What Trump Reportedly Says In Private About His Christian Supporters
In public, Donald Trump presents himself as someone who honors and celebrates military service, but in private, it appears to be a very different story. Earlier this month, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a stunning piece in The Atlantic about the Republican president denigrating those who wear the uniform, dismissing fallen heroes as “losers” and “suckers.”
Similarly, Trump also presents himself in public as a hero to people of faith, most notably Christian conservatives who are at the heart of his political base. It’s against this backdrop that The Atlantic has a new piece today from McKay Coppins, reporting that the president is quick behind closed doors to mock and show contempt for theistic allies.
In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion…. But in private, many of Trump’s comments about religion are marked by cynicism and contempt, according to people who have worked for him. Former aides told me they’ve heard Trump ridicule conservative religious leaders, dismiss various faith groups with cartoonish stereotypes, and deride certain rites and doctrines held sacred by many of the Americans who constitute his base.
In other words, Trump saw these preachers as con artists, and if the reporting is correct, he recognized their skills as familiar because of his own expertise in the area.
Almost certainly not.
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Public opinion polling reveals that even the so-called benefits of the Trump administration to those select faith groups crusading against reproductive and LGBTQ rights are rejected by majorities within faith communities other than white evangelicals. According to the Public Religion Research Institute , majorities of white mainline Protestants and Black Protestants say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, as well as a plurality of Catholics.2 The vast majority of U.S. women of faith have used or currently use birth control.3 The PRRI also found that majorities of all major religious groups in the United States support government-backed health insurance programs covering contraceptives and supporting nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ community.4
Much less attention is paid to the Trump administrations manifold attacks on the rights and safety of faith communities. The administration has systematically targeted religious freedom both at home and abroad, including through its marquee policy priority of instituting a Muslim ban. The administration has also presided over a nation with an alarming uptick in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes, and its policies have contributed to a climate conducive to white nationalism. The administration has turned Americas back on religious minorities in China and refugees fleeing religious persecution around the world.
As this report details, the Trump administration has:
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What Is A Christian Its Not Donald Trump
Editors note: This op-ed has been corrected to remove inaccurate attribution for a claim that Donald Trump is the most Christian president in years. The statement was made as part of a written description of a July 9 YouTube posting of America First with Sebastian Gorka. The Sun regrets the error.
Whether one believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, one should agree that the most direct descriptions of Jesus come from the Gospels. Thus, Christians and critics of Christianity alike should start with the Gospels when describing what they believe or reject about Jesus. If their position contradicts the Gospels, then they are mistaken. It follows that ascriptions or denials of Christian virtues are wrong if they contradict the Gospels depiction of Jesus.
Consider two examples: A July 9 YouTube episode of America First with Sebastian Gorka was titled Donald Trump: The most Christian President in years. And on Nov. 17, national news reported that Paul Ewell resigned as Dean of Virginia Wesleyan University after declaring that people who voted for Joe Biden are ignorant, anti-American, and anti-Christian. To be fair, Mr. Ewell did not say explicitly that people who voted for Donald Trump are wise, pro-American and pro-Christian, but he implied it.
When given a narrative containing a character in obvious contrast to the Gospels Jesus, isnt it reasonable to describe this other character as anti-Christian?
Most Americans Dont See Trump As Religious Fewer Than Half Say They Think Hes Christian
President Donald Trump has often used religious language while in office, and he has surrounded himself with evangelical leaders and supported conservative Christian causes. But Trumps personal religious beliefs and practices have not been as public.
Indeed, half of U.S. adults either say theyre not sure what Trumps religion is or that he has no religion , while just 33% say hes Protestant.
And Americans overall dont think Trump is particularly religious: A majority say Trump is not too or not at all religious, while 28% say hes somewhat religious and only 7% say hes very religious, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The findings in this post are drawn from a new survey exploring the intersection of religion and politics in the U.S. The survey of 6,395 U.S. adults was conducted Feb. 4 to 15. All respondents to the survey are part of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel , an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.
Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology.
What is Trumps religion?
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Faith Vote Reflects 2016 Patterns
“This is what you get when you eject God from the courts and from the schools,” Hibbs told Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, speaking on Perkins’ radio show. Perkins himself, an ordained minister, had been among those who for state legislatures to reject pro-Biden electors.
On his show, however, Perkins recognized that the violence at the Capitol tainted Christian involvement in the pro-Trump movement.
“I would be hard-pressed to find Bible-believing Christians that would be OK with what took place at the Capitol,” Perkins said. “I think this sets us back in terms of addressing the concerns that endanger our republic.”
Other evangelical Christian leaders were far more outspoken in their rejection of the attack on the Capitol and more willing to blame President Trump.
“I don’t know the Jesus some have paraded and waved around in the middle of this treachery today,” tweeted Beth Moore, well known in evangelical circles for her Bible studies. “They may be acting in the name of some other Jesus, but that’s not the Jesus of the Gospels.”
“It was a moral abomination incited by the president,” said Russell Moore , president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, speaking Thursday to a group of religion journalists.
In a follow-up tweet on Friday, Moore called on Trump to “step down and let our country heal.”
Trump Might Be The Most Pro
Conservative Christians are being accused of hypocrisy. How can so-called values voters continue to stand with President Trump despite revelations that he allegedly had affairs with a porn star and a Playboy model, and paid them for their silence?
