Split Over Donald Trump and Cut Off by Culture Wars, Evangelicals Despair
Really great article from the NY Times-I recommend reading it all.
GRIMES, Iowa — Betty and Dick Odgaard used to own the tiny church next door to their home. They had built it over 13 years into an art gallery, bistro, flower shop and framing service. They even rented out the chapel, with its bright stained glass windows, for social events.
But three years ago, the Odgaards refused to rent the quaint site to two gay men for a wedding, saying it would violate their religious beliefs about marriage. The men filed a civil rights complaint, and the Odgaards settled, paying a penalty because it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. After the controversy, regular customers stopped coming. Friends and family members stopped speaking to them. The Odgaards were vilified as bigots and haters.
But it was not long before the Odgaards found themselves cast as heroes as well. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, then a Republican candidate for president, visited the Odgaards’ business and videotaped a sympathetic interview with them. They joined a troupe of business owners upheld as Christian martyrs in the nation’s culture wars: the cake baker, the florist and the photographers who stood up for their religious beliefs and lost legal battles. They received a standing ovation at a Cruz rally and signed on as “religious liberty ambassadors” in his campaign.
Now, a year later, the Odgaards and other conservative evangelicals interviewed in central Iowa say they feel as though they have been abandoned. Many say that they have no genuine champion in the presidential race and that the country has turned its back on them. Americans are leaving church, same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and the country has moved on to debating transgender rights. While other Americans are anxious about the economy, jobs and terrorism, conservative Christians say they fear for the nation’s very soul. Some worry that the nation has strayed so far that God’s punishment is imminent.
So, in a year where many voters see nothing but bad choices, many evangelicals feel deeply torn. Long a reliable Republican voting bloc, many are appalled to find Donald J. Trump their only alternative to Hillary Clinton. They say he has taken positions all over the map on same-sex couples and abortion and does not have the character to be president. Others are still bewildered that Mr. Trump defeated not only Mr. Cruz — a pastor’s son who made “religious liberty” a signature issue — but also half a dozen other conservative Christian contenders they would have gladly supported.
Nevertheless, polls show that the vast majority of evangelicals are now coalescing around Mr. Trump, largely out of fear that a President Clinton will appoint liberal Supreme Court justices.
The change in America seemed to happen so quickly that it felt like whiplash, the Odgaards said. One day they felt comfortably situated in the American majority, as Christians with shared beliefs in God, family and the Bible. They had never even imagined that two people of the same sex could marry.
Overnight, it seemed, they discovered that even in small-town Iowa they were outnumbered, isolated and unpopular. Everyone they knew seemed to have a gay relative or friend. Mr. Odgaard’s daughter from his first marriage disavowed her father’s actions on Facebook, and his gay second cousin will not speak to him. Even their own Mennonite congregation put out a statement saying that while their denomination opposes gay marriage, “not every congregation” or Mennonite does. Mrs. Odgaard, 64, the daughter of a Mennonite minister, was devastated.
About a year ago, the Odgaards sold Görtz Haus to Harvest Bible Chapel, a church start-up that had been meeting in rented quarters. Its senior pastor, Ryan Jorgenson, 36, leads Sunday services in sneakers and jeans. He was trained and sent to Des Moines three years ago by a fast-growing network of conservative evangelical churches based in Elgin, Ill., that believe the Bible is God’s inerrant word.
Mr. Jorgenson jumped at buying the Odgaards’ picturesque property on the busiest street in Grimes, a suburb of Des Moines. He converted the lower floor, where the flower shop once stood, into a children’s ministry, and installed soundproofing to insulate the children’s ruckus downstairs from the electric guitars and drums of the church’s worship band upstairs.
He liked the symbolism of converting a landmark site that had represented a defeat for conservative Christians into an outpost for preaching “God’s word, without apology,” he said. The church now draws up to 300 on a weekend, and is already outgrowing the space.
He expects that more and more Christians will, like the Odgaards, suffer “persecution” for their beliefs. He regularly visits the Capitol in Des Moines to pray with and lobby legislators with the Family Leader, a conservative Iowa group.
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Mr. Jorgenson was among many Iowa pastors who publicly supported Mr. Cruz, though not from the pulpit, and he is not sure if he will vote for Mr. Trump in November, even though Mr. Cruz has now said he will vote for Mr. Trump. He would not even consider voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, and said he did not know anyone in his church who would. But asked how much hope he had that Mr. Trump would protect the religious liberty of conservative Christians, Mr. Jorgenson held his two fingers a quarter-inch apart.
“My hope is not ultimately in the government,” he said. “I am not of this world. Jesus is going to come back. He’s going to bring the perfect government. Until then, we live in a world of sin.”
Melissa and Tom Berkheimer started attending Mr. Jorgenson’s church after hearing him interviewed on Christian radio. They had become frustrated that their minister “watered down” his sermons and never said a word about same-sex marriage even after the Iowa Supreme Court legalized it in 2009.
She is an accountant, he a chemist, and they met in an online Christian chat room. They had something in common, aside from their faith: Mr. Berkheimer is half-Japanese, and Mrs. Berkheimer had lived in Japan and her children from her first marriage are half-Japanese.
Over dinner at a steakhouse recently, the Berkheimers said they had nothing against gay people — a refrain the Odgaards also repeatedly sounded.
“My brother was a homosexual,” Mrs. Berkheimer said. Her brother became a born-again Christian before he died of complications from AIDS many years ago, and she named her son after him, she said.
She said she became seriously alarmed about the nation in the past year as Congress failed to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood after an anti-abortion group released videos taken surreptitiously of the organization. The Berkheimers are in the “Never Trump” camp.
“I’m worried for America if we don’t turn away from abortion,” said Mrs. Berkheimer, who is 48. “I think our country is going to be punished, with a nuclear weapon. I don’t think you can mock God forever.”
She quickly added that she was worried she would sound crazy saying such things.
Really great article from the NY Times-I recommend reading it all.
