outcome. Trump asks him if he thinks
evangelical voters will show up for him.
The pastor says he does. Later that night,
Jeffress and his wife go to the Hilton to
watch the results come in. For a while,
it’s slow and quiet, and the couple de-
bate leaving early.
But as the evening wears on, the feel-
ing in the room starts to change.
“I will never forget when the spotlight
was thrown on the balcony of the ball-
room,” he recalls later, his voice slowing
for dramatic effect. “The president and
the first lady and their family entered to
the soundtrack of the movie Air Force
One. It was a chill-bumps moment.”
After a speech, Trump comes down
from the stage to shake a few hands.
Spotting Jeffress, he walks over and
puts his arm around the pastor. The
boy who used to play his accordion on
Mr. Peppermint is now standing next to
the future president. “Did you see it?”
Trump says. “Largest evangelical turn-
out in history!”
“Yes, sir, I saw it,” Jeffress tells him.
“I just wanted to be sure you saw it.”Here’s Robert Jeffress in his office, a
year or so into Trump’s first term, speak-
ing to a reporter: me. We have a bit of his-
tory. In late 2011, around the time Jef-
fress was first upsetting conservatives
by criticizing Republican presidential
front-runner Mitt Romney, I wrote a
profile of Jeffress for D Magazine. In
the story, I explained that despite the
fact that I disagreed with him on vir-
tually every issue—at the time, he was
supporting a presidential run by Texas
governor Rick Perry—I found Jeffress
charming and personable. Yes, he insists
that the vast majority of humanity will
spend eternity in a pit of fire. But he’s
also self-deprecating and disarming. I
was curious about his political advoca-
cy and how he squares it with the teach-
ings of Jesus.
After the story ran, we continued to
have lunch every couple of months, usu-
ally in his office. It’s on the sixth floor
of one of the church’s eight buildings,
with towering shelves of scholarly jour-
nals, framed covers of his books (he has
written more than twenty), and floor-
to-ceiling windows that look out over
the Nasher Sculpture Center. We ask
each other about family and work. We
discuss news and politics and whatev-
er’s happening in the world that week.He’s completely engaged, attentive.
With or without the TV makeup, he’s
the same man. Same rapid-fire delivery.
Same polite, saccharine manner. Same
unapologetic born-again Baptist view of
the world. He says he genuinely wants
me to dedicate myself to Jesus Christ,
and he prays for me and my wife. His goal
is to save as many souls as possible be-
fore the end times. He knows journalism
is important to me, and he reminds me
that some of the greatest writers in his-
tory were Christians. I joke that I know
he’d love to brag that he helped shape
some sort of present-day C.S. Lewis.
I’m also forthright: about my curiosi-
ty, about my dismay at the many things
he says and does that have the potential
to hurt so many people. He knows what
I’m talking about, and he laughs and
nods. We discuss my writing something
about him and his friendship with the
president. He likes the idea. Then he
jokes, “Now, don’t pull a Michael Co-
hen on me!”
So for months, I attend Sunday ser-
vices, hang out at church events, spend
hours talking politics with religious con-
servatives, and meet over and over with
Jeffress himself. The unlikelihood of the
Trump presidency has occasioned much
ink and froth about the many purport-
ed reasons that white evangelicals sup-
ported him: economic and racial fears,
Supreme Court picks, abortion, the fact
that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, and so
on. It’s also provoked condemnation
of Jeffress and his fellow Trump-sup-
porting religious leaders for seemingly
abandoning Christian principles in ex-
change for power—for becoming “court
evangelicals,” as historian John Fea, the
author of Believe Me: The Evangelical
Road to Donald Trump, puts it. Fresh-
faced 2020 presidential hopeful Pete
Buttigieg, a gay military veteran and a
Christian, likes to say that support for
Trump is in tension with much of the
New Testament, including, for exam-
ple, the way Jesus condemns those who
truckle to the strong while neglecting
the poor. Closer to home, Eric Folkerth,
the senior pastor at the much more lib-
eral Woods United Methodist Church,
in Grand Prairie, writes an open letter
to Jeffress in May, calling him “a Phar-
isee of our time.”
And so I press Jeffress to explain the
choices he makes, to explain the things
he says in front of the cameras. Jeffresshas told me he was drawn to Trump’s
leadership and intellect. “He’s a very
smart person,” he’s said. “You don’t be-
come a billionaire and president of the
United States by being an idiot.” But
none of that quite explains why a pastor
goes out of his way to publicly defend
the president’s every indiscretion. He
could easily vote according to his views
on the Supreme Court or according to
his conscience on abortion without also
going on TV, over and over, in front of
hundreds of thousands of viewers, to ex-
plain away things like Trump’s adultery
and language that inflames foreign pol-
icy. He could be in favor of immigration
reform, for example, and not feel com-
pelled to rationalize the separation of
families. He could believe that God has
put someone in power and still hold that
person to a high moral standard.
Jeffress often tells his flock that God
sends us tests and trials. I want to ask
Jeffress if he thinks there’s any chance
Donald Trump is a test from God—and
if maybe he’s failing.Here’s Robert Jeffress on a Sunday
morning, surrounded by lights and cam-
eras and flat screens the size of school
buses, taking the stage with the con-
fident stride of a talk show host. He’s
looking out on an audience of roughly
1,600, with thousands more watching
and listening in, delivering a sermon
that’s at turns funny and thoughtful
and ripe with references to pop cul-
ture and historic events and scholar-
ly interpretations of biblical passages.
Jeffress is wearing a dark suit with faint
pinstripes, a red tie that glimmers un-
der the lights, and a nearly impercepti-
ble wireless microphone over his right
cheek, and he’s nailing the timing of ev-
ery joke and pausing for laughs and mod-
ulating his voice in just the right way to
create connection.
Today’s sermon is about “the anti-
dote to worry,” and it unfolds like a for-
ty-minute brimstone-scented TED talk.
In the first few minutes alone, he mixes
in quotes from obscure authors, anec-
dotes from World War II, and the ety-
mology of the word “worry.” Sprinkled
throughout are also copious references
to supporting Scripture; there are more
than ten, from the Old Testament and
New, in the first twenty minutes. Af-
ter each citation, he pauses to let his
words linger. His reasoning is based on108 TEXAS MONTHLY