Trump has boasted of infidelities, profited off gambling, mocked the handicapped, cheered and offered financial assistance for his supporters who fight protesters, supported abortion (until his fortuitous change of heart before the election), called for war crimes against innocent people,demonized minorities and immigrants, knowingly played upon racist fears, promoted open racists through social media, promoted conspiracy theories, and crudely treated women.
..Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants stand out as the only one in which a majority, 53 percent, agree that society has become too soft and feminine.
.. 68 percent of Trump supporters agree that society is too soft and feminine, far more than supporters of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.
.. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants voiced the highest levels of distress, 64 percent, when they find themselves around immigrants who speak little or no English,.
.. “Today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”
A solid 57 percent majority of white Americans whom P.R.R.I. surveyed agreed, but two groups stood out: Trump supporters at 81 percent and white evangelical Protestants at 68 percent.
.. Yet another area of commonality between Christian conservatives and the Trump campaign is their shared belief in the duty of the strong to lead the weak — the importance of leadership built on strength, authority and discipline.
.. Dobson’s thinking on the topic of strength and authority is dominated by a single theme:
If the strong-willed child is allowed by indulgence to develop “habits” of defiance and disrespect during his early childhood, those characteristics will haunt him and his parents for the next twenty years.
.. Dobson describes his own method for dealing with a six-year-old pet Dachshund, Siggie, who refused Dobson’s order to go to sleep in “a permanent enclosure.”
The only way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me “reason” with Mr. Freud.
What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!
.. Dobson’s story about Siggie gives us a glimpse of how the views on authority of some on the right match up with Trump’s views on what it takes to be an effective leader.
.. For years, secular progressives have said that evangelical social action in America is not about religious conviction but all about power.
This year, Moore noted, Christian leaders who in the 1990s
gave stem-winding speeches about “character” in office during the Clinton administration now minimize the spewing of profanities in campaign speeches, race-baiting and courting white supremacists, boasting of adulterous affairs, debauching public morality and justice through the casino and pornography industries.
In backing Trump, Moore concluded, “a group of high-profile old-guard evangelicals has proven these critics right.”
.. Rev. Robert Jeffress in Dallas, who has said that if offered a candidate modeled on Jesus:
I would run from that candidate as far as possible, because the Sermon on the Mount was not given as a governing principle for this nation.
In practice, Jeffress said:
Nowhere is government told to forgive those who wrong it, nowhere is government told to turn the other cheek. Government is to be a strongman to protect its citizens against evildoers. When I’m looking for somebody who’s going to deal with ISIS and exterminate ISIS, I don’t care about that candidate’s tone or vocabulary, I want the meanest, toughest, son of a you-know-what I can find, and I believe that’s biblical.
Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth, who wrote ..
.. The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.
A Challenge To My Fellow Evangelicals
- Only in the United States is climate change a controversial and politicized issue. Evangelicals in 129 countries support their government’s efforts to face this challenge.
- Evangelicals in other countries do not consider a national healthcare system as a controversial issue and, in fact, see it as highly desirable.
- One of the highest priorities for a majority of evangelicals around the world is for their governments to combat poverty and hunger, improve public education and provide clean water for ALL citizens, even if this means paying more taxes.
- Evangelicals from other countries want to see their government buy fewer weapons and invest in economic development and peace initiatives.
- Globally, evangelicals disapprove of torture being used by their governments in any form.
- A majority of evangelicals around the world view capital punishment as barbaric.
.. Our evangelical brothers and sisters around the world cannot understand how or why the majority of American evangelicals support Donald Trump. They have coined a new word, American ideo-evangelicals, to describe those in the U.S. who are voting more for their political ideology than for their faith values.
.. Evangelicals from all regions, but particularly in Africa, consider Hillary Clinton a “sister in Christ” and someone who lives out the Golden Rule in all the good she has done for women and children. Many affectionately call her “Sister Hillary.”
Four Issues to Consider Before You Vote Trump – What is Really at Stake
Trump has repeatedly called for the support of evangelicals and thanked evangelicals for their support (which is also a subtle campaigning trick to woo undecided evangelicals), and it is something very serious when the rulers who represent the spirit of this age call on the church to mobilize on their behalf.
..Trump has openly bragged about his adulterous affairs and sexual conquests. No other Presidential candidate has ever been such a bold proponent of adultery. He has been so base as to suggest that his daughter is fit to pose for Playboy and that if he was not her father he would be dating her.6 He recently described sexual desire towards his daughter7, and he’s even asked others if they thought she was “hot.”8 When his second daughter was a year old, he was already making comments about her body.9 His overall attitude towards women is highly sexual, misogynistic, and deplorable.
.. By simply looking at how the Bible describes a foolish leader, we can easily see that Trump is the embodiment of nearly every description the Bible gives of a foolish leader.18
.. To reapply a conservative phrase from the 1990’s – if Donald’s wife cannot trust him neither can we.
.. Christians deep down know that Trump is not a true believer and yet we fail to follow Paul’s clear instruction on what to do with such a man.
.. Jesus was clear that we are to evaluate men by their fruit. Until there is a genuine, public brokenness backed up by a radical change in demeanor, a commitment to repair past wrongs, and real fruit to demonstrate the truth of the commitment we should ignore any claims of an election conversion.
