One Cannot Really Love Jesus And Wish To Follow Him And Also Vote For A Person Who So Clearly Embodies The Opposite Of Everything Christ Taught Died For And Demands Of Us
1:05 PM on Nov 6, 2016 CST
As sociologists of religion, we are intrigued by the surprisingly large number of self-identified Christians, especially evangelicals, who support Trump and have voted for him over the more vocally religious Ted Cruz. In past elections, such voters were motivated by moral convictions around abortion, same sex-marriage, and the perceived deterioration of traditional values, and voted predictably for candidates such as Huckabee, Santorum, and most consequentially, George W. Bush.
These issues and their 2016 equivalents have never been central features of Trumps life history, let alone his candidacy, and on many of them he has confused, moderate or unclear positions. Whatever the appeal of Trump to evangelicals might be, it is not due to these conventional stances.
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For a while, his opponents have seemed willing to ignore Trump, perhaps as a disciplined tact to suffocate his bloviations of the oxygen they need to burn. We have come to feel, however, that this approach has ultimately proven naïve in the wake of his recent primary victories. However unserious anyone might find him, the nation is despairingly at a moment where we must take his challenge seriously.
1. He lacks compassion.
4. He lies a lot.
What Has The Response Been
Christianity Today’s searing editorial provoked a split reaction among American Christians – mirroring divisions among Christians in their support for the president.
Some followed the magazine’s lead in breaking ties with the Republican president, while others doubled down on their support for Mr Trump.
On Sunday, almost 200 evangelical leaders and other supporters of the president, including former Arkansas governor and two-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann, penned a letter slamming Christianity Today.
“Your editorial offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations,” they wrote. “It not only targeted our President it also targeted those of us who support him, and have supported you.”
The president also weighed, taking to Twitter on Friday to dismiss Christianity Today as a “far left magazine”.
A far left magazine, or very ââ¬Åprogressive,ââ¬ï¿½ as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasnââ¬â¢t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather…..
â Donald J. Trump
But while the article lost the magazine a reported 2,000 subscriptions, it gained 5,000 new readers, drawn from a younger and more diverse audience, the Washington Post said.
Evangelicals Rally To Trump Religious Nones Back Clinton
Evangelical voters are rallying strongly in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Indeed, the latest Pew Research Center survey finds that despite the professed wariness toward Trump among many high-profile evangelical Christian leaders, evangelicals as a whole are, if anything, even more strongly supportive of Trump than they were of Mitt Romney at a similar point in the 2012 campaign. At that time, nearly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestant registered voters said they planned to vote for Romney, including one-quarter who strongly supported him.1 Now, fully 78% of white evangelical voters say they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, including about a third who strongly back his campaign.
Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated voters those who describe their religion as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular are lining up behind Hillary Clinton over Trump, much as they supported Barack Obama over Romney in 2012. Two-thirds of religiously unaffiliated registered voters say they would vote for Clinton if the election were held today, just as two-thirds intended to vote for Obama at a similar point in the 2012 campaign.2 Religious nones are, however, somewhat less enthusiastic about Clintons candidacy than they were about Obama in June 2012 .
Support for Clinton among black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics mirror the preference for the Democratic candidate among blacks and Hispanics overall.
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Did Evangelicals Make Trump Their Messiah
The belief that Donald Trump was a Messiah ran rampant during his time in office. While many Evangelicals supported Trump because they believed he shared the same politics and values, some supported him because they thought he was a Messiah. They saw Trump as infallible and became his disciples.
Pastor Franz Gerber was worried that many members of his congregation appeared to idolize Trump more than they worshipped Jesus.
The Praise Chapel Community Church pastor voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Rural Forest county, Wisconsin, the area where he serves as pastor, swung heavily for Barack Obama to Trump his first term, helping to put the former president in the White House.
Gerber expressed regrets about his vote, but what disturbed him the most was an unquestioning and aggressive reverence for Trump within his congregation.
It seems like there are many evangelical Christians that are willing to die on the hill of supporting the Republican president, supporting Donald J. Trump, And to me, that hill is not worth dying on. No matter who the candidate is, no matter who the individual is, Gerber said. To put all your hope into that individual is a dangerous road. Scripture would warn us against that.
He is regarded as something of a messiah, sent by God to protect a Christian nation, Azarian said.
Do you believe Evangelicals made Trump their Messiah? Do you believe Evangelicals support of Trump has tarnished Christianity?
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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Tucker Carlson: The Real Reason So Many Christians Are Willing To Support Trump
The left lectures the American people on morality and faith.
What does a sincere and faithful Christian look like to you? How about a narcissistic former McKinsey consultant who passionately supports late-term abortion?
Is that the image you conjured in your mind’s eye? Probably not. But looks can apparently deceive because Mayor Pete Buttigieg says he is exactly that — a faithful Christian. Indeed, Buttigieg claims to be so faithful that he literally knows which political party God supports.
Pete Buttigieg, 2020 presidential candidate and South Bend, Ind. mayor: It is by no means true that Christian faith or any faith requires you to be a Republican, especially in these times. And so-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage when scripture says that whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker. It’s also important that we stop seeing religion used as a kind of cudgel, as if God belonged to a political party. And if he did, I can’t imagine it would be the one that sent the current president into the White House.
