Choosing Donald Trump

Stephen Mansfield

Description

The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump exposed a deep divide in American politics and culture, one that pollsters and pundits didn't seem to realize was there. But Trump did, and he used it to his advantage in ways that surprised nearly everyone, even those who voted for him. Perhaps the biggest question on many people's minds is how, exactly, did a crass, unrepentant reality TV star and cutthroat business tycoon secure the majority of the religious conservative vote?Now the New York Times bestselling author of The Faith of George W. Bush and The Faith of Barack Obama turns his pen toward the Trump phenomenon. Through meticulous research and personal interviews, Stephen Mansfield uncovers who Trump's spiritual influences have been and explains why Christian conservatives were attracted to this unlikely candidate. The book ends with a reflection on the vital role of prophetic distance, both historically and now.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• USA
• Ideology
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781493412259
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2017 by Stephen Mansfield
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1225-9
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Praise for Books by Stephen Mansfield
“I think this is a game-changing book. [A] really, really powerful book.”
Glenn Beck
“This is an important book. . . . I wish everyone could have read this book ten years ago. At least read it now.”
Eric Metaxas
“You will be thrilled, disturbed, and astounded, but ultimately inspired and uplifted.”
Rabbi Daniel Lapin
“Every voter in the country should read this book!”
Dave Ramsey, New York Times bestselling author; nationally syndicated radio show host
“You must read this perceptive and well-written book.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“Mansfield makes a persuasive case for why it’s both important and appropriate to expect candidates for president of the United States to be open and detailed about their personal religious journeys and beliefs.”
Jim Wallis, New York Times bestselling author; president of Sojourners; editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine
“Stephen Mansfield’s latest book takes on one of the most common points of contention in the news today: religion. He’s demanding that candidates come clean on their beliefs before they get to the Oval Office. He’s right, and he makes his case in a unique, fascinating manner that is rich in American history.”
Brian Kilmeade, FOX News
“Mansfield’s approach is neither partisan nor partial to a particular aspect of religion. Stephen Mansfield challenges both voters and the media to ask the right questions.”
Dr. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church
Dedication
To the Millennials who are much maligned and much conflicted, yet whose large souls and larger hopes may yet lead us to a greater America.
Epigraph
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.
If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority. If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause men everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will.
But if the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace.
Martin Luther King Jr., “A Knock at Midnight” 1
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Endorsements 5
Dedication 7
Epigraph 8
Introduction 11
Part 1: An Unlikely Champion 17
1. Convergence 19
2. Mixture 27
Part 2: The Backstory 35
3. King 37
4. Killer 55
5. Peale 71
6. White 87
Part 3: The Appeal 99
7. Johnson 101
8. Obama 109
9. Hillary 117
10. Voice 125
Part 4: Of Prophets and Presidents 131
11. The Art of Prophetic Distance, Part I 133
12. The Art of Prophetic Distance, Part II 143
Epilogue 159
Acknowledgments 163
Appendix: Donald Trump in His Own Words 167
Notes 183
Bibliography 193
About the Author 197
Also by Stephen Mansfield 199
Back Ads 200
Back Cover 202
Introduction
I am the only one who can make America great again.
Donald Trump 1
P olitics is almost always a matter of choosing between holding your nose and holding your nose tighter, but the 2016 election that placed Donald Trump in the White House was a particularly pungent affair. Perhaps the offerings were simply exposed to the elements for too long. Perhaps this explains the spoilage and the rot that set in.
There had been the blistering primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders. It lasted for more than a year, required six bludgeoning debates, and when it was over had solved very little. Hillary Clinton was the Democratic Party nominee. No one was surprised.
The Republican primaries took an even greater toll. There were seventeen candidates, twelve debates, and nine forums to endure. The bloodletting threatened to never end. Civility abandoned the field. The word gravitas never came to mind. Candidates insulted each other’s wives, publicly questioned their opponents’ eternal salvation, accused each other’s families of complicity in the Kennedy assassination, and disparaged each other in scatological terms. Hand size was an oft-used metaphor for size of another kind, and more than one candidate felt the need to assure the nation that he measured up to expectations.
When it was all over and the blood was wiped from television screens nationwide, Donald Trump was the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States.
He was the most unusual party nominee in American history. He had never held public office. He made his wealth and his reputation in cutthroat real estate deals and as an owner of gambling casinos. He specialized in breaking the rules. His campaign was one of the least orthodox, least disciplined, and least focused in US political history—and still he won his party’s nomination handily.
The immorality of his prior life alone set him apart as an American presidential candidate. He had been married three times and publicly boasted of his marital infidelities. He had often been a guest of adult talk shows where he found it necessary to describe his favorite variations on traditional marital practices. Voters could watch it all on YouTube. During his campaign, he swore, he mocked the handicapped, he insulted nearly every ethnicity in the United States, and he was eager to expose the sins of his political rivals.
None of it did him harm. He seemed coated in invisible Teflon. Even a decade-old recording of him describing sexual conquests real and intended did him no lasting damage. He could not mangle a fact or lob an insult so as to hurt himself in the polls. He was bulletproof. He was untouchable. He became the forty-fifth president of the United States.
Yet none of this was as surprising as the support from religious Americans that Donald Trump commanded. At his side stood some of the most visible faith leaders in the nation. Famous preachers declared him God’s man. Eminent theologians said he was chosen. Others said he was a Lincoln, perhaps not an orthodox believer but guided nevertheless by the better angels of his nature and the hand of a history-ruling God. A few even said he was a Churchill—crass, blasphemous, gifted, and ordained.
Trump gave back in kind. He swore to protect the Christian faith. He spoke of the religion of the political left as a religion alien to the good of the nation. He showed he had been doing his homework. He promised to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment that prevented clergy from supporting political causes and candidates. Few of his rivals even knew what it was. The much-maligned religious right knew, though, and realized in amazement that Donald Trump—of all people—had made himself a champion of their cause.
It was all part of a counterassault in a decades-old war between religious left and religious right. After the grand unity and patriotic fervor of World War II, the nation had begun to fray, pulled apart largely by competing religious visions. As early as 1947, the US Supreme Court ruled in Everson v. Board of Education that a strict wall of separation should exist between church and state. It was a wall that “must be kept high and impregnable,” the esteemed justices said. They “could not approve the slightest breach.” 2
This had not been the intention of the founding fathers when they drafted their First Amendment. Nor had it been the experience of generations of Americans. It meant, though, that prayer in public schools, Ten Commandments posted on courthouse walls, crosses in federal cemeteries, Bibles in classrooms, and even the very existence of military chaplains—indeed, nearly any appearance of religion in American public life—were about to be targeted by a new and activist secularism and by a religious left that said grace over it all.
It was only the beginning of upheavals. Between the Supreme Court’s 1947 Everson case and its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, the United States experienced a sexual revolution, an influential counterculture movement, an influx of non-Judeo/Christian religions, a questioning of the Vietnam War that led in turn to a questioning of national purpose, and a growing distrust of governing officials inspired by the agonizing Watergate scandals. It seemed to millions of Americans that both God and country were under siege.
By the late 1970s, these same Americans believed a counterinsurgency was required. It was time to restore what had been lost. This began with the rise of Jerry Falwell, a faith-based march called Washington for Jesus in 1980, and the advent of the Moral Majority. Ronald Reagan led the troops in those days, assisted by religious broadcasters James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and the eminent D. James Kennedy. They would return America to God. They would see the forces of secularism held in check. They would renew the purpos