Donald Trump has dug himself into deep trouble with Evangelical leaders, including some who once prominently endorsed the Republican nominee. Evangelical leaders have increasingly turned against the Republican presidential candidate after The Washington Post released a recording of lewd remarks he made in 2005.
One hundred noteworthy self-identified Evangelicals have signed a petition on change.org accusing Trump of undermining “gospel values” in America. The petition was originally posted with 75 backers the day before the comments became public.
Moreover, three major Evangelical leaders independently denounced Trump over this last week: reformed theologian Wayne Grudem, megachurch pastor James MacDonald, and Christianity Today Executive Editor Andy Crouch. Both Grudem and MacDonald once endorsed Trump, but have now reversed course.
Grudem described Trump as a “morally good choice” in a heavily criticized Townhall column published on July 28 that was subsequently removed at Grudem’s request. In a Townhall column on October 9, Grudem withdrew his previous comments, saying he regretted that he “did not more strongly condemn [Trump’s] moral character” in his previous column.
“I cannot commend Trump’s moral character, and I strongly urge him to withdraw from the election,” Grudem wrote. He continued:
His vulgar comments in 2005 about his sexual aggression and assaults against women were morally evil and revealed pride in conduct that violates God’s command, “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). I have now read transcripts of some of his obscene interviews with Howard Stern, and they turned my stomach. His conduct was hateful in God’s eyes and I urge him to repent and call out to God for forgiveness, and to seek forgiveness from those he harmed. God intends that men honor and respect women, not abuse them as sexual objects.
Some may criticize me for not discovering this material earlier, and I think they are right. I did not take the time to investigate earlier allegations in detail, and I now wish I had done so. If I had read or heard some of these materials earlier, I would not have written as positively as I did about Donald Trump. I am grateful that Townhall.com has agreed to remove my earlier statement.
Although he could no longer endorse Trump, Grudem refused to support the Democratic alternative: “I absolutely will not vote for [Hillary] Clinton.”
MacDonald had equally tough words. The pastor, who had previously backed Trump, has served on the Republican’s so-called Faith Council. In an email to fellow advisors on the council on October 8, MacDonald classified Trump’s lewd comments as “misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless,” according to Washington Post reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey. He also withdrew further his support until Trump demonstrated a “change of heart and direction.”
In a blog post on October 11, MacDonald explained his comments. He said Trump needed to repent and express his change of heart through a genuine apology before Evangelicals could consider him to be the better candidate:
The reason evidence of full repentance matters so much is that if Mr. Trump is not entirely repentant for the content of that recording, he cannot have changed. And if Mr. Trump has not truly changed (because that is what repentance actually is: change), then we do not have a rational reason to anticipate different behavior in the future. And we have lost the ‘better of the two’ argument that brought so much evangelical support to Mr. Trump in the first place. Of course, it is possible that in his confession he merely misspoke or failed to get his true heart across, as we have all done. But if Mr. Trump is satisfied with what he offered in terms of regret, it is unlikely he has changed and, sadly, we can only expect similar behavior in the future. Drawing his attention to this is not an abandonment of my role as a faith counselor but an effort to fulfill it, regardless of how it is viewed.
Also on October 11, Crouch wrote an editorial on behalf of Christianity Today. He said there ought to be “plenty of critique and criticism of the Democratic candidate from Christians,” but added that most Evangelicals had failed to demonstrate “the same critical judgment” toward Trump. He dedicated two paragraphs to detailing the problems with Clinton, but reserved the bulk of his criticism (eight paragraphs) for Trump and his Evangelical supporters. In his penultimate paragraph, Crouch observed:
Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord. They see that some of us are so self-interested, and so self-protective, that we will ally ourselves with someone who violates all that is sacred to us—in hope, almost certainly a vain hope given his mendacity and record of betrayal, that his rule will save us.
Grudem, MacDonald, and Crouch are far from the only Evangelical leaders who have criticized Trump. Other Evangelical leaders – including Russell Moore, Albert Mohler, and Erick Erickson – have long faulted the candidate and refused to endorse him.
Comment by Robert on October 13, 2016 at 8:11 am
Too little too late. The evangelicals have exposed themselves for what they are: Morally flexible & addicted to political power. Evangelicals have a spiritual problem not a political one.
Comment by 0pus on October 13, 2016 at 9:39 am
Your post is nonsense. The mere act of voting is about exercising political power. You prefer that Christians pay our taxes and not exercise our rights as citizens to have a say in politics. Forget it, not gonna happen. We have just as much say as anyone else.
Comment by Robert on October 13, 2016 at 9:49 am
My issue is not with evangelicals voting, but rather with evangelicals support of Trump. Please do not confuse the two. You read the article right?
Comment by Truegrit on October 13, 2016 at 10:16 pm
I would agree except that I feel that certain names mentioned above DO have a political problem, a left-leaning one, along with their spiritual problem. They have an ax to grind and in some cases have been quite successful in pulling the organizations of the church to the left. It is a major part of the Left’s plan. A Trump Presidency would be a nightmare for them.
