For years now evangelicals have been electing each other to get into government so that they can make this country more religious, well, actually more of their type of religious.
They have passed judgment on others, claiming they are only following the Bible, and have passed laws so that all of us are required to follow the Bible, well, their interpretation of it anyway.
Now, in spite of what they have been saying, there is a large number of evangelicals who are supporters a man for president who had been notorious for his philandering, had been divorced and married multiple times, promotes anything but Biblical wifely submission and modesty, teaches a message of hating his fellow man, and runs casinos where there is gambling and drinking, both of which are condemned in the Bible.
He is also, depending how the wind blows, pro-choice and in favor f Gay marriage.
The Good Samaritan would be anathema to him
While Trump’s rise forces the GOP establishment to confront how it lost touch with so many conservative voters, top evangelicals are facing their own similar problem.
John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, said,
“Evangelicals are looking at those issues less and less. They’ve just become too worldly, letting anger and frustration control them, as opposed to trusting in God.”
Trump has won the support of one-third of self-identified born-again Christians in the primaries and caucuses held so far.
Meanwhile Raphael Eduardo Cruz, a Baptist with a preacher father, is just not getting the evangelical vote.
And Ted is the Anointed One whose wife has claimed he is the face of God in America.
Meanwhile Trump has had a hard time with Bible references, on a recent campaign visit to church, mistook a communion plate for a donation plate, and has said he has never sought God’s forgiveness for his sins.
According to Reverend Russell Moore, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention,
“There’s a form of cultural Christianity that causes people to respond with ‘evangelical’ and ‘born-again’ as long as they’re not Catholic, even though they haven’t been in a church since Vacation Bible School as a kid.”
Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and son of the guy credited with mobilizing evangelicals to get involved in America’s political process because of his support of Reagan, and, therefore, an evangelical leader, supports Trump, and has said thatTrump “lives a life of loving and helping others”.
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Reflecting the wider division among evangelicals, Mark DeMoss, a Liberty University board member and longtime adviser to the school’s founder, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr., opposes Junior’s endorsement.
“My concern, thinking about evangelicalism and Liberty University, is more about a style and a behavior and a demeanor and a vocabulary that you can’t find any support for in Scripture.”
Comparing the words of evangelical leaders to the voting of their followers, Trump’s candidacy has revealed a distance between evangelical leaders and rank-and-file Christians.
Instead of the Bible, it appears that the evangelicals are basing their support of Trump on his protecting them from the Islamic State group, liberalism, growing secularism among Americans, and economic insecurity for the country and their families, an economic insecurity brought about because, based on their religion, they supported candidates that created the conditions they are angry about now.
The Reverend Carl Gallups, a Southern Baptist pastor from Milton, Florida, who gave the invocation at Trump’s Pensacola rally last January, said,
“I tell them, if you are not thoroughly satisfied with what you might interpret the depth of his faith might be, then the next thing we must look at is the candidate who will best preserve your First Amendment rights and allow you to express your Christian faith. We’re not electing a priest, a pope or a pastor. We’re electing a president, a CEO, a commander in chief. I’m not perfectly happy with Donald Trump either, but I’m a realist.”
Quite a contrast from past election rhetoric from evangelicals
As Reverend Russell Moore put it,
“I think it’s more a commentary on growing cynicism in American life, including among religious Americans. There is a certain segment of evangelicalism that has given up virtue in public life or character in public officials.”
Fighting among evangelicals has produced such responses as Rafael Cruz, Eduardo Raphael Cruz’s father, asking if Trump evangelicals are really sticking to the “word of God”, Russell Moore suggesting evangelicals who support Trump “may well be drunk right now, and haven’t been into a church since someone invited them to Vacation Bible School sometime back when Seinfeld was in first-run episodes”, Conservative Christian Radio talk show host Steve Deace alleging that evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress “is watering down/distorting the Gospel in full public view on behalf of a politician”, and the Christian Post for the first time in its history taking a stand against a political candidate, advising Christians to “pray for personal repentance, divine forgiveness and spiritual awakening for our nation. It is not the time for Donald Trump.”
So we now have Cruz Christians fighting with Trump Christians.
GOP leadership waited too long to go after Trump and took evangelical voters for granted assuming they would automatically vote for a traditional-values candidate.
That would have been Cruz, Rubio, or Carson.
They got that wrong.
Large numbers of Evangelicals seem to be walking away from those Biblical principles that they have been trying to force on the rest of us.