Though it has gained attention for its discussion of abortion, Balmer’s Bad Faith seeks to answer the question “Why did 81 percent of evangelicals support Donald Trump in 2016 and 76 percent in 2020?” While tempting, reading Bad Faith simply as a refutation of the Religious Right’s campaign against Roe v. Wade misses Balmer’s purpose and, with tragic irony, rejects the very narrative he seeks to uncover.
Unfortunately, Bad Faith lends itself to such a misreading. Balmer takes considerable time setting the stage for his condemnations. He begins by linking the optimism of the Second Great Awakening to the traditional evangelical commitment to progressive social reform. Tragically, the rise of premillenialism in the nineteenth century increasingly led evangelicals to a “theology of despair” that focused on individual salvation. As a result, evangelicals withdrew from a culture they saw as bereft of biblical values and established their own network of institutions, churches, and schools.
Balmer quickly moves beyond this generally agreeable narrative to lay bare some hard facts. Borrowing themes from his Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter, he sets up for what proves to be an unexploited contrast with Carter’s progressive, authentically Christian values with those of Donald Trump. Instead, moving quickly and convincingly Balmer proposes that abortion was manipulated to serve as an “origin story” for evangelical political reengagement, through it had not been a cause for serious concern before or immediately after Roe v. Wade.
With chapters 6 and 7, the volume’s most compelling, Balmer arrives at the discussion of race hinted at by the title. He evidences how a small group of highly invested operatives like Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell, and Robert Billings successfully coopted abortion in order to launch the Religious Right. The Religious Right’s true purpose, aside from power itself, was to prevent the removal of federal tax exemption of evangelical churches and schools while also allowing them to maintain the racist practices that had raised the threat of federal intervention in the first place. The slippery slope now clearly established, Balmer proposes that the racist and anti-federalist tendencies of candidate Ronald Reagan were manipulated by the Religious Right in order to secure the evangelical vote. Reagan’s presidency ultimately served the desire of Weyrich and others to deftly link outrage with abortion to the narrative of state’s rights that was already abundant in the South. For Balmer, the conditions had been set for the alignment of mostly well-meaning evangelicals with Trump despite his clearly bad, and unbiblical, faith.
Bad Faith capitalizes on Balmer’s reputation for scholarly engagement with contemporary evangelicalism in the United States through compelling historical narratives. The slim volume, published in trim size (5 x 7 inches), represents an extended essay rather than a full scholarly treatment of race and evangelical faith or politics. Happily, this will make it very accessible to popular readers. When supported by additional scholarly resources, Bad Faith may usefully serve to generate thoughtful and difficult discussion in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Institutions engaged in reflection about inclusion and diversity will find it a helpfully engaging resource for group study.
Despite the compelling narrative, many will find at least one reason for displeasure with Balmer’s diagnosis. The evidence refuting the origin myth of abortion is slight and selective. The link between school choice and an “unacknowledged and unaddressed racism” may be true, but it is also overgeneralized. While the spirit is there, the outright material rejection of racism is tepid and too closely linked to a lamentable evangelical support of Donald Trump. A theological or political stance about abortion is left rigorously ambiguous.
In the end, one is tempted to describe Bad Faith as a courageous rejection of the sin of systematic racism. Acquiescing to such praise suggests that a deep conversion is needed if we are to truly confront Christian racism at the heart of religious faith in the United States.
