Posted on 12/17/2017 11:31:22 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Among some of the religious conservatives who helped place Donald Trump in the presidency, there is a subtle but growing sense of buyer’s remorse. To them, Trump has not been ennobled by the office as they had hoped. He has not allowed his newfound but much touted commitment to faith to lift him above the crass brawler he has been most of his life.
For some of these religious conservatives, it is the pettiness that offends most. They had hoped for a healer, rather than the kind of man who would call protesting NFL players “sons of bitches” or who would feud with the beleaguered mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, while she stood elbow-deep in the waters of hurricane Irma. For other faith-based former Trump supporters, it is the sense that something is amiss in the president’s inner being, that perhaps TV host Stephen Colbert was right when he spoke of the president’s “anemic firefly of a soul.”
Then there are those who simply fear that the chaos in the White House and Trump’s bare knuckles approach to threats like North Korea will lead the nation into avoidable disasters.
They had hoped for a better man. In fact, they were promised one. During the 2016 presidential election, many conservative religious leaders, traumatized by the Obama years and terrified of a Hillary Clinton presidency, turned to Trump as the champion of their hopes. In doing so, they remade his campaign into a holy crusade, excusing behavior they had often derided in their pulpits.
It worked. By the time the dust settled, Donald Trump had won the votes of 81 percent of white evangelicals, more than half of all Roman Catholics, and more than half of all weekly church attendees in the United States.
In their defense, these religious conservatives believed themselves under siege. During the Obama years, they had endured bombardment of nearly everything they held dear.
It was candidate Obama who had once declared that working class white voters “cling to guns and religion” because they “get bitter” and are angry about people who “aren’t like them.” As president, Obama seemed never to have heard of an abortion he couldn’t support, unswervingly served an LGBT agenda, and used the weapons of his Justice Department against traditional faith and its practitioners time and again, even famously suing a small order of Roman Catholic nuns.
As the 2016 presidential race neared, Hillary Clinton seemed an equal threat. She had once told a global conference of women that abortion rights required “deep-seated ... religious beliefs” to be “changed.” As secretary of state, she proclaimed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights a “priority” of American foreign policy. This in an era of global terrorism and nuclear threat. She was so subject to the prevailing political winds that though as first lady she had once championed the Defense of Marriage Act by citing Bible verses, no one celebrated the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling legalizing same-sex marriage as publicly as Hillary Clinton.
By the launch of the 2016 presidential race, then, religious conservatives were desperate. They longed for a candidate sympathetic to their sufferings. They hoped for someone who channeled their anger. They would settle for a conservative who could win.
They found all of this in Donald Trump — he of the racist campaign statements, the womanizing, the casinos, the misquoting of scripture, and the foul language. A religious rebranding soon began. He was, some said, like Lincoln — perhaps not an orthodox believer but guided by the better angels of his nature and the hand of a history-ruling God. Maybe he was Churchill — crass, blasphemous, gifted, and ordained. He might even be like Cyrus the Great — a vile pagan but a tool of God nonetheless.
It was all part of an audacious religious makeover. Yet victory has come with great risk. American religious conservatives are wed to Donald Trump now. They will be made to answer for the mores, the methods, and the machinations of the Trump administration.
Perhaps it is just this connection to their seemingly untethered president that is causing some religious conservatives to have second thoughts. Perhaps they sense that if Trump fails them, if he betrays their vision, the banner of religious conservatives may be forced from the field of American cultural battle for a generation or more.
There is still a chance for a change. There is still the possibility that religious leaders with access to Trump will dare to call him to the full implications of the faith he claims.
Perhaps then we shall see the better angels of our nation take flight, even during the tempestuous presidency of Donald Trump.
> For some of these religious conservatives, it is the pettiness that offends most. <
I’m very pro-Trump. But I’m not a fan of cults of personality. So yes, I very much agree with this article, and the above statement.
Is this a deal-breaker? No. But I sure wish it were something Trump could get a handle on.
Trump as exactly what was advertised.
I think you have it reversed. Muslims have most benefited from the last 11 months.
I didn’t elect Donald Trump to make him more pious and faithful. I elected him to protect the faithful. I don’t get this article.
Isaiah 41:26
Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know? and beforetime, that we may say, He is righteous? yea, there is none that sheweth, yea, there is none that declareth, yea, there is nonethat heareth your words.
The media reminds me of a bitter woman who just hates one of the other ladies in the room.
She can’t shut up about her, and always has some of the most ghadtley tales to tell.
People usually wind up seeing her as a bitter old crone.
Stephan apparently doesn’t get it. If Jesus Christ himself had run in Trump’s place the vitriol from the left and the would only have been worse.
2016 was, sadly, not the time and place for gentlemen and statesmen. The Rinos and the left hated the most articulate gentleman in the race as worse if not more so than Trump.
As for narcissism, nothing could be more narcissistic and petty than the anti-faith lobby in the GOP and the Democratic Party, not even Trump.
I think all these years he’s been able to observe all these people coming to him for favors and handouts and he knows how they tick, he knows their price.
Sorry, Stephen. I was one of those “religious conservatives” that “put Trump in office (in other, fairer, words: elected Donald J. Trump President of the United States). I supported him with reservations, but in the past 12 months, have given up my reservations and wholeheartedly support him. I have grown to enjoy his tweets when formerly, I would have tsched tsched them.
Absolutely
This article was written to cast doubt, and try to divide Trump’s support. Worthless garbage.
That Mansfield, the author of several books on Machiavelli, is trying to make Evangelicals skeptical about Trump is a good sign. It tells us that Trump is being successful and Mansfield wants to divide Evangelicals to erode his political base. Does Mansfield think Evangelicals are so naive or dumb as to fall for this blatant attempt at manipulation?
TRUMP probably gets 100% Evangelical + Christian support in 2020 now!
I’ve never heard of this author. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know even one evangelical anything
The article is proof of the stupidity of the Never Trumpers.
I think the bigger question is: do we really care what a bunch of people who are so shallow that they’re actually bothered by surface level considerations like the tone of Trump condemning anti-American scum in the NFL? These are the church ladies who still have all kinds of heart attacks over people who put their elbows on the table while eating dinner.
Bio - Stephen Mansfield.TV
https://stephenmansfield.tv/bio/
Stephen Mansfield is a New York Times best-selling author and a popular speaker who also leads a media training firm based in Washington, DC. He first rose to global attention with his groundbreaking book The Faith of George W. Bush,...
Predictable.
Exactly -
The Bible is rife wth examples of God send flawed individuals to accomplish good results....Trump is no different. I refuse to let God hating liberals to define who we choose!!!
Yep - any “evangelicals” who have “buyer’s remorse” over Trump are fake evangelicals....
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