Comment by Mike Ward on October 13, 2016 at 1:06 pm
I don’t recognize most of the names, but long time Clinton supporter Tony Campolo is on the list. Ditto for Jim Wallis. Shane Claiborne is another one who probably never voted for a Republican in his life, and Joshua DuBois even described himself as “President Obama’s ‘Pastor in Chief’.” Brian D. McLaren and Eugene Cho don’t surprise me either. The rest, I’ve never heard of.
Comment by Joan Watson on October 14, 2016 at 1:12 pm
Trump never professed to be a Christian. He is still what he is when these evangelicals endorsed him, a hard-nosed business man!
Comment by Chet.Klinger on October 20, 2016 at 4:54 pm
“Trump told Human Events and other news outlets that he is “a believer.” In 2011, he told CBN he attended First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica Queens, which is part of the Presbyterian U.S.A. denomination. Some past articles and interviews have listed Trump as a member of the Reformed Church of America, but more recently he has said he is Presbyterian. He says he goes to church on Sunday when he can and always on Christmas, Easter, and on special occasions.” Read more at
http://www.christianpost.com/news/6-interesting-facts-about-donald-trumps-christian-faith-140522/#viK6i2CIhyIlt4bU.99
This sounds like a lot of Methodists I know.
If all it takes to be a Christian is to say one is a believer, and Jesus says, this is o.k., who am I to question? It is a good thing America’s Declaration of Independence didn’t rest solely on the clergy or so-called evangelicals of
the 1700’s or there would never have been a United States of America. Most clergy were still devoted to the
Church of England and the King of England.
It’s also a good thing God didn’t wait around for men with purely clean hands to do His will with His people, otherwise He would not have picked Abraham who doubted God, or Moses, a fugitive from the law, or Isaiah, a man of unclean lips, or David, an adulterer, or Saul, a persecutor of Christians. He yielded to the demands of people
bellyaching in the wilderness about eating manna every day, and He yielded to the cry from the people of Israel who wanted their own king, and look where these events got them.
Now we have two imperfect people running for president of the USA and I’m hearing “righteous” people wanting to abdicate their duty to vote. Letting go, and letting God decide who will be elected. This makes a whole lot of sense in nations where people don’t have a right a vote for their leaders. But here in the USA? This right was written into our
Constitution by godly men back in the 18th Century – men from many religions including Christians and Jews, men who had stained backgrounds of their own, Ben Franklin being among them. And this right was declared to be endowed by our Creator. And we are ready to blow it because we feel
yucky about going to the polls?
By abdicating our right to vote, we could be opening the door for Satan to pick who the next President will be, and, like the people of the wilderness or the people of early Israel, we could be sorry for the outcome of our stubbornness.
Look what happened when Romney lost the election. Evangelicals stayed home because of Romney’s
Mormonism. The least we can do if you elect not to vote, is get on our knees and pray on election day.
Now please tell me who an evangelical Christian is. It seems some who call themselves evangelicals are too far left and others are viewed as too far right, and many of us are trying to put ourselves somewhere right of center because somehow we think this is the safe place to be.
Jesus told John, the Revelator, to warn the churches about being too lukewarm. I give praise to those few clergy and
evangelicals who stood for freedom and righteous governance in their support of the War of Independence in the late 1700’s.
And I give praise for those evangelicals who boldly go forth here in 2016 to support the election of a president who will defend the right of Christians to worship here in this land,
in our military, in our public places, as well as elsewhere in the world including Syria and Iraq.
Comment by Stephen on October 15, 2016 at 7:12 am
This would have a lot more credibility if both candidates were equally denounced. However, I suspect many of the leftist signers gushingly support Hillary and her godless policies, as well as character. We should deeply grieve that our country has come to such a fallen state that we need to make a choice like this.
Comment by Kingdom Ambassador on October 19, 2016 at 3:58 pm
Praise God!
Another election, another opportunity to figure out that we have been had and that by our own making. If this election doesn’t wake you up to this fact, count yourself among the walking dead.
Both Trump and Clinton are the inevitable consequences of the constitutional framers banning Christian tests in Article 6, thereby eliminating mandatory biblical qualifications for civil leaders. America has
been doomed to nothing but nincompoops, scoundrels, and outright criminals ever since. Sound familiar?
The 18th-century founders usurped Yahweh’s exclusive election authority (Deuteronomy 17:15), thereby turning it over to We the People, the majority of whom, according to Matthew 7:13-14, are in the broad way leading to destruction. Talk about a D U M B idea! Just where do you suppose that’s going to get us? Perhaps the precipice of moral depravity and destruction!?!
No wonder following every election, America only becomes more ungodly, less Christian, and further enslaved regardless whether a donkey or an elephant is elected.
For more, see blog article “Salvation by Election” at http://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/salvation-by-election/.
Then find out how much you REALLY know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/ConstitutionSurvey.html and receive a complimentary copy of a book that EXAMINES the Constitution by the Bible.