Trump can’t understand why evangelicals would turn against him. He gave them dozens of federal judges, including two Justices of the Supreme Court. Son they will get rid of abortion, gay rights, Obamacare. How dare they?
Trump’s rage at Christianity Today gives away his scam
By Greg Sargent Opinion writer covering national politicsEmail BioFollow
President Trump just erupted in a rage at the magazine Christianity Today over its scathing, moralistic call for his removal over the Ukraine scandal. In so doing, Trump shed light on his understanding of the oft-debated oddity that millions of evangelical Christians remain loyal to the most hateful, depraved, self-dealing and self-aggrandizing individual to occupy the Oval Office in modern history.
In an unwittingly self-revealing moment, Trump responded to the magazine’s indictment of his profound moral failings with an argument that is thoroughly transactional and megalomaniacal: How dare you criticize me, after all the power I’ve granted to your movement? You’re breaking our deal, and now you’re dead to me.
Trump raged:
The magazine’s core indictment is that Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader” to “discredit” one of his “political opponents.” It adds that Trump “abused his authority for personal gain” in a “profoundly immoral” manner that damages the presidency, the country, and “the spirit and the future of our people.”
This depiction is unequivocally correct. The White House’s own summary of the July 25 call captures Trump doing just this: While withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from a vulnerable ally, Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation that would smear potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden with an entirely fabricated narrative.
Trump’s response again called this “perfect” conduct, reminding us that he is thoroughly unrepentant about all of it.
Christianity Today also indicts Trump’s personal immorality, his nonstop lies and his serial degradation of others, concluding that Trump is “morally lost and confused.”
This nonbeliever will not grapple with the deep spiritual currents underlying this phrasing, and will only note that Trump plainly hasn’t spent a second wrestling with the morality of these actions or their impact on others, and that his only discernible reigning ethic is that if you can get away with grabbing something, it’s rightfully yours.
Indeed, the transactional cast to Trump’s rage over this is particularly instructive, once you understand that Trump and his top advisers have consciously enlisted the nation’s evangelicals as an army of Trump defenders in the war against impeachment, which is widely depicted in the evangelical movement as a kind of epic persecution of Trump carried out by the godless and the damned.
As Sarah Posner details in a terrific piece, this effort is concerted, multifaceted and highly organized. Numerous high-profile evangelicals regularly depict impeachment as a disruption of God’s plan for America to be governed by Christians in accord with “biblical” values.
Impeachment is merely the weapon that the secular, satanic left is wielding to carry out its broader pro-abortion, anti-religious-liberty agenda, which requires the removal of Trump, the savior of Christian America, all to keep the persecution of Christians going at full throttle.
And on top of all that, as Posner notes, Trump is giving evangelicals unprecedented power and access:
With him in the White House, Christian right ideologues have virtual carte blanche to run his administration, as he has handed them control over personnel and policy at a level they could have only dreamed of, even under admired presidents like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Trump has handed them conservative judicial nominees, from the Supreme Court down to federal trial courts, and also has installed longtime evangelical allies at key Cabinet posts.
For all these reasons, the Christianity Today editorial won’t diminish Trump’s evangelical support. As Ezra Klein notes, the conviction that evangelicals are on the losing end of the “post-Christian culture war” is powerfully and deeply felt.
The result of this, according to Robert Jones, a longtime tracker of evangelical attitudes, has been a broad shift of evangelical opinion from Bill Clinton’s time, when personal morality in leaders was a central preoccupation of the movement, to the present.
“In theological terms, Trump has been able to convert evangelical political ethics from an ethic of principle to a consequentialist ethic, where the ends justify the means,” Jones, the author of “The End of White Christian America,” told me.
Trump’s promise to evangelicals, Jones added, was to “restore power and dominance to the Christian churches” at a time when “the demographics of the country are changing, you’re on the losing end of that, I’m going to turn back the clock, I’m the only one who can do that.”
The unacceptable bargain with Trump
Responding to this whole controversy, Christianity Today’s editor in chief, Mark Galli, has now directly engaged with this bargain that many evangelicals have made with Trump.
As Galli noted, there is no longer any way to avoid acknowledging Trump’s moral and temperamental unfitness for the presidency. Continuing to look the other way to get more judges and so forth is no longer worth the moral and spiritual costs to Christianity itself.
“The moral scales no longer balance,” Galli told the Atlantic. “We’ve been a movement that has said the moral character of our leaders is really important,” Galli continued, adding that the association of evangelicals with Trump will do “horrific” damage to their ability to share the Gospel with others.
