Christianity Today — the flagship Evangelical magazine in America — denounces Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a town hall in Sandown, N.H.
AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

Julie Zauzmer, Washington Post | October 11, 2016

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Earlier in this campaign season, before Donald Trump advised his Twitter followers to “check out sex tape,” before The Washington Post published a video with Trump talking crudely about sex and sexual assault, as many as 78 percent of white, evangelical Christians said they planned to vote for him.

Donald Trump delivers the convocation at the

 Vines Center on the campus of Liberty

University January 18, 2016 in Lynchburg,

Virginia. Trump addressed students and

guests at the non-profit, private Christian

University that was founded in 1971 by

Evangelical Southern Baptist televangelist

Jerry Falwell. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Now, the flagship magazine of evangelical Christianity is blasting the Republican presidential nominee – and criticizing the Christians who vote for him.

“Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbours ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord,” Christianity Today editorial director Andy Crouch wrote Monday in an editorial. “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.”

Christianity Today was founded by evangelist Billy Graham in 1956 and today serves as a major voice of evangelicals, who make up about more than a quarter of the U.S. population.

The publication does not endorse candidates because it is a nonprofit organization, Crouch wrote in the editorial. But Monday’s editorial, which devoted a paragraph to criticizing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (mostly for her use of a private email server), hammered Trump for about 1,000 words.

The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest — indeed, sexual assault — might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.

Evangelical leaders have been some of the most prominent national figures to have stuck by Trump over the past several days, while dozens of Republican members of Congress have withdrawn their support. Theologian Wayne Grudem decided after seeing the video released Friday that he could not support Trump, but such major evangelical figures as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell Jr. have reaffirmed their endorsements of the real estate mogul.

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Christianity Today said that any evangelical leaders changing their mind about Trump are “heartening, but it comes awfully late. What Trump is, everyone has known and has been able to see for decades, let alone the last few months. The revelations of the past week of his vile and crude boasting about sexual conquest — indeed, sexual assault — might have been shocking, but they should have surprised no one.”

The editorial criticized the Republican nominee in biblical terms. Quoting a list of sins that St. Paul condemns — “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry” — Crouch wrote, “this is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date.”

This article from National Post News