The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump

The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump
Author: Ronald J. Sider
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 172527180X

What should Christians think about Donald Trump? His policies, his style, his personal life? Thirty evangelical Christians (listed below) wrestle with these tough questions. They are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. They don't all agree, but they seek to let Christ be the Lord of their political views. They seek to apply biblical standards to difficult debates about our current political situation. Vast numbers of white evangelicals enthusiastically support Donald Trump. Do biblical standards on truth, justice, life, freedom, and personal integrity warrant or challenge that support? How does that support of President Trump affect the image of Christianity in the larger culture? Around the world? Many younger evangelicals today are rejecting evangelical Christianity, even Christianity itself. To what extent is that because of widespread evangelical support for Donald Trump? Don't read this book to find support for your views. Read it to be challenged--with facts, reason, and biblical principles. With contributions from: Michael W. Austin Randall Balmer Vicki Courtney Daniel Deitrich Samuel Escobar John Fea Irene Fowler Mark Galli J. Colin Harris Stephen R. Haynes Matt Henderson Christopher A. Hutchinson Bandy X. Lee David S. Lim David C. Ludden Ryan McAnnally-Linz Steven Meyer Napp Nazworth D. Zac Niringiye Christopher Pieper Reid Ribble Ronald J. Sider Edward G. Simmons James R. Skillen James W. Skillen Julia K. Stronks Chris Thurman Miroslav Volf Peter Wehner George Yancey

Believe Me

Believe Me
Author: John Fea
Publisher: Eerdmans
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780802877420

"Believe me" may be the most commonly used phrase in Donald Trump's lexicon. Whether about building a wall or protecting the Christian heritage, the refrain is constant. And to the surprise of many, about 80% percent of white evangelicals have believed Trump-at least enough to help propel him into the White House. Historian John Fea is not surprised-and in Believe Me he explains how we have arrived at this unprecedented moment in American politics. An evangelical Christian himself, Fea argues that the embrace of Donald Trump is the logical outcome of a long-standing evangelical approach to public life defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for an American past. In the process, Fea challenges his fellow believers to replace fear with hope, the pursuit of power with humility, and nostalgia with history

Unholy

Unholy
Author: Sarah Posner
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1984820443

“In terrifying detail, Unholy illustrates how a vast network of white Christian nationalists plotted the authoritarian takeover of the American democratic system. There is no more timely book than this one.”—Janet Reitman, author of Inside Scientology Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think. In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian America. Fueled by an antidemocratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda–and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement. Revelatory and engrossing, Unholy offers a deeper understanding of the ideological underpinnings and forces influencing the course of Republican politics. This is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.

Who Is an Evangelical?

Who Is an Evangelical?
Author: Thomas S. Kidd
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300249047

A leading historian of evangelicalism offers a concise history of evangelicals and how they became who they are today Evangelicalism is arguably America’s most controversial religious movement. Nonevangelical people who follow the news may have a variety of impressions about what “evangelical” means. But one certain association they make with evangelicals is white Republicans. Many may recall that 81 percent of self†‘described white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, and they may well wonder at the seeming hypocrisy of doing so. In this illuminating book, Thomas Kidd draws on his expertise in American religious history to retrace the arc of this spiritual movement, illustrating just how historically peculiar that political and ethnic definition (white Republican) of evangelicals is. He examines distortions in the public understanding of evangelicals, and shows how a group of “Republican insider evangelicals” aided the politicization of the movement. This book will be a must†‘read for those trying to better understand the shifting religious and political landscape of America today.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-06-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1631495747

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

For God and Country

For God and Country
Author: Ralph Reed
Publisher: Regnery
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1684510570