No doubt some Christian leaders have gone too far in rationalizing Trumps past personal behavior and excusing his offensive comments while in office. He is a deeply flawed man. But Trump does have one moral quality that deserves admiration: He keeps his promises.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to defend religious liberty, stand up for unborn life and appoint conservative jurists to the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts. And he has done exactly what he promised. The abortion-rights lobby NARAL complains that Trump has been relentless on these fronts, declaring his administration the worst … that weve ever seen. That is more important to most Christian conservatives than what the president may have done with a porn actress more than 10 years ago.
Hillary Clinton promised to escalate those attacks. In 2015, she declared at the Women in the World Summit that religious beliefs … have to be changed perhaps the most radical threat to religious liberty ever delivered by a major presidential candidate. Had Clinton won, she would have replaced the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia with a liberal jurist, giving the Supreme Court a liberal judicial-activist majority.
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Is Donald Trump Now A Born
After Donald Trump met with a group of evangelical leaders last week, Dr. James Dobson said that Trump “did accept a relationship with Christ,” and he had done so recently.
Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, was talking about the meeting with Trump in an interview with Pastor Michael Anthony on his website, Godfactor.com, and Anthony had said he was taken aback by a “gentler Trump.”
“e did accept a relationship with Christ,”Dobson said. “I know the person who led him to Christ — that’s fairly recent.”
Surprised, Anthony asked him, “How recently, roughly?” And Dobson responded, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know when it was. But it has not been long.”
Trump, who has in the past said he is Presbyterian, has occasionally stumbled over religious references during the campaign. Asked what his favorite Bible verse is, he chose the Old Testament’s “eye for an eye.” And during an address at Liberty University, he referred to Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians.”
Dobson talked about Trump’s unfamiliarity with the vernacular of evangelical Christians.
“He doesn’t know our language — you know, we had 40 Christians together with him,” he told Anthony. “He used the word hell four or five times. He doesn’t know our language. He really doesn’t.”
One example Dobson pointed to — “he refers a lot to religion and not much to faith and belief.”
But this, Dobson says, is a function of the fact that Trump wasn’t raised in the church.
Christian ‘prophet’ Claims God Didn’t Restore Trump Yet To Make People Doubt Prophecies
Pastor Hank Kunneman, a self-described “prophet,” claimed that former President Donald Trump has not yet been restored to the White House because God wants to make it look like the prophets are wrong.
Kunneman, and a number of other Christian leaders, predicted that Trump would win reelection in 2020. When that did not happen, they supported his baseless claims of widespread voter fraudexpecting him to take office in January. After that failed to materialize, many have said the former president will still be reinstated.
“People have been saying, ‘Why is the Lord taking so long? Why are the prophets missing it?'” Kunneman, the senior pastor of the Lord of Hosts Church in Nebraska, said during a Thursday episode of The Elijah List online program. “No, listen to me. It’s to make it look like the prophets miss it and for them to have petitions. And it’s to expose, but it’s to bring forth something at the exact time that will be part of the fulfillment of God.” Right Wing Watch first reported the pastor’s remarks.
During the episode, Kunneman recounted a dream he claimed to have had on Nov. 4. In the dream, he said that President Joe Biden was declaring victory but then he saw what he believed to be the Devil. The pastor went on to say that God was working out the situation in his own time.
Newsweek reached out to Kunneman’s church for further comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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Trump Says He Now Identifies As A Non
President Trump, who has long identified as a Presbyterian, now considers himself a non-denominational Christian, a new report said.
The president shared his change in religious identity in a written interview with the Religious News Service.
Though I was confirmed at a Presbyterian church as a child, I now consider myself to be a non-denominational Christian, Trump wrote, without giving an explanation for the transformation or saying when it occurred.
Trump has a loyal base among white evangelicals, who in 2016 helped propel him to victory.
That year, the religious group made up roughly a quarter of the electorate, and 81 percent of them voted for Trump, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The president told RNS that his parents taught me the importance of faith and prayer from a young age.
Trump, who contracted COVID-19 in early October, attributed his swift recovery to his faith.
I said, There were miracles coming down from heaven. I meant it Melania and I are very thankful to God for looking out for our family and returning us to good health, he told the outlet.
The president received a cocktail of anti-virus drugs while battling COVID-19. After taking an antibody treatment by drugmaker Regeneron, Trump said he felt like Superman.
Provoked By Trump The Religious Left Is Finding Its Voice
Moore has been a regular critic of Trump, but some pro-Trump evangelical leaders broke with the president over his incitement of the attack on the Capitol.
Albert Mohler, president of the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, created a stir last year when he announced he would be voting for Trump in spite of not doing so in 2016. Since the election, however, Mohler has been highly critical of Trump’s behavior, and he made clear Wednesday that he blamed him for the attack on the Capitol.
“President Trump is responsible now for unleashing mayhem,” he said.
In a podcast released Thursday, Mohler said he did not regret his vote, but he clearly distanced himself from the president.
“I do not follow a cult of personality,” Mohler said. “I am committed as a Christian to certain moral principles … that I believe are derived from biblical Christianity. … But what we saw in Washington, what we heard from the president, not just yesterday but in recent days, is an attempt to subvert the very constitutional order that he took an oath of office to defend.”
Other Christian leaders were similarly quick to weigh in on Wednesday’s events. Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Chicago archbishop, did not mince words.
The Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, was similarly outspoken.
The refusal of Trump supporters to acknowledge the Biden-Harris victory, and the hateful attack on the Capitol, were seen by some Black leaders as racist reactions.
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