Religion Must Evolve to Give Women More Choices

My recent book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, has caused quite a bit of stir among evangelical Christian circles. Evangelicalism in the U.S. is one of the religious groups that are the least comfortable with women working outside the home. We know that women in these groups have been leaving the workforce, not in huge numbers, but it has certainly has been a decline since the early 2000s. This seems to be connected to some of the theological teachings that evangelical Christians have imbibed.

Read more at: Religion Must Evolve to Give Women More Choices | Opinion

Christianity: America’s evangelical church is being torn apart by culture wars - by Barry Hankins

Is the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest and arguably most powerful Protestant denomination in the United States – being held together by culture wars instead of Biblical teaching? That is the question in recent weeks, as thousands of Southern Baptists gathered in Nashville for their annual meeting to determine the bitterly contested future of the convention. The most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit. ‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US Read more

Many conservative members of the denomination seem to have seen in Donald Trump’s populist authoritarianism a last-gasp chance to save white Christian America – theology, and, for Trump, Christian morality, be damned.

Read more at: America’s evangelical church is being torn apart by culture wars | Barry Hankins | The Guardian

USA: God and the GOP: will conservative evangelicals stay loyal to Trump? –

In 2016, white evangelicals made up a quarter of all US voters. And 81% of them voted for Donald Trump. Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone head to the pivotal battleground state of North Carolina to see if Trump's religious base is showing signs of crumbling. They meet extreme evangelical pastors, travelling progressive preachers and the moral movement leader Rev William Barber

Read more at: God and the GOP: will conservative evangelicals stay loyal to Trump? – video | US news | The Guardian

USA: Trump on evangelicals, according to Michael Cohen: 'Can you believe people believe that bulls--t?' - by

 Michael Cohen’s book — specifically the tawdry bits, as related by The Washington Post.

Cohen writes that before winning the presidency, Trump held a meeting at Trump Tower with prominent evangelical leaders, where they laid their hands on him in prayer. Afterward, Trump allegedly said: “Can you believe that bulls--t? Can you believe people believe that bulls--t?”

“The cosmic joke was that Trump convinced a vast swathe of working-class white folks in the Midwest that he cared about their well-being,” Cohen writes. “The truth was that he couldn’t care less.”

Gee, you don’t say. How can this be, Michael Cohen? You mean the guy who promoted Trump University doesn’t really care about the well-being of hardworking middle-class folk?

Cohen details a tawdry 2013 visit to a Las Vegas club, the Act, with Trump and Aras and Emin Agalarov — a Russian father-and-son oligarch duo. Cohen asserts that the group watched a debauched strip show that included one performer who simulated urinating on another performer, who pretended to drink it.

Trump’s reaction to the show, Cohen writes, was “disbelief and delight.”
Okay, super-gross, but no worse than what we expected.
Oh, and guess what! Donald Trump is an irredeemable racist!

Cohen writes that during the 2016 campaign, Trump was dismissive of minorities, describing them as “not my people.” “I will never get the Hispanic vote,” Cohen recounts Trump claiming. “Like the blacks, they’re too stupid to vote for Trump.”

Cohen describes Trump’s obsessive hatred of Obama, including claiming that the only reason the former president got into Columbia University and Harvard Law School was because of “f---ing affirmative action.” He also recounts Trump’s “low opinion of all black folks.” claiming that Trump once said while ranting about Obama, “Tell me one country run by a black person that isn’t a s---hole. They are all complete f---ing toilets.”

Read more at:
Trump on evangelicals, according to Michael Cohen: 'Can you believe people believe that bulls--t?'

US Evangelicals: Millions of Americans Believe Donald Trump Is Fighting Literal Demons

Donald Trump may not know how to hold a Bible, but that hasn’t stopped white evangelicals from being his most persistent supporters. The U.S. president’s evangelical followers have portrayed him as America’s deliverance, a flawed man recently converted to the cause around the time of his presidential campaign. In the decade prior, he’d bragged about sexual assault, cheated on his wife, and claimed he had no sins that needed forgiven. But these could all be overlooked because in 2016 he became a new Christian trying his best. Except the timeline is false. Trump has had a personal minister since 2002, a fringe televangelist controversial even within evangelical circles. Paula White is one of the most famous members of the neo-charismatic movement, and her beliefs are terrifying.

Read more at:
Millions of Americans Believe Donald Trump Is Fighting Literal Demons

America in turmoil: A Christian’s Questions for Trump’s Evangelical Voters - by Alton Frye

As an aspiring Christian (and sinners only aspire to meet the standards Christ set for us), I address you in the spirit of Isaiah: Let us reason together.

