I’m shocked that many professed evangelical Christians support Donald Trump.  Sure, we’re angry at Washington as other Americans are.  But have we thought about who this man is and what he’s done and stood for?  Can we even be sure when his mouth seems to run faster than his brain?

Last night’s debate on CNN was, I think, may have been the beginning of Trump’s “implosion”.   He’s not qualified to serve as President.  If he’s a Christian, the fruit of his life and words give no evidence.

Russell Moore, in a sharp, convicting article in today’s “New York Times”, says it better than I and hopefully will wake us out of our knee-jerk anger to think like Christians in this Republican nominating process.  I applaud Moore for writing it and the “New York Times” for printing it!

Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values?

By RUSSELL MOORE SEPT. 17, 2015

IN 2006, the television comedy “The Office” aired an episode in which one of the characters, Dwight Schrute, nervously faces the prospect of delivering a speech after winning the title of top salesman of the year for his company, Dunder Mifflin. As a prank, his co-worker preps him for his moment by cribbing a speech from a dictator, coaching him to deliver it by pounding the lectern and waving his arms wildly. Dwight does it, and the audience gives a standing ovation to a manic tirade.

Watching a cartoonish TV character deliver authoritarian lines with no principles, just audacity, was hilarious back then, but that was before we saw it happening before our eyes in the race for the United States presidency.

Donald J. Trump stands astride the polls in the Republican presidential race, beating all comers in virtually every demographic of the primary electorate. Most illogical is his support from evangelicals and other social conservatives. To back Mr. Trump, these voters must repudiate everything they believe.

Ben Carson recently contrasted his own faith in God with Mr. Trump’s theatrical egocentrism. “By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life, and that’s a very big part of who I am,” he said, citing a Bible verse. “I don’t get that impression with him.” Mr. Trump hit back, suggesting that Mr. Carson was faking his own faith: “So I don’t know about Ben Carson’s faith, and all of a sudden he becomes this great religious figure. I don’t think he’s a great religious figure.” Mr. Carson quickly backed off from his comments, but the questions are not so easily dismissed.

There’s no religious test for office, and there shouldn’t be. My Baptist ancestors were willing to make alliances with the heretical Thomas Jefferson because he believed in religious liberty. It didn’t matter that they never would have let him teach Sunday school.

We should not demand to see the long-form certificate for Mr. Trump’s second birth. We should, though, ask about his personal character and fitness for office. His personal morality is clear, not because of tabloid exposés but because of his own boasts. His attitude toward women is that of a Bronze Age warlord. He tells us in one of his books that he revels in the fact that he gets to sleep with some of the “top women in the world.” He has divorced two wives (so far) for other women.

This should not be surprising to social conservatives in a culture shaped by pornographic understandings of the meaning of love and sex. What is surprising is that some self-identified evangelicals are telling pollsters they’re for Mr. Trump. Worse, some social conservative leaders are praising Mr. Trump for “telling it like it is.”

In the 1990s, some of these social conservatives argued that “If Bill Clinton’s wife can’t trust him, neither can we.” If character matters, character matters. Today’s evangelicals should ask, “Whatever happened to our commitment to ‘traditional family values’?”

Mr. Trump tells us “nothing beats the Bible,” and once said to an audience that he knows how Billy Graham feels. He says of evangelicals: “I love them. They love me.” And yet, he regularly ridicules evangelicals, with almost as much glee as he does Hispanics. This goes beyond his trivialization of communion with his recent comments about “my little cracker” as a way to ask forgiveness. In recent years, he has suggested that evangelical missionaries not be treated in the United States for Ebola, since they chose to go overseas in the first place.

Still, the problem is not just Mr. Trump’s personal lack of a moral compass. He is, after all, a casino and real estate mogul who has built his career off gambling, a moral vice and an economic swindle that oppresses the poorest and most desperate. When Mr. Trump’s casinos fail, he can simply file bankruptcy and move on. The lives and families destroyed by the casino industry cannot move on so easily.

He’s defended, up until very recent years, abortion, and speaks even now of the “good things” done by Planned Parenthood. In a time when racial tensions run high across the country, Mr. Trump incites division, with slurs against Hispanic immigrants and with protectionist jargon that preys on turning economic insecurity into ugly “us versus them” identity politics. When evangelicals should be leading the way on racial reconciliation, as the Bible tells us to, are we really ready to trade unity with our black and brown brothers and sisters for this angry politician?

