The video is bombastic, even by Mr Trump’s standards. Just consider the title: God Made Trump.
“There’s a portion of the evangelical community that’s very attracted to the idea that God knows everything and God appoints leaders,” he said. “They believe that Donald Trump is the appointed leader at this moment in time.”
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
– Romans 13:1 NIV
Except, of course, if the current leader is a Democrat.
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doesn’t the Bible specifically warn about people like Trump?
For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
— 2 Timothy 3:2–5, English Standard Version
Get out of here with your pinko agenda. What are you, some kind of long haired, bleeding-heart, sharey fairy, hippie, Jew?
Behold: The supply-side Jesus.
Yes, but it doesn’t matter, these people don’t read the Bible. For them, it’s just an excuse to do whatever it is they’re doing.
Yes, but it doesn’t matter, these people don’t read the Bible.
They do read the Bible though, at least in my experience. I’ve gone to a number of different churches, Evangelical and otherwise, and the Evangelical or otherwise Calvinist folks were the ones that read the Bible the most and in the most detail — but perhaps also the ones who came to horrible conclusions the most often. Like that you should shine the light of Christ into the world by blocking women for promotion at your job, because 1 Tim 2:12 says that Paul does not permit them to have authority over men. (Real example, if possibly the worst one I’ve seen.) Maybe my experience is not representative, but I don’t think the problem is primarily that Evangelicals don’t read the Bible.
I have a long theory about some of the ways that Evangelicalism distorts Scripture, but one root of the issue is that (IMHO) Scripture was written by humans, reflects the biases of the authors and their societies, and has a lot of horrible things in it. If you take a sola scriptura view and then read it through a lens that’s been cultivated over years to reinforce patriarchy and supremacy (see e.g. Manifest Destiny, the curse of Ham, etc) then you will end up absorbing the genocidal and supremacist bits and not the hospitable and altruistic bits.
For them, it’s just an excuse to do whatever it is they’re doing.
For sure. People don’t want to repent. They want to find justifications for what they were already doing, or planning to do.
If you take a sola scriptura view and then read it through a lens that’s been cultivated over years to reinforce patriarchy and supremacy (see e.g. Manifest Destiny, the curse of Ham, etc) then you will end up absorbing the genocidal and supremacist bits and not the hospitable and altruistic bits.
Agreed, over the years I’ve come to firmly believe the root cause of all the Christian extremism we have nowadays is the literal interpretation of the scripture by Evangelicals. When you take every word of that book as law and you refuse to acknowledge some of it shouldn’t be relevant anymore, you end with some really absurd worldviews and beliefs. Especially in those small churches without affiliation to some larger religious body, without some authority dictating what is acceptable and what isn’t, the insanity runs amok.
This is something I admire in the Catholic church, their willingness to reinterpret the Bible to current circumstances, they get a lot of flak (deservedly so) for some things, but at least they have that going for them.
RIP independent thought.
Why does that remind me of The Life of Brian?
The absolutely most brilliant scene ever: Yes! We’re all different! (I’m not.)
You forgot the immediate shushing after the “I’m not”.
Their theology is as bad as their choice of political candidate. I cannot think of any other politician that embodies the “Seven Deadly Sins” in public/private life moreso than Mr. Trump. I honestly do not get how the same “conservatives” used to crow about character being of the highest importance for an officeholder/candidate during the 90s, can get on this godawful bandwagon. I still am a Christian and live my life rather “conservatively”, but if this is what Christianity and Conservatism has become, it is no wonder the next generation is saying “Count me out…”.
As discussed in the article, of was never really about religion. It was about rhetoric. The bar for Democrats to keep states like Iowa blue was so incredibly low, requiring only action. But none could be taken, and it will now be incredibly difficult to overcome this loss.
Tell me you don’t understand what either of those things are…
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In 2016, Mr Trump picked up just 22% of this group on the way to a second-place finish behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who like previous Iowa Republican winners made faith a major part of his campaign.
But since that time, when many were still sceptical of the blunt-talking New York businessman trailed by sex scandals, Mr Trump has made born-again Christians a key part of his voter base.
Self-described conservative evangelical David Pautsch is a huge fan of Mr Trump, and the former president is part of the reason he’s decided to run for Congress in Iowa’s 1st district, challenging a Republican incumbent from the right.
Mr Pautsch lives here in Davenport, a city of around 100,000 people in eastern Iowa, and was collecting signatures to back his campaign from hundreds of locals who braved frigid weather to visit a gun show at an exhibition centre.
Kedron Bardwell, a political science professor at Simpson College in Indianola, just outside Des Moines, said that Mr Trump had a key advantage over his rivals - a track record that aligned with evangelical priorities.
His appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court - and the overturning of Roe v Wade, which for decades had held that there is a constitutional right to abortion - is a key part of that record, as is his decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
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Well God is an asshole then
God made herpes, and I don’t want that, either.
I’m not a very religious person. But if Jesus (the human being) saw what his followers have become, he would be disgusted. I don’t know how they can read the bible and say that Trump is the sort of person it heralded. There is a major cognitive disconnect in the miswired brains of these ‘evangelicals’.
how they can read the bible and say […]
With a blindfold in the shape of their favorite preacher. You can make any book say anything, if you only read the parts that say what you want.
That is the “beauty” of that book. It is self-contradictory. It can and has been used to justify anything. Almost everyone reads just the bits they like and ignore the rest. Taken as a whole it is on par for what you would expect from 2 millennia old shepherds. Not some divinely inspired work of absolute truth.
I don’t know how they can read the bible and say that Trump is the sort of person it heralded
That’s the neat part: they have never opened that book.
