Let me suggest that the slender thread connecting Trump to the church is his occasional holiday appearances at Marble Collegiate Church, made famous by its pastor for 52 years, Norman Vincent Peale. Blending pop-psychology and spirituality, Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) remained on The New York Times bestsellers list for 186 weeks. Nicknamed "God's Salesman," Peale was criticized for trivializing Christianity. Reinhold Niebuhr said that he "corrupts the gospel," and that he helps people "feel good, while they are evading the real issues of life."

Let me suggest that the slender thread connecting Trump to the church is Norman Vincent Peale.

In the 1952 election, Peale declared presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson unfit because he was divorced. For his part, Stevenson quipped, "Speaking as a Christian, I find Paul appealing and Peale appalling." During the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, which began his long relationship with the Nixon White House, Peale declared, "Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake."

Trump's parents attended Peale's sermons each week with the family in tow, and Donald often recalls the impact on his life. He and his sisters were married by Peale.

A more recent exponent of a feel-good gospel, Joel Osteen, has called Donald Trump "a friend of our ministry" and "a good man." Trump has previously tweeted, "Being associated with Joel is my great honor--he's a fantastic man!"

So when in recent months, it has appeared that Trump appeals to a sizable group of evangelicals, it may be less surprising than all the hoopla suggests. Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. hailed him as "one of the greatest visionaries of our time" and a wonderful Christian brother "who reminds me of my dad." The redoubtable Pat Robertson gushed in an interview with the empire-builder, "You inspire us all." Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, who has introduced Trump at rallies, says, "We need a strong leader and a problem-solver, hence many Christians are open to a more secular candidate."

Vague on doctrine, infiltrated by consumerism and a sentimental moralism intent on helping us all "become a better you," and sort of interested in "family values" as long as they don't interfere with our own family breakdowns, many cultural evangelicals are tired of losing the culture wars. They want a winner--"a strong leader." I'm hardly the first to point out that it's the stuff of which demagogues are made.

It is not that Trump has caused this transformation in portions of the so-called "evangelical electorate." Rather, his candidacy has revealed the inner secularization of significant portions of the movement, which surveys have documented for some time now. Four theological words highlight the problem.

1. Creation. Trump reveals that many evangelicals have come to embrace a new doctrine of creation, according to which the state accords basic rights instead of recognizing their dignity as fellow image-bearers of God. Hence, the support of the torture of human beings (and perhaps their relatives) as legitimate state policy; this is entirely justified to some by the circumstances of an unlimited war on terror. Never mind the Christian just-war tradition that has undergirded centuries of Western reflection. And given the apparent failure of even his most recent ambiguous statements about the KKK to diminish support among his base, Trump reveals that America's unfinished task of wrestling honestly with racism is just as clearly mirrored in some parts of evangelicalism.

Card-carrying evangelicals should have gotten it when Trump announced that he has never asked God for forgiveness.

2. Sin. Trump reveals that many evangelicals have come to embrace a different idea of sin than evangelicals have in the past. First, sin is now seen less a condition that renders us all "miserable offenders" before a holy God than mistakes good people make that fail to contribute to "our best life now." Card-carrying evangelicals should have gotten it when Trump announced that he has never asked God for forgiveness because he doesn't really do anything that would require it. This is problematic from a Christian perspective on several levels.

First, even if we were to reduce sin (a condition) to sins, the latter no longer include multiple divorces, significant past support of the abortion industry, lack of any church membership, and unabashed dedication to a "Me First" ethic. Widespread evangelical support suggests that we're fine with these practices now--they're normal.

Second, and even more troubling, "sinners" are now apparently the "others" whose very presence makes us feel afraid and disenfranchised. Deflecting sin from ourselves to others, we have helped to provide a foundation for whatever demagogue can rally people "like us" to self-righteous anger against outsiders.

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What Trump and Sanders teach us about America
A possible American political apocalypse

By S. Adam Seagrave
http://www.mercatornet.com
April 1, 2016

No matter what happens in November, the Trump and Sanders candidacies should give us a sober realization of where we are in the United States, and of where we are headed. Trump and Sanders are often considered together as unconventional political outsiders, and sometimes as refreshingly candid critics of ordinary party politics.

But there is another way of viewing the two surprising candidacies in common--as two symptoms of a single underlying malaise. Despite their positions on opposite extremes of the political spectrum, Trump and Sanders could be seen as twin harbingers of a possible American apocalypse--signs of the beginning of the end for the American political tradition and way of life.

This statement may sound overly dramatic, but there are important reasons to carefully consider its plausibility. Trump and Sanders both focus predominantly on economic issues; both make no attempt to hide the fact that they see money as the root of all things good and evil. And both draw their support primarily from citizens who consider economic issues to be the single most important ones facing our country.

The Stunting Effects of Modern Commercial Society

To some extent, of course, economic issues have always played a prominent role in elections and national politics--not only throughout US history but also throughout human history in general. But usually--and certainly in earlier periods of our own history--these issues have been counterbalanced by others of a different nature.

