions through which social Marxism was now advancing.
Issues of marriage and sexuality have particularly become the litmus test by which Republicans and Democrats have identified themselves. However, it is just on these issues that Christians define themselves over against both parties. The ‘abortion at any stage of pregnancy’ Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 came to be owned by the Democrats over the next decade as a feminist and Party issue. The ‘pill’ and abortion secured ‘free sex’ and ‘a woman’s choice’ in American culture. A further undermining of marriage unfolded from 1969 to 2010 as state after state legalized no-fault divorce.
A homosexual liberation movement began with the Stonewall riots in 1969. Arguments supportive of marriage, the life of the unborn, and biological sex lost support, being undone in a postmodern culture accepting constructed reality and free (rather than moral) choice. As the serpent in the Garden of Eden had challenged God’s definition of right and wrong by offering humans their right to become like God in choosing their own right and wrong, so now the West rejected divine authority and nature. With AIDS in the news in the 1980s, homosexuality increasingly came ‘out of the closet’ into the daylight of American culture, aided further by postmodernity’s rejection of natural law and acceptance of constructed genders. Homosexual marriage was recognised by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. The small minority of those living ‘against nature’ (a term used in antiquity for non-heterosexuals—cf. Romans 1.26-27) soon defined American culture. Transgenderism was normalized by the Girl Scouts in the 2010s, which illustrates the hold that unnatural Gender Theory took in USA in institutions reserved for women. Males identifying as women began competing in women’s sports. Democrats, like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson in 2022, could not even offer a definition for a ‘woman’ when asked.
The election of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in both houses of Congress means a rejection of postmodernity and an acceptance of natural law. This does not mean a specifically Christian form of governance or culture. However, as Paul could agree with much of Stoicism about what is ‘according to nature’ and what is ‘against nature’, so can Deists and those of various faiths agree with Christians about what is natural and what is not. As Trump declared at his inauguration, there are only two sexes, male and female.
The inclusion of a rabbi in prayers during the inauguration and prayers offered simply to ‘God’ but not in the name of Jesus Christ or to the ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ are generic, religious prayers. While Franklin Graham and Rev. Lorenzo Sewell prayed in Jesus’ name, others did not. Trump’s religion appears to be more Deist than Christian. He does not represent Christians in sexual ethics or marriage. He may be on a faith journey, but we can at least say that he has accepted outspoken Christians like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth into his government. Biden’s government lacked Christians, and he himself made a mockery of Catholicism (as did Nancy Pelosi).
At the outset of this new government, Christians are especially delighted that God is not rejected and His creation is accepted in regard to sex, marriage, and the value of human life created in the image of God. By contrast, the Democrat Party does not recognize male and female as the only genders fixed at birth. It is the party that kills babies and calls it ‘women’s health’. It is the party that claims to save the environment but whose policies have destroyed cities. It is the party that elected a demented, old man as president and pretended he was clever and wise (helped by the legacy media). It is the party that let buildings burn and thieves steal on the grounds that ‘black lives matter’. It is the party that opposed law and order, defunded the police, weaponized government against citizens, and turned cities into havens for criminals, calling them ‘sanctuary cities’. It is the party that erased borders for waves of illegal migrants over their own citizens instead of pursuing legal, regulated immigration and integration. It is the party that prosecuted parents and helped confused children hide their sexual dysphoria from their parents. It is the party that considered Catholics terrorist suspects. It is the party that claimed to protect women’s rights and then let internally disordered males into their private spaces. It is the party that increasingly exercised state power over its citizens during the Covid epidemic. It locked down their citizens and masked their children to protect them from a virus they did not understand and denied obvious evidence that it came from gain of function research in China. It put persons with Covid into nursing homes where the elderly died in great numbers. It is the party that relentlessly prosecuted a president and a supreme court justice nominee on falsified and absurd charges while claiming everyone has their own truth. It is a party that rewrites history through a Marxist lens. It is the party that first sends millions of dollars to Iran and then promotes worldwide antisemitism after terrorists kill Jewish civilians in their own country. It is a party that despises white men, Christians, and heterosexuals while promoting everything else to establish ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’. It is a party that thinks diversity is a social value above unity, integration, and merit. It is the party that one day claims to protect society from sexual exploitation and the next promotes sexual promiscuity in school libraries and classrooms. It is a party that thinks guns kill people but criminals pulling the trigger should be let out of jail. In a word, it is a postmodern party that exults in incoherent, hypocritical, lying, anti-natural, deconstructive, anti-Christian, power hungry governance.
As the Trump government takes power, Christians have much to anticipate. They will, however, find themselves in opposition to Trump’s acceptance of abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy and of in vitro fertilization that destroys fertilized eggs. They will reject any acceptance of same-sex marriage. American Christians have good reason to support an ‘America first’ approach to civil government, but their missional universalism must push them to the Church’s different activity and goals under the Lord Jesus Christ. They can appreciate that a society is stronger not because of its diversity and multiculturalism but because of its unity (especially when that unity is in Christ), but they must understand that the Church is naturally diverse and multicultural because it is universal. They have good reason to support policies and laws to make America a strong economic and political force in the world, yet they must remember that from those who are given much, much is required (Luke 12.48). They may find space to live righteously and to proclaim the Gospel publicly under a Deist notion of religion, but they need to reject prayer to a generic God or the universalist notion that all faiths are paths to salvation. Indeed, the rightful place of the Church is as a prophetic witness of God’s standards to government, no matter which party is in control. The Church must never become an arm of the State but must always declare that Christ is King of kings and Lord of Lords.
[i] George Barna, ‘Decisive Christian Vote Carries Trump to Historic Victory, Post-Election Research Shows,’ 2024 Election Research—Report #2 (13 November, 2024); online: CRC-Release-Post-Election-Nov-13-2024-Christian-Vote-Hands-Trump-Victory.pdf (accessed 21 January, 2025).