It’s perversely revealing that Trump’s response to all this is to rage that evangelicals are indeed getting a good deal
For some evangelicals, at least, this bargain has crossed over into a species of scam that they can no longer accept.
Double-edged sword: The biggest concern here is that without the endorsement of Trump from the evangelical community, Pence can come to the position of president. They would love nothing more.
Trump is going to want revenge, TO GET back at “Christianity Today”
“Donald Trump is Completely Obsessed With Revenge”
“Revenge–it’s a big part of Trump’s life”
“In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: ‘Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.'”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-obsessed-with-revenge/
This is a brief profile of the enemy Trump just declared another one of his revenge wars with:
Circulation 130,000
Founder: Bill Graham
First Issue: October 1956
“Its presence on the Internet began in October 1994 when it became one of the top 10 content providers on all of AOL.
All Christianity Today brands together reach more than 2.5 million people every month when print and digital views are combined, plus more than 5 million page views per month on the Internet. The ministry offers access, both premium and free, to over 100,000 articles and other content on their various websites.”
Trump will want revenge.
How many does Commonweal reach?
According to its Media Planner, Commonweal Commonweal “has18,000 paid subscribers & a total readership of 39,000.”
However, don’t dismiss its reach as a result of these low numbers. A targeted audience can be quite influential.
Thanks
I posted a comment in this thread with that information and didn’t memorize what I read, copied and pasted. I recall the actual publication had more than a 100,000 readers, maybe more.
I never really understood how the evangelicals could support a person like trump, then I moved to the Southern US, and now I understand. Evangelicals are very much like trump – fake and two faced. They are all about see how pious I am, instead of just living their religion.
My take is that the Evangelicals got everything they could out of trump, particularly judicial appointments, and now they don’t need him. They’d rather have pence as their president now.
Agreed. Pence is the first ever Christian Nationalist this close to the presidency. Evangelicals smell an opportunity for him to become president.
This editorial could be a political tactic by the religious right to save Republican Senate seats. By giving their blessing to impeachment, Republican senators can count on not losing their Evangelical constituents if they vote to convict Trump.
The Democrats need to win 3 seats to take the Senate back & impeachment is popular in purple states. That puts a few Senators in a bind who would need to defend any votes they take back home. If evangelicals don’t abandon them for a ‘yes’ vote, they’re Senate seat is less vulnerable to a Dem challenger.
If this is their tactic to get Pence, it is a exceedingly stupid one.
Trump will never resign and there is no way in Hell (or in the Senate, at least) that Trump will be removed from office.
So the idea that Pence will become President is just dumb.
And the Christianity Today editorial certainly does Trump no favors for his re-election bid and if Trump is out, so is Pence.
nkdwhtguy,
You are correct about Pence and evangelicals. But, otherwise, you’ve been duped by the media.
The judge appointments reflect the success of Catholic influence achieved by Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Trump’s McGahn and Cipilone.
The religious right was co-founded by the Catholic, Paul Weyrich, and the evangelical, Jerry Falwell. Bishops and state Catholic Conferences in the midwest and south may be mainly supporting Republican voting,
similar to their evangelical cousins.
Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
It’s amusing that to he of the little hands and brain, any criticism of him, however gentle, is from the extreme, radical, Socialist left wing. LOL.
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matt. 25: 40. Thanks to Vlad’s Agent Orange and his Minister of Propaganda, Stephen Miller, a lot of kids are going to spend this Christmas in cages, and a lot more are wondering if they will ever see their parents again.
Christianity Today maybe, but most definitely NOT Christianity Yesterday.
How about this afternoon from 2:00 to 2:15?
Christianity of Convenience
Christianity Today
Christians of the Here and Now
Christians of the Sword. And how!
Christians of the Great Crusade
Christians of the Trump briggade
You forgot the inquisition that Trump has also brought back.
You do not hear anything from the Catholics condemning Trump for what he is morally and ethically. I think they are lining up to do the same thing they did during the Second World War. Capitulate like they did with Hitler and his storm troopers.
This morning, I did see a headline about a Catholic publication supporting Impeachment, but can’t find it now. But I did find these:
https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/news/news/network-lobby-announces-support-impeachment
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/12/16/editors-question-impeachment
https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/impeachment-catholic-experts-weigh-in
I saw that headline, too, (the one about a Catholic publication) but I did not click on the link and read it.
On the same day out of 365 days (no prior day during the hearings?), two publications, one Catholic and one evangelical, decided to weigh in on Trump. Yes, it was after the vote but, all of the information was out there before the vote.
