Getting A Negative Reaction From Liberals
When I was a young evangelical Christian, I was eager to be oppressed for my faith. The Bible and my pastors had warned me to avoid worldly people celebrities, intellectuals, scientists, the media and liberals. Those were the ones who forbid us from praying in school while indoctrinating us with communism and evolution.
Jesus once said: Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. So I went out of my way to piss people off telling the goth kids they were prisoners of Satans lies, handing anti-abortion literature to the loose girls, and forcing science class to run late while I debated evolution with the teacher.
My entire identity became wrapped up in being disliked by a specific group of people, and they were happy to accommodate me. Trump has had no problem arousing hatred from those same worldly people, creating what appears to some like an imploding presidency, while others see a heroic martyr against liberalism.
To evangelicals, pissing off liberals and defending unpopular opinions makes Trump appear more like one of them
I never used to watch much, but when he started campaigning I was watching it, Eike said. Ive been thoroughly angry at the media. I was pleased to see him put them in their place. It was refreshing.
Is Christianophobia A Problem
When the topic of Christianophobia comes up there are those who argue that it is merely Christians who have lost their privilege. Yet is it a privilege to be able to obtain a job in academia free of religious bias?
Is it a privilege to have religious leaders in student organizations who believe in their religion? The development of all-comers policies and the way they have been used to target Christian groups has revealed this threat to freedom of association.
Outside of academia there are episodes of a lay-pastor being fired from his position as a district health director due to his sermon and a fire chief being fired due to a Christian book he wrote.
It is more reasonable to see these events as rights, rather than privileges, being denied to certain Christians.
My own research shows that those with anti-Christian hatred tend to be white, wealthy, educated, and male.
I want to say to my Christian friends, especially the evangelical ones who most support Trump: I hear you. Christianophobia is real. I have studied it and debated with those who do not believe it exists. Trump has promised to protect Christians. The seeking of political control is one way to try to deal with Christianophobia. But it is the wrong way.
Why Do Evangelical Christians Love Trump
To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault.
White evangelical support for Donald Trump has long puzzled observers. To many, it seems hypocritical that Christians who have long touted family values could rally around a thrice-married man who was accused by several women of sexual assault. Scholars have commented on his crassness, defined by historian Walter G. Moss as a lack refinement, tact, sensitivity, taste or delicacy. Others have observed how he has broken rules of civil political engagement.
But in my research on evangelical masculinity, I have found that Trumps leadership style aligns closely with a rugged ideal of Christian manhood championed by evangelicals for more than half a century.
As I show in my book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, conservative evangelicals embraced the ideal of a masculine protector in the 1960s and 1970s in order to confront the perceived threats of communism and feminism.
Believing that the feminist rejection of macho masculinity left the nation in peril, conservative white evangelicals promoted a testosterone-fueled vision of Christian manhood. In their view, America needed strong men to defend Christian America on the battlefields of Vietnam and to reassert order on the home front.
Why it Matters
How I Do My Work
What Still Isnt Known
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One Of The Abiding Mysteries Of Contemporary Times Is How A Man Described As A Morally Louche Adulterer With Scarcely A Hint Of Faith Love Or Charity Won The Fealty Of Americas Evangelical Christians
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One of the abiding mysteries of contemporary times is how a man described as a morally louche adulterer with scarcely a hint of faith, love or charity won the fealty of Americas evangelical Christians.
Yet Donald Trump did just that in 2016 even if it was the most cynical of marriages and it carried him to the presidency of the United States.
As Trumps former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has written since seeing the light, places of religious worship held absolutely no interest to him and he possessed precisely zero personal piety in his life but he knew the power of religion, and that was the language he could speak.
Everything Trump told evangelicals about himself was untrue, Cohen wrote in his book Disloyal.
He was pro-abortion… He didnt care about religion. Homosexuals, divorce, the breakup of the nuclear family hed say whatever they wanted to hear.
He could lie directly to the faces of some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country and they believed him.
And so a deal was struck: evangelicals laid their hands on Trump and delivered their votes Trump delivered rants about godless liberals and, most important, nominated to the Supreme Court conservative judges who seemed open to revisiting abortion rights.
In 2020, however, Trumps grip on that key sector of the electorate seems to be slipping. Not hugely. But possibly enough to, God willing, humble him.
