How Trump Is Remaking Evangelicalism

The Atlantic ^ | 3-12-18 | Emma Green

[DeweyCA]

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“Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people?’” wrote Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, in his essay. “‘I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian[s], who voted for Trump.’”

In trying to understand Trump-supporting evangelicals, journalists and commentators have often smoothed over the vast diversity within evangelicalism. “Many of us shake our heads at the ‘evangelical leaders’ that the news media anoints for us,” wrote Tom Lin, the president of InterVarsity Fellowship, in his essay.

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Fundamentalism, argued Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, is the driving force behind the hyper-partisan political norms among conservative Christians, which yielded Trump. Fundamentalism’s “attraction to theological and social purity plays easily into a theologized ideology,” he wrote. Yet, “the more ‘evangelicalism’ seeks to be cast or accepts being cast as a theo-political brand,” he added, “the more motivating it is for some evangelicals to walk away from the tribe, not as a rejection of Christian orthodoxy but as a way to preserve and defend it.”

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This, above all, may be the fracture line within the church that Trump has most exacerbated: race. As Michael Gerson wrote in The Atlantic’s April cover story, “Here is the uncomfortable reality: I do not believe that most evangelicals are racist. But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States. And that is something more than a political compromise. It is a revelation of moral priorities.”

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[DeweyCA]

These Christian leaders neatly categorize evangelicals who (often reluctantly) supported Trump over corrupt secularist-supporting Hillary Clinton as being "fundamentalists." In other words, we are supposedly as dumb as people back at the time of the Scopes trial. And they say that we are supportive of Trump's racism. That shows me that they live in the liberal groupthink bubble of the MSM. Trump is not a racist and neither are 95% of his supporters. It is another way that these elitists find a way to look down upon Trump supporters.

Do they really think that Christianity and the Christian worldview would thrive more under the corrupt regime of secularist-supporter Hillary Clinton, and the judges that she would appoint?? They are right in one regard. We do not understand each other. We live in totally different worlds of information. The Christianity Today editor said that he didn't know ANY evangelicals who voted for Trump. He is as bad as that Manhattan reporter who didn't know ANYONE who voted for George W. Bush. His magazine's articles reflect his sentiments. The same with InterVarsity. They have been emphasizing much more the social gospel, and less of the need for personal salvation for quite some time now. It often seems to me that many of these "leaders" inordinately want "the praise of man." They want to be seen as "intellectually and morally respectable" by people who really don't respect the Christian God.

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[Luircin]

Evangelicals probably wouldn’t have wanted to vote Trump 20 years ago.

Evangelicals nowadays realize that they are under attack with the goal of utterly exterminating them.

I think they’ll vote Trump and feel happy about it.

[DoughtyOne]

They ought to. Trump is no enemy of Christians.

[DesertRhino]

Difference between Christians, and professional Christians. Magazine editors, seminary types, organizers, etc...all dislike Trump. They took the 30 pieces of silver...

[Skywise]

You’d think the atheistic writers at the Atlantic would understand the concept of a SECULAR government.

Blubbering idiots... I didn’t vote for Trump because of his religious street cred but because of his business acumen and his desire to restore American civil rights and liberties while trying to help out the blue collar force long abandoned by the DNC and the GOP.

Leave it the blubbering simpletons at the Atlantic to not understand the nuance and proclaim the evangelicals should’ve voted for Hillary.

[donna]

But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States.

This is not true. It is just leftist propaganda.

[DesertRhino]

Actual normal christian people know that Trump will fight on their side and they dispense with the childish purity tests. And those tests become pointless when the other choice is a lesbian communist spirit cooking pagan who is involved in international bribery, and the pizzagate and Epstein molester ring.

[DesertRhino]

And the Atlantic couldn’t give a tinkers damn about the White House being occupied by a less than perfect person. They were trying to put Hillary there.

[Steve_Seattle]

"But every strong Trump supporter has decided that racism is not a moral disqualification in the president of the United States."

BS. We believe that Trump is not a racist; if we thought he was a racist, the vast majority of us would not have voted for him. The left calls ALL Republicans racist. They called Bush a racist, and now he is their darling because he criticizes Trump.

[Steve_Seattle]

Christians voting for a flawed Trump is no worse than feminists voting for a flawed Clinton, but The Atlantic never even raised the issue regarding Clinton.

[Tamatoa]

Amen, Trump is not racist and never was. The media made that up just to divide Trump supporters and brainwash the liberals to believing.

[Army Air Corps]

Didn’t Christianity Today praise Obama?

[SunkenCiv]

In trying to understand Trump-supporting evangelicals, journalists and commentators have often smoothed over the vast diversity within evangelicalism. “Many of us shake our heads at the ‘evangelical leaders’ that the news media anoints for us,” wrote Tom Lin, the president of InterVarsity Fellowship, in his essay.

Thanks DeweyCA.

[right way right]

All this labeling tripe means nothing to Jesus.
Either he knows you or he will send you on your way.

Hell yeah, this crackpot ‘Evangelical’ Christian or whatever you want to call me, is going to vote again for my president a sinner who knows that he needs Jesus Christ, Donald Trump!

The Atlantic is a snooty elitist rag.

[Nifster]

Remember....Scopes lost.

Moreover these so called evangelicals that are tsk taking their way to infamy have lily white churches. They had disdain for Billy Graham. They wanted to have Yeb .And if their churches aren’t dieing it is only because they are practicing the faith of the The Great Mega Mall

[Nifster]

They didn’t like Reagan because he was a remarried divorced man who was an “actor”

[V K Lee]

Surely, I'll not be the only quote here to say:
Ms. Green, I found your article to be VERY offensive. Persons such as you will soon find there are more Christians, Evangelical and others, than you could possibly dream. Furthermore, we will stay silent no longer. There will be Biblical flooding as all you snowflakes will be melting from the hot words coming from US.

Quoting from "THE BIG GUY",
Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged"

[dadfly]

i wonder if perhaps these so called “christian leaders” have forgotten that it is by obedience to God and servitude to the Body of Christ that one gains the right to leadership in Christ—that the last shall be first in the Kingdom—that God uses the weak to confound the wise and powerful—that God hears the prayers of His faithful—that God chooses the leaders of nations—that God often uses the greatest sinners to proclaim the Gospel, glorify Himself, draw nations to revival and sinners to salvation in Christ.

thank God that our little group of fundamentalist prayer warriors meeting at our tiny church Monday nights to pray fervently for a Trump presidency never heard of these “evangelical leaders” and their faulty journalistic opinions about us.

[taterjay]

How about this ....Trump is not a racist. Rejection of the premise.