I’ll take the denunciations whenever they come. Especially before the Senate has its rigged trial, acting like puppets.
The article are interesting and many good points are addressed relative to the impeachment of Trump. Points are well made.
But, what I find totally lacking is the willingness for the leadership of the Catholic church at all levels to speak out on the Trump’s immorality, lack of ethics, his willingness to destroy people for to meet need for self-gratification, his lying when the facts clearly prove he is wrong, etc. The list is endless when it comes to Trump’s doing things that are not acceptable in a moral and ethical society. Trump’s way of life is what has led him down the road to impeachment. Trump claims to be a Christian but his daily action clearly demonstrate is not a Christian.
Moene15
MSM has chosen to ignore Catholics, similar to commenters here who prefer to see evangelicals as the problem.
The fact that the public perceives the court appointments as the work of evangelicals instead of Catholics makes the case.
For my last three years until graduation, I attended an all boys Catholic high school in the late 70s. We moved there and I was not aware that it was all boys and Catholic until my first day of school (my parents enrolled me when we moved). On my first day of school, I heard the n-word more in one day than I heard it collectively in my entire life. I witnessed bullying homophobia, intolerance of all forms, had a history teacher who was a racist (“Crispus Attucks was just some drunk hanging around”), and the constant hypocrisy of saying one thing in mass and then doing exactly the opposite as soon as it was over. They beat the joy the learning out of me.
On the other hand, I graduated from a Jesuit university and had the opposite experience. As a non-Catholic, I would be overjoyed if my sons chose to attend a Jesuit school because they repaired most of the damage my high school did.
But over my lifetime, I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of Catholics I’ve encountered in my life are closer to those of my high school experience. Interestingly (or maybe not) it is the same high school Steve Scalise attended. He learned and internalized his lessons there well.
Greg
Thanks for telling the story.
No taxpayer should be forced to pay for local community schools where they have no voice in school board elections.
I think the high school that sent MAGA hat-wearing boys to D.C. to influence politicians to criminalize medical care for their mothers and sisters was Jesuit.
Anecdotally, I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the philosophies of Jesuit high schools and universities. High schools seem to try to indoctrinate, universities promote thinking and reasoned dissent.
And an addendum to Scalise above, he also attended LSU, which was immortalized in Randy Newman’s song Rednecks, “College men from LSU, went in dumb, come out dumb too.” It’s no wonder he has a leadership position in the House.
Louisiana is unique among other states in the south. The state has a large Catholic influence. Mary Landrieu (DFER) is one of the nation’s biggest promoters of privatization.
Scalise’s been linked to groups that SPLC exposes.
As Galli noted, there is no longer any way to avoid acknowledging Trump’s moral and temperamental unfitness for the presidency.
What worries me is that Trump is mentally unstable and can’t take any type of criticism. He has no self-control.
What will he do if he learns that some of the the extremist Evangelicals [or Catholics] no longer support him? I’ve read that many of the younger generation don’t believe in Trump as their savior and are leaving the church.
He can rage, but his actions could be extremely problematic if he feels ever more threatened.
So benefit of the doubt: it took them 3 years and they got a conscience. Better late than never.
If only the GOP Senators got a conscience.
What if ONE GOP SENATOR got a conscience.
OR TWO – Imagine Two GOP senators getting a conscience.
OR THREE (we’ll skip that one)
What if FIFTY GOP SENATORS got a conscience… Marched right in to the Senate Chamber – and started singing a verse of 2020 Impeachment Massacre (long e)
Why they’d think it’s a movement – and that’s what it is – the 2020 Impeachment Massacre Movement –
Wait, What, I’m more cynical than you are about the Evangelicals getting a conscience. These charlatians believe in nothing. Evangelicals have always wanted Pence as president and impeachment will give them their wish. It’s possible the Evangelical leadership may foresee a Democratic president in 2020. In that case, l they need to protect the Republican controlled Senate. There are between 3 – 6 R Senators in purple districts who could loose their elections if they vote ‘no’ on impeachment. This editorial gives them cover for a ‘yes’ vote.
Ha ha ha
You can get anything you want, at the Donald’s restaurant, excepting Donald.
From Christianity Today:
“we feel it necessary from time to time to make our own opinions on political matters clear— the facts are unambiguous: Trump attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of [his] political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral…His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused…Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated [Trump’s] moral deficiencies for all to see… we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.”