The intelligence with which we are blessed does not compel agreement, but it does command us to consider how our values relate to evidence, how our ends relate to means — and how our elected leaders reflect the moral goals we espouse.

Let me stipulate at the beginning that I believe you are good people and patriots who care about our country.

I am not smart enough, however, to understand how people of conscience have come to support such a dubious character as Mr. Trump. His outrageous performance at the national prayer breakfast — including his explicit repudiation of Christ’s command to love one’s enemies — prompts me to write this open letter.

Read more at: A Christian’s Questions for Trump’s Evangelical Voters - The Globalist

USA - Donald Trump and his relationship with Evangelicals : How Pat Robertson's Christian TV empire created a "shadow government" — and led to Donald Trump - by Chauncey DeVega

Last week Donald Trump shared a message on Twitter from a racist conspiracy theorist proclaiming that he, the president, was viewed by Jewish people as the “Second Coming of God” and the “King of Israel.”

The mytho-religious aspects of this “endorsement” likely have no meaning for Donald Trump. Such claims matter to Trump primarily because they stroke his megalomania. Trump the malignant narcissist authoritarian and fascist seeks out praise from wherever it may come. As such, Donald Trump frequently praises himself in the grandest and most absurd terms possible: for example, Trump’s looking to the sky last week as if looking for a sign from God and then telling journalists and the world that he is in fact the "chosen one."

Beyond personal grandiosity, Trump’s endorsement of his status as the “Second Coming” and the “King of Israel” were important signals to his two most loyal groups of supporters.

Christian nationalists, evangelicals, "reconstructionists" and "dominionists" support Donald Trump because they see him as a means of overturning the U.S. Constitution and its rules separating church and state, with the ultimate goal of creating a Christian theocracy. Trump’s racist supporters are buoyed and encouraged by his sharing (another) message from a member of their movement. Collectively, these Trump supporters are eager to put an end to America’s multiracial democracy.

Terry Heaton was a television news executive for the Christian Broadcasting Network during the 1980s, where he worked primarily on "The 700 Club," its signature news and talk show. Heaton also served as one of Pat Robertson's advisers during his 1988 presidential campaign.

Terry Heaton is also the author of several books including his most recent, "The Gospel of Self: How Pat Robertson Stole the Soul of the GOP."

I spoke to Heaton recently about how and why right-wing evangelical Christians have come to worship and love Donald Trump, a man who is an unapologetic sinner. Heaton also offers insights on the direct connection between evangelical-oriented media such as his former employer at CBN, Christian nationalism,  Fox News and Donald Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party and its voters. Heaton also warns about the power and influence of Robertson and his “shadow government” of right-wing  evangelicals, who have waged a decades-long campaign to overthrow secular democracy in America.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to my full conversation with Terry Heaton through the player embedded below.

How do you make sense of Donald Trump’s rise to power and why so many Christians support him, given his evident values and behavior?

One of the things that has always puzzled me about the Trump phenomenon is that he would never have been elected had he not been able to recruit people for whom his policies would be harmful. But many of these voters consider their faith first.

As I wrote in my book "The Gospel of Self," they see affluence around them and in their minds there is no reason they too can't be rich one day.

Read more at: How Pat Robertson's Christian TV empire created a "shadow government" — and led to Donald Trump | Salon.com

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USA TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: The Evangelical grip on the Trump Administration

‘Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration

Read more at: 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/11/trump-administration-evangelical-influence-support?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

The Israel - Saudi - US Alliance: Saudi Arabia hosts rare visit of U.S. Evangelical Christian figures - Stephen Kali

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a rare meeting with American evangelical Christians on Thursday, as the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom seeks to open up more to the world and repair an image of religious intolerance.

The delegation was led by communications strategist Joel Rosenberg and included former U.S. congresswoman Michele Bachmann, according to an emailed statement by the group, as well as heads of American evangelical organizations, some with ties to Israel.

"It was a historic moment for the Saudi Crown Prince to openly welcome Evangelical Christian leaders to the Palace. We were encouraged by the candor of the two-hour conversation with him today," the statement said.

A visit by such prominent non-Muslim leaders, who estimate they represent about 60 million people, is a rare act of religious openness for Saudi Arabia, which hosts the holiest sites in Islam and bans the practice of other religions.

Some of the figures' support for Israel, which the kingdom does not recognize, is also striking. For instance, Mike Evans, founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, describes himself on his website as "a devout American-Christian Zionist leader".

Saudi Arabia has maintained for years that normalizing relations with Israel hinges on its withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war - territory Palestinians seek for a future state.

But increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they regard as a common Iranian threat.

Prince Mohammed, who in recent years has loosened strict social rules and arrested Saudi clerics deemed extremists, said in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land. A month earlier, Saudi Arabia opened its air space for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel.

Several members of the delegation, which met with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates earlier in the week, have also advised U.S. President Donald Trump on faith issues.

Note EU-Digest: It is amazing to see how American Evangelicals - who are a solid political support group for the US Republicans - have walked into this trap, set-up by the Trump Administration, as they, together with their allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, seem to be preparing for an attack on Iran.

Given the uproar such an attack would cause in America, and around the world, this visit by American Evangelicals to Saudi Arabia can only be described as an effort to appease the Evangelicals as to the "good intentions" of the Saudi's. 

Unbelievable, is also the timing of this Evangelical delegation's visit to Saudi Arabia, which coincides with the investigations going on as to the horrendous murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on the 2nd of October, of the Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the daily changing and confusing explanations about this murder, given by the Saudi Monarch. 

This by itself should have been a major reason for the Evangelicals not to visit Saudi Arabia.

Read more: Saudi Arabia hosts rare visit of U.S. evangelical Christian figures

USA: The 25th Amendment Could Doom Trump — And Mike Pence Would Play A Crucial Role - Seth Millstein

Yes indeed. Mike Pence could safe the Republican party from possible, if not certain defeat, in the mid-term elections, and also "rehabilitate" the tarnished image of the US Right-Wing Evangelical movement, by invoking the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution.

This is only feasible, if Pence is able to work a deal with his Republican party members in Congress and some Democrats to get 2/3 of the House in favor, to invoke this somewhat obscure 25th Amendment, whereby Trump would be declared mentally unfit to remain President and Pence would become President.

Read more: The 25th Amendment Could Doom Trump — And Mike Pence Would Play A Crucial Role

Turkey: The pastor, the banker, and the irresistible drama in Turkish-US relations

US President Donald Trump once looked to be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest fan, uttering at a recent NATO summit: “I like him, I like him.” No longer.

This week, the US Treasury announced sanctions on two Turkish ministers over the case of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who has been in jail for 21 months and who has been the subject of months of secret negotiations between Ankara and Washington.

Although the move is symbolic – given the plethora of bilateral disputes between the sides and Turkey’s drift away from liberal Western norms – the Trump administration’s decision could become a historic milestone for Turkey’s position in the West.

Nonetheless, in the unpredictable global environment we live in and with volatile leaders on both sides, it is also possible that this will end up being a detour in relations between the two long-time allies. As happened with Russia after the Turkish air force downed a Russian fighter jet in 2015, and with Germany following the Turkish authorities’ arrest of two dozen German citizens last summer, this crisis might blow over in seven or eight months, leading first to a thaw and then to normalisation.

Still, the events of this week are momentous – the first serious fissure between Ankara and Washington since the 1975 US arms embargo on Turkey following the Turkish incursion into Cyprus.

Using the Magnitsky Act, the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Turkish Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gül and Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, designating them “leaders of Turkish government organizations responsible for implementing Turkey’s serious human rights abuses” – and, as such, accountable for the decision to persecute Brunson on trumped-up charges.

Brunson has been living in Turkey for 23 years, running a small protestant church in Izmir. He was caught up in Turkey’s massive dragnet after the coup attempt, accused of “supporting terrorism” – as most foreign nationals detained during that period were – by way of his alleged links with both the Gülen movement and Kurdish separatists. It took more than a year for the authorities to produce an indictment – which turned out to be a jumble of espionage charges, secret testimonies, allegations of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and local Gülenists, and an insidious plot to create an independent “Kurdistan” through the Christianisation of Syrian-Kurdish immigrants. A pro-government newspaper even claimed that, had the coup attempt been successful, Brunson would have been appointed as director of the CIA. It is troubling, if not unusual, for Turkish prosecutors to come up with wild accusations against foreign detainees. The practice reflects, above all, the emergence of a deeply paranoid security state that senses a threat from, as opposed to camaraderie with, Turkey’s traditional Western allies. German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel and human rights activist Peter Steudtner were similarly accused of “aiding an armed terrorist group”. The perception that the American “deep state” is behind the coup attempt and is harbouring Fethullah Gülen – a US-based cleric whose supporters played a leading role in the event – has now become the standard view in the Turkish bureaucracy. Turkey’s new national security ideology casts suspicion on foreigners, human rights activists, journalists, and liberal-leaning non-governmental organisations for knowingly or unknowingly participating in an effort to weaken or destroy Turkey.

