SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Just months before being elected president in 2016, Donald Trump spoke to a group of voters at an event hosted by a Christian activist group in Washington, DC. He wanted to remind them that their beliefs and values were under attack.
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DONALD TRUMP: Our media culture often mocks and demeans believers, and you understand that.
MCCAMMON: Trump said he would be the one to defend Christianity.
TRUMP: So let me say this up front. Under the Trump Administration, our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected and defended like you have never seen before.
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MCCAMMON: Throughout his presidency, Trump has presented himself as a staunch ally of Christian faith and values, fighting alongside conservative Christians for their causes, like rolling back abortion rights. And as his personal and legal problems deepened, Trump claimed he was under siege, targeted because of who he was.
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TRUMP: These four horrible radical left Democratic investigations into your favorite president of all time, me…
Continuing the greatest witch hunt of all time…
This trial is a real witch hunt.
MCCAMMON: On the day he was arraigned in Washington, D.C., on a felony charge of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump did not mince his words.
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TRUMP: When we look at what is happening, it is a persecution of a political opponent. This should never have happened in America. This is about the persecution of the person who leads by a very, very substantial number in the Republican primary and who leads Biden by a lot. So if you can’t beat him, you persecute him or sue him.
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MCCAMMON: That word, persecution, has a special meaning for Christians. This appears in the Gospels and is essential to understanding Christian identity. Consider this: Trump is not the first to use the rhetoric of persecution for political purposes. But why do the allegations of persecution resonate so deeply among the many American Christians who support him?
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MCCAMMON: From NPR, I’m Sarah McCammon. It is Friday, February 2.
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MCCAMMON: This is CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. For almost as long as Donald Trump has been in politics, he has presented himself as a target of different forces — the deep state, the Democrats — and he has talked about being persecuted. This rhetoric resonates deeply with members of his white evangelical Christian base. Candida Moss is 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 this story and how it plays out in Donald Trump’s politics. Moss says she is not suggesting that religious persecution is not real or even widespread, but she is arguing that it is perceived in a particular way in America.
CANDIDA MOSS: There are places today where people are persecuted and who need help. But when you say that Christians are always and everywhere under attack, you’re kind of glossing over these people because if everyone is under attack, if Christians are necessarily under attack, then that means what’s happening in America is the same thing. than what is happening in America. other parts of the world. If everyone is persecuted, then no one is persecuted.
MCCAMMON: I asked him about the intersection of the idea of persecution and political power.
MOSS: Being persecuted in Christianity because Jesus died in this unjust way, because the martyrs were executed, 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 it’s a very powerful rhetorical statement. If Christians succeed politically, commercially, and practically in their lives, it is because God loves and supports them.
But if Christians are criticized, if they fail, if people disagree with them, then that’s also a sign that they’re right, because if they can claim it’s persecution , it is a sign that God is on their side. . And the problem with that and the way it works in Christianity, as opposed to other groups, is that a powerful Christian group that claims to be persecuted can never totally disagree on anything because the disagreement is then understood as a disagreement in its own right. blown attack, a sort of religious war.
MCCAMMON: You really can’t lose one way or the other with this framework…
MOSS: Yeah. It’s absolutely a win-win situation. This is truly part of the genius of Christianity.
MCCAMMON: So we’ve talked about this idea primarily as a theological idea, but how does it transform into a political idea?
MOSS: So I think the first person to make this a political idea was 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 legalized Christianity and began to Christianize the Roman Empire. And Eusebius…
MCCAMMON: The first Christian nationalist, you could say.
MOSS: That’s right. And Eusebius wrote this history of the Church during the reign of Constantine, and one of the threads that he decided to weave through his 300 years of Church history was that Christians are always under attack. They are constantly persecuted. And the reason he did that is because in his day there was disagreement within the Church. This is how Eusebius presented the people with whom he did not agree, the heretics of his time, as the successors of the persecutors.
So he has this kind of polarized view of the world that is very rhetorically effective. He may describe people he disagrees with as being like ravenous wolves attacking the church. And he does this to advance highly politicized church leaders. He does this to advance his own theological and political positions, but he actually lays the foundation for how Christians have viewed themselves ever since.
MCCAMMON: And now let’s move on to the present. Where do we see this kind of politicized rhetoric around persecution? When did it begin to emerge in the American political landscape?
MOSS: So, to some extent, it’s sort of ingrained in the American identity. When you learn about America and its history, you learn about the pilgrims who came here fleeing religious persecution. But if you look at, for example, just political discourse, it really intensified in the 1960s, when evangelical Protestants began to see themselves as persecuted because of the rising wave of cultural movements that they considered as antithetical to Christianity. I’m thinking of the feminist movement, the kind of rise of secularization that we saw in the 1960s…
MCCAMMON: The sexual revolution.
MOSS: The sexual revolution, all those kinds of things – working women, increasing divorce rates, etc., etc. And then in the 1970s you see the religious right concerned that prayer is no longer happening in schools, that the Bible is not available. read in schools. And for the religious right, it felt like an attack. And it has only grown in strength throughout the 1980s until today. When we think about topics like LGBT rights and similar movements, these are interpreted as attacks on Christianity, as a sign that America is somehow moving away from its so-called Christian roots.
MCCAMMON: When Trump supporters, especially those of Christian background, hear him say that he’s being persecuted, that he’s being attacked, what do they hear in that?
MOSS: When they hear Trump talk about how he’s being persecuted, if they’re already his supporters, it’s a familiar cry, a cry they heard from the pulpit on Sundays. They identify with him because of this and begin to interpret criticism of Trump through this framework. And that means, for example, that when he is indicted, as he was, it simply serves as proof that he is being persecuted.
So it’s a win-win for him. It’s like a dog whistle. They hear him say that he is being persecuted. They know what that means. They know how unfair it is. However legally justified these cases are, a significant proportion of his supporters believe that they are nothing more than a crime against justice. For Trump supporters, these accusations are crimes. These are crimes of persecution.
MCCAMMON: It’s fascinating. I think about it, and it’s something I’ve thought about and written about too. But somehow reaching the pinnacle of political power doesn’t seem to be any sort of cure for feelings of persecution.
MOSS: I think that’s absolutely true. This remains a very valuable weapon in the rhetorical toolbox that you can use in times of disagreement. If you think about how many times President Trump has claimed to have been attacked during his presidency, not to mention the exaggerated claims that he was the most attacked political leader in history – which, you can imagine , Julius Caesar might not agree. , because he was assassinated by a group of senators – but this kind of inflammatory rhetoric is completely disconnected from historical events. And you can continue to use it as a way to protect yourself from criticism, no matter how powerful you are.
MCCAMMON: Candida Moss is professor of theology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and author of the book “The Myth of Persecution.” Thank you very much for speaking with us.
MOSS: Thank you very much for inviting me.
MCCAMMON: This episode was produced by Avery Keatley. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. And before leaving, one more news, this one concerning our show. Starting this week, you can support the podcast by subscribing to CONSIDER THIS+. You’ll be able to hear every episode without messages from sponsors, meaning 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 subscribe on our show page in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. This link can be found in our episode notes.
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MCCAMMON: This is CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. My name is Sarah McCammon.
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