Posted on 12/11/2015 7:58:22 PM PST by ConservativeTeen
I was wondering what Trump was talking about when he said he was an Evangelical too. I’ve been reading up about his mother, and I think this may go back to her. She was from the rural Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, which is a very religious area and the only place in the UK with growing church attendance. Even today, the whole island practically shuts down on Sundays in honor of the Sabbath. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which is Evangelical, is the most popular denomination there, and it’s very likely that is the type of Presbyterianism that Trump’s mother practiced before she emigrated.
Trump was raised in his mother’s Presbyterian faith, not his father’s Lutheranism, and one of his pastors when he was young, Norman Vincent Peale, had a big influence on his worldview (Rev. Peale praised Trump to the NY Times in the 1980s). In many instances, people’s sense-of-self and their identities are formed when they are young. Trump perhaps was thinking more in terms of this identification from his youth and the beliefs his mother encouraged in him. At any rate, what Trump actually believes now is not something anyone can know for sure except for Trump.
“Read DU and you’ll see a mirror image often.”
No thanks, I prefer to only take one shower per day.
O.k. Protestant. Happy? Sheesh!
trump is a sometime member of Marble Collegiate in Manhattan. I’ve looked a little, and it appears this church, in which he is not very active, is more a theologically right-of-center (theologically-speaking) social justice-inclined church. It does not appear to be an evangelical church. Nor does the church of his childhood, a parish of the Presbyterian Church (USA), not an evangelical denomination. In the few snippets we’ve heard from trump’s own mouth, I’d wager the claim to being an evangelical is as bogus as mine. And I’m a Catholic.
But I’ve mixed with Evangelicals since my youth, and trump sounds like no evangelical I’ve ever heard of.
I think he’s cynically trying to identify with evangelicals to get votes.
Sen. Cruz, however, I easily recognize as an evangelical brother.
LOL - Gottcha! ;)
Thanks for the info - I was not aware that the three of them supported ethanol production.
I was raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist church (although I’ve moved more toward the mainstream since then), and I agree that Trump doesn’t fit any definition of an Evangelical I’ve heard either. I was just trying to see how he might say something like that without thinking it an absurdity. Trump was a rich boy from New York City, where Evangelicals are few on the ground. However, I still think that it is not irrelevant that his mother came from an area where Evangelicals are as dominant as they are in the American Bible Belt and was most likely raised one herself, since she was the parent who was responsible for his religious upbringing. It at least might show that he does have a real reason to be sympathetic to Evangelicals.
It is remotely possible that he is deluded and thinks he is an evangelical. But I’d rather credit him with being sane and merely cynical. That seems more charitable. If he is deluded, it questions his basic fitness to be president. Do we want a deluded person with his finger on the nuclear button? If he is cynical, he’s just another politician.
I’ve seen several people who swear they are Catholics because they are from Catholic families, even though they do not actually practice Catholicism or only do so in a lax manner. This is not delusion. It’s simply that they see Catholicism as something they still identify and sympathize with, regardless of their actual religious practices. The same goes for many Jews I’ve come across.
I’m just saying Trump may see Evangelical Presbyterianism as part of his identity and heritage, which would make him neither deluded, nor cynical—just using an identity-based, rather than a belief-based definition.
Cafeteria Catholicism is a common occurrence. So is cultural Judaism. There are also folks who call themselves evangelicals who don’t abide by the word. Some might call them hypocrites.
But there is a certain “look and feel” to being an evangelical which is central to being an evangelical, even a bad one. Saying that one has never asked God for forgiveness marks one out as not being an evangelical. The recognition of personal sin and the great gift of God’s forgiveness through the Salvific power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, is central to evangelical identity. Anyone who confess that acknowledgment of God’s grace acting in their lives is not an evangelical, and if they say they are, they are either deluded or cynical.
That’s like a man running around claiming to be a woman. A true conservative will rightly attribute that to either 1) trying to get a free pass to the girl’s locker room to see them undress and shower or, 2) the mental illness of gender dysphoria.
Trump said that comment was meant for Cruz and Cruz knows what he meant.
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