"You think the meek will inherit the earth. The meek ain't gonna
inherit anything west of Chicago!"
Posted on 09/28/2016 3:54:08 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
LEBANON — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both have a problem winning over white evangelical Christians in Republican-rich southwestern Ohio.
Most don’t like either one of them.
But make no mistake: Most evangelicals REALLY dislike Clinton, the Democratic former secretary of state. They see her as too liberal, favoring abortion and same-sex marriage, and a serious threat to religious freedom through her potential appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many evangelicals don’t know much about Trump, the Republican businessman, developer and reality-television star. They acknowledge being troubled by his background, multiple marriages and bravado, but they say they’re willing to overlook much of that and take a chance with him even if he wasn’t originally their first or second choice.
“Sometimes you have to choose between dumb and evil. I’ll take dumb,” said the Rev. Tom Pendergrass, senior pastor of Urbancrest, a Baptist church in Lebanon northeast of Cincinnati in Warren County.
“Individually, I will vote for Donald Trump, even though I don’t agree with him,” Pendergrass said. “I hope someone gives him wise biblical counsel.”
Pendergrass is also concerned about Clinton’s gun-control advocacy.
“I am a gun owner,” he said. “I can hit just about anything I shoot. If somebody breaks into my house, I’ll put a hole in them.”
Darryl Blair, a former factory worker and charter-boat captain, now works part time at Lennartz Olde Time Barber Shop in Springboro.
“If I did a poll in my barbershop, Trump would win in a landslide,” Blair said. “I don’t ask people, but if they tell me who they’re going to vote for, they say, ‘Anybody but her.’”
He added that “Trump’s a loudmouth. He’s a blowhard. But I don’t believe the man is an out-and-out liar.”
Not all churchgoers fall in line with Trump.
The Rev. Rich Jones, pastor of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, won a contest to meet Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Jones said he likes Clinton and will vote for her.
Jones, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, has an evangelical background and noted that there are evangelicals in his mainline Presbyterian congregation. He has heard a great deal of anti-Clinton rhetoric from them.
“I do think this election has consequences,” he said. “If I were to support Trump, I don’t know how I could face my Hispanic friends, my LGBT friends, or refugees in my neighborhood. I don’t know how I could, as a follower of Jesus, say, ‘You are somehow less than human.’”
What is shaping up in this critical corner of the state is an election hinging as much on the anti-Clinton vote as the pro-Trump vote.
“In the primary, Trump was one of the bottom for me. Anybody but Trump would have been my pick,” said Doug Shope of Lebanon, a teaching pastor at a Nazarene church. “Now he’s what we’ve got. I don’t necessarily trust him. He’s our best bet, but it’s still a gamble.”
Many evangelical voters say they are under siege for their religious beliefs, battered by the ban on government-sanctioned prayer in public schools, challenges to displays of religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments on public property, and the Supreme Court’s ruling last year allowing same-sex marriage.
White evangelical Christian voters continue to play a crucial role in GOP politics. They make up one-third of voters who strongly support or lean Republican and one-fifth of all U.S. registered voters, according to the Pew Research Center on Religion & Public Life.
Many evangelicals stayed home in 2012 instead of turning out to vote for Mitt Romney, a Mormon. But a Pew survey in June showed that they appear to be coming home to Trump: Seventy-eight percent said they planned to vote for the GOP nominee. At the same time, “religiously unaffiliated voters” — self-described as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — were firmly in Clinton’s camp, along with black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics, Pew found.
Ohio’s eight-county southwestern region is vital to GOP hopes of balancing or overcoming more Democratic areas of the state, especially northeastern Ohio.
Several people interviewed by The Dispatch said they had preferred other Republicans to Trump in the primary season, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Lori Viars, a member of the Warren County GOP Central Committee and a member of Right to Life, acknowledged that Trump “is a question mark. But if he’s elected, I could sleep at night. If Hillary gets elected, I’d be terrified.”
Trump was Viars’ fourth choice. But, like Shope, she said he’s the better of the final two.
“Even if we don’t like Trump, he gives us the chance to fight another day,” Viars said. “It’s all about the Supreme Court. We’ve got to have a chance at saving the Supreme Court.”
The Rev. Bruce Moore, pastor of Bethel Assembly of God in Clermont County and a member of the Springboro City Council, describes himself as an “ultra-conservative Republican.” He is concerned that a Clinton victory would assure the appointment of liberal judges who would rule against issues important to evangelical Christians.
“I am going to vote for the Supreme Court Donald Trump said he would give us,” Moore said. “There’s great potential. Trump is a work in progress on biblical ethics.”
Some evangelicals are taking a balanced approach.
Troy Jackson, executive director at the AMOS Project, an inner-city Cincinnati federation of churches and a former senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, said he’s not seeing “a great deal of excitement” about the election.