People and politicians always care about the economy, as they should, but they also care about what we should do as human beings living in society together, beyond toiling for our ongoing material comfort. The American founders, for example, cared deeply about economic issues, but not quite as deeply as the progressive historian Charles Beard claimed. They also cared about natural rights, republicanism, virtue, the common good, and other less narrowly material issues.

As I have explained in other essays at Public Discourse, however, Americans today no longer have a common framework within which to discuss and appreciate these non-material political goods. The "American mind" can no longer lift itself up, however briefly, to embrace political principles that transcend our mere animality. We have lost this ability--for various reasons with long and deeply rooted intellectual histories--and consigned ourselves to wandering around the bargaining tables of plural and relative "values." The "American mind" is, in short, in the gutter, and Trump and Sanders are taking full advantage of this unfortunate fact.

Almost 200 years ago, Tocqueville very clearly foresaw this development in America. He was not opposed to economic pursuits and concerns, but he feared that too strong a focus on them would stunt human development and narrow horizons for citizens of modern democracies. Tocqueville called the "search for well-being" something "honest and legitimate," but nevertheless worried that this search would ultimately cause its subject to "lose the use of his most sublime faculties." "By wishing to improve everything around him," according to Tocqueville's prescient fear, "he will finally degrade himself."

Finding a Counterbalance

Indeed, this seems to have happened in the United States to a startling extent. American culture has gradually become what its harshest critics have alleged and its closest friends feared: a society concerned above all else with individual material well-being. Genuine concern for the common or "public good" is remarkably absent among our politicians and fellow citizens, with even the rhetoric of the common good quickly dissipating. Insofar as a strong national economy is valued, for example, it is simply as a rising tide that will lift many individual boats, and especially mine.

The negative effects of modern philosophy and science have finally made their indelible mark on American society, making us disillusioned and individualistic comfort-seekers. We see little reason to look past our dinner plates or iPhones to a more profound meaning for our existence, and therefore care mostly about putting more food on those plates and getting the next iPhone. Altruism and idealism only seem to persist in stunted and perverted forms of themselves: as a detached and cosmopolitan faux-empathy, and as the propagation of crude versions of tired and well-worn political philosophies.

Bernard Mandeville, one of the best and most underappreciated writers in the history of economic theory, bluntly affirmed that a flourishing commercial society absolutely required "vices" for its sustenance. Selfishness, materialism, individualism, extravagance, and animalistic comfort-seeking motivate an economy and increase general prosperity.

Mandeville also recognized, however--as Rousseau and Marx would later argue--that these vices inevitably lead to the downfall of the flourishing commercial societies to which they initially gave rise. If there is any hope for the long-term survival of such societies, Mandeville seemed to imply, it must come from a source entirely different from the "vicious" features that both give rise to and eventually destroy modern commercial societies.

For Tocqueville and many of the American founders--and, one might suspect, for Mandeville as well--this source was religion. Nothing provides a surer antidote to materialistic individualism than a reminder of the immortality of the soul and one's duties to God. Such reminders, according to Tocqueville, also serve to elevate the mind in general--to cultivate our "most sublime faculties" that lead us to embrace more abstract realities and pursue more lasting and meaningful activities. It is only by finding some way to counterbalance the materialistic individualism that is endemic both to modern commercial society and, in some way, to human nature itself, that we might hope to forestall its destructive force.

American Prospects

This hope, however, now seems a remote one. It is difficult to imagine an American society drawn out of itself to embrace lofty principles and ideals. The founders' careful balancing of economic realism with philosophical and religious idealism appears far beyond our reach today.

Trump draws considerable support from the perception that he will run the government like a business. Since he has made so much money himself from his private businesses, perhaps he will make money for all of us in our common public business. Trump is obviously and unabashedly unprincipled, and clearly expresses both in his words and in the example of his life that what really matters is making money. Voting for Trump is much like buying stock.

Sanders draws much of his support from the opposite perception--namely, that he won't run the government like a private business--but on a broader view his source of support is identical. Sanders is equally unconcerned with elevated and inspiring principles, appealing instead to economic frustrations and anger--in other words, to the idea that what really matters is getting and having money. Voting for Sanders is also like buying stock, but in a different sort of company.

The fact that Trump and Sanders have each received such enthusiastic and widespread support suggests that a majority of the American people view the election of the president in this model of an economic calculation. It is an incontrovertible sign that materialistic individualism has attained a stranglehold on American political culture--one from which we may not find means of escape.

Economic interests always have been and always will be a primary determinant of human behavior in general, and of political behavior in particular. But the long-term flourishing of modern commercial societies requires some counterbalance to such interests, some means of elevating our public consciousness beyond material concerns. Unless we can find or recover some such counterbalance--and soon--we should expect to be crushed beneath their weight.

Adam Seagrave is an assistant professor of political science at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law and editor of Liberty and Equality: The American Conversation. This article was originally published on The Public Discourse. .

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