10-12-2016, 12:04 PM
(10-08-2016, 06:35 AM)aussiefriend Wrote: I thought for sure he had lost the Christian vote after he has been caught not just lusting after a woman but a married woman! I can't see how evangelicals can support that. Which high profile people are supporting him?
I don't know how many Christians have dumped Trump, but it doesn't seem to be as many as I would have expected either. The Trump campaign surrogates are now telling interviewers that Trump has renewed his faith during the course of the campaign and that Christians will forgive him because, according to the Trump spokespeople, Trump asked for forgiveness.
One Christian magazine has strongly denounced Trump though. Editor Andy Crouch wrote the article published in non-profit politically-neutral Christianity Today, a 50-year-old flagship magazine of American evangelicalism started by Bill Graham.
The editorial was accompanied by a subtitle that minced no words: “Evangelicals, of all people, should not be silent about Donald Trump’s blatant immorality.”
Snip:
“Just because we are neutral, however, does not mean we are indifferent. We are especially not indifferent when the Gospel is at stake. The Gospel is of infinitely greater importance than any campaign.”
As for Trump, Crouch says, “There is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the ‘earthly nature’ … that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: ‘sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry’ (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date.”
“That Trump has been, his whole adult life, an idolater of this sort, and a singularly unrepentant one,” he continues, “should have been clear to everyone.”
Crouch does not spare Trump’s evangelical supporters, who have proposed a variety of theological justifications for making him their candidate. He is particularly dismissive of the argument put forward by many high-profile conservatives, including Graham’s son, Franklin, that because the Bible includes examples of God using flawed men to accomplish His will, evangelicals shouldn’t be concerned about Trump’s personal morality.
And he calls out the long-standing conservative evangelical reasoning behind backing Republican candidates simply out of concern over the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.
“There is a point at which strategy becomes its own form of idolatry — an attempt to manipulate the levers of history in favor of the causes we support,” writes Crouch. “Strategy becomes idolatry, for ancient Israel and for us today, when we make alliances with those who seem to offer strength — the chariots of Egypt, the vassal kings of Rome — at the expense of our dependence on God who judges all nations, and in defiance of God’s manifest concern for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed.”
“He has given no evidence of humility or dependence on others, let alone on God his Maker and Judge. He wantonly celebrates strongmen and takes every opportunity to humiliate and demean the vulnerable. He shows no curiosity or capacity to learn.”
“He is,” Crouch concludes, “the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/evangelical-m...04224.html
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I don't know if the article will influence many Christians who didn't back away from Trump long ago, but I thought of your post when I saw the article this morning.