Eric Metaxas has bothered me a lot in the age of Trump.
He was supposed to be a really bright guy, who wrote biographies of Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both of which were acclaimed at least in the parts of the virtual world I visit. But then he got an eponymous radio talk show, and started supporting Trump, for support of whom I had not heard and could not imagine any “really bright” defenses.
Was really bright Metaxas seeing something I was missing? Or had he just decided it was time to cash in on his “bright guy” reputation, seeing how even acclaimed books don’t pay that much in royalties? That doesn’t seem to fit: I’ve looked at the podcast version of his radio show, and two other podcasts Metaxas does, and they look a bit too high-toned, and even non-political, frankly, to be cash cows. (I’m not subscribing, but they’re apparently not the cesspools I feared, either.)
Then came a recent “debate” over Trump between him and David French. In my opinion, Metaxas did not produce even semi-bright arguments for Trump. It’s hard to identify Metaxas’ argument beyond that because it’s a “thought salad” (he’s too smooth for word salads), a fusillade of arguments lame and lamer.
I will not say that Metaxas makes evangelical-friendly arguments that he does not believe, whatever I may suspect about that. But he clearly is making fear-based arguments about the horrors that will come if Democrats are elected. (If Democrats gain the Presidency and the Senate, it could indeed get ugly because (a) they’ve been terrible on religious freedom since, oh, roughly, when Bill Clinton signed RFRA and RLUIPA and (b) now some of them are out for explicit revenge against at least Evangelicals, and it’s hard to punish Evangelical Trumpists without mucho collateral damage.)
So: Gotcha! You’re voting/inciting votes based on fear, Metaxas!
But so what? I’m voting against Trump because I fear that his malignant narcissism will tragically misapprehend the world in a future crisis — a fear his January-February misapprehension of the novel coronavirus threat justifies in spades.
I think, though, that “fear” is an equivocal word in this context. My fear for the country isn’t exactly the same genus and species as the fear Metaxas is engendering toward the prospect of Democrats controlling the political agenda again — fear of “socialism” and, of course, increased abortion (which has actually been decreasing, including under Democrats, for a long time now).
So no, I wasn’t missing anything, but it seems that stupid pro-Trump arguments are kind of an inexplicable quirk of Metaxas, who may indeed be a really bright guy in other contexts — though the way he wielded Luther and Bonhoeffer in the debate with French disinclines me to buy either of their bios.
(H/T John Fea, The French-Metaxas Debate: Some Commentary, who first got the debate transcribed and then in later commentary confirmed my impression that Metaxas was fear-mongering and, for good measure, dog-whistling.)
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Secularism, I submit, is above all a negation of worship. I stress:—not of God’s existence, not of some kind of transcendence and therefore of some kind of religion. If secularism in theological terms is a heresy, it is primarily a heresy about man. It is the negation of man as a worshiping being, as homo adorans: the one for whom worship is the essential act which both “posits” his humanity and fulfills it.
Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, Appendix 1
[O]nce you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness,
And they will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach ….
Wendell Berry, Do Not Be Ashamed
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