“I think some evangelicals will stay in the Republican column, and some will vote only on down-ballot candidates and not the top of the ticket. I think it’s going to be a real mix.”
The overall evangelical surge to Trump isn’t limited to older voters.
Glen Duerr, an assistant professor of international studies at Cedarville University, a Baptist college about 50 miles southwest of Columbus, recently polled self-reported evangelical students. Of 731 respondents who said they are registered to vote in Ohio or another state, 53 percent said they will vote for Trump, 12 percent said they support Libertarian Gary Johnson, and just 5 percent said they favor Clinton. Twenty-three percent were undecided.
its all about turnout - evangelicals are the group that wants to win the most, and they hate liars liked Crooked Hillary.
Ohio I am sure is wanting to make America Great Again.
let’s face it, Mr Trump is not an evangelical nor does his life particularly appeal to evangelicals
BUT he’s obviously a thousand percent better, more moral... than HilLIARy the Crook
and most voters see it, too.
Mr Trump is gonna get MANY usually-Demo votes (workers, evangelicals, blacks, Latins, you name it, and yes even women... who realize that despite her apparent chromosones HilLIARy has been very, very hostile to women her BillyGoat’s raped or otherwise treated badly
HilLIARy is not a genuinely attractive “women’s candidate” and women see it, too
I suggest they get over themselves because Jesus isn’t going to swoop in and make up for their inability to stop the slide of religion in this nation, nor the influence they have over events.
Hey Pendergrass...it’s not dumb to oppose mass illegal immigration.
Maybe in Southwest Ohio (Boehner country!) you haven’t experienced the Wonderfulness of being Invaded, but..trust us. It’s not a good thing.
Trump is the smartest guy who will take that office in 35 years.
Something strikes me as completely false about this.
Who the hell doesn't know about Donald Trump? LOL.
This point, on the other hand, strikes me as absolutely true. Many (maybe even MOST) of Trump's current supporters would say the same thing.
If God could use Abraham, David, and Saul known as Paul, then God could work with the likes of Donald Trump. Phyllis Schlafly’s last revelation was that Donal Trump was America’s Last Hope. I agree!
I drove from Cincinnati to Portsmouth along the Ohio in rural southern Ohio Saturday. I have never seen such a concentration of political yard signs. 100% Trump as far as president. Along this 110 mile trip you pass 9 coal fired electric power plants. These people know there might only be one thing you can take the bitch’s word on, she will kill their jobs.
The dims will really have to GOTV of the dead of cuyahoaga county to counter the rural vote in Ohio.
"You think the meek will inherit the earth. The meek ain't gonna
inherit anything west of Chicago!"
I don’t get the reluctance. TRUMP has promised to vote for pro-life Supreme Court Justices, do away with the tax laws that hobble free speech in the pulpit, and give protection to Christian beliefs, do away with government funding for Planned Parenthood, do away with Common Core...
What other candidate stood publicly for these issues. Could it be that all obstacles would be removed that keeps them from standing publicly for righteousness?
As a evangelical, I too had great reserves about Trump...
Bottom line is he isn’t running for minister of the country and Hillary as POTUS simply can not happen...
He has grown on me quite a bit since the primaries were over, as the buffoon act disappeared and the real Trump came though.. I was looking for a Christian and consitutionist...both which Trump registers on the low end of the scale...
The man has my vote as many of the fellow christian I know do as well..
I agree, I’m only voting for Trump because of the Supreme Court.
“I suggest they get over themselves because Jesus isn’t going to swoop in and make up for their inability to stop the slide of religion in this nation, nor the influence they have over events.”
I have asked such people if they’d vote for King David or Solomon since they were known philanderers. If you apply the test they use on Trump to men who were called “Great men of God” in the Bible you get some strange results. They need to rethink their purity test
Maybe because he's new to all this.
I agree. Trump may not be the hard-core Christian many here wish the GOP's nominee would be, but he will fight tooth and nail to protect the rights of those who are Christians. Most of these principles become moot if we are unable to protect the citizens of our country.
A hard core Christian like Ted Cruz could never ever win a national election. Canadian or not
I'm voting for Trump because I want to see the entire wretched political culture in Washington turned upside down.
God even used King Cyrus of Persia as one of His many annointeds (messiahs), Cyrus helped the exiled Jews return to Jerusalem of course
so certainly He can use Mr Trump (and I daresay, He’s a LOT more likely to use DT than he is HilLIARy the Corruptess!) I still can’t get over just how low the D party machine (and you can toss in the GOP-e) has sunk these past few years... they DEFINITELY need a thorough Housecleaning !!! maybe the RICO act can be used to clean up the political bosses and their foreign enemy Moslem donors?
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