From promising massive deportations of millions of people to spreading lies about immigrants eating pets, ex-president Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, are reaching deep into a rancid current in American democracy — nativism. What may shock some casual observers is how deeply embedded nativism has been among evangelicals in America.
Rodney Kennedy
Trump is returning to the one theme he believes helped him win in 2016: anti-immigration rhetoric. Trump’s post-birtherism political career began with an attack on migrants from Mexico, a modern recasting of the old American precept that black and brown people are not fit to be citizens of this country. Trump made his nativist vision concrete by promising to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.
When he made his announcement speech at Trump Tower he said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” And, finally, reporters thought that he sounded like a charlatan when he said, “I would build a great wall — nobody builds walls better than me. … And I would have Mexico paying for that wall.”
Trump cast himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican “rapists,” only to later be accused by multiple people, and by his own proud words, of being a sexual violator himself. White Supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint.
Then Trump spoke of “caravans” and “hordes” of illegal immigrants heading to the border. Now, he calls immigration an “invasion.” “We are going to stop this invasion,” he said. “This invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.” Trump blames immigrants for taking American jobs. Vance even claimed immigrants were causing rising home prices because they were “people who shouldn’t be here, people who are competing against you and your children to buy homes that ought to be going to American citizens.”
Trump, sounding like independent Pentecostal televangelist Paula White-Cain, claims immigrants are coming from around the globe: “They’re coming from the Congo. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from all over the world — Asia,” Trump shouted. “A lot of it is coming from Asia.”
Trump and Vance are taking pages from an old playbook. Americans can easily be attracted to nativism whenever it makes an appearance. For Southern Baptists, there is no reason to look anywhere but at the preaching of J. Frank Norris, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas in the early 20th century. Barry Hankins, a history professor at Baylor University, wrote the definitive work on Norris, God’s Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism.
Nativism hiding in the gospel of “whosoever will may come,” and “just as I am,” has shocking implications. There’s a hard edge of exclusion to evangelical faith even as the preachers offer the gospel to immigrants. There’s a pernicious mistrust hiding in the evangelical gospel, an inability to stop excluding when interests are perceived to be endangered.
Norris, for example, believed Roman Catholics and immigrants were subversive of America. Hankins says, “The result was an extreme form of American nativism that has been a recurring theme in American cultural history.” Norris insisted Catholics could not be real Americans. In his eyes, the Catholic faith was “anti-American and unconstitutional.” His opposition to immigrants was vicious in its tone: “low-browed foreigners.”
J. Frank Norris’s First Baptist complex in Fort Worth covered a city block and featured a sanctuary that could accommodate five thousand worshippers.
Hankins notes Norris once claimed all foreigners should be investigated, deporting the ones who were anarchists. “They should be herded into ships filled with bombs and sent out to sea to be blown up,” he said. He reserved some of his wrath for New York City. Trump and Vance sound like Boy Scouts when lambasting Springfield, Ohio, when compared to Norris: “New York is the world’s largest Jewish city. New York is the world’s largest negro city. New York is the world’s largest Italian city. New York is the world’s largest Irish city.”
Norris’s attacks on New York City resonate now in Trump’s relentless attacks on large cities in our country as he raves about crime rates at a time when crime is down and he rants about Democratic mayors destroying our cities. He has probably never read a single F. Frank Norris sermon, but he is his brother by temperament and viciousness.
In my earlier work, The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump, I compared the rhetoric of Norris and Trump. For example, at a rally in Dallas, Norris said, “Now, I call upon all red-blooded white folks here tonight, who love God, who love the flag, and who love order, to exercise your right as American citizens and see to it that none of these ring-kissing Tammany Hall gang cause any more interference or disturbance.”
Evangelicals in America are already primed for nativist attacks on immigrants. J. Frank Norris and fundamentalist pastors across the country condemned Catholics and immigrants with an unceasing fury. Trump and Vance are carrying on an old family tradition. It is steeped in prejudice, hatred, racism, and dehumanization. And it still resonates with some of the population.
The real task is to help Americans not be afraid of diversity and inclusion, of accepting the gifts of those different from us. On the ground, where people live and work, communities are being strengthened by an influx of immigrants. The radical nature of ordinary people working together for common goals shines brightly when people come from different places. Pursuing the potential of sharing the gifts of immigrants with others seems a constructive alternative to the destructive lies of nativism proclaimed by Trump and Vance.
Rodney Kennedy has his M.Div. from New Orleans Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Louisiana State University. The pastor of 7 Southern Baptist churches over the course of 20 years, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio — which is an American Baptist Church — for 13 years. He is currently professor of homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, and interim pastor of Emmanuel Friedens Federated Church, Schenectady, New York. His eighth book, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit, is out now from Cascade Books.