How Donald Trump Unites the Church

[struggle4progress]

Henry G. Brinton
Senior Pastor, Fairfax Presbyterian Church
05/13/2016 05:08 pm ET

... I am a fairly progressive Presbyterian pastor, and often disagree with evangelicals and Roman Catholics about political and social issues. But I recently read the following in The New York Times: “This election has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country.“ The author .. was Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptism Convention.

Moore went on to say, “Many of those who have criticized Mr. Trumps’s vision for America have faced threats and intimidation from the ‘alt-right’ of white supremacists and nativists who hide behind avatars on social media.” His words made me want to shoot off a message of support to the Southern Baptists — something I’ve never been inspired to do in 30 years of ministry.

In March, a group of Catholic leaders appealed to Americans to vote for candidates other than Donald Trump. “We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to reject his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination,” said their letter in National Review. The primary authors were .. liberal Catholics .. but conservatives Robert George of Princeton University and George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

From their perspective, Trump is unfit to be president and does not represent Catholic values. “His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity,” they write. “His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility.” I would argue that Trump does not represent Presbyterian values either ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henry-g-brinton/how-donald-trump-unites-t_b_9934428.html

[Cartoonist]

1. alt-right

No such thing. Everyone on the right is a racist homophobic misogynist. They'll all vote for Trump because they share his values.

[struggle4progress]

2. Real politics is a game of continually re-constructing the center

[LeftishBrit]

3. Not quite true

Many on the right are not racist homophobic misogynists, but are economic hard-liners who don't want to pay taxes to help poor people and/or are pro-war hawks. Also, many people are racist without being homophobes or misogynists!

I don't know what are the proportions in America (the economic hard-liners are probably the highest proportion in the UK) but I doubt that all on the right are uncritical fans of Trump.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. But Trump still managed to get more white evangelical primary votes than Cruz

or anyone - 40% to 34% (and 11% for Rubio): http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/nbc-news-exit-poll-results-lacking-clear-champion-2016-white-n571786

[struggle4progress]

5. The classifications are crude, and meanings change with time and place

The pastor of the Lutheran church I attended in the 60s wanted us to call ourselves "Evangelical Catholics" -- but for him "Evangelical" meant sharing "the good news" (euangelion) and "Catholic" signified the universality of agape. I remember once getting in that church a long article on a religious sculpture showing Jesus crucified naked, with some explicit discussion of the scultptor's intent in showing Jesus-with-penis

The great politicalization of "evangelicals" as a right-wing force occurs with the 1980 Reagan campaign

President Carter has frequently referred to himself as an "evangelical" over the years

There are no laws regarding how people may describe their own religious or philosophical views. The Reaganite "evangelicals" probably did lean heavily towards Cruz. There's some evidence that the Trumpist "evangelicals" are a separate group, who call themselves "evangelicals" but are much more loosely associated with churches. Carter, and my former pastor, belong to other "evangelical" traditions. It's a common mistake to assume that a word always has a definite referent