Character matters, huh?

  Like many of my friends, this election was tough, for many reasons. And as the pundits and amateur politicos continue their arguing and hand-wringing about the supposed lessons, my thoughts have been more focused on what, to me, is a deeper issue, and one I’ve struggled to understand for many years.

  See, it started as a child. I went to a Christian school for all of elementary and junior high school. Specifically a Southern Baptist school, although the churches I attended ranged from Southern Baptist to Pentecostal to the non-denominational variety that fall under the broad “Evangelical” umbrella. And in those churches, as elections were getting close, I would see these voter guides in the back, provided by the Christian Coalition.

  Now of course, the framing of questions made it basically a way to endorse Republican candidates without actually endorsing them and jeopardizing their nonprofit status. Many times Democratic candidate columns would show “no response,” I would assume because the questions were loaded from the start.

  This was the 1990s, and Bill Clinton was president. While periodically referring to him as the antiChrist and a murderer - even showing conspiracy theory documentaries about it in church buildings - he also cheated on his wife in the Oval Office. And this, for many of the Christians I knew then, was equivalent to high treason. “Character matters” is what I was always told. And values matter. And those are sentiments that I carry with me to this day.

  So now I’m left asking the same question I also asked in 2016: what happened?

  Exit polling from NBC News shows Protestant Christian support for Trump was 63 percent. Catholic support, 58 percent.

  Despite cheating on every wife he’s had and being convicted on 34 felony counts related to paying off a porn star, he still has the support of the religious right. Two juries found him guilty in two civil cases - resulting in him currently owing almost $90 million in judgments - for both sexual assault and defamation. The judge in that case clarified that it was rape.

  The above doesn’t include the derogatory language and lies he’s told about minorities, the dehumanizing language that echoes Adolph Hitler, the other lies, and on and on and exhaustingly on. Oh, and the January 6 literal coup attempt.

  It’s not that I think all Trump supporters are racist or sexist or white supremacists; it’s that none of those three things were deal-breakers, especially for the very same people who drilled into me how much “character matters” and “values matter.”

  If you’re willing to vote for someone who is a racist or a rapist (or both in this case), where do you draw the line?

  And this sentiment I’m expressing, which seems wholly rooted in hypocrisy, also seems to at least correlate with some numbers that directly affect your faith. A 2022 report from Pew Research says, “With each generation, progressively fewer adults retain the Christian identity they were raised with, which in turn means fewer parents are raising their children in Christian households.”

  A January 2024 episode of On Point titled “the great dechurching” begins with “About 40 million Americans have left churches and other religious institutions in the last 25 years.” And while the article does point out that some people leave for “pedestrian reasons” such as moving or family changes, I personally know many people who left because of hateful rhetoric. They weren’t content to stay with organizations that demonized their LGBTQ+ friends and family members. They weren’t OK with the women in their lives not having bodily autonomy. They were angered by the church’s handling of the rampant sexual assault and grooming situations.

  For many people, this is what the church and Christianity have become known for. Theocratic rule - “under His eye” if you will. The term is “Christofascism” - the same people who criticize the Taliban seem to want something similar here. It’s antithetical to the concept of freedom. If you don’t have control over your own body, what even is freedom?

  We’re taught that “God is love,” but then the politics of division, fear, and hatred win over the majority of the faithful.

  With that being said, a verse from your Bible keeps popping into my head. It’s Mark 8:36 - “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The church may have just won an election, but at what cost?

  About the author: Josh Carples is the managing editor for the Capital City Free Press.

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