In the summer of 1980, as Ronald Reagan was campaigning to replace Jimmy Carter as president, the former California governor traveled to Dallas to address 16,000 evangelical Christians from 41 states at the National Affairs Briefing Conference in Reunion Arena.
The event was an important milestone in the emergence of the religious right as a significant factor in American politics. The gathering in Texas, noted The Washington Post, "grew out of the fledgling movement founded largely by radio and television preachers such as Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Va., after they found in a survey that some 70 percent of those who identify themselves as born-again Christians (a group estimated at between 35 million and 60 million people) did not vote in 1976." Reagan wasn't an evangelical, but he had grown up in the church, had been a Sunday school teacher, and regularly spoke of America's role in history as a reflection of God's providence.
The Dallas conference was nonpartisan — all three leading presidential candidates (Reagan, Carter, and Independent John Anderson) had been invited to speak, though only Reagan accepted the invitation. His speech that day helped convince many evangelicals to support the Republican cause, in part because of the deft and respectful disclaimer with which he began.
"I know this is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can't endorse me," Reagan said. "But . . . I want you to know that I endorse you and what you're doing."
In the end, a majority of white evangelical voters supported Reagan in the 1980 election. But it was support he'd had to earn. After all, the president he was challenging was a born-again Christian who had long served as a deacon in the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga.
For Donald Trump, however, the rules have always been different.
During Trump's first presidential campaign, numerous conservative Christian leaders lined up to support him with what would prove unwavering loyalty. Prominent religious activists who had thundered against Bill Clinton for his "debauched, debased, and defamed" ways (to quote the influential televangelist Pat Robertson) pledged their fealty to Trump, whose behavior was at least as debauched and debased. Ralph Reed, the first executive director of the Christian Coalition, had excoriated Clinton in 1998 on the grounds that "character matters, and . . . we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character." But in 2016, not even a video in which Trump boasted crudely of groping women's crotches could shake Reed's support. "People of faith" have more important concerns, he told CNN. "A 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of concerns."
Supporters crowded around Donald Trump at a 2015 rally in Mobile, Ala. |
Apparently it also ranked pretty low that Trump said he had never had any interest in praying for forgiveness. Or that he snickeringly described the taking of Communion as "when I drink my little wine . . . and have my little cracker." Or that when he was asked to name one or two favorite Bible verses, he dodged the question.
Eight years later — years filled with fresh revelations of Trump's lack of "good moral character" — little seems to have changed.
Somehow, Trump supporters who take religion seriously have managed to convince themselves that Trump is one of their number, notwithstanding the mountain of evidence to the contrary. The Mormon writer McKay Coppins reported in 2020 on the numerous ways in which Trump has mocked his Christian supporters, some of whom he refers to as "hustlers" plying a "racket." During meetings with evangelical leaders, he has at times made a point of emphasizing his lack of interest in religious faith. In a recording of one such meeting, Coppins wrote, "the candidate can be heard shrugging off his scriptural ignorance . . . and joking about his inexperience with prayer ('The first time I met [Mike Pence], he said, "Will you bow your head and pray?" and I said, "Excuse me?" I'm not used to it.')"
I could understand if Trump supporters acknowledged that while their hero doesn't share their faith, they stand with him anyway because of his political positions or because they love his combative style or because the people who hate him are the people they hate too. What baffles me is that so many of them feel the need to insist that Trump really is a faithful Christian — more faithful, in fact, than his opponents.
In a new poll commissioned by the Deseret News, an astonishing 64 percent of Republicans surveyed said that Trump is a "person of faith." Far fewer respondents said the same about other Republican candidates or officials. Just 44 percent of Republicans in the survey regarded Nikki Haley — who converted to Christianity as an adult — as a person of faith. The percentage was even lower for Ron DeSantis (34 percent), Vivek Ramaswamy (22 percent) and Chris Christie (22 percent). As for Senator Mitt Romney, a devout lifelong Mormon? Only 34 percent of the Republicans surveyed consider him a man of faith. President Biden, a churchgoing Catholic? A mere 13 percent.
