Too many Christians have spent years trying and failing to stay on the good side of their enemies. If the election of politically incorrect provocateur Donald Trump can teach us anything, it’s that all that effort wasn’t even necessary. But more importantly, trying to make our beliefs acceptable to the world is a bad habit that leads to softening on our baptismal promise to renounce Satan and all his works.
When President Obama tried to force Christian organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for abortifacient drugs against their consciences, the politically correct response was to smear anyone who opposed Obamacare’s mythical plan to provide healthcare to the poor. Rather than point out the obvious government overreach and the cruelty of threatening nuns for their beliefs, many Christians spent their energies trying to get on the right side of the politically correct narrative, writing countless thought pieces on how the Christian Right must learn to care more about the poor.
For some Christians, political correctness operates like a never-ending pattern reminiscent of the famous courtroom trick-question “When did you stop beating your wife?” When mainstream media outlets and powerful Leftist or globalist political figures decide on a course of action, Christians jump to get out of their way. When gender ideology is promoted in schools, Christians rush to prove they’re not “transphobic.” When an armed lunatic attacks an abortion clinic, Christians quickly accept and defend themselves against the narrative that smears all pro-lifers as guilty of the sort of rhetoric that leads to violence.
More recently, I was shocked to discover that even when the U.S. backed jihadist “rebels” against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria—despite the pleas of persecuted Christians and Yazidis there—many American Christians were even willing to repudiate their hunted coreligionists in the Middle East rather than boldly differ with Western elites.
Lessons of 2016
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was replete with rhetoric that flew in the face of political correctness—and yet here he is, the duly elected President-elect of the United States of America. His election proves the pointlessness of all that squirming to get on the right side of the narratives that have been handed down to us.
But more importantly, while Christians have busied themselves with the eternal task of not offending the ever-shifting sensibilities of progressive elites, many good people have suffered at the hands of those whom such obsequiousness helped bring to power.
Consider the list of anti-Christian accomplishments that have been achieved in the last few years alone, which I wrote up this month at The Stream.
In the United States, anti-Christians have worked hard to:
And overseas, anti-Christians have been able to:
Don’t let anti-Christian bigots call you “un-Christian” because of Trump
Whatever happens next, Christians should be grateful that the barreling anti-Christianity outlined above is at least severely hampered by the rise of the politically incorrect Trump. We should also consider ways to continue to push back against the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable—rather than on behalf of our own standing as inoffensive subjects.
After all, politics isn’t a game of showing “who we are” by proving we don’t fall into any “deplorable” categories whom the powerful threaten to ostracize or punish. Engaging in politics ought to be an act of public virtue aimed at achieving or defending the common good. Through a Christian lens, this should be gone about especially with an eye to “the least of these,” the vulnerable and endangered whom Christ warned us not to abuse.