But Brunson’s case is unique because his name has emerged as a rallying cry for the evangelical community in the United States – ultimately making the fate of the Presbyterian pastor a key issue in the strained Turkish-US relationship. When Erdogan held his first official meeting with Trump in Washington in May 2016, the White House organised a prayer vigil calling for Brunson’s release. 

Trump brought up the case three times during a luncheon with Erdogan that day and during subsequent phone conversations with Erdogan. Meanwhile, Congress has held hearings on the case and referred to Brunson in various legislative bills on Turkey. Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Trump supporters such as Jay Sekulow – an attorney on the president’s legal team who leads the American Center for Law and Justice – have all been involved in the Brunson saga. In this way, demands for Brunson’s release have become a permanent fixture in Turkey’s messy alliance with Washington.

Of course, the alliance is no less steady than a tired marriage mired in bickering and a litany of mutual grievances. Ankara has never quite forgiven Washington for not handing over Gülen. Turkey also objects to US support for Syrian Kurds affiliated with the PKK in the fight against the Islamic State group (ISIS). On top of this, the Turkish president has lashed out at the prosecution of Halkbank executive Hakan Atilla in a New York court case concerning the evasion of US sanctions on Iran. As Halkbank is one of Turkey’s largest state banks, Ankara fears that a US Treasury fine on the institution would trigger a domino effect in the Turkish financial system, at a time when the economy is experiencing a serious downturn.

In Trump, Ankara once had a sympathetic ear. From the get-go, the US president seemed eager to build a good relationship with Turkey’s strongman leader. This accorded with the prevailing view of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, which continues to believe that it is important to keep Turkey anchored to the West. However, Erdogan’s anti-Western rhetoric, poor human rights record, and decision to purchase Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems have all made it harder for American friends of Turkey to make the case for improved relations. US officials have publicly warned that Turkey’s purchase of S-400s would jeopardise NATO’s defences and could result in US sanctions.

Meanwhile, Congress has introduced legislation that threatens to block the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and also discusses the case of Brunson and Turkey’s imprisonment of US citizens and consular employees. (Several other US citizens, and two Turkish citizens who are US consular employees, remain in custody in Turkey; a third remains under house arrest.)

 One of the most dispiriting aspects of all this is that Turkey’s hostage diplomacy sometimes works. Ankara’s decision to return Yücel to Germany has led to the normalization of relations with Berlin and ended an unofficial German embargo on arms sales to Turkey.

 

Last week, the Turkish courts released Brunson from jail and put him under house arrest at his home in Izmir. But Washington saw this as a half-measure. Both Trump and Pence took to Twitter to threaten sanctions if Brunson was not released. US officials continued quietly looking into the possibility of using the Magnitsky Act to penalise Ankara

.

This drama even includes an Israeli sideshow. In expectation of Brunson’s release, Trump reached out to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to ask for the release of Turkish activist Ebru Ozkan, who Israel jailed for allegedly aiding Hamas. The 27-year-old was released on 11 June, the day after Trump’s call. 

Erdogan has recently acknowledged as much, but said this week that Turkey never entertained the idea of a direct swap for Brunson. In a meeting this week, Turkey’s National Security Council said that “threatening” rhetoric against Turkey was “unacceptable.” 

 

Even in difficult marriages, divorce is not an easy choice. In the case of Turkish-US relations, there have always been considerations and strategic imperatives that prevented harsh measures against Ankara – such as Washington’s reliance on Incirlik Air Base, and goals of keeping Turkey out of Russia’s arms and maintaining an important NATO alliance in the Middle East.

But the mood in Washington seemed to change very fast this week. Following Trump’s threat of “large sanctions” on Turkey, Turkish officials attempted a quiet diplomacy with the US, offering to release Brunson at his next hearing in October. However, they appear to have misjudged Washington’s patience with the matter, as the sanctions announced this week suggest.

It is hard to predict how long this saga will continue but, as one US official noted, “this is just the beginning [of US measures]. Brunson must be released in the end.” Meanwhile, the knotty set of problems in the Turkey-US relationship – from S-400s to Syrian Kurds, F-35s, and the Halkbank fine – have all somehow become intertwined, with Brunson at the centre of it all.

Note EU-Digest: Again the dirty game of power politics. Also, what is quite interesting to note is that the US government leaders in the past and present have never been able to give some clear picture on the status of the Gülen movement in the US. What kind of a deal has the US with him, and why are they so tight-lipped about why he was allowed "to set up shop" in the US?

