To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric and personal behavior — his denunciations of Hispanics, tasteless remarks about women and sex, and marital infidelities — were negatives for many of us who voted for him. But, though sometimes excessive or offensive, his brash style was effective because it showed that he understood the feelings of those alienated from mainstream politics — those who felt left behind economically and angry at a federal government that was intruding into their lives, schools that were teaching their children things they did not believe, and celebrities, the media, and mainstream politicians who ridiculed them. 

“How can practicing Catholics and evangelical Protestants support a president as immoral as Donald Trump?” This question assumes that it is morally or intellectually inconsistent to do so — an argument that has been advanced in publications as ideologically distant as the National Review and the Atlantic.

But are Christians who support Trump inconsistent or guilty of fundamental moral errors?

To many conservative Christians, such as myself, Donald Trump offered the hope of making right what they saw as going horribly wrong in our country. Alternative candidates stood for policies that would make things worse and were beset with deep character flaws of their own.

Candidate Trump was unabashedly pro-life and willing to defend religious freedom. He stood for a stronger national defense after eight years of appeasement and neglect. He understood and stated clearly that Western Civilization is under attack from Islamic militants. He supported Israel unreservedly. He saw how excessive taxation and regulation combined to give us the worst recovery from a recession on record.

That is not to say that all Trump supporters support all of Trump’s policies. I, for one, believe the president is wrong to promote the myth that immigration and imports kill jobs and hurt Americans. No candidate has a perfect policy platform.

To be sure, Trump’s rhetoric and personal behavior — his denunciations of Hispanics, tasteless remarks about women and sex, and marital infidelities — were negatives for many of us who voted for him. But, though sometimes excessive or offensive, his brash style was effective because it showed that he understood the feelings of those alienated from mainstream politics — those who felt left behind economically and angry at a federal government that was intruding into their lives, schools that were teaching their children things they did not believe, and celebrities, the media, and mainstream politicians who ridiculed them.

In short, despite efforts to caricature him, President Trump presents a complex picture of sound and unsound policies and personal virtues and vices. Conservatives Christians felt (and continue to feel) that, on balance, the sound policies outweigh the unsound, making the vices worth putting up with — especially given the alternatives.

The President’s Policy Agenda

Start with policy. On balance, and giving the most weight to the issues of public policy with the greatest moral significance for Christians — rights to life, religious freedom, and to a decent standard of living — the choice to support him has been clear to me and many others. Here Trump has delivered considerably well.

The future of the Supreme Court was the overriding reason for many to vote for Trump. By appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, President Trump has given hope that the right of religious liberty will be preserved and the rights of the unborn and unwanted defended. His establishment of new HHS policies to protect health-care workers who refuse services like abortion on religious grounds and his executive order on organizations refusing to comply with the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act likewise remove past threats to freedom to follow religious beliefs.

On the economic side, before Trump was elected, economic growth was forecasted to stagnate atabout two-thirds what it was since World War II. My own studies and those of many other economists supported the conclusion that the proliferation of regulations and rising taxes since the Bush era were the primary causes of this stifled growth.

President Trump delivered the largest revision of the tax code since President Reagan. While the tax bill could have been much better, it was still a move in the right direction, as I have writtenelsewhere. Trump has also made the first real progress in 40 years of sporadic attempts to rein in regulation. The number of regulations putting constraints on business in the first year of the Trump administration was only 32 percent of the number issued annually under Obama — not counting all the proceedings started to roll back regulation. Investment, employment, and the stock market all responded immediately.

These are not just economic issues but issues of social justice as well. Starting with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” in the late 19th century, the Catholic Church has reflected at length on the nature of social justice, especially in terms of the well-being of the working classes. A consistent theme is that workers should have an income from their labor that will allow them to support their families, educate their children, and provide for their old age.

At the same time, these “social encyclicals” condemned socialism for taking those privileges and responsibilities away from the workingman and imposing a government’s preferences and values. Later encyclicals, such as “Centesimus Annus,” having observed some consequences of the welfare state, warned perceptively about how welfare programs eroded self-respect, incentives to work, and the family. A key theme in this Catholic social teaching is that political and economic problems should be dealt with at the lowest level of social organization that can do so effectively — preferentially the family, church or community.

Read More