A majority of GOP voters seriously think Donald Trump is a "person of faith"
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A majority of GOP voters seriously think Donald Trump is a "person of faith"
Trump worships himself. That doesn't make him pious.
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Republican voters think Donald Trump is more religious than Mitt Romney and Joe Biden, according to a national poll conducted by HarrisX exclusively for the (Utah-based) Deseret News.
That may be the most damning evidence we’ve ever seen showing that GOP voters don’t actually give a damn what politicians believe. As long as they pay conservative Christians proper lip service, voters will assume they’re devout.
Disingenuous actions speak louder than words.
Among Republicans, 53% said Trump was a person of faith, ahead of every other person on the list — although he was statistically tied with Pence, who came in at 52%.
Trump also led several of his other opponents in the Republican presidential primary, with 47% of Republican respondents saying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a person of faith, 31% for Sen. Tim Scott, 31% for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, 30% for entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and 22% for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Only 23% of Republicans said Biden is a person of faith, while 12% said the same of Vice President Kamala Harris.
When it comes to Biden, this is not a matter of opinion. Biden is Catholic. Famously so. He regularly attends Mass. Hell, there was a whole news cycle about whether or not he deserves to receive Communion since Biden supports pro-choice public policies. If only 23% of Republican voters say Biden is a person of faith, then 77% of those voters are either woefully uninformed about the matter or they deny that Biden’s faith “counts.”
The same could be said of Harris (Baptist), Ron DeSantis (Catholic), Vivek Ramaswamy (Hindu), and Mike Pence (insanely conservative Christian). There’s plenty to say about how they practice their religions, or how some of them try to merge their religion and politics, but they are absolutely people of faith.
Trump, on the other hand, is a thrice-married racist who paid hush money to porn stars he was having affairs with when his current wife was pregnant with his fifth child. A sexual abuser. The Two Corinthians guy. The candidate caught bragging about non-consensually grabbing women because he was a celebrity. The guy who lies about everything. The guy who says he doesn’t need forgiveness. The guy who couldn’t name his favorite Bible verse.
The guy who held up a Bible in front of a church after his team used tear gas to drive away peaceful protesters:
Of the many, many things you could call Donald Trump, devout ain’t one of them. Not a single white evangelical church in America would ever allow this guy to be their pastor if they wanted to be taken seriously. And yet more than half of Republican voters (a good chunk of whom would describe themselves as conservative Christians) seriously believe Trump is a person of faith.
It’s not because he does any of the things you’re supposed to do as a Christian. He sure as hell hasn’t put any thought into theological debates.
If Donald Trump worships anyone, it’s himself.
The only reason anyone would seriously think he’s a person of faith is because Trump just tells people he is. They believe the lie. They buy into the pandering. Or else they think installing right-wing justices on the Supreme Court for political reasons is the equivalent of accepting the divinity of Christ.
Pastors across the country should be ashamed of themselves.
They’ve done such a pathetic job of defining what it means to be a Christian that half of Republican voters believe Trump falls under the umbrella.
If he’s in their club, they should be heading for the exits. Or at least that’s what they would do if they had any dignity. Trump has turned Christianity, writ large, into a series of culture war issues instead of anything that’s based on the Gospels. It’s so bad that pastors who care about what Jesus said are literally being driven out of their own churches.
The one caveat to all this is that the subset of evangelical voters didn’t feel the same as Republican voters in general. 65% of evangelicals (correctly) said Pence was a person of faith while only 37% said the same about Trump. But that still means more than a third of self-described evangelicals think Trump has deep faith.
Utterly delusional. Completely cultish behavior. Trump being an ally of conservative voters doesn’t make him one of them.
Or maybe they just think a guy whose career involves spewing bullshit is no different from a pastor. (In which case, welcome to the dark side. Pull up a chair. Make yourselves comfortable.)
All that said, it’s not like Democratic voters ace this quiz either. Only 38% of them (and 35% of Republicans) said Romney was a person of faith, which probably says more about their views on Mormonism than faith. Only 63% of Democratic voters said Biden was a person of faith… which still seems wildly low.
Still, the big takeaway is that a whole bunch of Republicans think Trump is a person of faith, a belief that stretches the definition of religion beyond belief. It’s the latest con he’s pulled over American voters.
A majority of GOP voters seriously think Donald Trump is a "person of faith"
"Pastors across the country should be ashamed of themselves."
If they were capable of being ashamed of themselves, the wouldn't be pastors.
If Donald Trump is a man of faith, then he demonstrates the disconnect between religion and morality about as well as it can be done. When you look back all the horrors perpetrated in the name of faith, it is beyond me how people can see faith as a virtue. The Twin Towers were taken down in the name of faith.