Normally David French does a terrific job at the National Review (I'm a HUGE fan of his Gun Violence Restraining Order piece) but... he is off the rails with his follow-up to this tweet:
By the way, the porn affairs and hush money payments by themselves are enough for me to never, ever vote for Trump. And that’s just one thing, of many. I remember the days, like way back in, say, May 2015, when that would have been a consensus Evangelical position.
That provoked this somewhat off-message response:
The difference is, unlike you, the evangelicals started thinking politically rather than moralistically. Moralism has its place, of course, but prudence must inform it and direct it. Aristotle (or even Aquinas!) should be our guide. You seem to prefer Kant.
Why is this off-message? Because it creates a false dichotomy between "thinking politically rather than moralistically".
Dealing with a lesser of two evils situation is a moral question that, believe it or not, precedes Trump. Here for example, is a Christian minister citing Aquinas and "the moral principle of double effect":
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, established the moral principle of double effect. (II-II.64.7) Four conditions must be met for someone to act righteously despite bad consequences. First, the act itself must be good or at least amoral. One could argue that voting is a good deed or at least morally indifferent. Secondly, the good effect cannot be achieved by means of the bad effect. The Machiavellian policy that the end justifies the means is wrong; nothing justifies sinful methods. Thirdly, one must intend only the good effect. The other is an involuntary repercussion.
To illustrate, physicians routinely prescribe medicines to patients notwithstanding unfortunate side-effects. Finally, the good effect must be proportionately greater than the evil effect. For instance, driving through a red light when there is no traffic in the middle of the night is better than waiting for it to turn green when rushing someone urgently to a hospital.
There was Terry Drew, who sat in the seventh pew on the left side, who knew and agreed with Trump’s position, and knew that supporting him involved a blatant moral compromise.
“I hate it,” he said. “My wife and I talk about it all the time. We rationalize the immoral things away. We don’t like it, but we look at the alternative, and think it could be worse than this.”
The only way to understand how a Christian like him could support a man who boasted about grabbing women’s crotches, Terry said, was to understand how he felt about the person Trump was still constantly bringing up in his speeches and who loomed large in Terry’s thoughts: Hillary Clinton, whom Terry saw as “sinister” and “evil” and “I’d say, of Satan.”
“She hates me,” Terry said, sitting in Crum’s office one day. “She has contempt for people like me, and Clay, and people who love God and believe in the Second Amendment. I think if she had her way it would be a dangerous country for the likes of me.”
Not a Hillary fan. The minister also wrestled with his support for Trump but settled on the notion that God sometimes uses flawed messengers:
The dilemma was that Trump was an immoral person doing what Crum considered to be moral things. The conservative judges. The antiabortion policies. And something else even more important to a small Southern Baptist congregation worried about their own annihilation.
“It encouraged them that we do still have some political power in this country,” said Crum.
When he prayed about it, that was what the voice of God had told him. The voice reminded Crum that God always had a hand in elections. The voice told him that God used all kinds of people to do his will.
“Nebuchadnezzar,” Crum said, citing the pagan king of Babylon who was advised by godly men to tear down an old corrupt order. “Even sometimes bad leaders are used by God.”
No spoiler on how the minister talked about Trump during the sermon.
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