Albert Mohler, the longtime president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the best-known evangelicals in the United States, famous for his writings on faith, and now for his podcast, “The Briefing,” which airs every weekday. Mohler was a harsh critic of Donald Trump in 2016, calling him a “sexual predator,” and lamenting his popularity among Christians. (Mohler says that he did not vote that year.) When Mohler and I spoke in June of 2020, he called Trump “a huge embarrassment,” but nevertheless offered various reasons why it was necessary to support him in that year’s election. He admitted that his reasoning had a certain “pragmatic, utilitarian dimension to it,” explaining that Democrats and Republicans had diverged so much on social issues.
Five years later, Mohler interviewed a fellow-theologian about “the sin of empathy.” The conversation occurred in February, around the same time that Elon Musk told Joe Rogan that “civilizational suicidal empathy” was destroying the West. I wanted to hear more about Mohler’s perspective on empathy, and whether his views on American politics and the Trump Administration had evolved since we last spoke. Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below.
Do you still think President Trump is an embarrassment?
Now when you say those words, you are going back to 2016?
2020. You said that to me.
O.K., I need context here. I supported President Trump’s election in 2020.
I know you did, but when we talked you said, “President Trump is a huge embarrassment, and it’s an embarrassment to evangelical Christianity that there appear to be so many people who will celebrate precisely the aspects that I see Biblically as most lamentable and embarrassing.”
Yeah, I mean, I said that in a context. I mean, frankly, many of the particulars of the story of Donald Trump are embarrassing to evangelicals. But, at the same time, I unapologetically supported him in 2020, and I supported him in 2024. And, by the way, I supported him as President once he was elected to his first term. I don’t think it’s fair to have that statement as an isolated statement. Donald Trump’s not the only politician that has embarrassed me that I have supported.
So it’s a larger group?
Well, and it’s a complicated context, and I want to be very clear about that. It’s very complicated. It’s not so easy. I just finished teaching a two-hour class on leadership, and one of the things I pointed out is that, you know, in ancient Rome and then Victorian England, you had a separation between public virtue and private vice. Now you have public vice. That’s a game changer. We know stuff about John F. Kennedy that people didn’t know when he was alive.
In 2020, I thought you were making a real utilitarian case for Trump.
Absolutely. There’s a utilitarian aspect of politics, period. So, you know, on my podcast tomorrow, I talk about incrementalism in politics, and I just say politics is incrementalism. The perfect can be the enemy of the good in politics. There are no perfect candidates.
You just proudly used the word “utilitarian.” You once said, “A utilitarian worldview is widely celebrated by secular élites. . . . When an objective morality of right and wrong is abandoned, inevitably something like pragmatism and utilitarianism is all that will come into play.” Do you have any concerns about that now?
Yeah. I’m not disagreeing with myself. In that quote you read to me, I’m talking about what’s formally identified as the philosophies of pragmatism and utilitarianism. So when I say somebody’s pragmatic, I’m not necessarily tying it to John Dewey, you know, who didn’t believe that morality was real. I am a moral realist. I’m not a pragmatist. But in decision-making, sometimes we have two options and we have to weigh those and make a choice. I would use the word “pragmatic,” and I’m not trying to be slippery here.
You recently wrote, “President Trump has won the White House, and he has achieved a complete takeover of the Republican Party. The Republicans who disdained him and tried to terminate his leadership have made his point by leaving the party and becoming Democrats (or at least voting for Democrats). President Trump will just argue that they are now where they have always belonged. It’s hard to argue otherwise.”
Amen.
Can you say more—
So I think there’s been a great sifting. I’ll be honest, in terms of principle, I see myself in a straight line, and I’m open to anyone correcting me about that. I can tell you why I think I’m a straight line on these issues. I’m trying to achieve, legislatively and culturally, the greatest realization of the moral ends that I believe are right. That’s the strategy, and the tactics change election by election, because you’re presented with a different set of choices. I think, if you want to understand why so many evangelicals are basically so glad to have so many former Republicans gone, it is because in terms of the great issues of the day, they weren’t really all that different from Democrats. They were just liberals on a slower timetable.
What do you think about the kind of lifelong Republicans who just were so disgusted by Trump’s behavior, by the accounts of women who said that he assaulted them, by, you know, making fun of disabled people, all these things? What about people who just felt like they had had enough and morally couldn’t swallow it anymore?
I have two different responses. No. 1, let’s assume that that was said honestly and with an attempt at moral consistency.
Well, you said things like that once, so I will assume you said them with honesty.
Right, but let me finish my thought. I’m about to get lost here. Some are making that argument, I think, with a form of their own integrity and responsibility. But what I want to ask them is, well, then where do you draw the line? In other words, who is then acceptable? Just be honest and tell me where you draw the line. I think what has become evident is that there were a lot of Republicans who really were not philosophically, ideologically, or certainly on moral issues absolutely aligned with the Party. And as you know, the Republican Party’s always had at least three major streams: big business and corporate interests, social conservatives, and then libertarians. The libertarians and the corporatists—they’ve never been big on social issues, which are certainly the primary reason why a lot of moral conservatives are in the Republican Party in the first place. And I think it’s become clear that an awful lot of people really weren’t committed to those issues. It didn’t get smoked out in 2016, but it did in 2020 and 2024.
Smoked out? You mean like they revealed themselves or something?
Look, how many people were against same-sex marriage and are now for it?
In 2024, there was an open primary. Many people on the stage were pro-life, against gay marriage, and had more sincere conservative social values than Donald Trump. Why did evangelicals broadly not embrace someone else in the 2024 primary?
