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President Donald Trump made history<\/a> last Friday as the first U.S. president to attend March for Life, the annual anti-abortion rally held in Washington, D.C. For that he received widespread praise from conservative political and religious leaders and voters around the country, including many, unsurprisingly, from my home state of Arkansas<\/a>.<\/p>\nTrump\u2019s decision to attend was motivated by politics. He wasn\u2019t against abortion until he started running for President, and yet he has heard mounting questions<\/a> raised about the sturdiness of his support among evangelicals, whose backing in 2016 was key to his victory. The kerfuffle around Christianity Today<\/em>\u2019s December editorial<\/a> calling for Trump\u2019s removal sparked a reexamination<\/a> of the durability of that support. Enter March for Life, an opportunity to double down on what Trump knows is the linchpin<\/a> of his appeal to many religious voters.<\/p>\n The transactional nature of Trump\u2019s relationship with evangelicals and other religiously motivated voters is a two-way street. He doesn\u2019t live by nor ostensibly even aspire to the values of most of these voters. They see his flaws but support him anyway because he helps advance elements of their policy agenda, namely, anti-abortion judges and legislation.<\/p>\n Although Arkansas\u2019 Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson was the first governor of a solid red state to voice support<\/a> for the congressional impeachment inquiry last September, Arkansans overwhelmingly support Trump, with over 60% of us voting for him in 2016. Much of that support came from Arkansas\u2019 large evangelical community, which makes up no less than 46% of adults<\/a> in the state. Naturally, the state\u2019s two Republican senators \u2013 Tom Cotton<\/a> and John Boozman<\/a> \u2013 have voted in line with Trump\u2019s position 87% and 93% of the time respectively.<\/p>\n I was raised in a home where being an evangelical Christian and voting Republican were inseparable. I live in Northwest Arkansas, practice my faith as the co-pastor of Vintage Fellowship<\/a> in Fayetteville and even ran for Congress in the 3rd Congressional District as a Republican in 2018.<\/p>\n Given all this, you are forgiven if you\u2019re somewhat surprised to hear that I helped organize a rally for voters in Fayetteville against Trump and in support of Democrats this week.<\/p>\n When I\u2019m not preaching, I work with a group called Vote Common Good<\/a>, which aims to get evangelicals and other voters of faith to make the common good \u2013 not political parties \u2013 their primary voting criteria. And this year, voting for the common good means getting Trump and his enablers out of office.<\/p>\n Trump is an anathema to everything I was taught to love about Jesus, everything I was taught about how to live out my faith. His disdain for decency, disrespect toward basic tenets of right and wrong and complete disregard for the most vulnerable among us could not be more fundamentally un-Christian. To vote for him because he sees the political expediency of supporting restrictions on abortion is a Faustian deal with the devil that is ultimately more likely to exact greater cost than reward. Case in point: the astounding about-face<\/a> in evangelical support for refugee resettlement since Trump took aim at the program.<\/p>\nRelated Stories<\/h2>\n
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