Read more: The pastor, the banker, and the irresistible drama in Turkish-US relations | European Council on Foreign Relations

Middle East Christian Communities: Why Did Christian Leaders in the Middle East Shun Vice President Pence's Visit?

The Middle East At Easter: "the US 
want Jesus to be a political Jesus"

According to Israeli news outlet Haaretz, Christian leaders in the Middle East shunned Vice President Mike Pence in his recent trip to their countries.

Christian leaders in Egypt and Jerusalem reportedly decided to boycott his visit, in an attempt to protest President Trump’s December 7th recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Pence was unable to visit Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born, because it is located in the occupied region of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority who declared that Pence was ” unwelcome in Palestine.”

Pence declared that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the “only true foundation for a just and lasting peace.” Arab Christians apparently disagree, wanting East Jerusalem to be the capital of a non-Israeli Arab state. Protestors held signs that read, “Pence you are desecrating our land. Pence go home.”

Pence reportedly completed his visit to the Middle East without meeting with any prominent Christian leaders from Egypt, Jordan and Israel. In his meeting with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Pence raised the issue of protecting Egypt’s Christians from persecution.

After meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, Pence’s remarks made clear their disagreement over a two state solution: “Friends occasionally have disagreements, and we agreed to disagree on recognizing Jerusalem. We agreed all parties need to come to the table. I hope I impressed on him our earnest desire to restart the peace process.”

In his speech to the Knesset today Pence used religious symbolism, quoted from the bible, and explained his support for Israel as a moral and religious obligation, not solely a political one. His speech was interrupted by numerous standing ovations by Israeli  Knesset members.

According to The Associated Press, Palestinian Christians reject Pence’s “brand” of Christianity:

They argue that such streams of evangelical Christianity have used religion to whitewash Israel’s harsh policies during its half-century-old rule over millions of Palestinians.

“For me, it’s a sick ideology,” said Munib Younan, the recently retired bishop of the small Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and former president of the Lutheran World Federation, an umbrella for churches with millions of believers.

 “When I say Jesus is love, they want my Jesus to be a political Jesus,” Younan, 67, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian, said in a recent interview at his West Bank church.

The AP adds that while Christian Arabs are a minority living in the West Bank, they lived peacefully next to their Muslim Arab neighbors, describing their neighborhoods as places “where the pealing of church bells often blends with the Muslim call to prayer.”

Note EU-Digest - Jesus Christ represents love, not hatred or violence, and if politics and fanaticism was not injected into the Middle East as a result of  foreign interventions,  historical peaceful coexistence would still prevail there today.   

Read more: Why Did Christian Leaders in the Middle East Shun Vice President Pence's Visit?

USA: Evangelicals in America and Donald Trump: Chris Cuomo grills Rick Santorum on the hypocrisy of evangelicals - by Charlie May

The hypocrisy of Evangelical Christian conservatives in the era of President Donald Trump is unlike any other.

In an interview on CNN, "New Day" host Chris Cuomo talked with Rick Santorum, who is a senior political commentator for the network, as well as an evangelical, about their lasting support for the president. Cuomo pointed out the "apparent hypocrisy" of evangelicals who have continued to support Trump despite all of his unbecoming characteristics, hateful rhetoric or immoral behavior, all because the two have a common interest and want to advance a political agenda.

"When it suits the politics, the piety is great, and when it doesn’t the politics, the piety is easily excused, and that’s hypocrisy," Cuomo told Santorum. "Character either counts, or it doesn't."

He added, "With people who say they put faith first, character has to count, it always has...Now all of a sudden everything is forgivable."

Santorum said that's something that "goes on both sides" and pivoted to the actions of former President Bill Clinton, who was impeached after he lied about his relations with Monica Lewinsky.

"Let's just be honest about this," Santorum said. "The politics seem to trump everything these days, and unfortunately that is the case. The former Pennsylvania senator explained he has condemned Trump for actions he's disagreed with.

Cuomo quickly jabbed, "But you’re not going out of your way to talk about him with these affairs, either. Like the way you did with Bill Clinton."

Cuomo said Trump has been viewed by evangelicals as a King David figure. Santorum agreed and said admitted that King David was a flawed man.

"What else did King David do that made him acceptable to Christians and is a fundamental aspect in the Bible?" Cuomo asked,

"Psalm 51: It was fundamental to the forgiveness. It was fundamental to the acceptance of what he was as flawed because he knew it, and he begged forgiveness and promised to live his life differently going forward. It is in the Bible story because it is fundamental to the reckoning to it."

