A well-worn youth minister metaphor explains how easy it is to get off course. It begins at the beginning.

Hikers (or pilots or sailors or whichever protagonist lands best with your audience) who find themselves far off their target destination usually need to look no further than the early stages of their journeys to determine where they veered off course. It was rarely a sharp turn left or right that got them lost, but rather a minor miscalculation in their initial steps.

I’ve been thinking about this metaphor lately as I reflect on how a particular group of Christians has engaged with our country’s decade-long Donald Trump Era.

This isn’t another one of those “Evangelicals are hypocrites for enthusiastically supporting this guy!” reflections. That sentiment, while true, is a bit tired and overstated. Historians like Kristin Du Mez have helped us understand that it was always going to be this way.

A tradition that lionizes mythical strongmen was always going to latch on to the first mythical strongman that came along. So, in retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as we were when ministers like Paula White, Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham cast their lots with Caligula.

In the same way, no one should have been caught flat-footed by the smaller but vocal collection of progressive Christians warning about the dangers of Trumpism.

We have our own sins to atone for, such as our historical role in the ascent of White Christian nationalism and the often patronizing and performative aspects of our advocacy. But leaders in the Christian tradition of Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis were always going to take a stand against the racist ramblings of a corrupt Manhattan real estate investor turned Reality TV star.

Our country has become desensitized to Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric, and many of our neighbors have been given tacit permission by their pastors to mirror his hateful words. These pastors are neither White Christian nationalists nor “woke lefties.” Instead, they lead congregations that refer to themselves as “purple churches.”

I first noticed the phrase “purple church” appearing around the time of Trump’s political ascendancy, and I don’t think that was an accident. Congregations began fracturing along political lines shortly after the infamous Access Hollywood Tape was released in October 2016.

After the 2016 election, congregants were angry at their pastors for speaking out against Trump, others for vocally supporting him, and still others for remaining silent and refusing to give explicit support or condemnation. It was a challenging time for pastors, especially those whose impulse was to remain silent.

This challenge was understandable. Historically, pastors, especially those in churches whose people benefit from the status quo, had an easy time remaining apolitical. (Pastors in churches full of marginalized people didn’t have that privilege.)

Legal prohibitions against endorsing political candidates supported this apolitical silence.

It was also supported by elections that, regardless of how animating the candidates may have been, were mostly about boring policy agendas. It’s easy for a pastor to remain outside the fray when debates are about foreign policy and marginal tax rates.

Even conversations about abortion afforded a certain amount of immunity, since that was an issue that had reached a cultural stalemate.

In this context, it was understandable for a pastor to highlight the reality that their church consisted of people with different political beliefs. Their congregation was neither red nor blue but “purple,” they would say.

However, with Donald Trump, elections are no longer just about policies. They are also about a candidate who has bragged about sexual assault. 

They are about a former president who called African nations “shithole countries.” They are about someone who told female politicians, U.S. citizens with racialized and religiously marginalized identities to “go back where they came from.”

Some pastors navigated these choppy political waters with general “both sides” condemnation. “We shouldn’t call immigrants vermin,” they would say. 

“But calling people ‘deplorables’ isn’t acceptable either.” Eventually, when they realized the scales would never be balanced with Trump involved, they joined their colleagues who chose silence from the beginning.

Silence from the pulpit on issues signals a recognition of how complicated policy can be. It acknowledges there is room for disagreement and that many differences of political opinion exist within a congregation.

But silence on hateful speech, especially from someone you know many people in your pews follow, signals an ambivalence to hate, at best. More often, it signals acceptance.

Many purple church pastors remained silent because they made a calculation that Donald Trump would eventually go away. But he didn’t go away, and their silence is one of the reasons why.

Had they spoken out (without “bothsidesing”) from the beginning, they would have lost people. But they also would have signaled to those put off by Trump’s hateful rhetoric that their discomfort was legitimate.

Now we are so far off course that a typical Trump speech includes so much hate that it gets forgotten before the next news cycle even rolls around. And, as we all know, it is only going to get worse now that his opponent is a Black, South Asian woman. It already has.

The good news for purple church pastors is that this moment presents a perfect opportunity for course correction. And, more good news, they may be some of the last remaining voices in our country that can still prophetically stem the tide of hate that is certain to grow as we approach November. They can do so without being partisan.

The silence from pulpits may have given permission for churchgoers to retreat to their political corners. But in some cases, it may have also positioned purple church pastors to effectively educate their congregants on the many ways racism and misogyny make their way into our political discourse. 

I pray they receive courage from God for the task at hand.