Jesus taught his disciples to “count the cost” of following him. We should know, he said, where we’re going and what we’re leaving behind. We should also count the cost of following Donald Trump. To do so would mean that we’ve decided to join the other side of the culture war, that image and celebrity and money and power and social Darwinist “winning” trump the conservation of moral principles and a just society. We ought to listen, to get past the boisterous confidence and the television lights and the waving arms and hear just whose speech we’re applauding.

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. He is the author of “Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel.”

The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly (Proverbs 15:2).

A man’s wife deeply influences his character and success.  That’s why we should know as much as possible about prospective presidents’ wives.  After all, when a man and woman marry, they “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

So here’s an informative article by Michelle Malkin In National Review about Dr. Ben Carson’s wife, Candy.   Malkin contrasts Candy Carson with Michelle Obama.  If you think that unfair, concentrate on the good attributes she identifies about Candy Carson.

Meet Candy Carson, the Anti–Michelle Obama

She’s smart, she’s talented, and she loves America.

After nearly seven years of the East Wing’s politics of mope and complain, it’s refreshing to see a presidential candidate’s spouse who is always smiling. Candy Carson — wife of GOP 2016 hopeful Dr. Ben Carson, mother of three sons, and grandmother of two — is the anti–Michelle Obama. She’s a quiet but confident ray of sunshine: down-to-earth, devoutly Christian, and proudly patriotic. While Mrs. Obama first gained notoriety by carping about racism and trashing America, Mrs. Carson helped kick off her husband’s 2016 bid by playing the violin with a gospel choir as they performed a joyful, rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

I met the couple, who recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, a few weeks ago during a campaign stop in Colorado Springs. Dr. Carson’s dazzling career as a Johns Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon is well known. But Mrs. Carson’s own personal story is remarkable as a stand-alone exemplar of the American Dream achieved. The daughter of a teacher and a factory worker, Candy Carson grew up poor in inner-city Detroit with four siblings. She earned a scholarship to attend Yale University, where she met her future husband and fellow Detroit native. Mrs. Carson triple-majored in music, psychology, and pre-med. She played violin for the Yale Symphony and the Yale Bach Society. Just as her church-organist mother insisted that all her children learn to play instruments, Mrs. Carson formed a string quartet (two violins, cello, and viola) with her own three sons and dubbed it the “Carson Four.”

Feminists loved Mrs. Obama’s relentless jokes openly denigrating her spouse’s shortcomings as a husband and father on the campaign trail. Victory did not improve her dour disposition. Even after moving into the White House and enjoying multiple taxpayer-financed vacations around the world, President Obama’s bitter half bizarrely lamented her plight as a “busy single mother.” So. Put. Upon. Share article on Facebook share Tweet article tweet

By contrast, Mrs. Carson revels in her role as family matriarch and life partner in her husband’s endeavors. “The calling of a neurosurgeon isn’t easy to live out, and Ben has been required to go above and beyond the call of duty many times,” she writes in her upcoming memoir, A Doctor in the House. “The life of a neurosurgeon’s wife isn’t much easier. But it’s all been worth it. Together, we’ve been through poverty, tragedy, wealth, and joy, and I’ve come to love Ben more as each year has passed.”

Mrs. Obama regularly grumbles about juggling her various roles. “Finding balance has been the struggle of my life and my marriage, in being a woman, being a professional, being a mother,” she kvetched to Ladies’ Home Journal. “What women have the power to do, through our own experiences, is to push that balance out into the culture. If people are happier, and they’re more engaged, and they have jobs they can value that allow them to respect and value their homes, that makes the home life stronger.”

Moms like Candy Carson operate in a no-whine zone. It is a blessing to have so many opportunities and choices. Struggle this, struggle that. Time for another Aspen ski vacation or carbon-footprint-enlarging jaunt to Milan! Elitist liberal working mothers expend an astounding amount of energy letting everyone know how hard they toil, how much “sacrifice” they’ve made, and how unhappy they are if they’re not working outside the home earning “respect” from other elitist liberal working mothers. Meanwhile, moms like Candy Carson operate in a no-whine zone. It is a blessing to have so many opportunities and choices. And there’s no time to waste.