To be clear, the survey sorted respondents by party affiliation, not by their religious identity. Not all those who are Republican are necessarily evangelical, or even Christian. But the overlap between the two groups has grown dramatically in recent decades. In the 1970s, as Ryan Burge, a Baptist pastor and professor of political science, has written, only 40 percent of white evangelical churchgoers identified as Republicans. Now that number is 70 percent.
One thing I have learned in life is that human beings have a powerful capacity to believe things contrary to fact when it is in their financial, emotional, or social interest to do so. Trump is not a man of faith and never has been. But in 2016, millions of voters on the religious right — not all of them Christian — decided to ignore Trump's gross moral transgressions because they liked his stands on certain public issues. In the process, they diminished their moral authority. Eight years later, they are still at it.
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Always playing the race card
A few decades ago, back when "Saturday Night Live" was still funny, cast member Dana Carvey often portrayed The Church Lady, a smug talk-show host who skewered her celebrity guests for their wicked ways. One of The Church Lady's best-known tropes was to put on a show of wondering who might have been responsible for whatever depraved act the celebrity might have committed. "Who could have done that? Let me think. Was it — oh, I don't know — Satan??"
The urge to blame every bad thing on whomever or whatever one fears or detests most is an unattractive feature of human nature. It regularly plays out in our politics: Right-wing nativists routinely blame immigrants for everything from rising crime to economic crises to the spread of disease. Left-wing alarmists have for years been indicting climate change for ill effects as varied as traffic congestion, hate speech, childhood obesity, and the strength of the Taliban. When a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans charge the country's problems to the president and his party. When a Republican is president, Democrats do the same thing.
At some level, there is no avoiding this tendency. For many people, there seems to be a hardwired need for a default villain whose guilt can always be assumed, or a default crime that can always be pinned on anyone doing something they oppose. Thoughtful and ethical educators can help overcome the penchant to reduce the world to such simplistic formulas. But what happens when educators themselves actively promote that kind of thinking?
To my mind, the most poisonous intellectual development in recent American life has been the drive by much of the left to impute racism to any outcome, disparity, or institution of which it disapproves. The resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay last week was only the most recent high-profile example.
The backlash that made Gay's departure inevitable was triggered by two things: her mealy-mouthed reaction to an explosion of antisemitism on the Harvard campus and multiple allegations that her academic work was riddled with plagiarism. Yet a slew of leftists, beginning with Gay herself, insisted that what actually brought her down was racism. In her letter of resignation, Gay complained of "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus." In an op-ed column two days later, she accused her critics of having "relentlessly campaigned to oust me" on the basis of "tired racial stereotypes."
The accusation was taken up by a chorus of activists and agitators, including MSNBC talk host Al Sharpton ("This is an attack on every Black woman in this country"), Boston University professor Ibram X. Kendi ("Racist mobs won't stop until they topple all Black people"), and New York congressman Jamaal Bowman ("This isn't about plagiarism or antisemitism. This is about racism").
Within the progressive bubble chamber such accusations may appear self-evident. I imagine that to most Americans, they come across as disingenuous blame-shifting. In recent years, public esteem for academia has plummeted. Gallup reported in July that "Americans' confidence in higher education has fallen to 36 percent, sharply lower" than in the past. In 2015, for example, 57 percent of Americans surveyed said they had "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education. The more the public has learned about the intolerance, indoctrination, and ideological conformity on college campuses, the less it admires what transpires on those campuses.