Besides condemning Trump, the editorial called out the phony ‘Christians’ who support Trump:
“’Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.’ ”
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-should-be-removed-from-office.html
No president has ever done more for religion? I guess that works if one considers lying, sexually grabbing beautiful women, spewing hatred and fear, admiring dictators like Putin & Kim Jong Un, putting children in cages & adults in concentration camps, calling critics foul names, making amnesty for immigrants impossible, wasting tax money on a Space Force, denigrating our intelligence services and badmouthing the media is a way of building up religion. I’d say that Trump is giving religion a bad name.
Words from the Orange Buffoon:
“I guess the magazine, ‘Christianity Today,’ is looking for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “How about Sleepy Joe? The fact is, no President has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!”
Trump has delivered everything the Christian right has been working for for decades. the Supreme Court is firmly in the hands of right wing Christians. Also, Trump has appointed more right-wing, anti-civil rights, anti-public education judges to the federal courts in his first 2 years than every president in the history of the country. Every one of these appointees are young so they’ll be in their positions for decades. Add Betsy DeVos & public funding for religious education to the mix and they have a gift that will keep giving for several generations.
They don’t need him any longer.
My opinion- Current Democratic presidential campaigns should focus on regaining the white Catholic votes they lost between 2008 and 2016 (in 2008, 47% Dem., 52% Repub. and, in 2016, about 40% Dem. and 60% Repub.) A lesson from marketing tells sellers that it’s easier to get a buy from a repeat user than to get a new customer (evangelicals).
Hillary’s campaign thought one of three things- the midwest and southern Catholics were as intransigent in their voting as evangelicals, Catholics in the midwest and south wouldn’t vote for a female president or, her campaign negligently failed to consider the impact of the voting segment. Instead of Bloomberg on the dais at the DNC convention, a high visibility Catholic from the midwest would have been a better choice.
Going forward, northeastern and west coast, Democratic, Catholic politicians should be working to wrest midwest and southern Catholic voters from Koch-like political machines and, they should stop ignoring the Catholic League and Napa Institute.
As a subset of interest, Democratic politicians should focus on what drives Italian Americans to vote Republican.
Blog commenters who demand those in ed reform look at evidence should ask themselves if they are willfully ignoring evidence about the involvement of bishops and state Catholic Conferences in political agendas.The two groups admit their campaigns for parental school choice and to overturn Blaine amendments.
Commonweal is liberal Catholic (40% of the total). Is it more likely that Catholic voters will switch to Democratic voting or evangelicals (20% liberal)?
I know. I know. All this sound and fury over the impeachment, and it will mean about as much to Trump’s remaining in or being ousted from office as did the lettuce leaf that fell off my salad bowl yesterday. And it seems that nothing this guy does, however immoral or stupid, will budge by a point the 30 percent of Americans who are the most hardcore disciples of his cult. That’s been tested again and again and again and again. . . . I’d like to be proved wrong about this. Could the brave Christianity Today be a harbinger of more defections to come? Hope springs eternal. But back to judgment about the impeachment: if the impeachment makes future presidents think twice about corrupt self-dealing at the expense of the security of allies, it will have been worth it. And, ofc, there is a matter of principle involved. What Trump did was traitorous and immoral. It needed to be called out as a model to our children, grandchildren, etc., going forward. As Diane has pointed out here, the impeachment will forever be the first thing said in the history books about this lowlife. That’s not only satisfying but important.
In a conversation the other day with one of the Trump supporters of my acquaintance, he started making light of climate change and gun control. These conversations are exhausting and pointless.
Abigail Shure: I keep wondering how many cities will have to flood and how many islands with human habitation will be gone before there is recognition of climate change.
There seems to be no magical number of innocent adults and children who have to be killed before gun control becomes a reality.
I agree that at this stage, conversations with the non-believers is worthless. Facts never matter since they come from ‘fake news’ sources.
It will take a vast majority in the United States (like 90-percent of the population and that includes 90 percent of the billionaires – forget Trump) that recognizes Climate Change is real and is mostly caused by CO2 emissions since according to Gret Thunberg, the rest of the world outside of the U.S. already believe this.
This probably will not happen in the U.S. until Florida and many of America’s cities are underwater.
I’d like Trump to move to Mar-a-Lago, and live there for the rest of his life after he is moved/forced/run out of the White House.
I want Trump to be alive (hopefully in a vegetative state so he isn’t tweeting anymore) and still living at Mar-a-Lago when it vanished under the Atlantic with him still in his bed eating Big Macs, drinking Diet Coke, and shouting “There is no such thing as climate change. It is a hoax.” Until we stopped hearing his ranting and only see bubbles rising to the surface above his bed.
