Former president Donald Trump and his Republican rivals for the 2024 election have for months been heavily courting social conservatives and white evangelical Christians, seen as the most influential group in Iowa’s Republican caucuses.

“We thank you for the upcoming election, Lord — or caucus, as we call it in Iowa,” said Hundley, speaking from the sanctuary of his evangelical Christian church in his slight Texas drawl as his parishioners bowed their heads.

“It doesn’t matter what our opinion is,” he went on. “It’s really what’s your opinion that matters. But you’ve given us the privilege of being able to exercise a beautiful gift. The gift of vote. We thank you for that.”

While Hundley stops short of suggesting to his parishioners which candidate divine guidance should lead them to support, he is among more than 300 pastors and other faith leaders who’ve been described as supporters by former President Donald Trump’s campaign. It’s a message that some members of Hundley’s First Church of God have taken to heart, saying their faith informs their intention to caucus for Trump.

Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    11 months ago

    Religion is America’s original sin

    It’s worse than that. Religion was co-opted into the maintenance of slavery, and it caused schisms in multiple sects, including the Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists

    Generation after generation, Southern pastors adapted their theology to thrive under a terrorist state. Principled critics were exiled or murdered, leaving voices of dissent few and scattered. Southern Christianity evolved in strange directions under ever-increasing isolation. Preachers learned to tailor their message to protect themselves. If all you knew about Christianity came from a close reading of the New Testament, you’d expect that Christians would be hostile to wealth, emphatic in protection of justice, sympathetic to the point of personal pain toward the sick, persecuted and the migrant, and almost socialist in their economic practices. None of these consistent Christian themes served the interests of slave owners, so pastors could either abandon them, obscure them, or flee.

    What developed in the South was a theology carefully tailored to meet the needs of a slave state. Biblical emphasis on social justice was rendered miraculously invisible. A book constructed around the central metaphor of slaves finding their freedom was reinterpreted. Messages which might have questioned the inherent superiority of the white race, constrained the authority of property owners, or inspired some interest in the poor or less fortunate could not be taught from a pulpit. Any Christian suggestion of social justice was carefully and safely relegated to “the sweet by and by” where all would be made right at no cost to white worshippers. In the forge of slavery and Jim Crow, a Christian message of courage, love, compassion, and service to others was burned away.

    https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/