A question for evangelicals: Is it Donald Trump or is it Christ that you follow? It cannot be both

Christian evangelicals should not tolerate Donald Trump supporting ministers.

This is not about politics; it is about morality.

Of course, the two are not cleanly distinguishable. The mistake we often make is compartmentalising them. ‘Oh, it’s just politics’, we say. ‘No, it’s somebody’s life — somebody has to live with the policy you vote for, and the ideas you help spread.’

If Christians are serious about being a force for good in the world, they need to get off the fence about the far right.

Silence helps only the oppressor; and far too many Northern Irish Christians are anything but silent in their support for Donald Trump, whom I consider to be far right.

People say to me, “Our job is to preach Christ.”

If that is the scope of your Christianity, then I feel sorry for you. Any villain can preach using the ‘right’ words.

The Gospel is about so much more than preaching. It’s about how we treat one another, the good we put out into the world.

And how can one claim to be following Christ while they follow Trump, when he has had at least one far right advisor and has said things that appear to show admiration of white nationalists, his assault on truth, his cruelty to immigrants, his history of racism and the 20+ women who have accused him of sexual assault.

Court documents recently released by the hacktivists Anonymous show Trump settling many harassment cases out of court, suggesting millions in hush money.

Of all this, yet even a casual perusal of some ministers’ Facebook pages (including some ministers in my former church the Free Presbyterians) shows open and unabashed admiration for Mr Trump, and not even the slightest concern for his administration’s many cruelties, not least the separation of hundreds of children from their parents at the US/Mexico border, and the keeping of those children in unsanitary conditions.

Tales of sexual assault within those camps — compared to concentration camps by historians and Holocaust survivors alike — were rampant.

But even without the sexual assault allegations, the separating of children and parents was already a terrible sin.

We are talking about toddlers, often being kept in what amounted to cages, without their parents.

This is not hyperbole — the reports are there to be found if you wish to look them up.

So; Trump or Christ?

You can follow one or the other.

But you cannot follow both.

John A. Gray, Ballymoney

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