Santorum said that the issue of morality was an issue between Trump and God, not between Trump and anyone else. He explained that King David's contrition was not to "his fellow men, it was to God."

Cuomo asked: "Isn’t that convenient?"

Cuomo is right that evangelicals have looked the other way when Trump has said or acted in a way that is fundamentally contradictory to the very faith they claim to hold so dear. In the wake of his alleged extramarital affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, evangelicals have adamantly stood by Trump's side.

One Republican lawmaker, however, has seemed to have taken issue with how evangelicals have handled themselves.

"I don’t know how many in the evangelical community can reconcile some of their positions at this moment," Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Penn., told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night.

Read more: Chris Cuomo grills Rick Santorum on the hypocrisy of evangelicals - Salon.com

USA: Christian Evangelicals After Trump, Will Christians Be 'Still Evangelical?' - by Emmna Green

Under President Trump, the word “evangelical” has been tossed around a lot, used interchangeably with other broad terms like “conservative Christians” and “the religious right.” Evangelicals are portrayed as cohesive, all-powerful, and monolithic; they are almost always discussed in the context of politics, and the unspoken assumption is that they are white. This is a regrettable failure of description, since it does not remotely cohere to reality. But more importantly, this way of talking about evangelicals papers over significant disagreements among those who claim the label—fractures that will fundamentally shift how evangelicalism is perceived and expressed in the coming years.

Still Evangelical?, a new book from InterVarsity Press, captures the way a certain segment of Christian leaders are thinking about this moment of evangelical identity crisis. All of the writers hold prominent positions in the worlds of ministry, seminaries, and religious advocacy, but none are household names outside of the Christian world. This is part of the point: Many highly respected evangelicals with significant influence are basically ignored by the mainstream press, creating a skewed view of what evangelicalism is.

Yet this group is also arguably at odds with many Americans who call themselves evangelicals. They write from elite perches. Many are unabashedly progressive, and at least one is a female executive pastor of a church—a controversial role for women in some evangelical denominations. Although some are bona fide conservatives, none seems to be a full-throated Trump supporter. For the most part, these are Christians who feel disoriented by their brothers and sisters who supported Trump in the election. That fact alone means they sit in the minority.

The statistic that 81 percent of the white evangelicals who voted chose Trump has been cited constantly over the last year and a half. All jokes about conservative Christians supporting a thrice-married, foul-mouthed casino owner have become canned. Non-Christians weren’t the only people who were shocked. “Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people?’” wrote Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, in his essay. “‘I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian[s], who voted for Trump.’”

 Read more: After Trump, Will Christians Be 'Still Evangelical?' - The Atlantic

USA: Christians: Why evangelicals love Trump - by Josh Dawsey

After bowing his head during a blessing before dinner with evangelical leaders in the Blue Room last month, President Donald Trump cracked a joke.

"I'm the only person on Fifth Avenue that would have a prayer like that," the president said, according to two attendees, seeming to separate himself from much of Manhattan's swanky Upper East Side.

One evangelical leader present offered that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whose palatial cathedral and residence is blocks from Trump Tower, may also suggest a blessing before dining. Trump agreed before commenting on the cardinal's lavish digs.

He then pointed to several of the religious leaders before saying an iteration of: "The Christians, they know what I'm doing for them, right?" He grinned and nodded as he was praised.

The episode provides a window into Trump's symbiotic relationship with evangelical voters, according to more than a dozen White House officials, advisers and religious leaders.

Several senior White House officials say they've never heard Trump reference the Bible privately or pray in the Oval Office — even though he has, at times, asked Vice President Mike Pence to pray. He swears frequently, even startling some aides with his coarse language. He was famously caught on tape saying he could grab women by their genitals because he is famous. In New York, he was well-known for cheating on his wives and encouraging coverage of his sex life in the tabloids.

Though he has declared the Bible to be his favorite book, just ahead of his autobiography, he has not exhibited a deep knowledge of it. On the campaign trail, one of his more famous moments was calling the communion "my little wine and my little cracker" and incorrectly calling Second Corinthians "Two Corinthians."

Yet he has told advisers he sees evangelicals as among his most important constituencies, and he has enjoyed fervent support, as evidenced by another rapturous reception on Friday at the Values Voter Summit.

A Reuters poll in September showed more than 60 percent of white evangelicals back Trump, far higher than his overall approval rating, which has often fallen below 40 percent. 

“Trump has been focused like a laser beam on the evangelical vote since the day he entered the presidential race in June 2015, and that has never changed," said Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who said Trump called religious leaders repeatedly during the campaign.

