How should we think, write, and speak?
We might cringe to admit it, but future historians will call this the Age of Trump. Like Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump is a controversial and charismatic politician who has a gift for connecting with ordinary Americans. His reign over the nation’s political culture is the kind of stuff that frames entire chapters in American history textbooks.
When the New York City real estate tycoon and reality television star first took center stage in the unfolding drama of American politics, many of us Christian anti-Trumpers initiated a regimen of moral chemotherapy. There was a cancer in the body politic and it needed to be contained, if not eliminated altogether.
I borrowed the phrase “moral chemotherapy” from legal scholar Cathleen Kaveny. She describes it as a “reaction to a potentially life-threatening distortion in ordinary, day-to-day moral discussion.” Sometimes, Kaveny says, such a distortion can be so great that it threatens to “undermine the very possibility of moral and political reasoning” within a given community. When this happens, the “harsh focus of prophetic indictment becomes necessary.”
Donald Trump represented such a distortion. Moral chemotherapy was necessary.
In 2018, I penned an urgent, heartfelt message to my fellow Christians asking them to reconsider their embrace of Trump. I wrote opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines, spoke in churches, bookstores, and college campuses, and appeared on television programs in hope of convincing people that Trump’s presidency was bad for the country and bad for the church. My work was part of a larger Christian anti-Trump effort carried out by scholars and writers with platforms much larger than mine.
Yet here we are, weeks away from another Trump presidency.
The body cannot exist on chemotherapy forever. Kaveny reminds us that chemotherapy is “dangerous” because “it kills healthy cells as well as diseased ones.” It thus must be used “accurately and sparingly.” The same is true of the body politic and the body of Christ. We prescribed strong doses of moral chemotherapy but it did not cure the disease running through our political and religious institutions. And maybe some healthy dimensions of democratic culture and Christian culture were damaged in the process.
But the disease lingers. We have a president-elect planning to pardon men and women who staged an insurrection on the United States Capitol, an insurrection that he himself encouraged and did little to stop. A decade or two ago conspiracy theories were associated with fringe political actors. Today the defenders of such theories are invited into the corridors of government. The separation of powers, a vital component of our Constitutional order, is severely weakened by GOP members of Congress who, in their moral cowardice, refuse to stand up to Trump. The Speaker of the House appears on Sunday morning news shows and defends a twice-impeached, felony-ridden president-elect who wants to use the highest office in the land to punish his political enemies.
On November 5, despite all this, the people chose Trump. Or at least they held their noses and voted for him because they think he will deliver lower inflation, end “wokeness,” protect them from “dangerous” immigrants, and make America great again.
As Trump prepares for his second presidential term, how should Christian intellectuals function? For those of us who earn our daily bread by thinking, the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election is a good time for reassessing how we do our work. What should we write and speak about in the Age of Trump? And how should we do it?
Moral chemotherapy is easy. And we are good at it. Intellectuals, to quote Noam Chomsky’s seminal 1967 New York Review of Books essay, “speak the truth” and “expose lies.” We critique the ethical deficiencies in our culture and cast condemnation from the heights of the ivory tower. Yet we are not very good at co-existing with people who see the world in fundamentally different ways than we do, or even just vote differently.
Sometimes I wonder if we spent so much time prescribing moral chemo that we didn’t try to understand our Trump-supporting neighbors. We never learned to engage the MAGA movement in a productive and perhaps more effective manner. Instead, we just kept prescribing the pill. And on Election Day the body rejected the treatment.
***
So back to my title. What is the responsibility of the Christian intellectual in the Age of Trump? Here are nine suggestions.
Christian intellectuals must lean into their role as educators. In our heart of hearts, we are teachers. It is time to remember that essential dimension of our vocation. Teachers meet their students where they are and go from there. They engage in the work of persuading, nudging (to use Cass Sunstein’s phrase), and offering evidence and sound argument in the hope of winning some.
Christian intellectuals must remain political and ecclesiastically jealous. In the eighteenth century a politically “jealous” person kept a careful watch on government leaders to guard against vice and corruption. We have the responsibility as citizens to speak out against authoritarianism, injustice, and those who seek to undermine democratic institutions. As Christians, we have an obligation to call out idolatry, unhealthy nationalism, materialism, and abuse. As Alan Jacobs wrote in 2016, Christian intellectuals are “watchmen.” The era of moral chemotherapy may be over, but this aspect of our work remains.
Christian intellectuals must refuse to accept an equivalence between anti-intellectualism and educated opinion. Populists would have us believe that educated people—the so-called “elites”—are the problem. But the founding fathers would have rejected such a view. “If the people are vicious,” Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence warned, “a republican nation can never be long free.” Today the words of Thomas Jefferson seem almost prophetic: “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other.”
In the last decade the church has validated Mark Noll’s “scandal of the evangelical mind” a thousand times over. The earth is getting hotter and some Christians still do not believe that climate change is real. For decades American historians have challenged the idea that the United States was founded primarily as a Christian nation, yet Christian nationalism appears to be on the rise. An anti-vaxxer may become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, while some Christians treat the real scientists—Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins come immediately to mind—as agents of “the deep state.”
