(My evangelical bonafides: I grew up in a non-denominational evangelical church and married my husband while he was in an evangelical seminary. He has pastored two evangelical churches for a total of almost 30 years. I have authored four books with evangelical publishers, including Harper Collins/Zondervan.)

This is not a rant against Donald Trump or the people who support him, who include many of my friends. I respect their choices. As with the tensions surrounding our beliefs about where God’s sovereignty ends and free will begins or how God created the earth—young or old earth, theistic evolution or intelligent design—godly people with a high view of Scripture disagree. And we can still treat one another with gentleness and respect in the spirit of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “…bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

We each give account to God for the stewardship of our citizenship and vote.

With a very heavy heart I would possibly vote for Trump in November, but could only do that in good conscience before God if I did whatever I could now to get someone else on the ballot instead. Here in South Carolina our early primary votes carry extra weight in shaping the presidential race. So we have donated to Nikki Haley’s campaign, have her sign in our yard, and I am writing this post

Why Haley?

    1. I loved the way Haley represented the United States at the United Nations.

She projected tremendous strength and courage, speaking truth to all the powers of the world without compromise or contempt.

In her first UN speech Haley said, ” I consider it unfortunate that the occasion of my first appearance here is one in which I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia. We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions….” What a contrast with Trump’s early, equivocating responses to Putin. I remember thinking, This is how I want my president to lead.

In 2018 Haley directed the US’s withdrawal from the UN’s Human Rights council saying, “This disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights.” On her watch she adamantly defended Israel and the administration’s decision to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem.

Haley remains deeply concerned about our national security. “The world is on fire,” she said last Friday, and it is largely due to “the debacle in Afghanistan.” We have shown such weakness that our enemies are emboldened.

After the October 10^th Hamas massacre of Israelis, Haley released this statement:

“Hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist organization backed by Iran and determined to kill as many innocent lives as possible. The reports out of Israel are horrific with a stunning number of dead and wounded and should be universally condemned. Israel has every right to defend its citizens from terror. We must always stand with Israel and against this Iranian regime.”

Notice the lack of contempt in this statement. Haley stands in the tradition of our founding fathers in calling out evil in plain, direct language, without exaggeration or mocking. Unlike Trump, she shows the same respect to her personal attackers.

In 2018 she announced on Face the Nation that Russia would be sanctioned for supporting Syria during its use of chemical weapons. But over the weekend the White House changed course without notifying her. When top economic advisor Larry Kudlow offered that Haley was ahead of the curve and momentarily confused, Haley responded, “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.” Kudlow later apologized to Haley.

    2. I appreciate Haley’s fiercely independent political thinking.

I’m struck by the irony that in this race Haley is being accused of being in the pocket of the Republican establishment.  But she came to power from the outside, just like Trump. Our South Carolina state rep Nathan Ballantine introduced her at a rally in our Columbia suburb over the weekend as a former South Carolina state rep who took on the Old Boy network when she ran for Governor, defeating three of them, including one who became our current governor, even though early in the race she was only polling at 2%.

In 2016, when Jeb Bush won the early support of the Republican establishment, Haley decided not to kiss the ring. Nor did she support Trump, who was polling well. Instead, when Trey Gowdy and Tim Scott joined Marco Rubio for his “Three Amigos” bus tour of South Carolina, Haley also added her support before the primary election.

    3. Haley excelled at bringing more jobs to South Carolina

To be specific, she helped bring 86,000 jobs spread over all 46 counties. She prioritized expanding small business as well as bringing in large corporations, including Volvo, BMW, Mercedes and five large tire companies. Perhaps this has contributed to why she is perceived as being in the pocket of big business. But you can’t have it both ways. A strong economy requires a thriving business sector, and when Haley became governor, our state faced record unemployment and years of economic decline. Now we are known as “the Beast of the Southeast.”

    4. Haley has taken a strong stance on immigration

As the daughter of legal immigrants, Haley is tender to their plight, but believes our immigration laws should be enforced. And improved. She believes that illegal immigrants should be detained in Mexico and thinks catch and release should be changed to catch and deport.

As governor she signed one of the strongest immigration laws in the country. It required employers to e-verify that their employees were legal immigrants. It was so strong that Obama’s administration filed suit against it. But they lost.

In this election she has been accused of being soft on immigration. But her words were deceptively edited. An ad shows her saying, “You don’t just need to build a wall,” but they cut off the end of her sentence where she added, “…we need e-verify too.” Which adds another, stronger layer of enforcement to the wall by making employers responsible for who they hire.

    5. Her record on taxes has been grossly misrepresented

Ads show Haley saying she will not raise taxes on South Carolina citizens. Other ads show her advocating for raising the gas tax. What they don’t explain is that the gas tax would not raise overall taxes because it was actually part of a “tax swap” where property taxes were lowered for homeowners in exchange for a slightly higher gas tax.

On immigration, taxes and other matters, I encourage you to make a quick internet search to see if attack ads against Haley are true. Go to her website and see for yourself what she stands.

    6. I believe that character matters. And Haley’s is far stronger than Trump’s.

This section is a hard one for me to write. I did not vote for Trump in the 2016 primary because of his character and there were other good options. I did vote for him rather than Biden in the general election because I thought both had weak character and I supported Trump’s policy. Primaries can offer us a choice we do not have in a general election. Which is why it is so important to make the best choice now. I am not ranting at Trump supporters or those who are undecided, but trying to speak objectively and from my experience.

