We may have never met. If so, I hope to meet you and thank you for letting me call you "friend" and thank you for reading this. You may have read other blogs or posts of mine and if you have you certainly know that you and I must be poles apart philosophically. So, it says a lot about your fair minded approach to life that you are reading someone with whom you may never agree.
You are probably experiencing disappointment so deeply that you feel it must be unprecedented in U.S. history. That may be true simply because this election has no precedent in our history. The division in this country has no precedent. In the last 50 years we have lost a consensus on morality that provided a basis for reconciliation between North and South (after the War) and between Democrats and Republicans after elections. That consensus is gone. Christianity, that provided that consensus, is now widely despised.
But let's get back to addressing your deep hurt and disappointment. You were probably not even born in 1960 but I believe that was the last time people like me felt the kind of disappointment you now feel. "But", you say, "were you conservative Evangelicals not bitterly disappointed at the election and reelection of Barak Obama?" Yes, many of us were, especially at his reelection. But holding control of the Congress eased our fears somewhat. You have no such consolation now.
Why do I compare your feelings now to ours in 1960? To understand this you must understand how deep were the fears of Roman Catholics holding high office. For some people this was a non-rational, visceral fear like the No Nothing Party in the 19th century and the Klan in the 1920's. This was behind the vicious opposition to the Catholic Al Smith, the Democratic candidate in 1928. But for others in 1960 it was based on an historical survey of countries where the Church of Rome had held control or large influence. Things did not often go well for liberty and prosperity in countries like that. This view was held, not just by conservative Evangelicals, but by so-called mainstream Protestants like Norman Vincent Peale of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. You may recall that he wrote the best selling The Power Of Positive Thinking in the 1950's. (An unrelated but interesting footnote to history is that a young Donald Trump attended Peale's church and acquired much of his optimism there.)
John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to be elected President and his victory in November 1960 is what drove people like me (18 years old) into deep disappointment like you feel now. Our unwarranted fears of Roman Catholicism were combined with our naïve belief that the Republican Richard Nixon was "one of us". He had, after all, spoken at Billy Graham's New York Crusade in 1957. I am now getting to the place where I hope that can see that your fears now are as unfounded as ours were then. While Kennedy may have been grossly immoral in private, his acts as President were, in retrospect, far from unfriendly to us who had feared him.
Once, he instructed one of his assistants to contact a South American government to help Billy Graham get the use of a certain arena for one of his crusades. Kennedy had several long talks with Billy Graham, the first of which was shorty after the election. Kennedy urged Congress to cut taxes because, he said, "a rising tide (the economy) lifts all boats". Most importantly, Kennedy refused to take the advice of some generals and invade Cuba. We now know that this cool headed restraint prevented a nuclear war. Nixon may now not, and probably would not, have done the same. We both know what Nixon turned out to be like once he got into the White House. And now, 56 years later, we Evangelicals are allies and friends with many Catholics in our deepest concerns for our country.
So, my friend, even though many things are different now I believe that a good case can be made that you will someday, like me, see that your fears were greatly exaggerated and perhaps even completely unfounded. Trump will, it appears, appoint people, especially judges, who will move us back toward a Christian base of law and morality. While this is feared by those who want to do anything sexually ("LGBT") it is ultimately their dignity and worth as individuals (like the pre-born baby) that is lost if the Christian base is lost. Jefferson, in the Declaration, called this base "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God".
If I were you, my dear friend, I would welcome someone who wants to appoint people who will move us in that direction again.
May you, and those dear to you, be greatly blessed by God.
