President Trump Approval and Christianity

Christianity is splintering along racial and ethnic lines in the U.S. It's fair to say that President Trump and his policies are particularly unique in history, and so it's hard to be neutral or nonchalant about him and his administration. So it is particularly interesting to see Christian positions on Trump because it reveals us--Christians--to ourselves, particularly when we accept or disapprove of the Ethics of the Trump administration.

Ethics reflect values, and values reflect belief systems or religion. When there is a divergence in how we assess ethics among Christian demographics, it means that our values are different, and divergent values imply religious differences. This is another way of saying that though we all may call ourselves Christians, we can't all be Christians and feel so differently about Trump's ethics. Either one side is wrong and the other right, or maybe "Christian" is a meaningless term and Trump has exposed that.

The Pew Research Center has some numbers on Trump's approval among Christians.
Trump's approval among adults: 59% Disapprove and 40 approve
72% of White Evangelicals approve of Pres. Trump compared to 10% of Black Protestants.
51% of White Catholics approve of Pres. Trump compared to 26% of Hispanic Catholics.

Now, approval can very much be about politics, economy, and culture, and so not necessarily an issue in itself. But here's the troubling data.

They asked about the ethical standards of top Trump administration officials. Let's refer to it as "Trump."
34% of White Evangelicals rate "Trump's" ethics as excellent and another 35% rate the ethics as good. That's 69%.
4% of Black Protestants rate "Trump's" ethics as excellent and 5% as good. 63% see it as poor.
For White Catholics, 23% see "Trump's" ethics as excellent and 26% as good. (49%)
For Hispanic Catholics, 10% see "Trump's" ethics as excellent and 15% as good.

There is a clear divergence based on race and ethnicity (these categories work differently in other countries). The assessment of ethics is key. If there is a divergence on how we all view the ethics of the Trump administration, it has to go far beyond simple politics, culture, or economic issues. Differing assessments of Trump's ethics imply different values and religions. There are no longer transcendent values that fundamentally hold the Christian community together. What's disturbing is that because of the influence of the US, these forms of Christianity are being exported around the globe at an alarming rate.

Denominational differences have defined the landscape of Christianity in the past few centuries. But, in the past few decades, there are new differences that have emerged that seem to cut just as deep. All this does raise the question of Christian unity. The issue of Christian unity is a pressing issue for only one reason: Jesus prayed that his disciples be one. But what does that mean? Or maybe the question is who really are his disciples (those who are to be one)? Does discipleship identification rest primarily on self- identification, or is it that those who are true disciples and are the ones who are unified in perhaps some unidentifiable way known only to God? The stats above, coupled with denominational differences, show that Christian unity or the prospect for unity is virtually impossible.

President Trump has driven the kind of wedge in Christianity that may be impossible to overcome. Or maybe he is exposing a wedge that was there all along. Maybe we all just have to admit that our differing ethics reflect differing values, which in turn reveal that we "Christians" aren't all of the same religion. Maybe "Christianity" is simply some sociological umbrella term that masks the canyons between vastly different religious streams that make some claim to the Christ figure. Maybe we who claim to follow Christ should realize that the true disciples who should be those (whoever they are) are bound together in spirit and transcend these differences (but we are not all the true disciples). If so, then all that's left to us is to strive for righteousness and pray that we are among the true disciples.  (P.S. "true disciple" as I speak of it, is not the equivalent of not going to Hell)