Trumping up the Evangelical Vote

Let's face it, Trump wouldn't know a bible if one smacked him across the face. His pathetic attempts to appeal to the evangelical vote have become infamous jokes and memes. Before visiting churches in order to garner votes, the last time he saw the inside of a church was probably when he was getting married to his third mail order bride. As it turns out, Trump didn't have to humiliate himself to get the evangelical vote after all. Despite there being several candidates this year who either were clergy (Huckabee) or sons of clergy (Cruz), and plenty with serious evangelical street cred (Carson, Perry and Santorum), the lion's share of evangelicals are pulling for Trump, who can't name a single bible verse, operates gambling facilities, divorced more than once, is on record as being pro-abortion, and still thinks Planned Parenthood does a lot of good for women. It's a stunning paradox that is difficult to explain, at least if one wants to avoid throwing around accusations of racism.

To help clear up the confusion as to why evangelicals are willing to ditch bible-thumping candidates in favor of a secular, untraditional, and quite frankly, pretty sinful guy, Audie Cornish of NPR news recently interviewed Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas www.npr.org/2016/02/25/4681494…

Jeffress introduced Trump several times at different events, and even had Trump as a guest speaker in his church. The interview had a lot of interesting insights into the minds of modern evangelicals. Jeffress said that evangelicals are typically hopeful for an executive candidate who can "return America to its Judeo-Christian foundation", but reminded the audience that this is not the first time conservative evangelicals pulled for the more secular candidate: "Americans at that time (1980) had a choice between two candidates. One was a sincerely born-again Christian who taught Sunday school in his Baptist Church and was married faithfully to one woman. His name was Jimmy Carter. The other choice was a twice-married Hollywood actor who as governor of California had signed the most liberal abortion bill in California history and whose wife practiced astrology. His name was Ronald Reagan. Christians overwhelmingly chose Ronald Reagan not because he was the most religious candidate but because he had the quality people thought was most necessary at the time, and that is leadership"

Fair enough, we've always known that evangelicals supported sham "values" candidates in the past. But to me, the most interesting part of the interview was this snippet from Jeffress: "I think the same-sex marriage ruling by the Supreme Court last June was a watershed moment for evangelical Christians. I think in a strange way, that same-sex marriage ruling actually made evangelicals more open to a secular candidate like Donald Trump and here's why. I think many evangelicals have come to the conclusion we can no longer depend upon government to uphold traditional biblical values." So now, Jeffress argues, they are just looking to government to solve basic government-type things. And holy pope on a rope! Isn't this what we secular people have been calling for the whole time - that government isn't there to advance religion, but to legislate and administer public matters??! Well evangelicals, welcome to the club; better late than never.