Evangelical Support for Trump Eroding?

[Dill]

(10-12-2018, 02:43 PM)Benton Wrote: Charitable organizations give and receive. So, I'm not sure what you're implying. That there are lots of Christian-based charities? I would agree with that... along with saying there are lots of non-religious related ones, too.

For Christian folks, that shouldn't matter. That's between the recipient and God. Welfare abuse is irrelevant.

I volunteer when I can at a Christian-based kitchen, and a different food pantry. Neither one asks for income info. Just good folks feeding other folks who need fed because that's what God said to do.

Congress is largely supposed to be a reflection of their constituents. What they spend money on should be of interest to anyone who pays taxes. Personally, I'd rather that go to keep someone fed and sheltered and alive as opposed to paying someone's gambling losses or making a handful of lobbyists happy.

(10-12-2018, 03:05 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Some feel they are supporting "anti-Christian" activities such as drug use or alcohol abuse. They want to ensure their charitable dollars are used for food, clothing, shelter, and necessary medical care.

Not sure how many are against feeding, clothing, and sheltering the needy. As I said, I freely pay my taxes, but do not consider it my Christian duty; that's a totally separate matter.

People often wonder why Evangelicals, who state a desire to be "Christlike" and to make the U.S. a Christian nation, nevertheless support mean Republican policies.

As the links I posted above show, not all are down with such policies, but I find it interesting how those who are down with them reconcile denying refugees safety, food and shelter, or reducing welfare, with "being Christlike."  It seems that contemporary Protestantism has reworked the Augustinian division between the City of God and the City of man into a division between private, individual behavior and public government.

Defending Dr. Robert Jeffress and conservative evangelicals requires repairing our evangelical political theology

http://capstonereport.com/2018/01/21/repairing-evangelical-political-theology-getting-the-state-right/31843/

The biblical data is clear, the state exists to create order so that Christians can have lives of safety and quiet. Here are a few key texts:

Romans 13:3, “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have its approval. 4 For it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For it is God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong.”[1]

Here, Paul tells us that government is God’s servant (diakonos) that punishes wrongdoers. The service the state renders to God is twofold in helping its subjects toward good and preventing evil. One commentary, explains the formulation as, “Hence even Christians, ‘freed’ by Christ Jesus from the powers of this world, cannot resist the political authority that comes ultimately from God, even if that authority is at the time in the hands of heathens.”[2] This is a very important point. The state was not transformed by Christ’s work or the preaching of the Gospel. The Gospel’s preaching changed individuals. Government exists as it did prior to Christ’s work on the Cross and His resurrection. If we carefully consider what some neo-Kuyperian political thinkers push, that as Christians we must transform the state into an institution carrying out Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, and that Christ’s work has totally transformed the state (or at least should transform the state), then we must ask why are we not told such in the explicit texts dealing with government? It seems uniform in the New Testament writings that government is given one role and the church another.

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Trying to force Gospel principles on the state is out of place. It would result in absurdities. Would justice be served if the government turned the other cheek to open rebellion? Should the state forgive the felon 70 times 7? Of course not. (Though prison reforming advocates in evangelicalism sure seem intent on pushing that as part of their prison reform agenda.) These are principles for individuals. The principles governing the state are to foster order so that all of us are empowered to carry out those acts of love and mercy. Evangelicals must firmly resist confusing the purpose of the state with the purpose for the Christian. Otherwise, the state cannot do its job protecting us.
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This is an argument against "Gospelizing" the state, and so I think one corollary of it also must be that it is not the state's job to feed the poor--it is the job of the individual.  So there is no contradiction between reducing or ending welfare and feeding the poor in one's private life.

This distinction between private Christianity and Public government also enables Evangelicals to hail Trump a contemporary "Cyrus" who is not of them but enables the restoration of God's nation on earth.  

(PS: LOL "Biblical data")