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Thread: Have Evangelicals Lost Their Credibility by Voting for Trump? Michael Brown

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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Have Evangelicals Lost Their Credibility by Voting for Trump? Michael Brown

    A large number of evangelicals who voted for Trump did so for highly moral reasons, including protecting the unborn and standing up for religious freedoms.

    I find it ironic that the same people who have mocked us for years as hypocrites, bigots, haters, homophobes, transphobes, and worse now tell us that we have lost our moral credibility by voting for Trump.

    It is true that there are Christian leaders in other nations who feel that we (meaning, in particular, white evangelicals) have compromised our moral witness by voting for Trump in such overwhelming numbers (81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him). And it is true that it is difficult to reconcile our historic mantra of “character matters” with a vote for Trump, unless we are counting on his imminent moral transformation, which is certainly a risky way to vote.

    Considering, then, that Trump would have been the last person on a list of candidates that evangelicals would have drawn up — actually, he would not have made the list at all — it’s easy to see how the world could think that we have sold our souls to the devil in some kind of desperate effort to regain power.

    But for people to chastise us and say that we have forfeited our moral credibility in the eyes of our critics is to forget that, in the eyes of those critics, we had no moral credibility to lose.

    Some of this, no doubt, was our own fault, since much of the evangelical church has, indeed, been hypocritical, with rampant no-fault divorce in our midst, with a plague of pornography in our pews, and with more leadership scandals (both financial and sexual) than we can count. Why should the world take our moral witness seriously?

    But that is not the only reason we have been despised. To the contrary, a major reason that the world hates us is because of our moral stands and our refusal to capitulate to the culture, as a result of which we are likened to Hitler and the Nazis, to ISIS and the Taliban, to the KKK and other hate groups. This is all because we refuse to celebrate the redefinition of marriage or affirm the latest gender identity fad. (And should I mention what pro-abortion feminists think of evangelicals, especially male evangelicals?)

    So, when I hear our critics call us hypocrites for voting for Trump (and again, I speak here primarily of white evangelicals), I have to laugh and say, “I thought we already were hypocrites!”

    And I can only wonder what these same critics would have said if we had elected Ted Cruz, a staunch, once-married, Bible-quoting evangelical, as our candidate? They would probably be accusing us of setting up secret internment camps for all non-church attending Americans as we stealthily planned to take over the society. Can you even imagine what their accusations would be?

    Some Did Lose Credibility

    All that being said, as I have stated before, I do believe that some of us did lose credibility by the way in which we backed Trump, giving him a free pass for the very infractions for which we were ready to condemn Bill Clinton, overlooking his ugly attacks on others, and forgetting that the president and first lady are, in many ways, exemplars for the population...

    https://stream.org/have-evangelicals...ing-for-trump/

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Facing a choice between voting for Hitler and some lesser nut in the 1930s, a sensible evangelical would have voted for the other candidate just to vote against Hitler. I'm not making a direct comparison to the US election, this is a matter of principle.

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by fuego View Post
    [/B]All that being said, as I have stated before, I do believe that some of us did lose credibility by the way in which we backed Trump, giving him a free pass for the very infractions for which we were ready to condemn Bill Clinton, overlooking his ugly attacks on others, and forgetting that the president and first lady are, in many ways, exemplars for the population...
    This hits the nil on the head right here. I was frustrated before Trump became the nominee how so many Christians were excusing or altogether ignoring many of these issues about Trump. I was perplexed. With all the crazy stuff he was saying people still kept claiming "he's born again," etc. Even now there seems to be near worship of the man among Christians almost to the level that some African Americans were (and still are) worshipping President Obama.
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    Super Moderator Quest's Avatar
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    I don't agree that the dismissal of stuff was worship, at least not for me....I believe myself to be someone who can see past superficial flaws to a deeper person...I saw him making stupid statements but also observed a sense of humility and accomplishment in his life beyond his weakness for the ladies and his flamboyant speech....sort of like the person who can see the raging angry person as someone who is deeply sad and hurt... of course that person may or may not be redeemable but still...we need to see beyond the superficial...to me a lot of that stuff seems superficial....

    It was often pointed out that God often has chosen very flawed human beings to serve His purpose...that's what I saw and that's why I voted for him...if some view me as having lost credibility I take comfort that Jesus 'lost credibility' several times in His ministry for things He said and did...I follow HIM as best I can and that is all that matters to ME...

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    Super Moderator Quest's Avatar
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    I also understand that probably many Evangelicals saw this election as a point of decision and that God had offered the Church a temporary reprieve for our inevitable fall due to the masses that will choose to follow Satan in the end...TIME WILL TELL...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Quest View Post
    I don't agree that the dismissal of stuff was worship, at least not for me....I believe myself to be someone who can see past superficial flaws to a deeper person...I saw him making stupid statements but also observed a sense of humility and accomplishment in his life beyond his weakness for the ladies and his flamboyant speech....sort of like the person who can see the raging angry person as someone who is deeply sad and hurt... of course that person may or may not be redeemable but still...we need to see beyond the superficial...to me a lot of that stuff seems superficial....

    It was often pointed out that God often has chosen very flawed human beings to serve His purpose...that's what I saw and that's why I voted for him...if some view me as having lost credibility I take comfort that Jesus 'lost credibility' several times in His ministry for things He said and did...I follow HIM as best I can and that is all that matters to ME...
    Part of the frustration for me is that you had other great men running such as Ben Carson and (before he did some things that disappointed us) Ted Cruz. Heck, even Mike Huckabee was running at some point. But Christians still wanted Donald Trump and campaigned for him while virtually ignoring the others with statements like "We don't need a pastor in the Whitehouse".

    But it is what it is. America has chosen. Personally, Mike Pence was the primary influence on my voting at all (since I certainly was NOT going to vote for Mrs. Clinton) ;)
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    Quote Originally Posted by Quest View Post
    I also understand that probably many Evangelicals saw this election as a point of decision and that God had offered the Church a temporary reprieve for our inevitable fall due to the masses that will choose to follow Satan in the end...TIME WILL TELL...
    I do agree. However Christians need to make sure that they take advantage of this time and not waste it as we have done in the past. The first thing we need to do is PRAY for this new president and not look at him as the one who is going to save us. We need to pray that he will listen to God and not begin to believe that he IS God.
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    So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John's Avatar
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    I didn't really vote for Trump as much as I voted for a repudiation of the establishment. The rotten house was falling on our heads, time to shore it up a bit.

    The big deal here... Trump brought credibility to truth, he assailed those institutions that held illegitimate influence over the nation, the media, special interests etc. His contribution is that he woke people up, that will endure.

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