Testimony

Jon Ward, the chief national correspondent for Yahoo News, tries to answer this question in his deeply personal new book, “Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation.” It’s personal because Jon grew up evangelical himself in the suburbs of Maryland.

Jon is the son of a pastor. His parents kept him out of the local public school as too secular and prone to bad values. Jon went to a church school through sixth grade, was homeschooled for two years and then attended a Christian high school. “Christians established their own communities, educational institutions, and music festivals, isolated from the rest of the world,” Jon writes. He recalls being part of pro-life protests as a young child.

Not that he was unwilling; “I was still under the spell of my upbringing, which had taught me there was nothing to think about. Just vote GOP. This dismissal of thinking carefully was based on the notion that because Democrats support abortion, voting for any Democrat was unthinkable.” That simplicity was later challenged when he “met more actual Democrats who were real people and who were doing good in the world.”

Indeed, his work as a journalist with Yahoo, the Huffington Post and the Washington Times brought him into contact with thousands of people in a multitude of different environments. It broadened his sense of texture and complexity.

And then came the rise of Trump. Jon understood Trump’s appeal on a gut level. “Trump blew up the rules, ditched the media, and millions of Americans loved it. And I get it. How could I not? I had grown up deep inside the world that said the media was out to get us.” Of course, as a member of the media now himself Jon had quite a different perspective.

Jon details arguments he’d have with his family over Trump. Here, he believes that, at least for some, faith had lost to fear. “Faith gave us courage to stick to our principles even if there was a cost. Courage gave us the strength to engage lovingly and constructively with others who thought or believed differently from us. Fear, on the other hand, drove us to withdraw and retreat from dialogue and cooperation with others who were not like-minded. Fear would drive us to abandon our principles, to seek safety and protection at almost any cost, no matter who it hurt or how it reflected on our faith.”

One thing that I have been consistently dismayed by is how often people are willing to caricature supporters of one candidate or another. Perhaps it is because I’ve traveled the country so extensively to rural areas in the Midwest and the South, but I’ve always thought that most people are good and moral in any walk of life or town, blue or red.

“Testimony” is a valuable book in explaining how so many Americans of faith were – and still are – willing to support a candidate who seems so anathema to many of their expressed values. It ultimately is a call to avoid black and white binary ways of thinking, for people of faith or anyone else. “Christians should become agents of nuance rather than of reductionism.”

He writes, “[T]ruth-seekers don’t search for battles outside themselves to win. Instead, they examine their own point of view, searching for holes, weaknesses, errors . . . Journalism has made me more of a Christian, a better Christian. It has exposed me to the richness and complexity of life and has led me into the adventurous pursuit of truth that has durability, integrity and honesty . . . It is to live a life of curiosity and wonder.”

To hear Jon's story, click here. For Jon’s book click here. To move our politics beyond one side vs. the other, click here.