{"id":9110,"date":"2018-10-30T14:23:49","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=9110"},"modified":"2018-10-30T14:23:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:23:49","slug":"factoid-of-the-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=9110","title":{"rendered":"Factoid of the day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost 7 of 10 white evangelicals (think, Southern Baptists) hold a favorable opinion<\/a> of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

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With the unique exception of white evangelical Protestants, majorities of all other major religious groups have an unfavorable opinion<\/span> of Trump. Majorities of black Protestants (80%), religiously unaffiliated Americans (75%), Hispanic Catholics (74%), non-Christian religious Americans (73%), white mainline Protestants (52%), and white Catholics (52%) have a negative opinion of Trump. By contrast, almost seven in ten (68%) white evangelical Protestants have a favorable view<\/span> of Trump, including 28% who have a very favorable view.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though most Southern Baptists ‘know’ that the Bible is inerrant, most have no idea at all that The Donald is not a fine Christian man. After all, Pastor Bubba fools around, too, and tells lies and says mean things about non-club members all the time.<\/p>\n

The unhappy truth is that Trump’s followers, like the typical Southern Baptist congregation, comprise a cult. I don’t know what the psychological name for the behavior is, but many of Trump’s followers have simply transferred their devotion to one charismatic leader to a different or additional charismatic leader.<\/p>\n

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Donald Trump exploits the identical grievances as skillfully as the two greatest leaders in Christian history, so it should be no surprise that his following includes a lot of self-identified Godly types.<\/p>\n

The Jesus Movement of the 1st<\/sup>-century was no less a political movement than a religious movement; once upon a time, recall, there was no distinction. Jesus excoriated the rich (It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven.), and celebrated and promised riches to the underclass (The meek shall inherit the earth.).<\/p>\n

Skip forward 1500-years, and consider Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Excepting perhaps his objection to indulgences, it’s a slam-bang certainty that his oppressed and illiterate peasant followers had no idea what his 99 Theses were about or could weigh a theological argument. What they knew is that Luther hated the Jews, hated the Catholic Church, and held a disdainful attitude toward women — a regular guy, just like themselves! YAAAY!<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t call the Fabulist-in-Chief a spiritual<\/i> leader but, given his devoted and unreasoning followers, it is entirely proper to call him a cult leader and, in a narrow sense, no less a religious leader than Haile Selassie or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost 7 of 10 white evangelicals hold a favorable opinion of Donald Trump. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9110"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9115,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9110\/revisions\/9115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}