Those who have known Trump longest guffaw at his approach to evangelicals and say they believe he is only pandering. Even some of the religious leaders who wanted to praise Trump publicly asked to go off the record and say they don't believe the self-described Presbyterian is religious. 


Read more: Why evangelicals love Trump - POLITICO

US Presidency: When will evangelical leaders dump Trump? by Jonathan Merritt

In the wake of President Trump’s waffling on white supremacy, his supporters and advisers have abandoned him in droves.

After a wave of prominent CEOs defected from the president’s Manufacturing Council and Strategy & Policy Forum, Trump decided to disband both. 

On Friday morning, the entire President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned. 

As their joint letter to Trump declared, “Ignoring your harmful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions.” The first letter of each paragraph spelled “resist.”

Amid the mass exodus, one group is somehow standing by its man: evangelical Christians. Pastors and activists on Trump’s informal faith advisory council have stated their unwavering support of a man whose statements and behavior consistently clash with the convictions they claim to hold. One has to wonder what, if anything, it will take for these evangelicals to finally dump Trump.

Read moere: When will evangelical leaders dump Trump?

Trump and the Evangelicals: Op-Ed Susan Campbell: We Are The Other White Evangelicals

If you are a white evangelical Christian who doesn't support Donald Trump, expect to explain yourself — a lot.

Evangelicals — roughly defined as people who believe in conversion experiences, have a personal relationship with Jesus, and stress the importance of the Bible as their foundational document – have been a political force at least since the bicentennial, when Newsweek declared 1976 "The Year of the Evangelical."

That year, half of evangelicals voted for one of their own, Jimmy Carter, a real, live Baptist Sunday school teacher.

That's a hefty margin, but last November, some 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, who is evangelical neither in word nor deed.

The theories as to what attracted white evangelicals to the most flawed president in history are many, but understand this: White evangelicals don't all sit in the same pew, and those who didn't flock to Trump are left with a feeling that the brand has been sullied by their fellows' support for the most flawed president in history.

"Even to this day, I struggle with whether I should still identify as an evangelical, but I think it's a term worth fighting for," says Ben Dubow, executive chef, director of culinary education and nutritional services at MACC Charities (MACC stands for Manchester Area Conference of Churches) and co-lead pastor at Hartford's Riverfront Family Church. "It's a movement worth fighting for," particularly considering the social justice issues that engage evangelicals — including one of Dubow's missions, feeding the hungry.

Dubow's path to Christianity started in his conservative Jewish family in Wilton. As a 4-year old, young Dubow called the family to the table for Shabbat services. In middle school, he and one of his sisters (he's one of seven) set as their goal saving Bridgeport from poverty.

And then in high school, Dubow researched a project on Taoism and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (a fabulous political party platform, by the way). He also set out to write an expose for his school newspaper on Young Life, a Christian youth outreach program. (He was convinced it was a cult.) Instead, he converted to Christianity and later worked for the organization.

It was a rough conversion for his family to accept, though they reconciled and still spend part of each summer together on Martha's Vineyard.

For the complete report click here

The Trump Administration: How Donald Trump Hijacked the Religious Right - by Sarah Posner

Back in August 2015, when Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions were widely considered a joke, Russell Moore was worried. A prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, Moore knew that some of the faithful were falling for Trump, a philandering, biblically illiterate candidate from New York City whose lifestyle and views embodied everything the religious right professed to abhor. The month before, a Washington Post poll had found that Trump was already being backed by more white evangelicals than any other Republican candidate.

Moore, a boyish-looking pastor from Mississippi, had positioned himself as the face of the “new” religious right: a bigger-hearted, diversity-oriented version that was squarely opposed to Trump’s “us versus them” rhetoric. Speaking to a gathering of religion reporters in a hotel ballroom in Philadelphia, Moore said that his “first priority” was to combat the “demonizing” and “depersonalizing” of immigrants—people, he pointed out, who were “created in the image of God.” Only by refocusing on such true “gospel” values, Moore believed, could evangelicals appeal to young people who had been fleeing the church in droves, and expand its outreach to African Americans and Latinos. Evangelicals needed to do more than win elections—their larger duty was to win souls. Moore, in short, wanted the Christian right to reclaim the moral high ground—and Trump, in his estimation, was about as low as you could get.

