By Their Fruits

Jesus famously said that “by their fruits you shall know them.” He made it clear that what he meant was that good people do good things, bad people do bad things, and that is how you tell them apart. You cannot be good by just saying good and doctrinally correct things; you have to actually do them. Nothing in religion could seem more fundamental than this.

But right-wing American Christians do not believe this. They reject what Jesus said. The most obvious place to see this is in politics.

Right-wing fundamentalist Christians are almost all Republicans. Many Republican politicians do evil things. The most prominent example is Donald Trump, who has had repeated, well-documented scandals, both sexual and financial, in addition to encouraging a revolt against the United States government. He has publicly called on Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants” to NATO countries.

But it is not just Trump. Many Republican politicians have had scandals, such as Mark Sanford, who disappeared from the state of which he was governor, claiming to be hiking on the Appalachian Trail but actually in Argentina visiting his mistress; and George Santos, who was ousted from Congress after multiple financial scandals and misrepresentations.

Nor is it just Republican politicians. Jerry Falwell, Jr., then president of Liberty University, which his father founded, was spectacularly scandalous in arranging not for an actual affair but for arranging to watch someone else have sex with his (Falwell’s) wife. He resigned after a ten million dollar severance was offered to him. Ted Haggard, a megachurch pastor, had scandals related to sexual acts and to misrepresenting his book as a best-seller when actually his church had bought most of the copies. Both Falwell’s and Haggard’s churches proclaimed openly that the Republican Party, and specifically Donald Trump, were God’s choices for moral leadership in America.

And it just keeps going on. As I write, Liberty University has been fined $14 million for its failure to report, and sometimes to even acknowledge, incidents of sexual violence toward female students and staff. To Liberty University, as to the Southern Baptist church, a woman’s proper place is to let men do what they want with them and keep silence. And Steve Garvey, former baseball star with a history of sexual and financial scandal, was the Republican winner in the Super Tuesday election in 2024, running for a California U.S. Senate seat.

Of course, Democrats have scandals also. Some of us are old enough to remember the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewensky affair. I’ll let you look for other examples. But it appears to me that neither Republicans nor Democrats have a moral high ground over the other party.

And there is one outstanding example of truly good Democrats: Barack and Michelle Obama. For eight years, Republicans searched desperately for any scandal with the Obamas, and they didn’t find a single one. I read Michelle’s autobiography, Becoming, and I was astonished that such good people could actually rise to positions of leadership in our society.

Most evangelical Christians believe everything Trump says, approves of everything He has ever done, and appear to adore Him with religious fervor. They refuse to even consider that He might be wrong. To them, He is no mere human being. Sarah Posner wrote a book about it in 2020 (Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump; Random House) and the white evangelical devotion to Trump has only gotten stronger each year since then.

If Christians obeyed Jesus’ command to evaluate people on the basis of what they do, rather than what they say, the result would be clear. Neither Democrats nor Republicans consistently have the moral high ground. One should judge candidates individually, not on the basis of their devotion to Donald Trump, and Trump must be subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

In some cases, the blasphemy is open. One Georgia billboard had a photo of Trump and a quote from the Bible: “and the government shall be upon his shoulders,” an Old Testament reference always attributed to Jesus. I would show you, but the image cannot be copied. You can, however, find it at the Ministry Watch wehsite. I also saw a billboard in Missouri, as I drove on I44, in 2023, which said that Trump, like Jesus, was being crucified; the poster showed a cross on a hill. The billboard was on a side road which I could not find. Christian responses to these billboards ranged from support to disturbance, but few if any evangelical Christians declared it to be blasphemy.

But most evangelical Christians totally reject Jesus’ authority in this matter. They worship Donald Trump.