I was outraged by Bill Clinton’s sexual abuse of Monica Lewinsky and his lies to cover it up. Were you? “I did not have sex with that woman.” “Character matters!” millions of us insisted, backed by the firm teaching of God’s Word.

Slowly, we began to learn about President Trump’s moral character. I cringed at his hot mic comments from 2005, “I just start kissing [beautiful women]. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab them by…You can do anything.”

He also lives by a core philosophy he shared in his best-selling business book The Art of the Deal: “Fight Back–always hit back against critics and adversaries, even if it looks bad.”  Hit them twice as hard.

Who can forget his response to the gold-star Muslim father, Khizr Kahn, whose son was killed in Iraq, when he challenged Mr. Trump from the podium of the Democratic Convention. “Have you even read the Constitution?…You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” True to his own advice, Trump hit back and even attacked Kahn’s quiet and vulnerable looking wife. More cringing.

When Bill Barr, his Attorney General, refused to vigorously attack perceived voter fraud after the 2020 election (and hey, I still have many questions), Trump attacked him as a “spineless RINO” and “gutless pig,” just as he attacked other good men like Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, and Mike Pence. In his memoir, Barr describes his research into the 2020 vote. He became convinced that, ironically, Trump actually lost the election by losing suburban voters and independents in counties that had supported him in 2016. But they rejected him in 2020 primarily because they became disgusted with his brutal treatment of others.

If you revile, belittle, and assault the dignity of others, you wound them and make them want to withdraw from you. If they have gravitas and moral authority, you look small and selfish by comparison. You alienate the people looking to you for leadership. Relationships break down. Trust and unity are destroyed (from my previous post on Trump’s character).

Here we are four years later, and rather than focusing on the American people, as he did in ’16, Trump is focused on talking about being a victim and the avenger, “I am your revenge!” Is that how we evangelical Christians see ourselves? As victims and avengers? Is he really speaking for us?

I was deeply grieved to read this Jan 16th article from the Salon website: With Donald Trump’s Iowa landslide, evangelicals reveal who they really are | Salon.com

Forget Jesus — modern evangelicals look at President Drink Bleach as their lord and savior

Over the past eight years, we’ve all watched as evangelicals have grown ever more fanatical in their love of Trump, a thrice-married adulterer who bragged about committing sexual assault. Still, many pundits cling to this fantasy that American evangelicals are morally upright people who actually mean all that talk about chastity, charity and Christian values. It was always a silly notion, of course, as the evangelical movement has long shown itself more interested in right-wing politics than in feeding the poor and healing the sick….

Trump is an avatar for the current mood of white evangelicals. They are done pretending to be “compassionate.” The mask is entirely off. Evangelicals are not the salt-of-the-earth types idealized by centrist pundits. They are what feminists, anti-racists and pro-LGBTQ activists have always said: authoritarians who may use Jesus as cover for their ugly urges but have no interest in the “love thy neighbor” teachings of their purported savior.

Forget Jesus. The real lord of the evangelical movement has shown his grimacing orange face to the world, and it is a nasty one. There’s a temptation among pundits, who want to retain their view of the humble Iowa evangelical, to write this alliance between Trump and the Christian right as purely transactional: He gets votes, and they get their anti-choice/anti-gay policies so long as they just ignore the stuff they supposedly don’t like about Trump.

But this image of evangelicals as reluctant Trump supporters doesn’t comport with reality. Trump often gets a rapturous reception with evangelical audiences and is frequently memorialized in fan art that depicts him in a near-messianic light. “I say when Jesus died, he died for us,” one Trump supporter [said]. “So when Trump is facing all these things, he’s doing it for us in our place.”

And Trump has leaned into this Messianic embrace. Last month he posted this video on his Truth Social account. It begins, “And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So, God gave us Trump.” It’s a little tongue-in-cheek in style, but the content is serious.

The Salon piece is written with the same harsh, dehumanizing language that Trump uses. Yet I know many unbelievers who basically agree with its substance. They just don’t write about it where I can quote them. It breaks my heart for me to think this is how evangelical support for Trump is interpreted by increasing numbers outside the church. Think of what our vote says about what we value to friends and family who don’t know Jesus.

Who we really are

We are not victims who need another savior. We are overcomers with the one we already have. Many of us voted for Trump so he would refashion the Supreme Court and overturn Roe. End or restrict abortion and save millions of little lives. Well, the court was refashioned with a conservative majority, but our mission is not accomplished because issues of the heart need a real Savior. And by supporting Trump we can get in the way of the main thing.

If there is anyone else who can champion saving babies and be a strong force against the powers of evil in this world, who will not only build a wall to control immigration, but require employers to e-verify, who has a track record of bringing in tens of thousands of jobs in her state while keeping spending under control and do it with courage and boldness, wit and kindness, maybe we should vote for her. Especially when so many polls indicate Haley would be more likely to beat Biden than Trump. Let’s disappoint all the democrats who are so happy Republicans are ignoring her, especially here in her home state.

I encourage you to vote for Nikki Haley for president in the Republican primary this Saturday. Early voting Tues-Thurs. If you agree, please share this post.

Who are you planning to vote for? Why? I welcome your respectful response in the comment section below.