In addition to raising the Carson children, co-founding the Carson Scholars Fund charity (which has awarded nearly 7,000 scholarships across the country to academically gifted students of all backgrounds who give back to their communities), and serving as sounding board and co-author of three of the Carsons’ New York Times bestsellers, Mrs. Carson worked in trust administration, insurance, and real estate. She also found time to earn a master’s degree in business from Johns Hopkins and conduct the University of Maryland Medical Center Chamber Players.

Like the Obamas, the Carsons have experienced their share of racial discrimination and prejudice. But it does not define them. Neither have they let their phenomenal success get to their heads. “Did I ever imagine I would live in a place like this?” Mrs. Carson reflected in an interview at her elegant home with Baltimore magazine. “Of course not. Growing up poor, you try to be a good steward of the money you have.”  What a refreshing change from the arrogant profligacy that has marked the past two presidential terms in Washington. The most common refrain you’ll hear from people who meet the couple is how humble and gracious they are. They’ve made sure to instill the values of thrift, personal responsibility, and private philanthropy in their children.

Both Carsons emphasized in our visit their profound concern for their grandchildren’s future, the abandonment of constitutional principles, and the fiscal cliff that young generations of Americans now face. Attitude is everything. The narcissism and nihilism of the Beltway stand in stark contrast to the faith of the Carsons in God, their country, and each other. However their political adventure turns out, they are “ready to follow . . . whatever He has in store for us next,” Mrs. Carson writes. Keep smiling, work hard, be grateful, and play on. This is what makes America great. — Michelle Malkin is author of the book Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs.

(Malkin’s e-mail address is [email protected].

“When he questions my faith and I’m a believer—big league—in God and the Bible and he questions my faith and he doesn’t know me.” (Donald Trump reacting to Dr. Ben Carson)

Words not only communicate.  Words reveal what’s in one’s heart.  Jesus said, “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).

I read the following report from CNN and put in bold-face type the words I thought were particularly revelatory about Republican presidential primary candidates Dr. Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

* * * * *

Instead, the retired neurosurgeon apologized for firing what the billionaire front-runner perceived as the first shot when Carson on Wednesday called the depth of the two contenders’ faith “probably the biggest” difference between them.

“I would like to say to him that the intention was not to talk to him, but about what motivates me,” Carson told The Washington Post. “If he took that as a personal attack on him, I apologize, it was certainly not the intent.”

Trump hours earlier called in to CNN’s “New Day” and laid into his rival, calling Carson — the first surgeon to separate conjoined twins joined at the head — just an “OK doctor” and said “you look at his faith and I think you’re not going to find so much.”

Trump also called Carson’s views on abortion “horrendous.” Carson is staunchly opposed to abortion now, but was an abortion rights supporter when he was younger and performed medical research on aborted fetuses in 1992.

“If you look at his past, which I’ve done, he wasn’t a big man of faith. All of a sudden he’s becoming this man of faith. And he was heavy into the world of abortion,” Trump said.

Trump is now opposed to abortion, but only after years supporting women’s right to abortions, describing himself in 1999 as “very pro-choice.”

Carson has been a prominent figure in the evangelical community for years and repeatedly touts on the stump the role faith has played in his life. He jumped onto the conservative political scene when in 2013 he delivered the keynote address at the National Prayer Breakfast, diving into a heavy-handed criticism of President Barack Obama’s health care reform measure with Obama at his side.

Despite the harsh criticism, Carson resisted the urge to wage war with Trump.

“The media frequently wants to goad people into wars, into gladiator fights, you know. … And I’m certainly not going to get into that,” he told The Washington Post.

A Carson surrogate — his business manager, Armstrong Williams — did go after Trump, suggesting the billionaire was just waiting for an excuse to slam Carson.

“Mr. Trump sounded almost like a schoolyard bully that if you say something I don’t like I’m going to come at you with everything I’ve got on the table,” Williams said on CNN’s “This Hour.”

Trump and Carson have so far played nice, but Trump recently suggested he might have to start lashing out if Carson continued to surge behind him.

Carson’s criticism of Trump’s faith offered Trump the perfect opportunity, allowing him to hit Carson while remaining a “counterpuncher.”

“I’ve realized where my success has come from, and I don’t in anyway deny my faith in God,” Carson said Wednesday when asked about the difference between him and Trump, before quoting what he said was one of his favorite Bible verses.

