Sunday, January 28, 2018

It's Sunday

[In “God and Donald Trump”, Stephen] Strang attempts to explain evangelical fervor for Trump and provides a window into the world of charismatics, a subset of evangelical Christians who believe God still speaks to people through prophesies and is still actively involved in arranging the world of human affairs.

[...]

From early in Trump’s presidential candidacy, his biggest religious supporters—indeed, his only religious supporters for a while—were charismatic Christians like pastors Paula White and Darrell Scott. They were drawn to Trump, and he to them, because of their embrace of the prosperity gospel. Also sometimes referred to as “health and wealth” theology, this belief holds that God rewards faith with good health and financial success. By those very simple metrics, a billionaire like Donald Trump, whether his fortune came from family, scams or a higher power, must be a very faithful man.

Other religious conservatives, Strang argues, supported Trump in 2016 for reasons familiar to any Fox News viewer: a fear of globalism, the deep state, George Soros the former Nazi collaborator, wide-scale election fraud. They liked Trump because he said he liked them, told them they were persecuted, and vowed to stand up for them. He said he would bring back “Merry Christmas.” He told them they were important.

[...]

Strang outlines a string of charismatics who had visions—or who now retroactively claim to have had visions—that Trump would one day win the White House. A Catholic holy man named Thomas Zimmer who spent much of his life in Italy even claimed to have received a prophesy in the 1980s that Trump would “lead America back to religion.” And the book is filled with testimony after testimony from Christian leaders who were amazed to find themselves supporting Trump in 2016, who each claim that he was their very last choice up until he won the Republican nomination.

In fact, while some conservative Christians speak about Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton as the work of God, it seems the real divine intercession was in clearing the GOP field for Trump.

[...]

“Millions of Americans,” declared Jeffress at a July 2017 event his First Baptist Church of Dallas sponsored in Washington, D.C., “believe the election of President Trump represented God giving us another chance—perhaps our last chance to truly make America great again.”

  Politico
So that must explain why God chose Barack Obama twice?
At a certain point in “God and Donald Trump,” the recent theological gymnastics on display from Tony Perkins and Jerry Falwell, Jr., among others, to explain ongoing conservative Christian support for a president who (allegedly) paid off a porn star weeks before Election Day so she would keep quiet about their (alleged) affair become clear. There will be no point at which Trump’s most loyal evangelical and charismatic supporters declare they have had enough. Because to do so would be to admit that they were wrong, that God wasn’t behind Trump’s election, and that their Holy Spirit radar might be on the fritz.

[...]

“And perhaps best of all,” [Strang] continued, “we each thanked God in our own way that Hillary Clinton was not going to be the next commander in chief.”
A woman!  The only thing worse to them than a black man.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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