As Trump infuses his campaign with Christian imagery, his support is strong among evangelicals and conservative Christians.

As Donald Trump increasingly infuses his campaign with Christian trappings while coasting to a third Republican presidential nomination, his support is as strong as ever among evangelicals and other conservative Christians.

“Trump supports Jesus, and without Jesus, America will fall,” said Kimberly Vaughn of Florence, Kentucky, as she joined other supporters of the former president entering a campaign rally near Dayton, Ohio.

Many of the T-shirts and hats that were worn and sold at the rally in March proclaimed religious slogans such as “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “God, Guns & Trump.” One man’s shirt declared, “Make America Godly Again,” with the image of a luminous Jesus putting his supportive hands on Trump’s shoulders.

Many attendees said in interviews they believed Trump shared their Christian faith and values. Several cited their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, particularly to transgender expressions.

Nobody voiced concern about Trump’s past conduct or his present indictments on criminal charges, including allegations that he tried to hide hush money payments to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign. Supporters saw Trump as representing a religion of second chances.

    • credo@lemmy.world
      91·
      7 months ago

      My life is needlessly difficult because I try to understand stupid people. It wears me out.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
        50·
        7 months ago

        It’s like somewhere in the ancient past someone wished that stupidity was painful, but forgot to specify who it should be painful for.

      • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        7 months ago

        A historical context helps out with this. They’re just us from 500 years ago. Even this divinely ordained stuff is straight out of history textbooks, the divine right to rule that medieval kings claimed.

        • Gsus4@mander.xyz
          19·
          7 months ago

          yea, sometimes these guys sound like the christian mobs from the early “dark ages”, the ones who destroyed pagan symbols e.g. Hypatia.

      • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        7·
        7 months ago

        Same here. The other night I had to ask myself repeatedly “if I was awful at my job, where would I have put…” and it hurts. Being competent comes naturally to me so, to me, it seems that it takes way more effort to be that dumb.

    • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
      26·
      7 months ago

      The irony being that the only way to understand it is to be that dumb. But if you were that dumb, you wouldn’t understand it nor would you try to because you’d think you are smart.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
      14·
      7 months ago

      Some people are completely lost in the modern world. They shut down completely whenever anyone aims any critic at them and congregate to unquestioningly hold on to what they recognize. It is basic human instinct and being smart sometimes just pushes some of these people into taking advantage of the system and leading this herd mentality, instead of taking a risk trying to wake them up.

    • Franklin@lemmy.world
      5·
      7 months ago

      Unfortunately, it’s well understood that political engagement especially when in a debate is an emotional undertaking.

      Complicated further by the fact that we tend not to change our assumptions even when presented with data that proves otherwise.

      We are a tribal species whose emotions are not geared towards understanding the far reaching and nuanced decisions we are faced with.

  • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    92·
    7 months ago

    Jesus was an anti-war, anti-capitalist, inclusivity-preaching socialist who gave free healthcare to the sick and free food to the hungry. Maybe they should crack open that book they always talk about.

    • Plum@lemmy.world
      29·
      7 months ago

      If “anyone can talk to god, you don’t need all the ceremony” can turn into the Catholic Church et al for 1,900+ years, I don’t think they’re gonna read for comprehension on inclusion.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
        16·
        7 months ago

        “anyone can talk to god, you don’t need all the ceremony”

        That’s really close to why the Protestant Reformation happened, out of which all sorts of other lunacy has sprung. I’m not defending the Catholic Church by any means, but this particular criticism might not hit as hard as you intended it to.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
          9·
          7 months ago

          John the Baptist was an apocalyptic Jew. I think it was there from the beginning. The apocalyptic Jewish sects make sense when you consider that they started their religion during the tail end of The Bronze Age collapse. They had just watched all the major powers implode, and tons of knowledge went with them. Makes sense that they would think the world was about to end.

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      7 months ago

      The problem is it’s got a lot of convenient contradictory statements in it.

      For example:

      He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.

      • Luke 22:36

      This part isn’t in Marcion’s version of Luke, which is probably the earliest extant version. But it is in the canonical version.

      Something very convenient given it reversed the ban found across the Synoptics on carrying a purse when ministering, which necessarily prevented taking people’s money.

      Just a bonus that it also allowed for the church to take up swords too right around before the time they start executing people for ‘heresy.’

      There’s plenty of problematic passages added in over the years:

      Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

      • Matthew 15:22-26

      So inclusive.

      • DaleGribble88@programming.devEnglish
        5·
        7 months ago

        Why did you stop at verse 26?

        27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

        28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

        • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          Because the woman calling him master and him then giving in is irrelevant to her being called a dog compared to children beforehand.