Right on. Core teachings of Jesus are about forgiveness, compassion, and humility. None of these exist in Trump- world.
Will-
About humility and religion in America today…read the 2018 article in, Journal of the History of Ideas, by Udi Greenberg (Dartmouth), titled, “Catholics, Protestants, and the Tortured Path to Religious Liberty”.
Steve Bannon is Catholic. Local media reported about his targeting for political messages, phones that had been in Catholic churches.
Conservative Catholics continue to want Trump instead of evangelical Pence. The Catholic church loses conservative parishioners to evangelical churches, mainly the people who want socialization as part of their authoritarian religion.
The moneyed in the Catholic church who expect it to preserve civil order as it did in Ireland during the great hunger, don’t want evangelical Pence. He’s a threat to the size of their congregations.
Speaking of real Catholics, I know it’s a fictionalized version, but check out The Two Popes on Netflix. Let’s hope some of these “conservative” Catholics learn something–although I doubt they’ll watch it. One of the best things I’ve seen in quite some time.
Thanks.
If you haven’t read Sandy Levinson’s review of Ken Kersch’s book (Balkinization blog), it’s worth a read.
Trump’s rage at Christianity Today gives away his scam https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/20/trumps-rage-christianity-today-gives-away-his-scam/
This may be coming too late for this discussion, but many of the comments above are looking at evangelical Christianity as monolithic the same way that most conservatives always looked at communism as monolithic. Communism was very fractious, and evangelical Christianity is even more so. Often the fault lines surface due to personal disagreements, but there are also profound differences of opinion concerning everything from global warming to the welfare state. It fail to recognize this is to commit the fallacy of generalization, one of the seven deadly logical sins.
80% of evangelicals voted for Trump so, there is some commonality.
About 60% of white Catholics voted for Trump.
The Catholic church and evangelicals share a political agenda. Sandy Levinson wrote a review of a book that examines religion’s role in conservatism. “Why Ken Kersch’s book is an indispensable revelation about our constitutional situation”, which is posted at Balkinization.
Differences within a religion are moot. What matters is the concentrated political and economic power of theocracy destroying democracy. There are indicators that the Koch network aids the Catholic political power structure.
Evangelicals for Trump are known as Trumpangelicals, a toxymoron if ever there was one.
Trumpangelicals
Back the Don
Evangelicals
For the con
Poet-
Spelling it must be a challenge for the undereducated.
Linda: perhaps you are correct. I grew up in a part of the country that was all Protestant. I recently published a rememberance dictated by an 89 year old woman in 1934. One of her memories was when the Irish were brought to the county to build the railroad spur to Shelbyville. This would have been about 1850 or so. The Irish built a church so they could have Catholic services. It was curious how her memories were parallel to my own much later. I just do not know many Catholics. I was interested in the churches I visited in New Mexico.
Meanwhile, I do know southern Protestants. They may be solid for trump now, and some may be like that guy in the aquarium today wearing that shirt that said Trump 2020, Make Liberal Gay Again. I, a southern Protestant, felt like wringing his neck like a chicken. My friend, Dave, probably would have accosted him.
What looks like a solid front now could go away quickly.
NBC News:
The Christian magazine that published a blistering editorial calling for President Donald Trump’s removal from office over his “blackened moral record” has received a boost in subscribers despite a public backlash among leading evangelicals, according to the publication’s editor in chief.
Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today who authored the op-ed, acknowledged to MSNBC on Sunday that the magazine has lost subscribers, but he said there has also been an outpouring of support.
“A stereotypical response is ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ with a string of a hundred exclamation points — ‘you’ve said what I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to articulate, I’m not crazy,‘” Galli said of the response from supporters. “We have lost subscribers but we’ve had 3 times as many people start to subscribe.“
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign will launch an Evangelicals for Trump campaign in Miami on Jan. 3, the Miami Herald’s David Smiley reports. The campaign announced the event one day after the surprise editorial in Christianity Today that endorsed House Democrats’ impeachment vote and called for the president’s removal.
These are those of whom Christ said that in that day many will claim to have performed miracles in his name and he will say: ” depart from me, I never knew you ye workers of iniquity.”
The Jesuits have seasoned their opposition well with their Osteens and camouflaged their political hacks with Trump and Pompeos. The downfall is even noe on the horizon and only spiritual myopiacs can’t discern it including its political hacks and pundits. But they will only after they are in full force arrempting to flee with their filthy lucre as gain.