'Disaster for our country': Evangelical Trump critics lament election outcome
One of the creators of a Christian nonprofit effort aimed at cultivating “better Christian politics” claims President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election is a “disaster” for the United States.
Curtis Chang, co-founder of The After Party, expressed profound emotional distress over the outcome, which saw Trump elected to a second term following strong support from Evangelicals, particularly white Evangelical voters.
The After Party, which Chang created with New York Times columnist David French and Russell Moore, editor-in-chief at Christianity Today magazine and former president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, was purportedly formed to help Christians develop a healthy and biblically informed understanding of political involvement, without promoting partisan viewpoints.
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During a candid conversation on “The Good Faith Podcast” posted to YouTube on Thursday, Chang made a distinction between the podcast’s contents and The After Party curriculum.
“A lot of people associate us with The After Party curriculum that we've created, really, to help Christians think about the ‘how’ of politics,” said Chang. “And because of that, the three of us in The After Party, in our roles as The After Party, were very intent to steer away from making any statement or encouragement on partisan leanings, on our own political viewpoints."
“This is a Good Faith recording; this is not The After Party curriculum.”
Chang and his colleagues then opened up about their personal feelings in response to the election results, with Chang saying that he was “still sorting through the combination of anxiety, avoidance, anger, anguish, alienation."
“I'm all over the map," he said. "I just felt like is this my country? Like, what does it mean?”
Chang recalled how, in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s election, he spent hours staying busy by digitizing photos and clearing out his garage in a phase he described as “big avoidance mode.”
“I mean, this election, I think, was a disaster for our country, but it did wonders for my to-do list,” he added.
French offered a more analytical perspective on some of the broader consequences of the election beyond his own circle.
“As it became very clear that Trump is going to win, what really settled in my mind was this idea that despair is a luxury,” he said. “One of the feelings that I had was, many of us who have stable jobs, who have good families, who have good friends, we're going to be fine,’ but there's a lot of vulnerable people out there who are not going to be fine.”
Moore, who was one of the more prominent anti-Trump voices in the SBC before he left the denomination in 2021, said whatever his thoughts on the outcome, it was “reassuring” that voters knew exactly for what — or rather whom — they cast their ballot.
“One of the things that is reassuring to me about this election is I don't feel like anybody was hoodwinked,” he said. “I think that both candidates were very, very clearly who they are, what they're going to do and the American people made a choice, so that's reassuring to me."
“I don't think that there's a sense in which, ‘Well, the American people don't know the drama they're signing up for.'"
Chang, French, and Moore all emphasized the importance of maintaining moral courage, even in a political climate they all agree is increasingly divisive and often cruel. French suggested Evangelicals who didn’t vote for Trump should prepare for a “long slog” of American “regress.”
“We were never promised that we would live in times of American progress,” he said. “Generation after generation of Americans have lived in periods of regress and we have to settle in maybe for a kind of long slog."
“It's already been long, for a longer slog, so take care of yourself.”
French publicly expressed support for Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris in a New York Times column in August, in which he said he would vote for Harris in order to “save conservatism from itself.”
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected].
