Free Republic

President Trump launched his campaign outreach to evangelical voters Friday, telling thousands of Christian supporters at a megachurch in Florida that “God is on our side.” “With your help, your prayers and your tireless effort to mobilize Christian communities across our land,” Mr. Trump said, “we’re going to win another monumental victory for faith and family, God and country, prayer and freedom.” Referring to his victory in 2016 despite strong opposition from the media, the president told the faithful, “I really do believe we have God on our side. We’re going to blow away those numbers in 2020.” He urged...

(CNN) Much has been made of President Donald Trump's strong standing with voters on the religious right, especially after a Christianity Today editorial called for Trump to be impeached and removed from office. The editorial generated a lot of press because Trump won white born-again evangelicals with more than 75% of the vote in 2016 and his approval rating with them remains at 75% in CNN/SSRS polling taken in the middle of last year. Figures such as these, however, can often obscure as much as they reveal. Trump's standing with all religious voters -- and, in particular, nonwhite religious voters...

hould Christians continue to support Donald Trump as President, even during the Democrats’ impeachment show and the 2020 presidential election? An editorial in Christianity Today called for the U.S. Senate to remove Trump on impeachment, using as its theology talking points from the Democrat Party. Did God choose Donald Trump — an unlikely prospect — to help lead the United States of America back in a Godly direction? Such discussions reveal more about people’s ideas and misunderstandings about Christianity. This topic could be endless because it involves the Creator and Superintendent of the entire universe. But let’s start somewhere. Donald...

"Looking at evangelical voters, 34% would strongly approve of the president’s removal, 9% somewhat approve, 4% somewhat disapprove, and 49% strongly disapprove." Do we believe this? I am so confused

I found Michael Brown’s response to my op-ed, “Are Evangelicals Who Support Trump Fools?” further proof that evangelicals who back Trump are foolish when it comes to how they view the President.According to Merriam-Webster, foolish means “having or showing a lack of good sense, judgement, or discretion” and fool means “a person lacking in judgement or prudence.” Whether you say someone is being foolish or acting like a fool, Brown’s op-ed gave me no rational or biblical reason to think evangelicals who support the president are being anything other than both when it comes to their perception of the most...

In a lengthy op-ed piece for the Christian Post, Chris Thurman claims that “evangelicals who support Donald Trump are being both blind and foolish to do so.” Therefore, “labeling them as such is not sinful but appropriate and necessary.” Is there any truth to his charge? Thurman explains that in using the word “support” he “was not referring to evangelicals who voted for Trump in 2016,” even though he believes they erred in voting for him.Rather, he wrote, “I’m referring to those evangelicals who continue to hold Trump up as a great leader, say he is God’s chosen one for...

Blankenship, 69, said he will be running as a candidate 'for the Constitution Party', a political party that places itself to the right of the Republican Party.... Blankenship shares many of President Trump’s policy positions,..but said that Trump hasn’t been effective. Blankenship is known for his 2018 Senate bid,.....He lost the Republican primary in the race and then was blocked from running on a third-party ticket in the Senate race.

A Florida televangelist who has taken a job in Donald Trump White House said in a sermon on Sunday that Christians who give money to her ministry will receive life-clarifying 'visons' from God. Paula White has been close to the presdient since at least 2002, and she says the pair once planned to open a megachurch together. She preaches the 'Prosperity Gospel,' which says giving money to churches and religious causes brings health and wealth. She prayed Sunday that congregants would open their wallets. 'Maybe that's a sacrifice of fifty dollars or a hundred dollars, maybe it's a thousand dollars,...

Happy Friday! Paula White, President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisor, is joining the White House staff — seen as a move to boost relations with Christians. She gave a prayer at a June rally saying “demonic networks” have aligned themselves against Trump and vowed that the president “will overcome every strategy from hell and every strategy from the enemy.” [TheHill] Topping the news: The House voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into Trump. Democratic Utah Rep. Ben McAdams was the only member of Utah’s delegation to vote for it. [Trib] [Fox13] [StandEx] -> Utah Gov. Gary Herbert wrote a letter to...

America has had some difficult periods in its history, and I lived through one of the worst. I came of age during the radical anti-Vietnam War era in the late sixties. I remember the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention when radicals tried to take over the party. We saw the same sort of street violence over the Vietnam War that we see today against President Donald Trump in what is almost a repeat of that era. As a student journalist I covered the riots of radicals at the University of Florida. I reported on the protests after the shooting...

