Religion, Secularism and Homosexuality

[Eric the Green]

(06-14-2016, 04:55 PM)radind Wrote: I see Trump as totally non-religious. It is my opinion that one of the factors in the support of Trump from the nominal 'Christian' community is that most do not have a Biblical worldview.

We remain, hopefully, in dialogue with two very different worldviews.

I don't think Trump himself is very religious at all. He is appealing to that group for his political purposes. But you would have a hard time proving your assertion that the evangelicals who support him in droves don't have a Biblical worldview.

But here is one analysis:
But the larger question with Trump, as Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig wondered aloud in The New Republic, is why any evangelical supports him.
The answer, according to several lengthy analyses of Trump’s campaign, lies in two oft-ignored truths. The first is that some evangelicals don’t simply vote for someone just because they share the same faith, a trend likely to accelerate as Republicans scramble to nominate someone they think will win the general election — or at least break the status quo. As longtime religion reporter Amy Sullivan notes over at Yahoo, “While evangelical Republicans sometimes have different priorities and values than their non-evangelical peers, this could be an election cycle in which they vote as Republicans first and evangelicals second.”
The second reality is that while Trump struggles with scripture, his ideas aren’t alien to evangelical pulpits. Thousands of Christian churchgoers have spent years listening to a religious leader who echoes much of Trump’s vitriol, if not his bombastic style — namely, famous televangelist Pat Robertson. Robertson is known for calmly articulating radical positions justified by thin theology: He claimed that the Hurricane Katrina resulted because God was angered by LGBT acceptance, made blanket statements condemning Islam and while expressing fear for Arab Christians, and warned that if the immigration reform passes, America’s politics will be dictated by Mexico.
All of these ideas harmonize with Trump’s symphony of reactionary positions, which — when combined with evangelical voters swayed more by Trump’s anti-establishment charisma than his policies — is enough to cobble together a sizable evangelical primary voting bloc.
“…These appeals might draw the stray evangelical vote here or there,” Bruenig writes. “But if I had to surmise which subset of the evangelical category Trump has struck a chord with, I would guess it would be that intransigent Robertson crowd, the evangelicals who are perpetually dismayed with the Republican establishment Trump is now confounding.”

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/0...ngelicals/

Well, let's see, here's more references:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/dr.../88126.htm

And this one:
Amedia noted that Trump has promised to be an "ardent supporter" of Christianity and to uphold the tenets of the First Amendment.

"I think, as Christians, we need to look at that, because the church is under attack. It is under attack from the Left, it's under attack from politics, it's under attack at our Supreme Court level," he said.

"We need Supreme Court justices who are going to uphold the First Amendment, they're not going to legislate law. We need a Congress that is going to work with the president to legislate law, and we need Supreme Court justices who are going to have a heart and a fear for God."

Amedia said he believes that Trump is "the man" who will do all those things, adding that "every Christian needs to look at it that way."
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/te.../88080.htm

And this:
The support that Donald Trump has received from legions of evangelicals has puzzled and “surprised” many people. After all, the presumptive Republican nominee is exceptionally vulgar and, despite claiming to be a devout Christian whose favorite book is the Bible, knows little about scripture and has emphasized, “I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness” from God. One common explanation for this apparent contradiction is that numerous evangelicals embrace Trump’s agenda, from eviscerating Obamacare to cracking down on undocumented immigrants and barring Muslims from entering America. But Trump and his evangelical supporters think alike in more ways than people realize. Fundamentalist approaches to evangelicalism have long fostered anti-intellectual, anti-rational, black-and-white, and authoritarian mindsets—the very traits that define Trump.

https://newrepublic.com/article/133488/e...like-trump