“‘By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life’ (Proverbs 22:4), and that’s a very big part of who I am. I don’t get that impression with him,” Carson said of Trump. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t get that.”

Carson told The Washington Post that his comments were interpreted as an attack on Trump.

Trump has pulled strong support from evangelicals, but has also stumbled on questions about his faith, saying that he does not ask God for forgiveness — a key tenet of Christianity — and declining to cite his favorite Bible verse in a recent interview. And the New York church that Trump said he attends told CNN that Trump is not an “active member.”

Trump, who has repeatedly called himself a counter-puncher, said he was only hitting Carson because he attacked him the day before.

“He makes Bush look like the Energizer bunny,” Trump said on “New Day.”

Trump also defended comments he made about Carly Fiorina’s appearance in a Rolling Stone profile published Wednesday, insisting he was not talking about her looks when he said “Look at that face!”

“Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president,” Trump had said while sitting with a Rolling Stone reporter.

“I’m not talking about looks. I’m talking about persona,” Trump insisted on CNN’s “New Day.”

Trump did not refute the accuracy of the quote.

Fiorina declined the opportunity to punch back Wednesday night on Fox News with Megyn Kelly.

“Well, I think those comments speak for themselves,” Fiorina said. “Honestly, Megyn, I’m not going to spend a single cycle wondering what Donald Trump means.”

But then, sensing an opportunity, Fiorina added:

“Maybe — just maybe — I’m getting under his skin a little bit, because I am climbing in the polls.

* * * * *

Which mouth do you want speaking for America?  Which heart is exalted in God’s sight?

The trouble started last June when the U.S. Supreme Court discovered the U.S. Constitution legalized same-sex marriage.  The 5-4 ruling required same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live and that states no longer may reserve the right only for heterosexual couples.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision.  Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”  Implication:  the five justices who favored same-sex marriage grounded their decision in something other than the Constitution!  If true, the Court made law! 

Rowan County (Kentucky) Clerk Kim Davis, a professed Christian, claimed issuing same-sex marriage licenses violated her religious faith.  She stopped issuing all marriage licenses.  Two homosexual and two heterosexual couples sued her.  A federal judged ordered her to issue the licenses, a decision an appeals court upheld.  Davis’ lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled against her.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to jail for refusing to obey an order of his court which required her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  Davis and her attorneys stated she’s been willing to have her name removed from marriage licenses in the county.  But Judge Bunning replied he would be satisfied only when Davis either issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples per the U.S. Supreme Court decision or resign.

When asked about the case yesterday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the penalty for the Kentucky clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples is a matter of the rule of law in the United States.  “I would just say on principle that the success of our democracy depends on rule of law. And there is no public official that is above the law, certainly not the president of the United States. But neither is the the Rowan County clerk. That’s a principle that is enshrined in our Constitution and in our democracy and it’s one obviously the courts are seeking to uphold.”  Pardon my cynicism, but it seems to me the president has placed himself above the law!  (Okay, that was a cheap shot.  But political class hypocrisy galls me!)

So what next?  Today Davis sits somewhere in jail–not allowed to post bail.  (Mass murderers have been out on bail!)  What’s up with Judge Benning?  Doesn’t “equal protection under the law” apply to Davis?  Is Benning angry at her conscientious disobedience?  Or does he have an agenda?

Admittedly a resolution isn’t simple at this point.  Davis is a government employee.  She could resign.  On the other hand, what of her religious freedom?  Is there no middle ground?

But something more ominous is in play.  In his blog yesterday, Dr. Albert Mohler wrote, “What this story reveals beyond the headlines is that the moral revolution on marriage and human sexuality will leave nothing as it was before. No area of life will be untouched, and no address will be far removed from the front lines of the revolution.”

Sound extreme?  I don’t think so.  Five justices have been allowed to redefine marriage.  And because Davis acted on her religious convictions, today she sits in jail.  What would we do if a same-sex couple wanted to use our church building for their wedding? Or if a same-sex couple wanted to use our service business as part of their ceremony or reception?

If Mohler is right, soon we may not be mere spectators in the “moral revolution.”  We may be participants. 

A column in today’s Wall Street Journal about Donald Trump reminded me of the antichrist.

Whoa there, Trump fans!  Don’t cancel your free subscription to my blog without hearing me out, please.  I’m not implying Trump is the antichrist.  I simply see a parallel between the way people are going wild over him and the way ” . . . the whole earth [will marvel] as they [follow] the antichrist” (Revelation 13:3).