Last month The College Fix, a conservative news website produced by student journalists under the guidance of media professionals, compiled a list of "72 things higher ed declared racist in 2023." Drawn from stories it had reported during the year, the tally of institutions, individuals, and opinions tagged with the R-word included the fast food industry, enjoying classical music, the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," Jason Aldean's pop song "Try That in a Small Town," no longer wearing a face mask, and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In elite academic circles, it has become de rigueur to view America through race-tinted spectacles — to see White privilege or anti-Blackness or systemic racism everywhere, to impose a stringent dogma of Diversity/Equity/Inclusion at the expense of scholarship and merit, to chill the free expression of views that challenge that dogma, and to enforce racial double standards in admissions so blatant that the Supreme Court struck them down as unconstitutional. Is it just a coincidence that over the same decades, public regard for higher education has tanked?
Writing about The New York Times in The Economist last month, James Bennet — the paper's former editorial page editor — said it was "becoming the publication through which America's progressive elite talks to itself about an America that does not really exist." What is true of the Times (and other legacy news media) is true of universities like Harvard: They have become so invested in their conviction that US culture and society are irremediably racist — a conviction not borne out by reality — that they have lost the public's respect.
It was funny to hear The Church Lady screech that "Satan!" was the culprit behind every debauchery, but there is nothing amusing about progressives who cry "Racist!" whenever something happens that they don't like. No matter what Kendi and his ilk may say, Claudine Gay didn't resign under pressure from "racist mobs." She resigned because her multiple failures had turned her presidency into an embarrassing liability. Harvard now has the chance to transform that embarrassment into a springboard to reform and repair its reputation. The first thing it should do is resolve to quit playing the race card.
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My hot friend
Hanging in my sister's kitchen is a sign that makes me chuckle every time I think of it. It reads: "Coffee — my hot friend I was telling you about." My sister is a committed coffee drinker, as am I. One of the first decisions I have to make every morning is whether to brew my morning cup of coffee or to buy it — and if I'm buying, whether to patronize my neighborhood Starbucks, Dunkin', or Caffè Nero, all of which are located within a few yards of each other. About half the time I make my own; where I go the rest of the time depends on a variety of factors, including how long the lines are and which coffee shop's vibe — the three are very different — appeals to me.
I don't actually drink that much coffee — usually no more than two cups a day. (More than three, I have found, can trigger attacks of migraine.) But I have been drinking coffee for about 30 years and hope to be doing so for another 30. Now, thanks to The Washington Post, I'm more optimistic about being able to do so.
In a piece that originally appeared in October but that for some reason was flagged in a Post newsletter on Sunday, the paper staged a "Coffee v. Tea Smackdown" and set out to determine which of the two beverages deserves "the world title for healthiest drink."
Not just hot, but healthy too. |
It wasn't close.
Tea offers a few health benefits. It can help to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and contains a chemical — L-theanine — that has been shown to lower stress and generate a calming effect. But in pretty much every other category, coffee rules. It supplies beneficial fiber. It promotes gut health. It offers some protection against colorectal, prostate, liver, oral, and breast cancers. It lowers the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Both coffee and tea contain caffeine, which boosts alertness, and drinkers of both beverages tend to live longer than people who don't drink either beverage. But all in all, the Post reports, "in this battle over health benefits, coffee comes out on top."
For all that, tea remains a far more popular drink globally than coffee. In the Americas and most of Western Europe, coffee is the beverage of choice. But in Great Britain, Ireland, and throughout the east, tea drinking is entrenched. It has been estimated that, worldwide, three cups of tea are consumed for every cup of coffee. This morning, one of those cups of coffee was consumed by me. I think I'll have another this afternoon.
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What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the op-ed page
From "Who will bring Castro to justice?" Jan. 11, 1999:
In Cuba, dissent is forbidden. It is a crime to engage in even peaceful opposition that "perturbs the socialist order." Hundreds of political prisoners are behind bars for holding opinions of which Castro disapproves. No one may leave the country without permission. The government arrests people without warrant and holds them without trial. There is no due process in Castro's courts, no right to call defense witnesses, no guarantee of legal counsel. Prisoners are beaten, malnourished, denied medical care, kept in solitary confinement, forced into slave labor.
Fidelismo at 40 is the ugliest thing in the Americas.
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The Last Line
"We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped." — Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
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(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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