Consider This from NPR - Why Trump's Persecution Narrative Resonates With Christian Supporters

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Former president Donald Trump is facing dozens of criminal charges, including four felony counts on charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump says he's being persecuted, and that idea resonates with his Christian base.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Just a few months before he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump spoke to a group of voters at an event hosted by a Christian activist group in Washington, D.C. He made a point of reminding them that their beliefs and values were under attack. Our media culture often mocks and demeans people of faith, and you understand that. Trump claimed that he would be the one to defend Christianity. So let me state this right up front. A Trump administration, our Christian heritage, will be cherished, protected, defended like you've never seen before. Throughout his presidency, Trump cast himself as a staunch ally of Christian faith and values,

fighting alongside conservative Christians for their causes like a rollback of abortion rights. And as his personal and legal troubles mounted, Trump claimed he was besieged, targeted because of who he was. These four horrible, radical left Democrat investigations of your all-time favorite president, me. As a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all times, this trial is a total witch hunt. On the day he was arraigned in Washington, D.C. on felony charges for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump did not mince words. When you look at what's happening, this is a persecution

of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that's leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. So if you can't beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him. That word, persecution, holds a particular meaning for Christians. It shows up in the Gospels, and it's critical to understanding Christian identity. Consider this. Trump isn't the first to use the rhetoric of persecution for political gain. But why do claims of persecution resonate so deeply among the

many American Christians who support him? From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon. It's Friday, February 2nd. It's Consider This from NPR. For almost as long as Donald Trump has been in politics, he's cast himself as a target of different forces, the deep state, the Democrats, and he talks about being persecuted. That rhetoric resonates deeply with members of his white evangelical Christian base. Candida Moss is a professor of theology at the University of Birmingham and is the author of The Myth of Persecution. It traces the theological history of persecution in Christianity. We talked about that history and how it plays out in Donald Trump's politics. Moss says she's not suggesting that religious persecution isn't real or even

widespread, but she argues it's perceived in a particular way in America. There are places where people are being persecuted today and who need help. But when you say that Christians are always and everywhere under attack, you actually kind of obscure those people. Because if everyone is being attacked, if Christians are necessarily being attacked, then that means that what's happening in America is the same as what is happening in other parts of the world. If everyone is being persecuted, then no one's being persecuted. I asked her about the intersection of the world. If everyone is being persecuted, then no one's being persecuted. I asked her about the intersection of the idea of persecution and political power. Being persecuted in Christianity because Jesus died in this unjust way, because the martyrs

were executed, that just being persecuted is a sign that what you are doing is right and good, and that you have the support of God. And that means that this is a very that what you are doing is right and good and that you have the support of God. And that means that this is a very powerful rhetorical claim. If Christians are succeeding politically, commercially, practically in their lives, then that's because God loves them and supports them. But if Christians are being criticized, if they're being unsuccessful, if people disagree with them, then that's also a sign that they're in the right., if they're being unsuccessful, if people disagree with them, then that's also a sign that they're in the right. Because if they can claim that as persecution, that's a sign that God is on their side. And the problem with that and the way that that

functions in Christianity, as opposed to other groups, is that a powerful Christian group that claims that it's being persecuted can never fully be disagreed with about anything because disagreement is then understood to be a full-blown attack, a kind of religious war. You really can't lose either way. Yeah, it's absolutely a win-win state of affairs. It really is sort of part of the genius of Christianity. So we've talked about this idea primarily as a theological idea, but how does it turn into a political idea? So I think the first person to make it a political idea is a historian called Eusebius of Caesarea. He was a Christian bishop and he was part of the court of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who was the famous emperor who made Christianity legal and started to sort of Christianize the Roman Empire.

The first Christian nationalist, you could say. That is right. And Eusebius wrote this church history during Constantine's reign. And one of the threads that he decided to weave through his sort of 300-year history of the church was that Christians are always being attacked. They're constantly being persecuted. And the reason he did that was that in his own day, there were disagreements in the church. And so Eusebius presented the people with whom he disagreed, the heretics of his own day, as the successors to the persecutors. And so he has this kind of polarized vision of the world that's very rhetorically effective. He can describe people with whom he disagrees as actually being like ravenous wolves attacking the church. And he does this to sort of

advance very politicized church leaders. He does this to advance his own theological and political positions. But he really lays the groundwork for how Christians ever since have thought about themselves. Now let's move forward to the present. Where do we see this kind of politicized rhetoric around persecution? When does it start to emerge as part of the American political landscape? So to an extent, it's sort of baked into American identity. When you learn about America and its history, you learn about the pilgrims who came here fleeing religious persecution. But if you think about, say, just political discourse, it really sort of picks up in the

1960s when evangelical Protestants began to see themselves as persecuted because of the rising tide of cultural movements that they saw as antithetical to Christianity. I'm thinking feminist movement, the kind of secularization rise that you see in the 1960s. The sexual revolution. The sexual revolution, all of those kinds of things, women working, rising divorce rates, etc, etc. And then the 1970s, you see the religious right concerned about prayer no longer taking place in schools, about the Bible not being read in schools. And to the religious right, that felt like an attack. And that has only gathered increasing amounts of strength through the 1980s into the present. When you think about things like LGBT rights and similar movements,

these are construed as attacks on Christianity as a sign that America is sort of moving away from her supposedly Christian roots. When Trump supporters, particularly those from a Christian background, hear him say he's being persecuted, he's being attacked, what do they hear in that? When they hear Trump talk about how he's persecuted, if they're already supporters of his, it's a familiar cry, one they've heard from the pulpit on Sundays. They identify with him because of it. And they start interpreting criticisms of Trump through that framework. And that means, for example, that when he gets

indicted, as he has been, that just serves as evidence that he is being persecuted. So it's win-win for him. It's like a dog whistle. They hear him say that he's persecuted. They know what that means. They know how unjust it is. However legally justified any of these cases are, there is a substantial proportion of his supporters who will believe that this is nothing other than a crime against justice. For Trump supporters, these indictments are crimes. They are crimes of persecution. That's fascinating. I'm thinking about that, and it's something that I've thought about and written about as well.

But reaching the apex, in a way, of political power is not any kind of cure for the sense of persecution, it seems. I think that's exactly right. It remains a really valuable weapon in the rhetorical toolbox that you can bring out if you're being disagreed with. If you think about the number of times that President Trump claimed that he was the most attacked political leader in history, which you can imagine Julius Caesar might disagree as he was murdered by a group of senators. But this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, it's completely dislocated from historical events. And you can continue to use it as a way to kind of buffer yourself from any criticism, regardless of how powerful you are. Candida Moss is a theology professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK,

and the author of the book, The Myth of Persecution. Thanks so much for talking with us. Thanks so much for having me. This episode was produced by Avery Keatley. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Courtney Dorney. Thanks so much for having me. You'll get to hear every episode without messages from sponsors, which means you'll hear what you need to know in even less time. And your contribution will help make the work of NPR journalists possible. You can sign up on our show page in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. That link can be found in our episode notes. It's Consider This from npr i'm sarah mccammon