Rod Dreher, the conservative commentator whose book The Benedict Option was a surprise best-seller, has hit out at evangelicals who support Donald Trump in a New York Times column today headed, 'Trump can't save American Christianity'.
Writing in the wake of the firing of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director, Dreher writes: 'Is there anything Donald Trump can do to alienate evangelicals and other conservative Christians who support him? By now, it's hard to think of what that might be. These are people who would never let men with the morals and the mouths of Mr Trump and Mr Scaramucci date their own daughters. And yet, Team Trump has no more slavishly loyal constituency.'
Repeating themes from his book, Dreher says: 'The truth is, Christianity is declining in the United States. As a theologically conservative believer, it gives me no pleasure to say that. In fact, the waning of Christianity will be not only a catastrophe for the church but also a calamity for civil society in ways secular Americans do not appreciate.'
He says Americans are falling away from the Church in unprecedented numbers and that the faith American Christians profess is 'from a moral and theological perspective, shockingly thin' and characterised by a 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism' that replaces biblical Christianity with 'feel-good, vaguely spiritual nostrums'.
Dreher says: 'Since the 1980s, conservative Christians unwittingly participated in our own marginalization by placing too much hope in Republican politics.'
Conservative Christians, he says, 'helped elect Republican politicians, but that did not stop the slide toward secularism. True, the church gained some access to power, but it failed to effectively counter popular culture's catechetical force.
Too many of us are doubling down on the failed strategies that not only have failed to convert Americans but have also done little to halt the assimilation of Christians to secular norms and beliefs. Mr Trump is not a solution to this cultural crisis, but rather a symptom of it.'
Again reiterating the themes of The Benedict Option, Dreher says Christians are 'going to have to step back to some meaningful degree from the world for the sake of building up orthodox belief, learning the practices of discipleship and strengthening our communities'.