Christian political witness is too often reduced to hanging Ten Commandment posters in schools, forcing K-12 educators to read from “patriotic” Bibles, and building social media platforms that provide an outlet for “owning the libs.” A theology that teaches Israel can do little wrong because the Jewish people still have a role to play in biblical prophecy is too prevalent in our churches. Meanwhile, the suffering of Palestinians (including Palestinian Christians) is largely ignored. All of this is unacceptable for a nation that was supposed to be built upon an educated citizenry. Intellectuals have a responsibility to counter the anti-intellectualism of populism.
Christian intellectuals must think more deeply about our publics. The literary critic and activist Edward Said wrote that an “intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy, or opinion to, as well as for, a public.” Who is this “public” and how do we reach them? A descent from the ivory tower is a good place to start. Of course, academics and scholars have been speaking to popular audiences for a long time. But for many elite intellectuals, writing for these audiences usually means enlightening the readers of The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Yorker or some other publication the majority of Trump voters, working people, and evangelical Christians do not read. Most Christians do not subscribe to Christianity Today, Christian Century, Commonweal, or First Things. Intellectuals need to have a deeper conversation about how to reach voters who don’t read or would prefer to learn about the world through non-traditional news sources and opinion sites.
Having said that . . .
Christian intellectuals must not abandon highbrow outlets. Just because the people we want to reach seldom read the stuff we write does not mean we should stop publishing in outlets—in the Christian world and beyond—that appeal to an educated audience. We have a duty to speak to fellow Christians who do not have the time, gifts, privilege, or interest to spend multiple hours a day thinking and writing but still want to learn from Christians who do. Those who read our work in such outlets, or come to a public lecture, or listen to a thoughtful conversation on a podcast, are probably more effective at putting ideas into action than we are. Many of them have built up trust in their local communities and churches to a degree that enables them to translate good ideas into action.
Christian intellectuals must think local. If our goal is to speak to a national audience, we may need to rethink our goal. National audiences hardly exist anymore. We live in what American historian Daniel T. Rodgers calls the “age of fracture.” Today Christian intellectuals should conceive their work in the context of communities, cities, towns, congregations, and all of those so-called “third places” where social capital is built. We need to think more deeply about how we might contribute to, or sometimes even build, local institutions for the purpose of supporting the intellectual and educational culture of such places. This might mean staying in a church full of MAGA evangelicals and building bridges through Christian education. Or it might mean pursuing innovative approaches to bringing Christian thinking to people across the boundaries of social class.
Christian intellectuals must be present on social media, but use it judiciously. Over the years I’ve learned the hard way that social media is no place for serious public engagement. Those who pontificate on Facebook, X, and yes, even BlueSky, tend to portray the world in black and white. While thriving democracies and thoughtful churches need nuanced and complex thinking in order to survive, social media offers only echo chambers. I recommend using social media to monitor the pulse of the nation and the state of the Christian community. It is a wonderful way to share one’s writing and the writing of others. But we must be realistic about what it can accomplish.
Christian intellectuals must be guided by Christian virtues. This, for me, is the most difficult part of thinking in public. It is also the area in which I have failed most frequently. Kaveny calls us to prophesy “without contempt.” Christian intellectuals should not shy away from arguments. We should take risks, be bold, display vulnerability, and act with courage and fortitude when necessary. But we must always remember that our interlocutors and sparring partners bear the image of God. This means that we need to address our audiences with humility, prudence, patience, and charity. We should bring what Paul describes as the “fruits of the spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23) to bear on our work. This is easier said than done, but for those who struggle on this front, Martin Luther King Jr, in a 1961 sermon at a Detroit church, provides some inspiration:
We come to see that there is within every man, the image of God, and no matter how much it is scarred, it is still there. And so, when we come to recognize that the evil act of our enemy neighbor is not the whole being or our enemy neighbor, we develop the capacity to love him in spite of his evil deed. The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. There may come a time when it will be possible for you to humiliate your worst enemy or even to defeat him, but in order to love the enemy, you must not do it. For in the final analysis, love means understanding goodwill for all men and a refusal to defeat any individual. . . . Love makes it possible for you to place your vision and to center your activity on the evil system and not the individual enemy who may be caught up in that system.Â
And finally . . .
Christian intellectuals should pursue community with like-minded intellectuals because our work can get lonely. Christians called to the life of the mind occupy liminal spaces. Our vocation requires us to be bilingual. To fulfill our calling we need to speak the language of elite intellectual discourse and the language of the church; the language of the academy and the language of the Sunday School. And no matter how hard we practice our diction, we will always be holy fools to some and despised prophets to others. This is why we need companions along the way to pick us up when we grow weary, help us carry the burden, and make the loneliness more bearable.
