Tag: evangelicals

Trump’s Approval Slips Where He Can’t Afford to Lose It: Among Evangelicals

New York Times logoPolls and private concerns from top social conservatives show the president’s standing with the cornerstone of his base isn’t what it used to be. A photo op with the Bible was supposed to help fix that.

President Trump needs every vote he got from white evangelicals in 2016 — and then some. Hoisting a Bible in the air may not be enough.

Unnerved by his slipping poll numbers and his failure to take command of the moral and public health crises straining the country, religious conservatives have expressed concern in recent weeks to the White House and the Trump campaign about the president’s political standing.

Their rising discomfort spilled out into the open this week when the founder of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, scolded the president for taking such a belligerent tone as the country erupted in sorrow and anger over the police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis. Continue reading.

What’s really behind Republicans wanting a swift reopening? Evangelicals.

Washington Post logoHILLSBORO, OHIO — Polls conducted since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic find that Democrats take the virus more seriously than Republicans, and are more willing to support restrictive government edicts in response to the outbreak. Most of those pontificating from the left conclude that Republicans get bad information from President Trump, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, to name a few, and therefore aren’t as worried as they should be.

Blaming so-called right-wing media for the strikingly different attitudes between the GOP and Democrats is in this case too simplistic. The Republican Party has long been home to conservatives and libertarians, who have a natural resistance to any governmental expansion of reach and authority over citizens. For many, if not most, Republicans, “give me liberty or give me death” is not outdated rhetoric.

Most Republicans are appalled at how casually governors — in their view — trampled the Constitution at the behest of state and federal health departments. As one small business owner in Tennessee said of the lockdowns, “If constitutional rights can be taken away whenever there is a crisis, then they are not rights at all — they are permissions.” Continue reading..

Televangelist Jim Bakker Warns His Flock That Christian Leaders And Republicans Will Die If Trump Loses In 2020

Jim Bakker, otherwise known as half of disgraced ’80s televangelist power couple Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker — pictured above with his current wife, Lori — has spent the past decade and a half quietly rebuilding his empire after serving nearly five years of a 45-year prison sentence (for fraud and conspiracy-related charges) from 1989 to 1994. (Not to be confused with the drugging and rape allegations from actress Jessica Hahn which had previously derailed his career in 1987.)

In the present, it should come as very little surprise that the “reformed” Bakker is back on his bullshit, now as a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and spewing dangerous rhetoric. In a sermon recently flagged by Right Wing Watch, Bakker told his followers that if Trump doesn’t get reelected in 2020, that “leaders of the gospel and the political conservative leaders” are going to be murdered. By who? Presumably AOC and the other women in Congress who Trump supporters chant “send them back” at rallies about? Dark lord Nancy Pelosi? Satan? Your guess is as good as ours! Continue reading “Televangelist Jim Bakker Warns His Flock That Christian Leaders And Republicans Will Die If Trump Loses In 2020”

Trump lauds religious adoption agencies for refusing service to same-sex couples

“We will always protect our country’s long and proud tradition of faith-based adoption.”

President Trump attends the 2019 National Prayer Breakfast. Credit: Chris Kleponis, Polaris

President Donald Trump openly endorsed discrimination by foster and adoption agencies, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning.

After welcoming Chad and Melissa Buck, a couple from Michigan who he applauded for having adopted five children, he said, “Unfortunately, the Michigan adoption charity that brought the Buck family together is now defending itself in court for living by the values of its Catholic faith.”

“We will always protect our country’s long and proud tradition of faith-based adoption,” he added. “My administration is working to insure that faith-based adoption agencies are able to help vulnerable children find their forever families while following their deeply held beliefs.”

View the complete February 7 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.

Has Support for Moore Stained Evangelicals? Some Are Worried

The following article by Laurie Goodstein was posted on the New York Times website December 14, 2017:

Some evangelicals have expressed concern about their movement being publicly associated with politicians like Roy Moore who have been dogged by scandal. Credit Kevin D. Liles for The New York Times

The editor in chief of Christianity Today did not have to wait for the votes to be counted to publish his essay on Tuesday bemoaning what the Alabama Senate race had wrought.

Whoever wins, “there is already one loser: Christian faith,” wrote Mark Galli, whose publication, the flagship of American evangelicalism, was founded 61 years ago by the Rev. Billy Graham. “No one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.”

The sight of white evangelical voters in Alabama giving their overwhelming support to Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate, despite accusations of racial and religious bigotry, misogyny and assaults on teenage girls, has deeply troubled many conservative Christians, who fear that association with the likes of Mr. Moore is giving their faith a bad name. The angst has grown so deep, Mr. Galli said, that he knows of “many card-carrying evangelicals” who are ready to disavow the label.

The evangelical brand “is definitely tarnished” by politicization from whatever side, Mr. Galli said on Wednesday. “No question about it.”

He said that his readers seemed to agree with the thrust of his essay. The main criticism he received, he said, was one he agreed with: that he should have made it clearer that he was referring not to all Christians, but to evangelicals in particular.

The bloc that has marched under the banner of the “Moral Majority” and “values voters” has now been tagged as the most reliable base of support for both Mr. Moore and President Trump, two politicians who are known for fanning racial and religious prejudices and who stand accused of sexual harassment by numerous women — accusations that each man denies. White evangelicals across the country delivered 81 percent of their votes to Mr. Trump last year, according to exit poll data, and backed Mr. Moore in Alabama by the same proportion on Tuesday.

Continue reading “Has Support for Moore Stained Evangelicals? Some Are Worried”

Why Trump’s evangelical supporters welcome his move on Jerusalem

The following article by Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida, was posted on the Conversation website December 7, 2017, and has been updated December 8, 2017:

Credit: Jusbe via Morguefile

President Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Dec. 6 that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel received widespread criticism. Observers quickly recognized the decision as related not so much to national security concerns as to domestic U.S. politics and promises candidate Trump made to his evangelical supporters, who welcomed the announcement..

Historian Diana Butler Bass posted on Twitter:

“Of all the possible theological dog-whistles to his evangelical base, this is the biggest. Trump is reminding them that he is carrying out God’s will to these Last Days.”

It is true that evangelicals have often noted that their support for Trump is based in their conviction that God can use the unlikeliest of men to enact his will. But how did conservative American Christians become invested in such a fine point of Middle East policy as whether the U.S. Embassy is in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem?

For many of President Trump’s evangelical supporters this is a key step in the progression of events leading to the second coming of Jesus. There’s an interesting story as to how that came to be. Continue reading “Why Trump’s evangelical supporters welcome his move on Jerusalem”