Not Our Faith is not alone.
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One Answer To The Question ‘why Do Evangelicals Support Trump’ Is That They Don’t Or At Least Not All Of Them
As a student of American evangelicalism, I am frequently asked how Christians can support Donald Trump. I stop myself from going into lecture mode. Most people want a sound bite, not a disquisition.
So heres the short answer: Ever since 1980, when Ronald Reagan told a Dallas gathering of 15,000 evangelicals, you cant endorse me but I want you to know that I endorse you, white evangelicals have voted for Republicans, who mostly promise to enact their agenda.
Mostly theyve been disappointed. In November 2016, when Trump won election to the White House, abortion was still legal, gay couples had the right to marry, government regulations inhibited the free market and the U.S. embassy to Israel remained in Tel Aviv.
Trump promised to change all that.
Despite his personal shortcomings, evangelicals believed him. He selected a solid Christian as his running mate, and his track record as a businessman proved he got things done.
God uses imperfect messengers, evangelicals reasoned, and if King David an adulterer who arranged to have his partners husband killed could still accomplish great good, why not the 45th president?
So it was a realpolitik calculation that drove so many white evangelicals to the Trump-Pence ticket. It was also stoked by economic uncertainty, cultural anxiety and a sense of social marginalization that festered through the Obama years. They wanted an affirmation of their status, and Trump offered one.
We used three sorting criteria.
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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.
‘it Sounds Like You’re Describing Trump’
MyIowa seminar examined why emotional manipulators manipulate and how to escape their snares. Though I never made reference to current political figures, I noticed that person after person would come up to me and whisper, It sounds like youre describing Trump.
For some of my attendees, Donald Trump was the clearest example of manipulation that came to mind.
Im a white evangelical in a red state.Posting criticisms of Trump on my social media feed is like dangling ones feet in a piranha tank. Many of my church-going, Trump-supporting friends feel compelled to educate me about what Im missing when it comes to the president.
They suggest that perhaps Ive become so deranged by hatred for him I cant see straight. Perhaps Ive been watching too much CNN. Or maybe Ive been one of them all along.
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Trump And The Split Among Christians
Beyond connecting Christians to some of the more unsavory parts of Trump, the danger of Trump is also the danger of division within the Christian church. Trump is especially unpopular among young people and people of color. There is evidence that even among evangelicals, younger persons are less likely to support Trump. At a time where it has become more important for Christians to hang together and deal with anti-Christian attitudes, President Trump has created even more division. To be sure, the division is our fault more than it is Trumps fault. The way some Christians have placed Trump on a pedestal has created a divisive situation considering the way he freely dehumanizes others.
It would not be fair to place the entire responsibility upon those defending Trump. But it should not surprise us that a political leader who traffics in divisive rhetoric would have followers who spread division. I have heard again and again that some Christians not only fail to critique the dehumanizing comments of Trump, but they also like him because of that tough man approach. They often say that there is a need to go to war against progressives and that Trumps hostility towards those progressives is a welcome change over other, more civil political leaders.
Many Other White Christians Not Just Evangelicals Express Affinity For Trump
White evangelical Protestants are not alone in their admiration of Trump. Among other groups of white Christians, smaller but still substantial majorities also express agreement with Trumps policies and associate him with a number of positive traits, such as intelligence.
For example, roughly two-thirds of white Catholics say the phrase fights for what I believe in describes Donald Trump very well or fairly well, and 68% of white Catholics say intelligent is a fairly or very good descriptor of Trump. Similar shares of white Protestants who are not born-again or evangelical Christians say the same. And more than half of people in both groups say they agree with Trump on many, nearly all or all of the important issues facing the country.
The survey shows, furthermore, that growing numbers in all three of the largest white Christian groups think that their side has been winning recently on the political issues that matter to them.
Today, 63% of white evangelical Protestants say their side has been winning lately, nearly triple the share who said this in May 2016, six months before Trumps election. The share of white non-evangelical Protestants who think their side has been winning politically is up 19 percentage points over the same period, and the share of white Catholics who think their side has been politically victorious of late is 29 points higher today than it was in 2016.
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Church Of Alleged Atlanta Spa Shooter Condemns Suspect’s ‘wicked’ Actions
Conservative evangelicals catapulted then-candidate Donald Trump to an against-all-odds victory in 2016. And this year theyre again throwing their political lot with a bombastic businessman from Queens with a sordid past and a penchant for social-media provocation. To find out why, I spoke to a number of evangelical pastors and thought leaders.