Impeachment proceedings haven’t diminished white evangelical support for President Donald Trump. Most white evangelicals say Trump’s personal conduct makes no difference in, or increases, their support for him, a new poll shows.The Public Religion Research Institute released its 10th annual American Values Survey — the organization’s flagship research report — on Monday at a rollout event held at the progressive-leaning policy think tank Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The data is based on interviews with 2,527 Americans taken in two different waves conducted between the end of August and mid-October to take into account the announcement of a House impeachment...

President Trump's spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, told Fox News Thursday that she's sharing "never-told stories" as his personal pastor in a new book. The author of "Something Greater: Finding Triumph Over Tragedy" is confident, with a recent Fox News poll showing Trump with 81 percent of support from evangelicals, that he will carry the vote in 2020. "We look at these baseless claims. First, it was the Russian hoax, now it's the Ukranian inquiry of impeachment...and it's not only against the president...but it's against the vote of the American people in 2016," White-Cain said on "Fox & Friends."

Televangelist Pat Robertson has joined the chorus of conservative critics lambasting President Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of Northern Syria — endangering America’s Kurdish allies. Trump was slammed by many of his usual defenders on Monday after the White House announced the U.S. will allow for a Turkish military operation in the war-torn region. Trump argued in a statement that Turkey will assume responsibility for all ISIS fighters captured in the region, many of whom were detained by Kurdish forces allied with America. The Turkish government views these Kurdish militias as terrorists — despite the U.S. supporting...

A recent editorial in the New York Times confirms the results of my own online polling. President Trump appears to be gaining more conservative Christian voters than he is losing.Writing for the Times on October 5, Jeremy W. Peters compiles an impressive list of former Never Trumpers who are now firmly in his camp. And quite a few of those on his list would identify as conservative religious voters.Some of them once labeled Trump a “racist” and a “fascist.” Others, like Glenn Beck, “once called Mr. Trump ‘an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity,’” but “now says that...

After an expose’ on Zack Exley by Pulpit & Pen several weeks ago, it seems that the sugar-daddy of woke evangelicalism might be in trouble with federal prosecutors for corruption and the unauthorized diversion of campaign dollars to his own pet-projects and shell companies. Zack Exley isn’t an evangelical, but he spent half a decade strategizing how to get evangelicals to vote Democrat before serving on campaigns for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Now the man who thought up how to get Christians to embrace “Social Justice” to change their voting patterns—and who is funneling cash to ‘woke’ organizations...

Ben Howe is angry at evangelicals. As he describes it, he is angry that they didn’t just vote for Donald Trump in record numbers, but repeatedly provide moral cover for his outrageous failings. He is angry that leaders of the religious right, who long claimed to be the champions of American morality, appear to have gladly traded their values for power. He is angry that Christians claim they support the president because they want to end abortion or protect religious liberty, when supporting Trump suggests that what they really want is a champion who will mock and crush their perceived...

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Joe Darby, a South Carolina pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, pondered a sensitive question that he knew was on the mind of his congregation. Would black voters be able to reconcile their conservative religious doctrine with voting for a gay candidate for president? "It's a heavy lift in the black church," says Darby, who is also a Charleston-area NAACP leader. "Just as nobody who is racist likes to say, 'I'm a racist,' nobody who is homophobic in the black community likes to say, 'I'm homophobic.'" .... "I'm interested to see how Buttigieg is going...

When my airplane dipped beneath the clouds, I could finally see the earth: interminable horizon, crisscrossing bands of interstate, the cities of the plains, home to more than 7 million souls. Landing in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex feels like drifting down to reality; if everything is bigger in Texas, it’s also more intense — the light brighter, the shadows deeper. I was particularly grateful for all that harsh relief in April, because I had come to take stock of a spiritual situation tailor-made to emphasize every challenge in the contest of conscience between heaven and earth. How are evangelical Christians...

Wednesday on CNN’s “At This Hour,” CNN political commentator Angela Rye criticized evangelicals who support President Donald Trump. Rye was discussing acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli changing the words of the poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty to, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” during an interview with NPR. Rye said, “Emma Lazarus, so of course that brings me to the Bible. I think about, you know, the God...