<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">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 <a href="http://www.NickGier.com/TrumpReligion.pdf">www.NickGier.com/TrumpReligion.pdf</a>.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">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.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin-bottom:22.5pt;text-align:center;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><b><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">Trump: the “Baby” Christian Who Won’t Ask for
Forgiveness<br clear="all">
</span></b><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">By Nick Gier<br clear="all">
<i>It won't be the first time that a
terrible person<br clear="all">
who lived completely against Christ came to know him.<br clear="all">
</i>—Pastor Michael Anthony<i> </i></span><i><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><br clear="all">
</span></i><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> <i>Donald Trump hasn’t been born again. The
Religious Right has simply sold out.<br clear="all">
</i>—Rachel Held Evans, Christian Writer<br clear="all">
<i>Trump is the most immoral and ungodly man
ever to run for president.<br clear="all">
—Florida Family Values</i></span><i><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><span></span></span></i></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> James
Dobson</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">, 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 “h</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">e 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.<br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">
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.”<br clear="all">
Trump was baptized in the
First Presbyterian Church in Queens, New York, where his parents were members.
They later attended </span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">Marble Collegiate
Church, and there in 1993 the Rev.</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"> Arthur Caliandro joined Trump and Marla Ann Maples (his
second wife) in holy matrimony. Their baby daughter Tiffany was already two
months old. <br clear="all">
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.<br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:rgb(17,17,17)">One of
the essential acts of believing Christians is to ask God to forgive their sins.</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> 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.”<br clear="all">
For many years Norman Vincent
Peale, the author of <i>The Power of Positive
Thinking</i>, was the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church, and repentance was
not a central idea in his theology.</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> 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.”<br clear="all">
It is now clear why Dobson and
other evangelicals believe that Trump has to start all over again. Church
historian D.</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> </span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">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.<br clear="all">
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 </span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“has the core values of the Scriptures where you produce. He
has so much honor given to him because he has had so much.”<br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">
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 </span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“it was never Jesus’
intention for us to be broke,” and this “is what Donald Trump represents.”</span></font><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:georgia,serif"> He also recently posted an image of Hillary in black face.</span><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"><br clear="all">
</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">
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.<br clear="all">
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.”<br clear="all">
<a name="_GoBack"></a> Nick
Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.
Read all of his columns on the 2016 election at
<a href="http://www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf">www.NickGier.com/Election2016.pdf</a>.</span><i><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><span></span></span></i></font></p><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><font face="georgia, serif">-- <br></font><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“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.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant</font><br>
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