“The church of Jesus Christ ought to be the last people to fall for hucksters and demagogues,” Moore wrote in Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, a book he had just published at the time. “But too often we do.”
As Trump continued gaining ground in the polls, Moore began to realize that the campaign represented nothing short of a battle for the soul of the Christian right. By backing Trump, white evangelicals were playing into the hands of a new, alt-right version of Christianity—a sprawling coalition of white nationalists, old-school Confederates, neo-Nazis, Islamophobes, and social-media propagandists who viewed the religious right, first and foremost, as a vehicle for white supremacy. The election, Moore warned in a New York Times op-ed last May, “has cast light on the darkness of pent-up nativism and bigotry all over the country.” Those who were criticizing Trump, he added, “have faced threats and intimidation from the ‘alt-right’ of white supremacists and nativists who hide behind avatars on social media.”

Read more: How Donald Trump Hijacked the Religious Right | New Republic

Paris Agreement on Global Warming: Donald Trump Dumps agreement as US Conservatives and Evangelicals applaud move

Noah Could Be Back In Business

Donald Trump has announced the withdrawal of the US from the global Paris agreement on climate change - in a huge blow to efforts to curb the effects of global warming. The president said he wants to "renegotiate" a "more fair" deal for the US with Democrats and other countries.

He added: "if we can get a deal, that's great. If not, that's fine."

Mr Trump, who had made pulling out of the pact - which has been signed by almost 200 nations - a central plank of his run for the presidency, said that in withdrawing he was "keeping his campaign promise to put American workers first".

He said he wants to talk to citizens of "Pittsburgh, not Paris" to cheers in the crowd of the Rose Garden at the White House.

The President had been put under extreme pressure by allies around the world to stay in the agreement, and though administration said his views on the subject were "evolving" - having previously claimed climate change was a "hoax" - Mr Trump refused to be backed into a corner.

He has said that the deal would hit the US coal industry hard and that it would prove "too costly" for US to stick to the Paris accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But Mr Trump ignores the fact that new money in renewable energy outpaced new investments in fossil fuels for the first time in 2015 to the tune of $350bn.

Pulling out of the agreement outright would take four years under the standard cooling-off period for new international treaties - the route Mr Trump is likely to take, but he said that the US is out "as of today."

Note EU-Digest: Of the world's countries, the climate change denial industry is most powerful in the United States. 

The Koch brothers, industry advocates and libertarian think tanks, often in the United States. More than 90% of papers sceptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.The total annual income of these climate change counter-movement-organizations is roughly $900 million.

Between 2002 and 2010, nearly $120 million (euro 136 million) was anonymously donated via the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.. In 2013 the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation.

Since the late 1970s, oil companies have published research broadly in line with the standard views on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, a strategy that has been compared to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by tobacco companies.

Also for millions of Americans evangelical Christians belief in the science of global warming is well below the national average.

Recent data from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication suggests that while 64 percent of Americans think global warming is real and caused by human beings, only 44 percent of evangelicals do. 

Evangelicals in general, tend to be more politically conservative, and can be quite distrusting of scientists (believing, incorrectly, that they’re all a bunch of atheists). Plus, since some evangelicals really do go in for that whole “the world is ending” thing—not an outlook likely to inspire much care for the environment. 

EU-Digest 

US Presidential Elections: Conservative Evangelical Author Matt Lewis on Trump, Evangelicals and Stupid Republicans

The timing of Lewis' book couldn't have been better. Due in stores Tuesday, publication is just six days before the Iowa caucus.

If you think this is a book about Donald Trump, you're sort of right. The current Republican presidential frontrunner hadn't announced his candidacy when the book was written, Lewis told The Christian Post in an email interview, but Trump's non-ideological populism has confirmed the book's thesis

Lewis is not opposed to all forms of populism. He supports populism that rejects corporate cronies working with big government to rig the system for their benefit and at the expense of the "little guy."

But, Lewis writes in a passage that earily fortells Trump, "If, instead, populism represents the demogogic politics of nativism, xenophobia, resentment, know-nothingism, victimhood, bitterness, envy ... and/or protectionism — used as a rhetorical cudgel to manipulate the masses — then count me (and most of the public) out. Unfortunately, it sometimes does. Populism often requires scapegoats."

CP readers will be particulary interested in chapter 5, on the Christian Right. Lewis, an Evangelical Christian, has mixed feelings about the contributions of Evangelicals to the Republican Party's anti-intellectualism.
In the afterword, Lewis mentions conservatives who have helped maintain an intellectually vibrant conservatism, and several Evangelicals are on the list, including Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, author and public speaker Eric Metaxas, and Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

On the other hand, Lewis believes the dumbing down of the Republican Party is partly due to the anti-intellectualism within certain strains of Evangelicalism, and the inclusion of those Evangelicals into the party.

Read more: Conservative Evangelical Author Matt Lewis on Trump, Evangelicals and Stupid Republicans (Interview)