Opinion

The last temptation of Donald Trump: How he lured evangelicals to follow Satan

Nathaniel Manderson
Sun, November 3, 2024

Donald Trump Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images

Many distractions in this life can take a person away from their true path. Even as I put these words together, I think about everything unrelated to my writing. I think about my career and need to find work that gets me out of being constantly underemployed. I find myself looking around the coffee shop where I write. I watch other people talking. I wonder about their lives, and why they seem to have figured out something I have not. Sometimes my mind goes back to my history of making historically bad decisions. I think about my bills, my kids, past partners, my family and all the ways I generally feel sorry for myself. All the while good work needs to be done. In my own understanding, God's work needs to be done, yet this world's distractions and temptations keep me far from the ministry and teachings of Jesus Christ.

As I consider the temptations in my own life, I realize that the current leadership of the evangelical church in America — which is my own religious background — has fallen prey to the temptations offered by Donald Trump. These temptations are eerily similar to the temptations the devil offered Jesus in the desert, before Jesus began his ministry.

For those of you who do not know this story, which is told most famously in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus goes into the desert to fast for 40 days and prepare himself to do his work. At this time, Satan comes to him, offering the same three temptations, at least as Christians understand it, that can pull anyone and everyone off their true path. They are the same temptations Trump has offered to the evangelical movement, with the difference being that the evangelical movement has chosen to follow Trump as he leads them away from God and closer to the path set forth by the devil himself.

The first temptation was the offer of turning stones into bread. Jesus would have been starving by that time, but his famous reply was that man does not live on bread alone. I must admit that the thought of having more money — more bread, both literally and metaphorically — is as powerful to me as to anyone else. I want to provide more for my daughters, and every time I have to explain to them why I can't afford something, it breaks my heart. Yet I also understand money has the potential to take me down a dangerous path, away from my true calling as a teacher and counselor.

Trump has offered the evangelical church a lot of bread, and the possibility to live the way he does. There are invitations to Mar-a-Lago, trips on the Trump plane, tax breaks for the wealthy and, on a larger scale, an economy that is constructed to benefit the richest people in our society, prominent evangelical ministers among them. In every area of life, when money becomes the end goal, community is undermined, art suffers and the truth is distorted. The church is no different. Evangelical leaders, by the way, are terrified of this message. They twist themselves into theological knots teaching and preaching that it's OK to be both a millionaire and a minister to the gospel of Christ.

I don't know if it is or it isn't, but I do know there is a specific message in the gospel about the temptation of greed, and I know that temptation can undermine the teachings of Jesus Christ. Somehow or other, for many evangelical Christians, paying proper wages to the working class, offering opportunities to the disadvantaged and welcoming foreigners have become evil things, and providing tax breaks for billionaires has become a foundation of the Christian faith. Trump has offered evangelical leaders almost limitless bags of cash, and those leaders will do anything to get their hands on it.

The devil's second temptation is the offer of protection and safety. In the gospel, he urges Jesus to jump off the roof of the temple — if he is truly the son of God, surely his father, will protect him. Jesus replies that we must not put the Lord God to the test. This is an interesting temptation that we often encounter in life. The desire for comfort, safety and protection is almost universal. In my career, I have greatly desired job protection, for example, but that is never guaranteed when you are committed to telling the truth. Diplomacy was never my strong suit and my working life has been a struggle. I wish it weren't that way, but over time it has taught me that sometimes security becomes more important to people than their own integrity.

I see that in the evangelical support of Donald Trump. His offer of protection is clear, and something he discusses all the time. He promises to keep the Christians safe from the evil forces of liberalism. The left is coming for your guns, he tells them. They will persecute you for your Christian faith. Your children are in danger of conversion by the "woke" mob on college campuses, on television, in the big cities. Never fear, believing Christians, Donald Trump will keep you safe.

The problem with this message — other than the fact that it comes from the devil — is that there was no promise of safety for those who chose to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is the follower who risks their own safety by choosing to love their enemies, heal the sick, serve the poor and love those who are cast out, imprisoned or powerless. That is hard to do under any circumstances, but especially for someone who is sitting at home on their couch and is only interested in the rights of people who agree with them and think as they do.

It should be obvious that Jesus Christ did not live a safe life, a protected life or a comfortable life. Promises of protection and safety would have taken him off course just as Trump's temptations have taken the evangelical leadership away from what should be their true mission.

The final temptation offered by the devil, and by Trump, is the most obvious. The devil offers Jesus power over the whole world, and all he has to do is kneel before Satan and submit to his authority. I feel that I barely have to write anything here — the truth of this is louder than anything I can put into words. People support politicians, most of the time, based what they perceive as their own self-interest. I am no different. My fight for the working class, and for the first-generation college students I have worked with and supported has been at the heart of my politics. I do not seek power as such, but I definitely want more and better opportunities for the population I love. The idea of gaining personal power and greater influence is a natural temptation but, again, that again could take me away from my true calling on the front lines of this work.

Power does corrupt, as it most certainly has in the case of evangelical support of Donald Trump. Pastor Robert Jeffress is hardly the only example, but no one embodies the corrupting force of that this temptation better than he does. That man loves the power of the White House and the power Trump has provided him. Jeffress will create whatever theological explanation he has to in his efforts to return Trump to the White House.

I often listen to Jeffress on the radio. He's a good speaker, about as good as it gets in the evangelical realm. He likes to tell a story how he managed to talk himself into the Oval Office when he was on a school trip to Washington as a teenager. It may be a more instructive parable than he realizes, because Jeffress has been doing everything he can to return to that office ever since. All he had to do, in fact, was to submit to the authority of Donald Trump. This temptation, the corrupting force of power, can prevent a person of faith from supporting those people they are claiming to help. Once these ministers have tasted that kind of power, it is like an addiction. Nothing else can satisfy them.

My recent employment has been as a hospice chaplain, ministering to dying people and their families. It's a job that stays with you on a very deep level. Every day, I am faced with families who are trying to say goodbye to a loved one, and with people who are trying to say goodbye to life. This is not always a peaceful transition, no matter what many of us would like to believe. There is sometimes great anxiety, loss of control and anger.

What I have learned is a great but simple truth: Death comes for all of us, regardless. People of faith, successful people, people who have failed, people who believe they have done everything right and people who have done almost everything wrong. Their lives before the final stage hardly matter, and those final days are often difficult and sad. The comforts of this world have left them. Power, safety and money are all gone, and revealed as empty pursuits in the end. Those things — the temptations of Trump and the devil — only tend to keep a person from their true path, distorting their relationships, their careers, their family life, their art or their writing, their politics and their faith.

I have reached the inescapable conclusion that the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the evangelical church in America are going in opposite directions. The evangelical church is heading closer to the devil. It has submitted to Donald Trump and moved ever further away from a man who served the poor, healed the sick, loved his neighbors and taught his followers to do the same. Evangelical leaders have stopped listening to Christ. There is only one other alternative.