On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump easily swept the four states with the heaviest majorities of Protestants who consider themselves “evangelicals” – Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia.
So the campaign’s major religious puzzle – likely to be pondered come 2020 and 2024 – continues to be how to explain Trump’s appeal to Bible Belters.
How the hell can anyone who calls themselves a Christian vote for Donald Drumpf?
That’s the question that needs to be asked as this racist, misogynist hate-monger who supports torture, ridicules the disabled and wants to ban all Muslims from America, comes ever closer to winning the Republican nomination and, potentially, the White House.
It’s time to put the moral crisis over the political one. Donald Trump’s potential nomination by the Republican Party is not just a crisis for that party and for election politics in general, it is a moral crisis for the country, for democracy itself, and for the state of faith in the nation.
The media can act shocked about Trump failing to quickly and very clearly denounce David Duke and the KKK and their support for him, but they didn’t seriously ask the more important question: Why do the advocates of white supremacy like and advocate for Donald Trump?
"Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University," said Mitt Romney on March 3, speaking at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah.
If Donald Trump is telling the truth, he only recently learned that David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is an avowed segregationist. Apparently, the KKK and its history have faded from many white Americans’ memory. Jeffrey Lord argued on national television this week that the Klan is an invention of “the left.” As native sons of the South, we could forgive these men their ignorance. (“Bless their hearts. They ain’t from around here,” is the polite way to say it.) But we can neither forgive nor ignore the way 400 years of white supremacy have been naively reduced to whether a candidate will disavow the support of a hate group leader. Racism lives on in policies that perpetuate racial disparities, with or without the KKK.
Super Tuesday ended with big wins for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the one making headlines, despite the fact that he dropped out of the presidential race last month. Six New Jersey newspaper editorial boards are now calling on the governor to resign, according to USA Today.
The Rev. Franklin Graham picks up a toy stuffed animal, tattered by time and a child’s love, from a shelf in his office where his big game hunting trophies loom. It’s a little black sheep with a music box in its belly, a gift from his mother when he was a tot. When the son of Billy Graham winds a little key it plays, “Jesus loves me.” Franklin Graham, a hellfire evangelist and a social conservative force, is still a “black sheep” at 63.
I can’t watch the political debates for long without feeling sick: So much animosity and ego and bullying and attacking and negativity; so little thoughtful discussion and kindness. The toxic words seep inside my skin and into my emotions. I have to get away from it.
The worst part is when candidates use their “religion” as a justification for all of the ugliness being spewed — when they start trying to one-up the other and convince voters that they, themselves, are true believers who rank right up there on Jesus’ most-favored list.
When the media says “evangelicals” they really mean “white evangelicals” and virtually never measure the opinions and voting practices of black, brown, or even young evangelicals. In fact, they don’t even ask religious identity questions of Democratic primary voters where many of the black, brown, and young evangelicals may be voting. It is older white evangelicals who are mostly voting in the Republican primaries and now are increasingly supporting Donald Trump. “What?” is indeed the right question.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump convincingly won the Nevada caucuses last night but he is still struggling in what might be called “the Pope Francis primary.” In a joint op-ed in today’s edition of The Hill, the first Hispanic woman elected as a bishop of the United Methodist Church and a Catholic nun who is an outspoken Washington lobbyist for social justice causes blast Trump for the views he expressed in picking a fight with the pontiff over what it means to be a Christian.
In this oddest of presidential election seasons, one odd fact is rarely mentioned: the curious age spread of the candidates.
At their first inauguration, our 43 U.S. presidents* have ranged in age from almost 43 to almost 70. More than half were in their 50s. Their median age was 55, and so was their average age.
But in 2016, now that we're down to seven candidates (Carson, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, and Trump vs. Clinton and Sanders), not a single candidate is in his or her 50s.
Days after creating a stir by saying that Donald Trump “is not Christian” because of his harsh views on immigrants, Pope Francis again took up the theme of “fake” Christians in his homily at Mass the morning of Feb. 23. Referring to the readings of the day from Isaiah and from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus warns of the judgement that awaits those who do not practice what they preach, Francis said Christians must act on their beliefs and care for the neediest — the hungry, the thirsty, and those in prison.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been a longtime fan of Pope Francis’ positions on social justice and income inequality, and now he says the pontiff is in fact a socialist — just like himself.
“(W)hat it means to be a socialist, in the sense of what the pope is talking about, what I’m talking about, is to say that we have got to do our best and live our lives in a way that alleviates human suffering, that does not accelerate the disparities of income and wealth,” Sanders tells the Rev. Thomas Rosica, head of the Toronto-based Catholic network Salt and Light in an interview to be broadcast the evening of Feb. 23.
Francis is right. The spirit of religion is about healing and nurturing and bringing together. And he puts the question into the politically charged air once again: Walls or bridges? What’s it going to be?
Do we open ourselves to the spirit that wants to give us new hearts? Or do we choose to have hearts as cold as a stone wall?
As "America's foremost Catholic," Stephen Colbert feels uniquely positioned to "broker a peace" between the two. He laid out his rationale on his late show.
“Mr. Trump, Mr. Pope (I believe that’s his formal name) is it possible that you’re fighting because you have so much in common?" said Colbert.
The social mission of the Catholic Church can be reduced to the following: God became poor in Jesus Christ to save humanity, and we must do likewise. The social mission of the Catholic Church is about becoming poor for the poor. It communicates who God is, who Jesus is, who we’re called to be. For politics, it reverses things. It turns the world upside down.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 18, 2016
Sojourners President and Founder Rev. Jim Wallis released the following statement today:
"Bridges or Walls?
"As Christians, we are called to answer: What does God want us to build, bridges or walls?
A reporter asked Pope Francis, "Can a good catholic vote for this man [Trump]?" And Francis answered honestly.
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian," said Francis.
Although Francis did not directly refer to Trump, his implication is fairly clear, and strong.
"To use anger politically, especially by turning people against other people, is one of the worst sins in politics, and both Cruz and Trump are doing that."