Donald Trump—Defender of Religious Freedom In 2016, many Christian leaders at first opposed candidate Donald Trump. He was a former social liberal, and his occasional vulgarity, multiple marriages and divorces, and tabloid scandals made it impossible for him to defend Christian values in public life. Or so they thought. Trump nevertheless won four-fifths of the Evangelical vote in 2016, as well as the majority of the Catholic vote. And in 2020, the idea that he can’t represent Christians is demonstrably false. He has been the most ardent and effective presidential defender of religious liberty and the pro-life cause since Ronald Reagan—and perhaps in U.S. history. In For God and Country, Dr. Ralph Reed draws on his deep knowledge of American history, his unsurpassed experience as a political strategist, his personal dealings with President Trump and the First Family, and his moral commitment as a Christian to show why Catholics and Evangelicals should continue to strongly support their unlikely champion. In For God and Country, Reed reveals: The sincerity of President Trump’s defense of the Christian faith—and why he has delivered policy victories when other pro-Christian presidents haven’t Why Trump is the most pro-Israel president in American history How liberals hope to demoralize Christians—and thus defeat Donald Trump and reverse his pro-life, pro-family, pro–religious freedom policies Why Never-Trump Christians naively preach de facto political surrender For God and Country is not just required reading for the 2020 election; it is required reading for every conservative Christian who loves America and wants to return it to Christian values.

The End of White Christian America

The End of White Christian America
Author: Robert P. Jones
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-07-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501122290

"The founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and columnist for the Atlantic describes how white Protestant Christians have declined in influence and power since the 1990s and explores the effect this has had on America, "--NoveList.

American Evangelicals for Trump

American Evangelicals for Trump
Author: André Gagné
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: RELIGION
ISBN: 9781003358718

This book introduces the American Evangelical movement and the role it played in the support of Donald Trump. Specifically, it focuses on the Neocharismatic-Pentecostal (NCP) leaders, their beliefs, and their political strategies. The author examines why 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, and why he still received between 76% and 81% of their vote in 2020 despite losing the presidency. Additionally, the book discusses how NCP leaders are part of the Christian Right, a religious coalition with a political agenda centered on controversial issues such as anti-abortion activism, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, and the protection of religious freedom. Structured around the three main ideas inspiring NCP leaders who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020--Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and Eschatology (the End Times)--the book examines how these ideas have sustained the evangelicals close to U.S. political power in the Trump era. In light of the potential for Trump's return to power in 2024, the book serves as a warning of what a renewed alliance between Trump and his former NCP supporters could bring. It is an essential read for all students and researchers of Evangelicalism, Religion in America, Political Theology, or Religion and Politics.

The Day Christians Changed America

The Day Christians Changed America
Author: George Barna
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-08-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692905302

George Barna, a pollster for for four decades with experience at all levels of political battle, conducted more than 50,000 interviews during the course of the campaign season. An award-winning and bestselling author of more than 50 books, he provides a bird's-eye view of how the electorate - and especially our communities of faith - engaged with the candidates in the most contentious election in modern history.

The Evangelicals

The Evangelicals
Author: Frances FitzGerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 607
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1439143153

* Winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award * National Book Award Finalist * Time magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book * Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017 This “epic history” (The Boston Globe) from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America—from the Puritan era to the 2016 election. “We have long needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it” (The New York Times Book Review). The evangelical movement began in the revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known in America as the Great Awakenings. A populist rebellion against the established churches, it became the dominant religious force in the country. During the nineteenth century white evangelicals split apart, first North versus South, and then, modernist versus fundamentalist. After World War II, Billy Graham attracted enormous crowds and tried to gather all Protestants under his big tent, but the civil rights movement and the social revolution of the sixties drove them apart again. By the 1980s Jerry Falwell and other southern televangelists, such as Pat Robertson, had formed the Christian right. Protesting abortion and gay rights, they led the South into the Republican Party, and for thirty-five years they were the sole voice of evangelicals to be heard nationally. Eventually a younger generation proposed a broader agenda of issues, such as climate change, gender equality, and immigration reform. Evangelicals now constitute twenty-five percent of the American population, but they are no longer monolithic in their politics. They range from Tea Party supporters to social reformers. Still, with the decline of religious faith generally, FitzGerald suggests that evangelical churches must embrace ethnic minorities if they are to survive. “A well-written, thought-provoking, and deeply researched history that is impressive for its scope and level of detail” (The Wall Street Journal). Her “brilliant book could not have been more timely, more well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary” (The American Scholar).