.. However, when a man is bold in his sin it is very different from someone who has failed and yet is repentant or at least is struggling against their sin. Trump is the opposite. He has said that he has never felt the need to ask for forgiveness because he and God have a great relationship and he doesn’t do much that is bad.29 This is a man who is brazen in his sin. He is not a broken man who has come short. He is not even trying to hide his sin because he does not even feel the shame of it.
.. when God’s people put their hope in political saviors God will give us more and more inferior leaders until he breaks our ungodly association with political saviors.
..
We found that evangelicals are drawn toward politics by messianic figures. Although Trump may not be Christ-like, the term messianic does have other synonyms such as “liberator” or “defender,” words that Trump supporters might easily use to describe him.
…we found out what did draw this group toward politics: strong, decisive leaders, not issues. They got involved in politics for the same reason they got involved with their church — because they were looking for someone to help “show them the way.” Evangelicals were drawn into politics by messianic leaders.[31]
.. The Lord is forcing the issue by presenting us with worse and worse leaders to expose where our true loyalties lie.
.. It is humiliating that the church bows to a man who is the opposite of everything we stand for because we have fallen prey to a political narrative that motivates us by fear. If we were truly free and truly found our hope and citizenship in heaven then we would not be so fearful and easily manipulated by the threat that if we don’t fall in line then another candidate will be elected.
..
“Though it’s common to talk about the Republican Party having been captured by white evangelical activists, if you really look at the way the two groups have interacted over the years, it’s more accurate to say that evangelicals have been captured by the Republican Party…Born-again Christians continue to laud Jesus as their King of Kings. But it is a strange sovereign who is so slavishly responsive to his subjects. Here Jesus is more pawn than king, pushed around in a game of political chess, sacrificed here to take down Obamacare and there to turn a reality-television star into God’s gift to America.
“The Trump candidacy is no outlier. He has not hypnotized evangelicals into forgetting the foundations of their faith. He is simply revealing the fact that their faith is now more political than theological. The white evangelicals who flock to his rallies like their parents once did to Billy Graham revivals know that he lives a life comically at odds with teachings of the Bible and the examples of the saints.”[32]
.. I think we aren’t giving the convictions of evangelicals enough credit. They know enough to know what Trump is saying and doing is wrong, and yet they are still supporting him.
.. Russell Moore closes his op-ed with a plea to evangelicals: “We ought to listen, to get past the boisterous confidence and the television lights and the waving arms and hear just whose speech we’re applauding.” But what if the boisterous confidence and the television lights and the waving arms are precisely what evangelicals have been trained to love? What if they can’t listen because they are enraptured? What if they applaud, not because Trump has given them a speech, but because Trump has given them what they love?[33]
.. Perhaps the Lord wants to use Trump to break our obsession with worldly power.
.. To say it another way, if we are in a generation when the Lord is humbling the nation, then Trump’s rally cry is essentially a rejection of what the Lord is doing in our nation. Trump is not defining greatness as goodness. He is describing it as power, might, and economics.
.. What if Trump’s entire platform is actually in opposition to the season the nation is in? What if we are in effect repeating the error of the religious leaders in Jeremiah’s day and assuring a man, and his supporters, that the Lord supports his agenda when in fact it is entirely the opposite?
.. If the Lord is humbling the nation, Trump represents something entirely different – pride, arrogance, and tolerance of sin. Promoting and embracing Trump is a statement of our trust in human strength at the cost of decency and morality.
.. When Jesus is declared in His beauty and in His glory, then we are neither awed by imposters like Trump nor fearful of leaders like Clinton.
.. Daniel was an influence in government and politics but he never put his hope in it and was therefore able to be a prophetic voice. He never confused Babylon with Zion and that’s why Daniel was just as able to serve under Babylon as under Persia. We should be equally able to be a prophetic voice to the Republicans as to the Democrats.
.. We are faced with two unqualified options because the Lord wants to break our search for a political savior.
.. Any man who sets himself up as the savior, threatens others, ridicules the vulnerable, and even threatens freedom of the press will not suddenly become a Christian in office.
Religious Conservatives and Donald Trump — the Cheapest Date in Politics?
f even a man like Donald Trump can count on Evangelicals, then the GOP will feel free to pursue power without regard to constitutional principle, content in the knowledge that its faithful Christian puppies will eagerly follow — wagging their tails at even the thought of crumbs from the table.
.. The social-justice Left has such a stranglehold on the Democratic party that for decades the Democrats have staked out extreme positions on abortion and enforced absolute discipline on judicial picks.
.. They’re indignant at the notion that Christians would turn away from a man who demonstrates aggressive, persistent ignorance on economic and foreign policy because there’s a chance — just a chance — that he might nominate a decent Supreme Court justice. They’re indignant that faithful Christians who’ve long called for integrity in politics won’t support a man who’s demonstrated faithlessness to his family and indifference to the truth.
.. Honestly, it’s pitiful. Is the Christian conservative movement so weak and so insecure that it will throw away its vote so easily? A vote for Trump is a declaration of irrelevance, a declaration that Christian support is unconditional so long as one can argue that the other side is marginally worse.