          The author of Matthew has a clear agenda, and the passage excerpt stands on its own.

          • DaleGribble88@programming.devEnglish
            3·
            7 months ago

            You really don’t think the context of the woman correcting him, Jesus accepting the response of a canaanite woman, admitting fault, thanking her for her faith, and then rewarding her doesn’t change the context of “Jesus compared a woman to a dog” just a little bit?

            • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              7 months ago

              He didn’t admit fault. He said she had enough faith to justify his taking action. But nothing about his own initial answer being unjustified. You are reading that into the text when it isn’t there.

          • BalooWasWahoo@links.hackliberty.org
            1·
            7 months ago

            Yes… I wonder what that agenda might be, when a few chapters later, Jesus/revelation-by-spirit suddenly says that his disciples should go to the gentiles and minister to them rather than the jews, because the jews rejected him.

            …Almost like there was a specific arc being set up to contrast one position with the next in a dramatic fashion.

            • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              What is up with people reading things into the text that aren’t there?

              Where in Matthew does Jesus have a revelation-by-spirit where he says not to minister to the Jews because they rejected him?

              • DaleGribble88@programming.devEnglish
                1·
                7 months ago

                [28:18] Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

                I don’t know where he got that RATHER than the Jews from the book of Matthew, since I read that as more of an AND, but the rest is from the end of the book of Matthew.

                Now please go be a teenage atheist edgelord somewhere else. We’ll be here when you want to have a discussion in good faith, but for now, go sea-lion somewhere else.

                • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  Yes, at the end of Matthew is a declaration to go out to the world, but absolutely jack shit about a refusal towards the Jews, undermining the point the commentator was making about the very strong pro-Jewish attitudes in Matthew being part of a reversal arc.

                  As I said, they were reading things into the text that weren’t there.

                  Now please go be a teenage atheist edgelord somewhere else. We’ll be here when you want to have a discussion in good faith, but for now, go sea-lion somewhere else.

                  Lol. Last I checked this was /c/news, not /c/Christianity.

                  And being specific around the texts in question and the contexts they arise in isn’t sealioning dude. I spent several years participating every day in /r/AcademicBiblical and just very much give a crap about accurate vs inaccurate representations of the material.

                  You can think you are circling the wagons to defend the scriptures, but I’m not the one in this thread misrepresenting them and the intentions of the respective authors. And while you can be free to do you, there is a certain wisdom regarding not blindly following the blind that extends to blind faith (and before you counter with doubting Thomas and the benefits of faith unseen, just know that the entire history of Thomasine Christianity and its relationship to early canonical Christianity is the topic I’ve spent six years studying in depth, so you will definitely get a mouthful back on that invocation and its post-30s CE historical context).

  • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world
    70·
    7 months ago

    If Trump hasn’t paid for a dozen abortions I’d be surprised.

    How do people look and listen to the guy and project all these values that they think are good on him?

    • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
      54·
      7 months ago

      i see it as validation that religion itself is a grift… an exploitation of a crack in the human psyche.

      the same mechanism that helps people ignore the ridiculousness of %religion% lets them ignore the terrible behaviors of its participants.

      maybe add a dash of mass-psychosis… throw in a huge, daily serving of faux news propaganda and here we are

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      19·
      7 months ago

      I have never heard an interviewer ask if he has ever paid for an abortion. I mean I know he wouldn’t answer honestly, but they never even ask.

  • skozzii@lemmy.ca
    55·
    7 months ago

    How the hell am I living in the same reality as these people? Where do they get their info from?

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
    28·
    7 months ago

    It’s amazing… stupid people who think invisible sky wizard is guiding their life and stupid enough to think that Trump ever thinks about them. God it’s like half this country gets off on being a cuckold without knowing it.

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
      8·
      7 months ago

      Stupid people are actually controlled by rich oligarchs through news and right wing propaganda but they think they are independent rebels.

  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
    21·
    7 months ago

    Every comment I have seen so far, has the wrong take on this. Christians aligning with Trump is basically the same thing as when the Christians aligned with the Nazis. They are both selling the same shit, a return to a time where the father was dictator of his own home and ruled with an iron fist. All you have to do is embrace the dictator of the country, and you can have that.

    That’s half the reason Christians are Christians in the first place. Fascism just makes those ideas more mainstream and allows for the laws to embrace the concept.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… Morons

    • Nougat@fedia.io
      4·
      7 months ago

      People will believe anything to avoid feeling chronically anxious and afraid, even things which are demonstrably untrue.

      People believe things when that belief is useful to them. There is a large overlap with “usefulness” and “accuracy,” but usefulness always wins.