Posted on 03/17/2016 5:30:05 PM PDT by Kaslin
his month’s conventional wisdom: The current Republican presidential campaign shows the GOP to be hopelessly split. Maybe that’s true, but the real split Donald Trump spotlights is the severe one within broad evangelicalism.
After Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, influential film critic Pauline Kael said, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” Many evangelical leaders are in the same position regarding Trump voters, but it’s not hard to figure out why millions support him. They feel smooth talkers have lied to them. They’re tired of theorists who spin untethered, abstract fantasies. They want blunt speech from someone who supposedly knows bricks and mortar.
Trump deserves credit for bringing the debate about free markets and immigration down from suite level to street level. Although international trade in theory raises all boats, many Americans who work with their hands, and don’t have the patience to sit in classrooms, are sunk. Economically, many fall behind. Socially, many do not get married, and those who do often get divorced. Wall Street hates tight borders and protectionism, and abstractly that makes sense; but lots of barely employed 25-year-olds need protection.
Trump’s exposure of the split within broad evangelicalism is also educational. The church he sometimes attends, Marble Collegiate in Manhattan, is part of the Reformed Church in America, a denomination often dubbed “evangelical.” Marble Collegiate’s most famous pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, authored the mega-selling “The Power of Positive Thinking” and made comments like these: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! ... If you have zest and enthusiasm you attract zest and enthusiasm. ... If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.”
Houston’s charismatic Lakewood Church -- 43,000 weekly attendees make it the largest Protestant church in the United States -- offers parallel teachings. Pastor Joel Osteen, dubbed an evangelical by The Huffington Post, The Christian Post, and other postings, says, “God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us,” and “We were old sinners -- but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.”
That contrasts with the classic evangelical message that we are still sinners whose only hope lies in the good news that Christ has already laid down His life for us. Key lines from three hymns sung at my church late last month: “False and full of sin I am. Thou art full of truth and grace. ... There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. ... Amazin ... grace! how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”
Donald Trump would be comfortable at Lakewood but not at my church, unless he followed Judy Collins and others in switching the start of “Amazing Grace” to “saved someone like me.” After all, he and his friends are the best, the greatest: No way he and they are wretches. The good news of the Trump gospel: We have nothing to confess and repent. The good news of Christ’s gospel: We have much to confess, yet we need not fear, for Christ has already paid the full penalty for our sins past, present, and even future.
In his 1923 book “Christianity and Liberalism” J. Gresham Machen showed how “liberal Christianity” and biblical Christianity are two different religions. The same is true regarding the Christian gospel and the Trump-Osteen-Peale gospel, which we could abbreviate as “TOP.” Donald Trump says, “I was a great student. I was good at everything. . I will be a great president. . I win at golf. ... I have a great, great company. ... I rely on myself. ... Nobody can build like I can build. Nobody.” Trump differs from Osteen and Peale in being tops even in adultery: “Beautiful, famous, successful, married -- I’ve had them all, secretly, the world’s biggest names.”
But, judging from Psalm 51 and many other parts of the Bible, whether we’re at the top or not matters little to God, who wants from us a broken spirit. He does not delight in sacrifice. He wants us to repent our vice. He creates in us a new, clean heart. He gives the lowly a strong, fresh start. He wants our Hallelujah.
After Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, influential film critic Pauline Kael said, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”
Interesting, I don’t know anyone who voted for Obama. And yet there he is.
I know someone who voted for Obama, twice - my brother. I talk with him as little as possible. I don’t talk politics, since he’s unteachable and I don’t like to fight when it accomplishes nothing. I don’t talk anything else around him either, since politics contaminates all of his beliefs. I don’t even bring my kids around him, since when he’s near them he tries to talk politics. It’s a shame too; he used to be a decent person before he accepted socialism and government power as good things.
Good post.
I think that we should have great confidence. I think that we should have tremendous vision and great courage to accomplish great deeds and be called to excellence.
But we should also realize that we are sinners. One of the most valuable things about the Old Testament prophets is that they were people who could see. Yes, they could sometimes see the future. But, more importantly, they could see who man is; and they could see who God is; and they could see the tremendous difference between the two.
I’m not sure that Trump sees that much of a difference.
The phrase "broken spirit" is a vile phrase to use when writing a political tract about a presidential nominee. We obviously do not want a broken spirited President. The writer obviously wants to hide behind twenty volumes of theological explanations of the profound strength behind the phrase. But used plainly, in this context, undermines the very concept of a strong President except to those who have read the twenty volumes. Thus the effect for the average person is to claim that Christ wants a weak, broken President.
What a vile attempt at mind rape on behalf of Satan. Complete with plausible deniability. How utterly revolting. How evil.
I am part of the split up to the point when I cast my vote for Trump over Clinton. #neverClinton
Excellent of Marvin Olasky to point out that speck in Trump’s eye.
Indeed
I have never voted for a rat candidate, and never will.
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