As we enter the next phase of the Age of Trump, let us do the work of Christian thinking with a renewed spirit of hope and reconciliation. It won’t be an easy task. But no true calling ever is.
John Fea is Executive Editor of Current, Distinguished Professor of History at Messiah University, and Distinguished Fellow in History at the Lumen Center in Madison, Wisconsin
Thank you for this.
As one who finds it -Enlightening -that the word-Intellectual-is not found in the Bible, it seems those who just get by seeking-Wisdom, Understanding and Discernment – from a Biblical perspective, probably didn’t have to -“Hold out nose”- and vote for Trump/Vance over the alternative.
Yes, thank you for reconsidering-Looking down your Nose-at us less than-Intellectuals- and trying to write in a way that reflects both the individualism existence of thought, and collectivism in shared Christian Principles.
Thank you, for the opportunity of a comment section. I wanted to clarify the “hold out nose” comment. I was proffering the act of, Sniffing the political wave then deciding who to vote for.
It was never a question in my mind or even spirit, who I would vote for, considering, The Choices.
The Dems never offended a candidate that had any solutions or ideology, that lined up in anyway with what is best for all citizens.
The last four years proved, even a flawed,- Business Person Real Leader- is better than flawed old school Leftism/Socialism.
What if we need a completely different starting point to even begin to provide a centrist intellectualism? I noticed a lot of elitist thinking in this article. Us/them. That elitism is the very reason many people turn to Trump. Not because he is one of them, but because he plays the part well.
For example, you wrote off entire interest groups as anti-intellectual. In other words, stupid. You will hate and scoff at this comparison, but Trump calls people stupid as well.
Listening may be the only way forward. Less publicity, more conversations. As an example, to call people against vaccination anti-intellectual as a whole may be too broad a brush. Sure, there are science deniers etc., etc. But it is not anti-intellectual to want more ethical vaccines. It is not anti-intellectual to acknowledge scandalous financial corruption in the vaccine industry. It is not anti-intellectual to want to change the law so vaccine injury patients can have a day in court. It is not anti-intellectual to want more regulation over the vaccine approval process. It is not anti-intellectual to want more government research into the possibility of a connection between vaccines and rising auto-immunity diseases.
My point being, in an age of instant access to the knowledge of the universe, people need human connection and lived-in wisdom to see the value of a certain viewpoint. Establishing oneself as an expert will never work again. Practitioners of human connection, listening, and humility may have a chance to pass on their quality of thinking to another person. Thanks for listening.
Paul: You use the example of vaccines. Do you feel the same way about climate change or election denialism (2020) in the same category? Christian nationalism? Do you believe January 6 was based on sound thinking? I want to listen, but as I wrote in the piece I don’t see any moral, political, or cultural equivalency between those who promote conspiracy theories and those who make decisions based on science, facts, and evidence.
John, speaking of election denialism, what about the fake accusations in “Russiagate” in which your tribe insisted there was proof that the Russkies enabled Trump to steal the 2016 election? It was a huge lie, yet it created a lot of damage because people insisted it was true.
As for climate change, do you really believe that wrecking economies and consigning billions of people to poverty is going to change world temperatures even by a fraction? Your denialism is that people like you can plan entire economies without creating mass havoc. We have the sorry history of the USSR and Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the grinding poverty of most North Koreans and Cubans as an example, but you remain a True Believer. So, who is the denialist?
And, yes, your article was a screed of someone who believes himself to be morally and intellectually superior to others.
Thank you for this. As a historian of American evangelicalism and a working pastor in a progressive church, these challenges define my daily work. This roadmap will be helpful in giving language to the task of the next four years (and the decade after that). When I was the pastor of a predominantly conservative church (one which I loved and love deeply), my emphasis was on joining their deep faith and biblical literacy to action that reflected what they believed. In my current church, the loving action of these people is often disconnected from any roots in scripture or theological reflection. There is much good work to do in both spaces, whoever occupies the Oval Office, and your nine suggestions give some shape to that work.
John, thank you for not writing me off immediately. I think you hit on something critical for understanding this. You grew up in a culture where information flow was significantly slower and where science was rigorous and respected. There was a lot more standing between “an idea popped into my head” and “this is a ground-breaking discovery that we should go to the expense of publishing.” AI and deep fakes have rocked the bedrock of how people perceive truth, or intellectualism for that matter. Scientific reversals and back-tracking, which this generation has had plenty of, increasingly consign science to the realm of “sophisticated opinion” in people’s imagination or perception. So your “science, facts, and evidence” mean almost nothing to them, as you can see. “Facts can be manipulated by AI, science might change in ten or twenty years, so how aren’t all ideas just functioning as props for an ideology that I despise?” is my understanding of the basic underlying question. There is a sort of intellectual defeatism plaguing our culture.
I will try to answer your questions more directly at a later time.
There are many many churches who have bought neither the yeast of the Sadducees (Trumpism) nor the yeast of the Pharisees (wokeism and CRT). I am fortunate to be in such a church, but there are many others!