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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/14/18

Why White Evangelicals Dote on Wayward Trump

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By *Berry Craig

Franklin Graham and Donald Trump
Franklin Graham and Donald Trump
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Duane Bolin can't figure why so many white Christian evangelicals dote on Donald Trump.

"Trump represents everything they should be against," said Bolin, a retired Murray, Ky., State University history professor who grew up a Southern Baptist.

Trump is twice divorced and thrice married. He's evidently been a serial adulterer. He talks dirty. He lies non-stop. He's less than well-versed in Holy Scripture. He seems to prefer golf to going to church on Sunday.

Apparently, white evangelicals don't care that the president fails to practice what their pastors preach about "Godly behavior," at least on a personal level.

The "Basic Beliefs" of the Southern Baptist Convention include declarations that:

  • "In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose...all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery."
  • "Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime."

Writing in The Guardian, Randall Balmer satirized evangelical white folks who are evidently all in with the president's "very flexible" ethics.

The souls of these conservative Christians of the Jesus-loves-Republicans-but-Democrats-are-going-to-Hell persuasion seem to be untroubled that the president is a double-divorcee (the only one ever) with a penchant for prevaricating:

"Yes, we know all about that business about not bearing false witness in the Ten Commandments, but that was a very long time ago. Can't we get beyond that? Truth and truthiness are overrated. After all, did it really matter that the 'birther' nonsense was hokum? Not at all. It enraged those godless liberals and launched our brother in Christ Donald Trump toward the presidency.

"And all those websites fact-checking our president, claiming that he told more than 2,000 lies his first year in office? Big deal. He's also pro-life, and he's trying to root out transgender folks in the military, so cut the guy some slack. Besides, that same website that tracks lying concluded that Barack Obama told 28 lies during his two terms in office. So there." (Democrats are such hypocrites!)

Added Balmer:

"Let's be clear here. We're not talking about polygamy (sorry, Mitt), only serial marriages. This revision has been a long time in the making. Yes, Jesus said: 'Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.' Through the 1970s, we evangelicals ostracized anyone who was divorced, let alone divorced and remarried. But then we decided to ditch a family man (and fellow evangelical) in favor of a divorced and remarried Hollywood actor in 1980. Once that barrier was breached, we concluded that, hey, if two marriages are okay, why not three?"

Anyway, right-wing white evangelicals have a long history of overlooking randy, right-wing Republican politicians and media personalities.

Newt Gingrich is twice divorced and on his third wife. He cheated on spouse 1 and 2. While he was wedded to 2, he was making whoopie with future wife 3 at the same time "he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair," wrote Gail Collins in The New York Times.

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