Ooh. He’s a preachy little guy, isn’t he? Pretty funny. The best part is Pete Buttigieg is he’s likely the most faithful Christian many political reporters have ever met. To them, he might as well be St. Paul or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They’ve got no clue. They can’t tell a difference.
Cuomo: Yes.
No Support For Religious Communities Fleeing Persecution
The Trump administration has also turned its back on religious minorities around the world. It did not initially sanction Chinese officials for putting members of that nations Uighur Muslim minority into concentration camps because such action would hurt the chances of a trade deal with China.55 The president signed legislation approving sanctions only after former national security adviser John Bolton alleged in his book that Trump had encouraged Chinese President Xi Jinping to continue putting Muslims in concentration camps.56 The Trump administration has also declined to criticize Indias Hindu nationalist citizenship law that denied rights to Muslims. I want to leave that to India, President Trump said, abdicating the U.S. commitment to international religious freedom.57
According to an analysis by the International Rescue Committee, U.S. resettlement of religious minorities has fallen sharply since the beginning of the Trump administration.65
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Most White Americans Who Regularly Attend Worship Services Voted For Trump In 2020
Similar to past elections, religion played an important role in the 2020 U.S. presidential contest: Republican candidate Donald Trump continued to garner strong support from White evangelical Protestants, while Black Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated backed the Democratic candidate and eventual winner, President Joe Biden.
But religious identity alone does not tell the whole story. Among White Americans, worship service attendance remains highly correlated with presidential vote choice, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2020 validated voters.
As in previous years, voters who frequently go to religious services defined as those who attend at least monthly were more likely to vote for the Republican candidate in the most recent presidential election, while less frequent attenders were more likely to back the Democrat.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand the connections between religion and Americans voting patterns in the 2020 election. It is based on data from the Centers , which surveyed U.S. adults online and verified their turnout in the 2016 and 2020 elections using commercial voter files that aggregate official state turnout records. Panelists for whom a record of voting was located are considered validated voters all others are presumed not to have voted.
Read more about the ATPs methodology. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.
Jeff Sessions Explains Why Christians Support Trump
The former attorney general compared the president to a Middle Eastern strongman.
About the author: David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
In Christ there is no east or west / In him no south or north, / But one great family bound by love / Throughout the whole wide earth, goes the old hymn.
But in Donald Trump, there is division among American Christians. On one side are those who insist that the president is a Christian hero who is standing up for religious rights. On the other are critics who counter that white evangelical Christians have struck a corrupt but convenient bargain with an immoral leader whose inclinations are dictatorial, not religious.
Into this debate strides former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who, despite his excommunication from Trumps good graces, remains a die-hard backer of the president and his ideological agenda. Yet in a masterful profile in The New York Times Magazine by Elaina Plott, he comes down solidly, if unwittingly, on the side of the skeptics. Sessions suggests that the presidents own religious convictions are irrelevant, compares him to the dictators Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Bashar al-Assad, and makes the case for choosing a strongman who can defend Christians over democratic politics.
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Comparing Trump To Jesus And Why Some Evangelicals Believe Trump Is Gods Chosen One
This post was originally posted in November and has been updated.
It is no secret that many conservative Christians think highly of President Trump. He has consistently maintained high approval ratings from white evangelicals since he won the majority of white evangelicals and white Catholics in the 2016 election.
But while defending Trump during the presidents impeachment hearing, Rep. Barry Loudermilk made remarks that gave some the impression that the lawmaker thought Trump was worthy of better treatment than Jesus Christ.
Loudermilk, who was involved in a church ministry that served underprivileged children years before heading to Congress, said: Before you take this historic vote today one week before Christmas, I want you to keep this in mind: When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers. During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than the Democrats have afforded this president in this process.
Shortly after Loudermilks comments, Trump to Jesus began trending on Twitter.
But this is not the first time a Trump supporter has made comments that appear so reverent of the president that critics have raised their eyebrows.
Last month in an interview with Fox News, former energy secretary Rick Perry praised Trump as Gods chosen one an idea that is not unpopular among the presidents conservative Christian supporters.
Some Christians Feel It’s A God
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Some of the extremists who assaulted the U.S. Capitol are Christian nationalists. They believe they are on a divine mission to challenge government institutions in the name of God.
NOEL KING, HOST:
Parts of Washington, D.C.’s center are blocked off by the National Guard today, owing to concern about people or groups that might try to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. Some of them are Christians who support President Trump and believe they have a God-given mission to continue fighting on his behalf. Here’s NPR’s Tom Gjelten.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Some of President Trump’s most passionate advocates are Christians who fear their freedom will be in jeopardy under a Biden administration. Their militancy was evident weeks before the January 6 assault on the Capitol. In a podcast last month, Eric Metaxas, a conservative Christian writer and radio host, made a case for Christians waging a war to overturn the presidential election.
ERIC METAXAS: What’s going to happen is going to happen. But we need to fight to the death, to the last drop of blood because it’s worth it.
GJELTEN: That was on December 9.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: U-S-A, U-S-A…
GJELTEN: Three days later, Metaxas was the emcee at a prayer rally in Washington, where he and others implored God to help them keep Donald Trump in office.
METAXAS: We are here today to cry out to the God of heaven to ask him to have mercy on the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News.
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