[Vision2020] Trump: The "Baby" Christian Who Won't Ask Forgiveness

[Nicholas Gier]

Good Morning Visionaries:

For those who don't take the Daily News below is my Thursday column. A
longer version will appear in the Sandpoint Reader next Thursday and the
full version will be published in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal on
Sunday. You can find this one at www.NickGier.com/TrumpReligion.pdf.

For those interested in something a little more philosophical, I've
responded to a number of columnists who think (wrongly) that Trump is one
of Friedrich Nietzsche's Supermen.  It is attached.

nfg


*Trump: the “Baby” Christian Who Won’t Ask for Forgiveness *By Nick Gier


*It won't be the first time that a terrible person who lived completely
against Christ came to know him. *—Pastor Michael Anthony

*Donald Trump hasn’t been born again. The Religious Right has simply sold
out. *—Rachel Held Evans, Christian Writer

*Trump is the most immoral and ungodly man ever to run for president.
—Florida Family Values*

            James Dobson, President of Focus on the Family, calls Donald
Trump a “Baby” Christian, but “appears to be tender to things of the
Spirit.” According to Dobson, Trump’s faith is infantile because “he
doesn’t know our language. He refers a lot to religion and not much to
faith and belief in Christ.” Trump is also a Baby Christian because he only
recently came to, presumably with the aid of televangelist Paula White, a
personal relationship with Christ.
            The problem with these incredible rationalizations is that
Trump thinks that he has been a devout Christian for a very long time.
Recently at a black church in Detroit Trump had this to say: “As I went
through my life, my family kept me grounded to the truth and the word of
God. I have a strong faith enriched by an ever-wonderful God.” In a recent
CNN interview, Trump said that he has “great relationship with God.”
            Trump was baptized in the First Presbyterian Church in Queens,
New York, where his parents were members. They later attended Marble
Collegiate Church, and there in 1993 the Rev. Arthur Caliandro joined Trump
and Marla Ann Maples (his second wife) in holy matrimony. Their baby
daughter Tiffany was already two months old.
            When candidate Trump condemned immigrants and threatened to
block the entry to all Muslims, the Presbyterian Church USA sent him its
liberal position paper on immigration. The Trump campaign did not respond,
so leaders of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church sought to excommunicate him.
They could not proceed because Marble Collegiate had not seen him in years.
He was no longer a member, even though Trump still claims to be.
            One of the essential acts of believing Christians is to ask God
to forgive their sins. When asked by a CNN reporter if he had done so, he
said:  “I don't think so. I think if I do something wrong, I just try and
make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't do a lot of
things that are bad.”
            For many years Norman Vincent Peale, the author of *The Power
of Positive Thinking*, was the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, and
repentance was not a central idea in his theology. Interviewed by Gwenda
Blair of Politico, Trump praises him to the hilt: “You could listen to him
all day long, and when you left the church, you were disappointed it was
over. He was the greatest guy.”
            It is now clear why Dobson and other evangelicals believe that
Trump has to start all over again. Church historian D. G. Reid describes
Peale’s religion as a “religious pragmatism that dilutes Christian theology
and promotes American doctrines of self-reliance and materialistic reward.”
Trump fits this ideology quite well.
            Today’s Prosperity Gospel is Peale’s theology dressed up in
evangelical garb, and Paula White is one of its leaders. She and 40 others
of the same ilk hosted Trump at an event in Florida. Texas Pastor Mike
Murdock says that Trump “has the core values of the Scriptures where you
produce. He has so much honor given to him because he has had so much.”
            Many black ministers also undermine Jesus’ message in preaching
that wealth is a sign of God’s grace. Mark Burns, who spoke at the GOP
convention in Cleveland, maintains that “it was never Jesus’ intention for
us to be broke,” and this “is what Donald Trump represents.” He also
recently posted an image of Hillary in black face.
           The American public is not buying Trump’s false Christianity.  A
recent PEW survey showed that 37 percent viewed Trump as “not at all
religious.” Clinton’s percentage was 22 percent.  Ben Carson led all
candidates as “very or somewhat religious” at 68 percent, followed by Ted
Cruz (65 percent), and Hillary Clinton (48 percent). Even secular Jew
Bernie Sanders was seen as more religious than Trump 40 percent to 30
percent.
            Christian writer Rachel Held Evans declares that “Donald Trump
hasn’t been born again. The Religious Right has simply sold out.” I love
this statement from evangelical Florida Family Values: “Trump is the most
immoral and ungodly man ever to run for president.”
            Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of
Idaho for 31 years. Read all of his columns on the 2016 election at
www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf.

-- 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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