The reasons arent that complicated: As president, Trump has proved solidly pro-life and absolutely sound on Israel, while Joe Bidens coziness with the hard left downright terrifies this crucial voting bloc.
Jack Hibbs, the pastor at Californias Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, told me that pro-life issues continue to be the main catalyst, impelling evangelicals to rally around Trump 2020. Not only has Donald Trump been the most pro-life president in recent American history, he said, but his pro-family, pro-adoption policies have made it loud and clear that Donald Trump is concerned for the American family.
Samuel Rodriguez, an author and preacher who leads the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, agreed that Trump has done more for the pro-life community than any other president in history.
But theres more to it than that. Hibbs, Rodriguez and Metaxas pointed to other important issues Trump has championed that matter to faithful Christians, including criminal-justice reform, support for the military, religious liberty and Israel.
Donald Trump Is No Saint But I Know Why Evangelicals Love Him
The president has bragged about his sins and built a career on casinos and half-naked women. But as a former believer, I know they recognize a fellow outsider
As a recovering Christaholic, 12 years sober from God, Ive been asked before to explain why evangelicals stick with Donald Trump. After all, his attempts at appearing Christian are hopelessly pretentious, hes bragged about his sins, and has built a career on casinos and half-naked women.
Then Trumps infamous many sides remark about the violence at the Charlottesville, Virginia, rally brought denunciations from former supporters and business leaders, leading to two of his business advisory councils disbanding.
What happened at the Charlottesville protests?
What happened in Charlottesville on 12 August?
White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest against a plan to remove a statue of Robert E Lee, the Confederacys top general in the American civil war.
Demonstrators chanted racist statements, carried antisemitic placards and held torches during the Unite the Right rally, which was organised by white nationalist Jason Kessler.
The march was met by anti-fascist demonstrators, and some skirmishes broke out before James Fields, 20, allegedly ploughed a car into a group of counter-demonstrators.
Civil rights activist Heather Heyer, 32, died and others were injured. Fields has been charged with murder.
But his evangelical advisory board remained intact. So the questions of why come again.
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Trump’s Christian Supporters And The March On The Capitol
Christian supporters of President Donald Trump were among the thousands who descended on Washington DC last week. Their presence highlights a divide in American Christianity.
Before the march on the US Capitol began last Wednesday, some knelt to pray.
Thousands had come to the seat of power for a “Save America” rally organised to challenge the election result. Mr Trump addressed the crowd near the White House, calling on them to march on Congress where politicians were gathered to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s win.
The crowd was littered with religious imagery. “Jesus 2020” campaign flags flapped in the wind alongside Trump banners and the stars and stripes of the US flag.
The throng did march to Congress, a protest that led to chaos at the Capitol.
At least one group carried a large wooden cross. Another blew shofars – a Jewish ritual horn some Christian evangelicals have co-opted as a battle cry. Elsewhere a white flag featured an ichthys – or “Jesus fish” – an ancient symbol of Christianity.
For some Christians, seeing religious symbols alongside Confederate flags was shocking.
But for others, Mr Trump is their saviour – someone who was “defending Christians from secularists” as Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, told the BBC.
The imagery on display was revealing of not just the racial and political divides in America, but the religious divides as well.
Political Leaders And Scripture
To deal with Christianophobia, we must challenge the cultural values emerging from this type of intolerance. But in a very practical manner, evangelical support of Trump is making our culture even more toxic for Christians. For utilitarian reasons alone, Christians should not throw their support behind our current president.
But my argument is not limited to utilitarian concerns. The way Christians have come to support Trump does not fit with a proper understanding of the Scriptures. I acknowledge that I am not a trained theologian and so people may rightly argue with my interpretations. But I am confident that the evidence for Christians to be cautious about putting too much faith in their political issues is very strong.
Any fair assessment of the Old Testament and the trials of the children of Israel consistently comes back to the theme of relying on political figures instead of God. From the very beginning of the formation of Israel, Jews were warned about seeking a king to be the solution to their problems.
In other words, they believed more in the protection they could obtain from individuals who did not accept their God-given values than a God who has said he would protect them. Sound familiar?
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