Sarah Palin and Donald Trump campaign together.
Depends which evangelical Christian you ask.
Character apparently mattered back in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was a candidate and Trump was just a philandering mogul, but this year that all changed. Many evangelical Christians threw their support behind Trump, a man who has boasted about sleeping with married women, been married three times, plays fast and loose with facts, bragged about groping women and then got accused of doing just that.
To me, all of that added up to a man the religious right could not tolerate – but I was wrong.
Apparently, a good number of Christians think Trump was chosen by God to win this election. My mom forwards me emails from all kinds of preachers I’ve never heard of, and I’m beginning to see a common thread.
Johnny Enlow of Santa Clarita, Calif., a self-described prophet, wrote recently: “In the matrix of the spirit realm, as He placed Trump into power, He also released unprecedented wave after wave of the hosts of Heaven. These heavenly hosts have heavily damaged three major principalities over government, media, and the economy – and will continue to do so. The principalities were conspiring and doing everything in their power to sabotage this political result. They are not afraid of Trump’s righteousness, but rather they’re afraid of the size of the heavenly army they see moving in synchronicity with him.”
As a journalist and a Christian, this is a bit offensive to me. I had no idea there was a principality over my industry, conspiring to keep Trump out of office. It felt more like journalists were trying to figure out how to cover a guy who had the makings of the next Hitler – what with his denunciations of entire races and religions and his stated intention to make life hard for journalists. How would you have covered Hitler?
OK so he’s not as bad as Hitler, but he seems headed in the direction of a dictator, at the very least: Take down the press, it’s legal if the president does it, etc.
But back to the prophets.
“In this day it’s important for all of us to understand that this is not about politics,” Enlow continued. “It’s not about left or right. It’s not about our favorite political issue or our debates over the character or lack of it in ‘our candidate.’ This is about recognizing that God has intervened in the affairs of man and learning to agree with Him.”
OK, so God wants Trump – warts and all – and I just need to get on board. But here’s what I don’t get: If God can use or bless anybody – like Solomon, with his 700 wives and 300 concubines (as my sister argues) – why couldn’t he just as easily have done the same with Hillary Clinton? Oh yeah, because she supports abortion.
For many of my Trump-supporting friends, that’s the litmus test.
Enlow continues: “Trump has been anointed with an Isaiah 45, Cyrus anointing to break down the enemy’s mafia-like stronghold on the mountains of government, media and economy… He will come in barely knowing God, yet friendly towards Him, and before he leaves he’ll be branded by the fire of God’s presence. I believe he’ll be filled with the Holy Spirit in progressive measures as his terms continue.”
Now, Trump has never struck me as particularly friendly toward God – his pathetic attempt to quote a Scripture betrayed his unfamiliarity with the book – while Clinton has been a church-going woman her whole life. But wait, she’s a Methodist. Never mind.
The one thing Trump seems to have done to win the hearts and minds of some evangelical Christians was to allow a group of them to pray for him, in public. With the laying on of hands and all. “Unheard of!” they said – although I’d bet Mike Huckabee or Ben Carson or any number of other Republicans would’ve submitted to the same. Clinton might’ve even done so, although probably not in that setting. Trump looked perplexed as they prayed and put hands on him, but he went with it. So did the evangelicals, and now they’re fully on board the Trump train.
Enlow writes that after the election he had a series of dreams that all ended with the statement “Trump 183,” which led him to Isaiah 18:3, “All you people of the world, you who live on the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it, and when a TRUMP sounds, YOU WILL HEAR IT.”
“He did not put Trump in because he has the best character and pro-life stance. There were perhaps 15 Presidential candidates who looked better than him in both of those matters. God was not asking us our opinion. He is still not asking us our opinion.”
And then he makes a connection between the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series and Trump’s win. I won’t go into all that, because I don’t want you to think my mom is batshit crazy. (Even though she kind of is and we love her for it.)
However, not all fire-breathing evangelicals agree with Enlow: The pastor of my church is a filled-with-the-Holy-Ghost Pentecostal who could not disagree more. When he’s preaching, sometimes he seems to get struck by some kind of invisible lightning that shivers through his body. But he’s more inclined to think Trump could very well be the Antichrist. His sister thinks Trump bought off people to win the election. Her husband thinks 9/11 was a hoax.
Full disclosure: Most of my Trump-loving relatives are white, and my church is predominantly black.
I find it interesting that they all see conspiracies in every corner, none of them trust the media much, and evangelical Christians can have such diametrically opposed positions on Trump. The one thing they all pretty much agree on is that we are entering what Christians call “the last days.” Apocalyptic stuff in Revelations that’s not so fun to read. The first sign is an antichrist who leads the world astray. Then comes war, violence, natural disasters.
So you can see why the world no longer makes much sense to me: On the right, my relatives are convinced Trump is the second coming of Jesus or something. That the Holy Spirit will come upon him, especially once he enters office. That he will do YUGE things.
OK, that’s possible. Anything is possible with God. But they’ve been snookered before: I remember the last time my Mom thought the world was about to end and we geared up for Y2K with crates of water bottles and canned food, gas fireplaces, generators and flashlights. And then, the year 2000 arrived and the lights didn’t so much as flicker.
I tend to agree more with my church friends, who think Trump is more likely to be the antichrist than the second coming. But I’m going to take the prophet Enlow’s advice, when he says, “fasten your seatbelts and get ready for a wild and exciting ride… just stay in unceasing hopeful prayer.”
I don’t know that I can get on board with the idea that Trump has been chosen by God to lead this country to the promised land, but I can get on board with staying hopeful and praying without ceasing.