I supported Ron DeSantis. I think Donald Trump represents something a lot of people just don’t see. And I didn’t see it for a long time, but I think I see it now. I think there is an intuitive connection that Donald Trump has made with a lot of people in the United States who believe that a massive disruption of the norm is necessary in order to save the Republic and preserve the culture. I think they see that in Donald Trump. I have to say that I don’t think a mainstream Republican would, in his Inaugural Address, have said ‘In my Administration, there will be two and only two genders: male and female.’ I think Donald Trump did that because Donald Trump is a disruptor. There’s a great hunger on the part of many American conservatives, including conservative Christians, for disruption.
And on your part, too?
Yes, yes. Not without limits, but yes, yes.
What sort of limits?
Well, I believe in the continuation of the American Republic. I believe in the importance of constitutional order. I believe that disruption needs to take place.
You were not a January 6th fan?
I was not. Yeah.
What is your broader concern with empathy right now?
I think the broader concern is that it’s an artificial virtue, and I want to lean into authentic virtues. And I think it is used politically in ways that are very destructive and manipulative.
So what’s an example?
Well, on the immigration issue, the open embrace of empathy in that platform is on the part of people who basically are using empathy as an argument against having any meaningful citizenship, nationality, national borders, etc. Here’s the thing—I’ve never said it this clearly before, but feel like I need to say it now. Empathy means never having to say no. Because the whole impulse of empathy is feeling with people as they feel. It’s a therapeutic category rather than a moral category. I’m a Christian. I believe in moral categories. I believe in the importance of sympathy and even more in the responsibility of compassion. But that takes action and it’s based in truth. It’s not based on validating anyone’s self-perceived situation, nor identifying with their own read of the situation as valid.
One of my concerns about this Administration is the joy they seem to take in cruelty toward immigrants. Do you feel that at all? Does that concern you?
It would concern me. That is not what I’m seeing. And I have been in parts of the country where this is of daily concern. I have not seen a lack of concern. What I do see is that there are very clear concerns reflected in public support for the President, sending gang members back to their home country and things like that. In the view of millions of Americans, it’s a lack of compassion for fellow-citizens that has led to relatively insane and irresponsible open borders. The people I hang around with, they would never inflict any deliberate cruelty on anyone.
You’re talking about the Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador. The White House claims that they were all gang members, but we actually don’t know that. It seems like some of them were not. Time magazine wrote about these men: “Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.” The President and his Administration were revelling in this.
I think you ought to have a concern about the mistreatment of anyone. Look, I take a very Augustinian view of state power. You know Augustine, the Church Father?
I’ve heard of him.
This is the main Western theological tradition in Christianity. Am I making sense?
Yup.
An Augustinian view of government says that government coercion is never pretty. It is necessary, but it’s never pretty. And, when government acts in a coercive manner, it always leads to some form of pain. That’s what government coercion is. And so I am not justifying it. I’m simply saying that if you are going to return people against their will to their country, where they are seen there as gang members and they’re going to be treated as criminals—
They were Venezuelan, and they were sent to El Salvador, but go on.
O.K. No, that’s true, but at least in theory, they are to be sent back to their home country. And I think that’s a part of the spat between the Trump Administration and Venezuela at the moment. But, I also think the vast majority of Americans would say, Look, our understanding of refugees who are legitimate refugees does not include gang members who clearly are coming to the United States with an effort to expand their colonization of criminal activity.
We just don’t know for sure that they were gang members. There’s been some reporting that suggests some of them are not.
I understand that, but want to be honest with you, and I think you’ll be honest with me. Look, you can’t say that everyone with that tattoo is a gang member, but there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo. [The government has apparently been taking specific tattoos as a sign of gang membership, despite the fact that the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security have previously raised concerns about doing so.]
I really enjoyed our first conversation in 2020, and my feeling is, if we’d gone back to 2020, or even 2016, and I read you the passage that I just did about these Venezuelan men, many of whom I assume are Christian, your response would have been different.
I don’t think that’s true. I want to be ruthlessly honest with you and with myself. My view of some of the questions of public and private virtue—I’ve had to rethink some of those things. I think my approach to immigration policy and the potential gang involvement, I don’t think that’s changed at all.
When I read about the Trump Administration’s cuts to foreign aid, and the reports of children suffering around the world because of it, it’s hard to feel that the people in power in the Trump Administration care at all.
I know a lot of people in the government who would care a great deal and who actually think that the greater threat to human flourishing is letting a lot of the spending go on, all the programs go on, that aren’t really helping anyone but populating bureaucracies. I personally know some of the people in the Administration making some of these decisions, and I’ll simply say I believe they are not driven by animus, but, rather, driven by the attempt to try to get Leviathan back under some control.
When I interviewed you in 2020, I sensed that there’d been somewhat of a change from how you were thinking about things in 2016. And this conversation, at least to me, feels different than our 2020 conversation.
I’m trying to be as honest with you as I can be. And that means self-reflective as well. I’m a Christian theologian; I’m a Christian minister. I am obligated to introspection and self-criticism. And I want to be honest. I’ll tell you what I think’s changed. I think what has changed is the sense that something more significantly disruptive is going to have to take place for any progress to be made toward correction anywhere. And I will tell you, time will tell. I do not know if Donald Trump and his disruption is going to bring about lasting, meaningful, fruitful change. I’m hoping it does. And I see the necessity of disruption. If it isn’t Donald Trump now, I don’t know who it is going to be when. ♦
