{"id":102944,"date":"2020-11-02T02:57:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T23:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-evangelicals-are-huge-for-trump-despite-the-character-issue\/"},"modified":"2020-11-02T02:57:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T23:57:00","slug":"why-evangelicals-are-huge-for-trump-despite-the-character-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-evangelicals-are-huge-for-trump-despite-the-character-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why evangelicals are huge for Trump \u2014 despite the character issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why evangelicals are huge for Trump \u2014 despite the character issue<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Conservative evangelicals catapulted then-candidate Donald Trump to an against-all-odds victory in 2016. And this year they\u2019re again\u00a0throwing their political lot with a bombastic businessman from Queens with a sordid past and a penchant for social<\/a>-media provocation. To find out why, I spoke to a number of evangelical pastors and thought leaders.<\/p>\n

The reasons aren\u2019t that complicated: As president, Trump has proved solidly pro-life and absolutely sound on \u00adIsrael, while Joe Biden\u2019s coziness with the hard left downright terrifies this crucial voting bloc.<\/p>\n

Jack Hibbs, the pastor at California\u2019s Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills, told me that pro-life issues continue to be the main catalyst, impelling evangelicals to rally around Trump 2020. \u201cNot only has Donald Trump been the most pro-life president in recent American history,\u201d he said, \u201cbut his pro-family, pro-adoption policies have made it loud and clear that Donald Trump is concerned for the American family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel Rodriguez, an author and preacher who leads the \u00adNational Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, agreed that Trump has \u201cdone more for the pro-life community than any other president in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judges count for a lot. As author Eric Metaxas explained, the president has proved to be a man of his word on pro-life issues, standing by his pledge to nominate conservative judges: \u201cTrump in the last election claimed he would app<\/a>oint \u2018pro-life\u2019 judges to the Supreme Court \u2014 which no Republican had ever dared to say. Many howled in derision at this promise, saying he lacked character and would never follow through on any such ridiculous promises. But he did, even beyond the wildest expectations of pro-life voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to it than that. Hibbs, Rodriguez and Metaxas pointed to other important issues Trump has championed that matter to faithful Christians, including criminal-justice reform, support for the military, religious liberty \u2014 and Israel.<\/p>\n

Trump \u201chas done more to \u00adadvance religious liberty and protect religious liberty in America and abroad than arguably any other president in American history,\u201d Rodriguez said. Plus, \u201cthis administration\u2019s commitment to \u00adIsrael with every single act and gesture speaks\u201d volumes.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s security has been a muted issue in the mainstream media, but evangelicals have been paying attention: They remember the apocalyptic predictions that attended the president\u2019s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem \u2014 a move required by US law and vainly pledged by successive predecessors of both parties.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s also true that evangelical support for Trump continues to rankle many, including some evangelicals themselves. The president\u2019s harsh tone and incivility don\u2019t exactly bespeak someone who has internalized the life and message of Christ. But leaders like Hibbs and Rodriguez believe these arguments are a distraction that ignore the indisputable power of policy to shape Americans\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n

Says Rodriguez: \u201cA tweet cannot stop my destiny, but a law signed by the president or an \u00adexecutive order carries the \u00adpotential to infringe upon my ability to preach the gospel [and] raise my family with Christian values. .\u2009.\u2009. Tone and tweets cannot take away my rights, but executive orders can.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t as if Biden exactly lives up to Catholic moral teaching. \u201cDespite cynically posing as a Catholic,\u201d says Metaxas, \u201cBiden will do all he can to \u00adexpand abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy, including appointing justices to keep such infanticide \u2018legal.\u2019\u200a \u201d<\/p>\n

Despite critics\u2019 claims, evangelical support isn\u2019t about compromising values for power. For most, it\u2019s about carving through the electoral fog to find the candidate most likely to advance policies that best align with their beliefs \u2014 compromises made by numerous other voting blocs in this country without inviting moral opprobrium or charges of hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Whether evangelical support is enough to propel Trump to re-election is a different question, of course. The polls look more unfavorable to the president than they did four years ago, \u00adincluding in some evangelical-heavy states. But the point is this: Evangelical support for Trump isn\u2019t irrational.<\/p>\n

As Metaxas put it to me: \u201cMost Americans headed into dangerously rough weather on a small plane, with a decorated pilot in the cockpit who is unshaven, foul-mouthed and has a dice-and-dagger tattoo on his forearm, would elect not to replace him with a below average pilot who is a soft-spoken church elder. The stakes are far too high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billy Hallowell has been reporting on the evangelical community for more than two decades. He\u00a0is the author of \u201cPlaying With Fire: A Modern Investigation Into Demons, Exorcism and Ghosts.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Twitter: @BillyHallowell<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Why evangelicals are huge for Trump \u2014 despite the character issue” Conservative evangelicals catapulted then-candidate Donald Trump to an against-all-odds victory in 2016. And this year they\u2019re again\u00a0throwing their political lot with a bombastic businessman from Queens with a sordid past and a penchant for social-media provocation. To find out why, I spoke to a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/Trump_Natl-Day-Prayer_2018.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[78007,70327,4941,71142,71670],"class_list":["post-102944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-1-20","tag-2020-presidential-election","tag-donald-trump","tag-evangelicalism","tag-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}