The WSJ column was written by Bret Stephens’.  Here are a few selected quotes.

Since Mr. Trump joined the GOP presidential field and leaped to the top of the polls, several views have been offered to explain his popularity.  He conveys a can-do image.  He is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation.  He toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man.  He addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment . . .

[The ascendancy of Trump] says . . . that a movement that is supposed to believe in defending old fashioned values and traditions against the assorted degradations of the postmodern left might allow itself to be led by a reality-TV star whose [trashy] tastes in trophies, architectural and otherwise, mainly remind me of the aesthetics of Bob Guccione (founder of a porn magazine) . . . It says that many of the same people who have bellyached nonstop for the past seven years about the cult-of-personality president currently in the Oval Office are seriously willing to consider another cult-of-personality figure on the off-chance he’s peddling the cure America needs.  Focus group testing by pollster Frank Luntz suggests that Mr. Trump’s fans could care less about his flip-flopping political views but responded almost rapturously to his apparently magnetic persona.  When people become indifferent to the ideas of their would-be leaders, those leaders become prone to dangerous ideas.  Democracies that trade policy substance for personal charisma tend not to last as democracies . . .

Somewhere along the way I was taught that antichrist will rise up in a world of chaos.  Things will have become so bad everywhere that we’ll clamor for a strong leader who promises to save us.  I think Revelation chapters 6-11 imply that, and recent history bears it out.  Recall how new President Obama was going to unify this divided nation, and how he exuded hope for a new world order.

Now we have a candidate who, in Stephens’ words, “conveys a can-do image, is the bluntest of the candidates in addressing public fears of cultural and economic dislocation, toes no line, serves no PAC, abides no ideology, is beholden to no man [and] addresses the broad disgust of everyday Americans with their failed political establishment.”

Therefore . . .

• Let’s not be carried away by Trump’s angry charisma.
• Let’s not believe, as he said in one interview, that the Bible is his favorite book.  When asked his favorite verse, he couldn’t even loosely paraphrase one!
• Let’s consider that we have two remarkable contenders not part of “the political class”–Carson and Fiorina.
• Let’s realize that our primary allegiance is to the Kingdom of God and our voting should be informed by that.
• And let’s remember that, while we must submit to and pray for those in authority (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-7), new political leaders are not our hope.  Jesus is (Titus 2:13).

For the grace of God that brings salvation
has appeared to all men.
It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions,
and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
while we wait for the blessed hope—
the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness,
and to purify for himself a people that are his very own,
eager to do what is good (Titus 2:11-14).

Sounds like sensationalism.  An attempt to fuel anger against the government.  Have Christians actually been abruptly removed from an organization for preaching Christianity? 

According to the Baptist Press, “David Wells, a 13-year volunteer prison minister from McQuady, Ky., was informed in July by the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice that he would no longer be permitted to serve at the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Bowling Green because he refused to sign a document, per state policy, promising not to ‘imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful, or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.'”

Todd Starnes, radio host of Fox News and Commentary, writes, “The Kentucky regulation clearly states that volunteers working with juveniles ‘shall not refer to juveniles by using derogatory language in a manner that conveys bias towards or hatred of the LGBTQI community. DJJ staff, volunteers, interns and contractors shall not imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.’” 

“They told us we could not preach that homosexuality is a sin – period,” Wells said. “We would not have even been able to read Bible verses that dealt with LGBT issues.”

Wells said they’ve never used hateful or derogatory comments when dealing with the young inmates.  Starnes calls the dismissal of Wells the beginning of a “purge.”

Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal organization, is representing Wells. He said the state’s ban on Biblical counseling is unconstitutional religious discrimination.  “There is no question there is a purging underway.  The dissenters in the recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage warned us this would happen.”  Staver is demanding the state immediately reinstate Wells as well as the other volunteer ministers.

“By restricting speech which volunteers are allowed to use while ministering to youth detainees, the State of Kentucky and the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice have violated the protections given to private speech through the First Amendment and the Kentucky Constitution,” Staver wrote in his letter to state officials.

The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice demanded Wells sign a state-mandate document promising to never tell inmates that homosexuality is “sinful” or else DJJ would revoke his credentials .  Wells said, “We could not sign that paper.  It broke my heart.”