Saturday, August 19, 2017

Trump's Evangelical Court Prophets: Discussion of Their Refusal to Criticize Him Now Widespread



As CEOs shut down their advisory council in disgust with his Charlottesville remarks, the refusal of Trump's court-prophet evangelical preachers to renounce their role as faith advisors to the president (there is no formal advisory board) is gaining wider and wider attention:


Charles Pierce at Esquire:

Right now, the president* is wandering through American political life wearing a bell to warn people of his approach. But you know who's hanging in there? 
His preachers.


As Mark Silk suggests at Religion News Service, the reason there hasn't been a blow-up between Trump and his white evangelical court prophets after his disgraceful comments about Charlottesville is that they're telling him what he likes to hear, and are determined to stand — a phrase I'm echoing from NPR's discussion of this issue.



Is anyone surprised that the Religious Right has been a stronger defender of Trump than his CEO councils?



Jack Jenkins for Think Progress: As President Donald Trump struggles to manage the firestorm of criticism over his controversial remarks on white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, conservative faith leaders are sticking by his side — although his recent comments defending Confederate statues may be testing some of them.


As Jack Jenkins reports, one solitary member of Trump's evangelical advisory group has walked away — the one most likely to walk away: A. R. Bernard, an African-American megachurch pastor who has taken relatively a moderate (for evangelicals) stand on same-sex marriage. Jenkins also notes that Bernard's decision to walk away is provoking a backlash of belligerence among other court prophets advising Trump.

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